Speaker 1: There is a kind of tiredness that has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with sleep. It is the tiredness of carrying two
Speaker 1: things that pull in opposite directions, of knowing one thing
Speaker 1: and doing another, of wanting stillness and moving toward noise,
Speaker 1: of loving what you are, and somehow living as though
Speaker 1: you are not quite sure. Most of us have known
Speaker 1: this feeling for so long that we stop noticing it
Speaker 1: had a name. We simply move through our days with
Speaker 1: a low and familiar weight, the way a river carries silt,
Speaker 1: not burdened exactly, but never quite clear. Settle now, if
Speaker 1: you will, into a reevalu the world any new what
Speaker 1: it is solid patience, asking nothing of you. There is
Speaker 1: no picular way to be in this moment. There is
Speaker 1: only the moment itself and you, and whatever quiet is
Speaker 1: willing to gather between the two. Think of a tree,
Speaker 1: not a tree in any particular season, simply a tree
Speaker 1: as it is. The roots do not argue with the branches,
Speaker 1: The bark does not quarrel with the leaves. The tree
Speaker 1: does not spend its mornings becoming a tree and its
Speaker 1: evenings wondering if it has managed It. Simply is what
Speaker 1: it is, entirely without internal negotiation. And yet we look
Speaker 1: at a tree and call it still. We do not
Speaker 1: see the.
Speaker 2: Slow and immense labor of it, the reaching down as
Speaker 2: much as reaching up, the drinking and the breathing, the
Speaker 2: years of becoming written into every ring of its heartwood.
Speaker 2: A tree earns its stillness not by effort, exactly, but
Speaker 2: by allowing all its parts to want the same thing.
Speaker 2: There is a moment, and perhaps you have touched it,
Speaker 2: when something inside you simply agrees, When what you believe
Speaker 2: and what you do are no longer strangers to each other,
Speaker 2: when the life you are living and the self you
Speaker 2: recognize in quiet moments are not two separate countries with
Speaker 2: a border between them.
Speaker 1: It arrives without announcement.
Speaker 3: It does not arrive because you pushed hard enough or
Speaker 3: wanted it with sufficient intensity. It arrives the way morning
Speaker 3: arrives gradually, and then all at once, and suddenly the
Speaker 3: world is simply lit.
Speaker 1: A river, when it has found its course, does not
Speaker 1: question its direction. With every bend it carries what it carries.
Speaker 1: It moves with the shape of the land. It gives
Speaker 1: itself without grief to the sea it has never seen,
Speaker 1: And somewhere along the way somewhere between the mountain and
Speaker 1: the mouth, it stops being water trying to become a river,
Speaker 1: and simply is the river, fully without remainder. This is
Speaker 1: not a grand transformation. This is something quieter. This is
Speaker 1: what happens when there is no longer a part of
Speaker 1: you standing apart from you, watching with folded arms, unconvinced.
Speaker 4: We spend such tender years building arguments with ourselves, speaking
Speaker 4: in two voices, the one that knows and the one
Speaker 4: that hesitates to let the knowing change anything. And perhaps
Speaker 4: that was necessary. Perhaps the distance between who we were
Speaker 4: becoming and who we had been needed time to close.
Speaker 4: Perhaps the self is not reckless with its trust, even
Speaker 4: of itself. Perhaps we needed to circle the thing many
Speaker 4: times before we were willing to land. There is no
Speaker 4: shame in any of that. The bird that takes a
Speaker 4: long time to return to the brand is not a
Speaker 4: lesser bird. It is a bird that has been watching
Speaker 4: the wind carefully and know something about patience. But there
Speaker 4: comes a morning, and it may be this one where
Speaker 4: one not far from now, when the distance begins to
Speaker 4: feel unnecessary, when the voice that doubt it grows quieter,
Speaker 4: not because it was defeated, not because you argued it
Speaker 4: into silence, but because what you are living has become
Speaker 4: slowly and without ceremony, something it can find no fault with.
Speaker 4: You looked up one day and realized you were not
Speaker 4: managing yourself anymore. You were simply being yourself.
Speaker 1: The way rain is rain, the way the mountain is
Speaker 1: the mountain, through seasons, through storm, through all the long
Speaker 1: and ordinary years, not holding its shape through effort, but
Speaker 1: because its shape is what it is. This is what
Speaker 1: it is to live without internal conflict, not a permanent calm,
Speaker 1: not the absence of doubt or difficulty. Those remain, and
Speaker 1: they are human and they are yours. But something deeper
Speaker 1: has settled, some central thing has stopped arguing. The deepest
Speaker 1: part of you and the daily part of you are
Speaker 1: walking in the same direction now, and one is no
Speaker 1: longer dragging behind. And you notice in this a kind
Speaker 1: of spaciousness you cannot quite explain, as though a door
Speaker 1: that had been closed for a very long time has
Speaker 1: simply been left open, and the air is moving freely
Speaker 1: through the house of you, and nothing is locked, and
Speaker 1: nothing is hidden, and there is nothing you are trying
Speaker 1: not to be. This is not the end of becoming.
Speaker 1: The tree does not stop growing when its roots find purchase.
Speaker 1: The river does not stop moving when it knows its way.
Speaker 5: You will still change, You will still surprise yourself. There
Speaker 5: will still be mornings when the light falls differently and
Speaker 5: you see yourself from an angle you had not expected.
Speaker 5: But now the changes come from within a self that
Speaker 5: is not at war with itself. Now the surprises are
Speaker 5: the kind that deepen you, rather than divide. You let
Speaker 5: the settle without grasping it too tightly, the way mon
Speaker 5: night settles on still water, not by force, not by will,
Speaker 5: but simply because the water has grown quiet enough to
Speaker 5: hold it. You do not have to do anything with this.
Speaker 5: You do not have to become anything other than what
Speaker 5: you already quietly.
Speaker 1: Are. Somewhere, a lantern is burning in a distant window.
Speaker 1: It has been burning a long time, not to guide
Speaker 1: anyone home, not to signal anything, not to be seen,
Speaker 1: simply because that is what lanterns do when they are attended,
Speaker 1: and the person tending it is not anxious about the dark.
Speaker 1: They have simply made peace with the light they carry,
Speaker 1: and let it do what light does. And found in
Speaker 1: that small and faithful act that the evening is not
Speaker 1: so difficult to sit inside after all, Rest here a
Speaker 1: while longer if you wish. There is nowhere this moment
Speaker 1: needs to go. This was a ministry of mind guided meditation.
Speaker 1: I'm Simon. Thank you for sitting with me today. You
Speaker 1: came as you were not ready, perhaps not empty of thought,
Speaker 1: but here, and here was enough it always is. Join
Speaker 1: us next time. The silence continues.