I set off up the road without my shoes, the feel of the road beneath my feet…
Weaving my way once again, between the small stones, jumping over the cracks in the wide grey paving slabs…
Padding up the stony steps to Albert bridge…A smooth pathway underfoot to the other side of the river…
Into Battersea Park
Two laps round the circumference, appreciating the sensation of the ground under my soles…
Remembering why I took my shoes off… And have never really put them back on…
This English winter, my first in seven years, persuaded me into vivo barefoot by day and skinners socks and vibram fivefingers to run about in…
Warm feet, cosy winter feet
But they now cry out to be naked again… To tap tap tap along, strong feet.
Feet free
People look – always – some aghast, some intrigued, some in admiration…
The police circling slowly on motor bikes, took no notice of me – not one bit.
My inner voice lead me to shed my shoes once more, nearly four years ago – on Famara beach…
And, during this UK winter, it whispered to me to keep them warm.
I follow where my inner compass leads – often along the road less travelled; and so each journey is new, uncharted; no road map…
It is a chimera to think that we know the road; that we can plan it out and follow it where we want to go…
Each moment is new… Each moment vibrating with limitless possibility
Each moment never ever lived before
How can we possibly know the way…There is no road map for our lives
But there is an inner compass
We all have one
To start to listen to it, means that we must first stop and hear all the other voices…
The beliefs, the ideas, the stories, the rules of our conditioning – that we have allowed to drown out the gentle subtle movement of the compass within…
It guides always, sensitive always to the truth… It goes on whispering its suggestions – ever more quietly as the years go by – even when the voices of conventional wisdom still lead the way…
But if we stop
And feel
Listen to our heart
Hear its whisper
Very soon, its beat can start to soar and the compass becomes our constant guide
Life truly begins
Bare Sole to
Bare soul