Vachon Imagined

When a person expresses themselves, they are expressing life itself.

Something is moving through them, appearing as weakness, tears, laughter, anger, fear, joy, and every expression in between.

Life is moving.

The key to freedom is not resisting this movement.

The key to grounding is learning to remain present within it.

We can walk with people.

We can feel what they feel.

We can witness their pain, their joy, their grief, and their humanity.

But we do not have to become overcome by it.

We do not have to abandon ourselves and enter the same suffering as though it is the only reality that exists.

We can stand in fullness.

We can stand in light.

We can allow another person to move through their consciousness, through their experience of life, while remaining connected to the presence that holds us both.

When we become more presence and less self, this begins to happen naturally.

It is not something we force.

It is not something we perform.

It is not another task for the mind to accomplish.

We feel.

We release.

We ground.

We practice.

And like any practice, it requires knowing ourselves.

Because paradoxically, it is through truly knowing ourselves that we learn to lose ourselves.

A professional athlete does not reach mastery overnight.

A practitioner of medicine does not become skilled without years of discipline.

A musician does not embody their instrument without repetition and devotion.

Every path requires conditioning, repetition, discipline, and humility.

The same is true of presence.

We learn ourselves.

We return to ourselves.

And eventually, we discover that the self we were so desperately trying to protect was never separate from the life moving through everything.