My intentions of serving like a mountain stream
My intention with this blog is to create an online space to organize and offer my own reflections, ideas and curiosities about various researched topics and content that I find inspiring. This blog enacts as a creative catalyst for my writing and encourages my natural curiosity and drive to engage more with my local and online communities. I am learning and opening to new ways of risking vulnerability while moving toward who/what I care most about. When inspiration and creative drive come bubbling forth, I am learning to direct that energy into intentional projects and mediums that allow for my own growth and healing while creating movement and empowerment in valued directions. I am learning to get out of my own way by allowing my ideas to come through more clearly without judgment, hesitancy and trying too hard. As I feel deeper into this experiential process of letting go and relaxing into a more expanded sense of flow and effortless mastery with my work and my art, I am reminded it can be a lot like serving like a mountain stream. Every moment becomes a new opportunity to let go and arrive deeper into the present tense and your own flow toward fulfillment, connection and authenticity.
"I was taught when I was a little boy that it was good to be unselfish and loving, and I used to think that I should grow up to serve other people. But after a while I found out that unless one has something to give people, there is nothing one can do to help them. Just because I thought I ought to help, it didn't mean that I had anything to give. Gradually, over the years, as I understood what it was that I had received of significance from the world, I realized that these things were never intended as gifts to be given in the usual sense of the word. However much one enjoys the song of birds, they are not singing for the advancement of music, and the clouds are not floating across the sky to be painted by artists. In the words of a Zen poem: The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection; The water has no mind to retain their image. When a mountain stream flows out of a spring beside the road, and a thirsty traveler comes along and drinks deeply, the traveler is welcome. But the mountain stream is not waiting with the intention of refreshing thirsty travelers; it is just bubbling forth, and the travelers are always welcome to help themselves. So in exactly that sense I offer my ideas." Allan Watts