Cat Pedini, 3o
A Just Because POA
First, it is important that you imagine a river.
Next, you need to think about other bodies of water, and why the river is different.
The reason is forward motion. A river is not only always moving, it is always moving in one direction. Even when the twists and turns of the river take it this way or that, the one direction in which it is always moving is Forward. A salmon may fight the flow to swim upstream, but nothing can make the river itself reverse direction and run backwards.
You are in the river, and you are the river.
It is as macrocosmic or as microcosmic as you want to think about, and also both at once. Water in forward motion. It is your life, your body, and your world. The journey of humans, individuals or as a species, has liquid in its origins; the amniotic fluid to nourish a foetus which will evolve into a human body made up of mostly water, or the first fish with legs to crawl from the primordial ooze to also evolve into a human body made up of mostly water. It is forward flow, all of it. So first, you must picture the river.
Think of the river now as life. Remember, you are the river and you want to move forward. It is what rivers do. You may not know the topography of the river or where it will lead you. You also probably don’t know where or when the river will turn to rapids, bottom out into a tide pool which is almost still when you look at it, or where a family of beavers might have decided to build a dam to block the flow. You never know when a scorching sun will cause the river to go dry, or a surplus of rains cause it to overflow. It is affected by its contents, inhabitants, the silt churned up from the bottom, or the areas so clear you can see everything that lies beneath. Different areas of the river might resemble other ones, but never will it stay the same. It is linear. It moves forward because that is its nature, and it never looks back.
You are the river. Why would you try to stop your forward motion? So much time is wasted on regrets, on clinging to the past or even the present, to stagnate in the tide pool, or to avoid the rapids. This is unnatural for a river and it is unnatural for you. However, we must be able to assert some control over the river that we are, or we will be buffeted to death by the rocks within. When we encounter rapids or a beaver dam or some other thing which causes our river to get out of control or to stop, what needs to be remembered is this – you are the river and in the river and have been since the beginning of time, and you can reconnect with it if you try.
There are few rituals which fail to include a liquid of some kind. Tea, wine, blood; these are all symbolic of the original liquid which is water, and the original water which is life. Connect with the liquid and remember the river and you will be there; it is ingrained within you.
Sometimes the thing that stops the river is bigger than a beaver dam. While it is true that, given enough time, eventually the largest man-made structures will weather away and allow flow again, sometimes it is necessary to take some metaphorical dynamite to the metaphorical Hoover Dam and create a flood so that progress can resume. Back since Noah planted his vineyard and before, seekers of enlightenment have sought and sometimes found ways to help themselves reconnect to the river and restore motion. So often we want to hold on to what is and fear the often painful phenomenon that change is, that we make ourselves forget we are the river and we want to go forward. We must then make ourselves die, symbolically, so that we may be reborn in yet another act of forward motion, and allow ourselves to leave the past behind and continue our forward flow. The reason so many people indulge in drug use or excessive alcohol, or even something as innocuous as escape sleeping, whether they realize it or not, is an attempt to tap that part of themselves which remembers the river their conscious selves have temporarily forgotten. There again must come the reminder that you must control your journey as much as you are able, and not let it drown you.
There is no past. There are memories, but there are no regrets. A tide pool is a beautiful place to catch your breath and admire the scenery, but eventually the forward motion must resume. Leave the backwards travel to the salmon, who will mostly be eaten by bears anyway.
You are the river.
Flow.
