Beneath the surface of my life, where I focus on the details of the day, runs a river of a different depth. I often live at the surface, changing the oil in my car, paying the bills, cleaning the gutters, greeting my neighbors, lunching with friends, going to the dentist. All of these are important, they maintain my life and provide comfort. But the surface was never meant to be the landing spot, and comfort was never a goal for its own sake.
I also spend time attending to the river, which requires its own kind of maintenance and attention. Most mornings, my practice includes some form of meditation or visualization, turning my inner eye to the banks of the river and riding the flow to see where it goes. My river attention has a different quality than my surface attention. It is soft, porous, pervasive, filling my physical and mental space, large enough to gather the moving parts of my psyche and hold them brightly.
I’m always working to bring the surface and the river together so that instead of feeling like two things, they become one thing. My work at the surface creates a stable haven that promotes my well-being. I benefit from a healthy ego that can function in the world, relate to others with care, and weather emotional surges without panic. My work in the river strengthens the foundation at the root.
I’m usually lopsided, spending more time absorbed at the surface, worrying small details to death, until serendipity rings a note that reminds me of the river. I am always surprised at how quickly I can drop into the open, airy expanse below the veneer of life. My time there accumulates. It is as if the more time I spend in the river, the wetter I get.
The river is the engine, moving beneath, carving the rock underground like those caves in France where our ancestors painted rhinos and mammoths. The surface is the playground where the river’s potential manifests and imagination blossoms into color and form. The interaction of the river and the surface shapes my world through the choices I make about how to place my attention. The more often I remember the river, the more the alchemy of consciousness refines the landscape of the surface and closes the distance between the two.
At my core is an anchor that is comfortable in both. It is cheering me on as I go, spelunking in the dark, looking for a patch of the cave to paint the scenes where my imagination meets the details of my day. I listen for the note it sings, buoyed by its confidence in me.
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