In the midst of Spring arriving, I take two long weekend trips to family back East

–watching how I do travel and out-in-the-world these days: always the surrendering process holds me safe.

While I was away spring has come almost to full blossom in my gardens: daffodils, freesias, asparaxis, carpets of wild nasturtium, the roses in full leaf and even (at night, when the sun isn’t burning off the oils) the beginnings of the intoxicating scent of orange blossoms. Crickets back in legions. The bird population increased enough to empty the feeders noticeably more quickly now than just two weeks ago. And, the days have turned quite hot! I come back from 30 degrees and snow showers in Boston to a week of Ojai temperatures that are in the 80’s!

I come home tired more from the traveling than from the “full-on” being with people. This is a newness for me. Something that has come just in the past few trips this and last year. I seem so much more able to be completely surrendered into the moment of being with others, to be letting go of the being alone spaces. I am more able than ever to be in the middle of the flow, the intensity, the different ways of living. Without any part of me comparing it to or yearning for my other life at home. 

As soon as I leave home and shift into the between-place of travel to another time zone, I reset my travel clock to the new time. And, I make no translations back to the home time. Somehow (at least with just a 3 hour time difference with which to contend) I’ve always believed this shift to be the reason I’m never jet-lagged traveling in either direction. The change in my capacity to make the emotional reality shift to whatever reality I find myself in seems to have a similar kind of effect: no emotional-lag to deal with.

I’ve always had what seemed to me an enormous capacity to blend chameleon-like into whatever the emotional environment in which I might find myself. In earlier, more fraught seasons of my journey, I saw that capacity as a damage in me. I felt as though I had no solid, real self to call “me.” Only, instead, this ever-changeable persona. Now, my experience is quite different. There is a solid, defined and fully developed me that goes everywhere with me, in undiminished form. And, according to the emotional/physical environment in which I find myself, certain parts are more pronounced, more “figure.” The less relevant or fitting-in parts become more background until or unless some opportunity for their expression emerges. The more solidly I’ve come into my full self, the less distressed I am when no such opportunities arise. And, the less my need to be internally reminding myself of all of who else I also am. This not needing to remind myself is the parallel to not reminding myself what time it “really” is in my home place. It feels amazingly freeing, this surrendering into just what is so, just what of me is relevant in the just where I find myself to be.

The ongoing, ever-expanding practice of surrendering into just what is so in the moment is an extraordinary gift in almost any circumstance. It allowed me to be perfectly fine and unruffled in the midst of having my 1:55 P.M. flight delayed first one, then two, then four hours before it was finally just cancelled!  I took my hotel and food chits, went off to the Airport Hilton. There I soaked in a delicious bath, did “morning ablutions,” ate my own brought-from-home food, used my food chit to replace my now-depleted bottled water supply and then returned to meet and sleep on my now “red-eye” flight leaving at 10:20 P.M. that night. Sleeping on the plane instead of at my folks house (I would have arrived there at midnight on my original itinerary) left me with the same amount of waking time I would have had with them anyway! Having all my food, toiletries and amusements in my carry-on of course made it all much easier than it might have been otherwise. (There’s something to be said after all for my “high-maintenance” pre-travel preparations!)

I realize that, these days, when I go “out-in-the-world” I go without any expectation that things will go easily or well. I certainly want and would like them to, but that’s not the same as expecting that they will. When messes happen, I more easily able to yield, surrendering into what’s unfolding, waiting to see where it’s all leading. Of course, believing that Spirit has a hand in all of it-even the seeming messes-helps enormously!

And, almost always it does turn out that there’s some magic to be noticed in it. By arriving at my parents at 7:00 A.M., I got to start my visit with three hours just with my dad. A very different, incredibly sweet entry compared to the usual one that includes my step-mom in a threesome in which my less verbal dad gets over-talked!

So, here I sit back at home with nothing on my plate but the long, slow, unhurried process of hand coloring 18,000 fresh-from-the-printer Rememberings and Celebrations cards. A gentle kind of curious readiness pervades my being. Everything feels especially vivid just now. I sit in my meditation garden drinking morning tea amazed by the peace, the vibrant, endless shades of new and old green, the weaving of bird song and the sounds of their wings. Everything feels newly washed, sparkling. And inside my whole being there is the same freshness, newness, vibrancy. I feel so present, so full of just this moment, so available to whatever may be coming.

Originally published March 2004