Learning to listen
Receiving guidance through Earth, herself
It happened at the very end of the dark and stormy year that was 2020. December 31st, to be exact. I had gone on a little ski trip to a sacred mountain where I was living in Arizona. I had ridden the chair lift as high as it goes. Then, unstrapping my feet from my board, I started climbing even higher.
Up the mountain I went. Higher than the ski slopes. Above even the trees! Deep snow all around me, I walked with my boots and board as I ascended, the world opening up all around me.
At some moment, I took a seat, pulled a beer out of my pocket, and looked out on it all.
This year had been a disaster in a very literal sense. The world around us all had gone up in flame. At the same time, my own life as I knew it had disintegrated. What was once a clear, purposeful direction was no longer so. I existed in perpetual chaos. Life felt chronically aflame.
What had gone so wrong? I had believed I was doing everything right: checking all the boxes, working so hard as I pushed my way forward through every obstacle. Why did things feel so bad? Why had it all fallen apart?
Sitting there on a snow-packed mountainside, I looked up at the peak high above me. And, in a moment, I finally could hear it, and understand it all.
This mountain - oh how she had held me through all these years in Arizona!
Distanced from my home in The Rocky Mountains, and tucked away in a city that made no sense to me, it was my short trips up to this mountain that had always held me: keeping me grounded, sane, and (unbeknownst to me) guiding me in the directions I best ought to go.
But the sad truth is, I hadn’t known how to listen to her guidance. I hadn’t known how to veer from those paths instilled within me by those who did not have my heart, and my greatest soul fulfillment in mind.
She did, but I did not know how to listen.
Because of this, that day, I sat down atop a full life of unskillful choices, looked out on it all, and understood the long list of choices I had made those past years that had taken me away, off course, from that which was best meant for me.
Broken open, something within had finally shifted into that most magical of spaces where I could, at last, hear.
The only question remained. Could I really listen now, such that I could take her wisdom and put it into action: to solidify that change of course in my life that needed to happy?
Could I finally receive her wisdom, and move myself into action to align myself with where I best ought to be?
The mountains are here to hold us, just as they are here to guide us.
Rising up as the very foundation of Earth, herself, the mountains are here to hold the literal grounds for all that is unfolding up here in this wild thing we call life.
Rising up as the very foundation of Earth, herself, The Mountain holds us, just as she holds all of life within her tender grasp.
At the same time, the mountains loom high above us, providing us with that which is worth our gaze.
What is worth gazing towards? What is worth striving for?
We can take The Mountain literally. Go find one. They exist in such wonderful diverse forms all across this planet. Go sit on her grounds. Gaze up at her high peak. Listen. Learn. Act in accordance.
Also, know that you do not need to physically visit a physical mountain to receive this same wisdom. Close down your eyes. Call her in. Listen. Learn. Act in accordance.
The say hindsight is 20/20.
It is clear to me, now, that if only I had once known what I do now, then there are choices that I made that would had looked far different. Perhaps, then, the joy would have come far sooner. Perhaps, then, the collapse would not have taken me down so deep.
Alas, if only’s do not bear much fruit, only as reflection so that we can move forward with more skillful action.
May this telling (and all other tellings) of The Mountain be in service to guiding us each and all forward:
In deeper, truer alignment with all that serves our highest path