ON PAST ME

I remember how you used to look through the blindingly beautiful photos posted by people, whose lives look so visually different from yours that they must also be different.

I remember how you used to wish we had that life.

Well, now we have that life.

How did that happen?

Surely not in the way you tried by documenting only beauty, editing away any pain.

Simply, we have that life now because of presence. What you used to dream of and feel in those posts - the dream they sold - was presence. Whether the people in the pictures felt that or not, the level of beauty they conveyed could only be accessed through presence.

Beware that going down that road will also bring you all of the sadness you ever attempted to edit away. Rinse it out. Cry. Scream. Explode. Create and keep at this to hold the channel open.

Now I wake up in presence with all of the beauty, all of the pain, and all of the space in between.

People have described me as sunshine. I wake up to the realization that the light of the sun is both beauty and pain and so many other colors.

Do you dream of another life?

Hug the pain of this one.

The only path there is through.