Vachon Imagined

“How do you feel silence?” he asked me.

I smiled.

“How do you not?”

A little banter to get the juices flowing never hurt anyone.

Feeling is the experience of reality. It is not the whole of reality. Emotion is the experience of thought, but it is not thought itself. They are distinct, yet they belong together. Thought gives shape to experience, and feeling gives it movement. Together they become what we call life—what many traditions have called spirit.

Before we overthink the word spirit, consider this: it is simply life moving.

Everything moves.

Turn off the lights in your bedroom, and movement continues. The electricity may stop flowing through the wires in your house, but the universe has not stopped. The earth continues its orbit. Your heart continues its rhythm. Your breath continues to rise and fall. Life keeps moving.

That is why every attempt to describe God is, in some way, a compromise. We can point toward the movement, but we cannot possess it. We can give it a name, but we cannot own what was never ours to own.

The more we name it, the less we experience it.

We slowly leave the body and begin living almost entirely in the mind, mistaking our explanations for the experience itself.

But the renewal of the mind does not come from thinking more.

It comes from feeling completely…

…and moving on.

Feel joy, and move on.

Feel grief, and move on.

Feel anger, and move on.

Cry, and move on.

Laugh, and move on.

Not because these experiences don’t matter, but because they have already fulfilled their purpose. They arrived, they revealed something, and then they continued on their way, just as life always does.

When life, spirit, or whatever name you choose gives itself to you again, do the same thing.

Feel it.

Receive it.

Let it pass.

Again and again.

One day you realize something extraordinary has happened.

Anger no longer shakes you the way it once did. Joy no longer needs to be justified. Laughter no longer asks for permission. Sorrow no longer convinces you it will last forever.

Everything simply comes…

and everything simply goes.

Life keeps moving.

So do you.

And somewhere along the way, without trying to transcend life, you discover that you are no longer imprisoned by every feeling that passes through you.

You are finally free enough to feel…

and move on.