When the World starts to open …

Dear friend,?

There is a moment—subtle, unprovoked—when the air thickens with meaning. It happens between heartbeats, in the spaces between your thoughts, in the hush before dawn. It is not loud. It does not demand. But if you are quiet and slow enough and you allow your mind for a few moments to pause, you may feel it: the world is larger than it seemed only a moment before.?

I do not mean large in the way of miles or stars or deep oceans, though those, too, are vast beyond measure. I mean large in the way of presence. In the way the water, the air, whatever you see or feel, hums around you. In the way your own body is not only flesh, but something woven from a subtler thread. It is when you allow your body to sense beyond, and it starts sensing and speaking.?

For a long time, I did not notice. Like many, I lived in the visible, the tangible, the knowable. The world of action and result, of logic and evidence. But somewhere, beneath all that, something was knocking. A whisper in the bones. A shift in the air that had nothing to do with wind.?

It is difficult to explain, because explanation belongs to the mind, and this—this belongs to something older. It started a few years ago and became stronger.?

Some call it energy. Some call it spiritual, some mystical. Many might call it nonsense. I do not need incense, music or anything else to sense it neither to name it. I just know that when it began to stir, there was no way to ignore it anymore.?

At first, it was only a vague feeling. An idea that my mind might play a trick on me. A sense stayed that the world was not just happening around me but breathing with me. That my thoughts were not merely inside my head but moved like ripples on a lake, touching unseen shores. That time and space were not straight lines but something far gentler, wrapping moments like a mother swaddling a child.?

Then came the noticing. The way the world speaks—not in words as words are a translation and interpretation, but in patterns, in symbols, in nudges sometimes soft they are easy to dismiss and sometimes with full force. The way a thought can bloom in the quiet, and the world, as if listening, can answer.?

You may be reading this and thinking: But I feel none of this. The world does not hum around me. My thoughts are only thoughts.??

I understand. I was there too, for many, many years.?

And I invite you, gently, to notice. Not to believe - belief is not the point. Not to think – as there is nothing to penetrate, to analyze, to think about. Simply to sense and to notice.?

Sit for a moment, wherever you are. Breathe, without hurry. Let your shoulders soften. Let your hands rest.?

Now, listen.?

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Not to the noise of the world, not to the hum of machines or the chatter of minds, but to what is beneath it. To the stillness that is never truly still.?

Can you feel the way the air holds you??

Can you sense the pause between breaths??

Can you allow, just for a moment, the possibility that the world is not solid, not fixed, but alive in a way beyond words??

And if not, that is fine, too, this is not about right/wrong, not about a task or a step to be completed, but about a possibility, a gentle invitation to stay in relation with the moment. And it is a muscle that enjoys gentle training.??

Because it does not force itself upon you. It waits.?

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Like an old friend who has never stopped loving you. Like a song of essence written into your bones before you were born and that you chose to come into this life with.?

And one day, when you are least expecting it, you may tilt your head a certain way, or step into a patch of sunlight and sense a resonance, or wake in the deep of night with the hush all around you -

- and you will know.?

And in that knowing, the world will start to open.?

Blessings and love,?

Michael?

www.michellierow.com

www.cultivatingleadership.com