Life as a mountain river

I love the analogy of a mountain river for our lives. We talk about the importance of  ‘going with the flow’ but of course life will bring up blockages. It’s the nature of things and part of the fun of living. None of us want our rivers to be straight and featureless and we certainly don’t want them to stagnate. We didn’t come here to get things done, we came for the thrill of the journey.

Where there are rocks and eddies in our rivers the energy of the river picks up and becomes more powerful. The same is true in our lives. There’s that old saying, “what doesn’t kill me will make me strong”. It’s a dramatic way of putting it but true nonetheless.  If we can still fog a mirror then we will have rocks in our river. Some of these will feel jaggedy and huge, some will have become smoothed and rounded over time. If we keep our rivers full of water, (i.e. we attend to ourselves and attempt to live as close to our truth as possible), then a lot of these rocks will simply be submerged and become harmless. If our water levels are down, (because we are overwhelmed by circumstances and negative emotions), then all these rocks will stick up and get in the way of the flow.

It is normal and healthy for us to have rocks in our river – without these our flow would not have an opportunity to pick up energy – just don’t let your water levels go down so far that these rocks hinder the flow to the point that life feels like a trickle!