Tag: meditation on the move

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So Within; So Without…

Julia Chi Taylor

‘Let’s walk home’, I suggested over breakfast…’We could walk all the way back along the river’

It took us twenty five minutes to journey there on the tube…

And all day to walk back; with a stop for lunch!

The river route turned out to be fifteen miles; We started on the South Bank in Richmond and enjoyed witnessing a magical unfolding of new uncharted territories.

‘I love being by water’, I said to Anadi as we walked; ‘whether its the sea or the river…

I just love it’

‘What do you love?’ he asked

We walked in silence for awhile – I realised that I just love it, and at first had no words as to the ‘why’

Other than ‘I just do!’

But after awhile I said to him, ‘I love the expanse, the stillness and the movement; the reflection of the whole in the individual swirls and ripples…

When it is the sea I love that I can’t see the end and so I glimpse eternity

And I love the experience that we are ‘the whole ocean in one drop’

We are that ocean – we are that river; we are the whole; we are all that is

And the water reflects that as I walk beside it.

‘Why do you love it…’? I asked him 

‘I love the expansiveness too’, Anadi replied; ‘and the freedom and that it changes form; it can be solid when it is ice and then it has movement and is fluid…’

At Barnes we crossed the river to the north side… We knew there were many pubs along the way! And so after enjoying a delicious lunch stop in ‘The Dove’ on we went…

The rhythm of walking silent, peaceful. Time seeming so arbitrary, as to not exist. The hours passed and yet there was no concept of the hours; as we walked and talked and walked in silence too.

An inner journey as each moment is; every experience an inner one reflected in our individual creations; this life.

We an expression of consciousness; and our minds the incredible receivers of our inner divine creative force

So within, so without…

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Dear Diary; As I walked out…

Sometimes I wake up and think I’ll go for a walk…

And that I might keep going again – day after day like Laurie Lee ( and me in 2018!)… 

He inspired me when I was twenty years old, ‘As I walked out one midsummer morning’ echoed in my soul… Although by now my steps had become running ones, I had ‘walked out’ all my life, out into the fields behind our house, further to the woods and onto the common land…

Across to the next village and back again; walks taking three hours and more at a tender age… In Cornwall on holiday – early each morning alone I walked, by now inspired by William Wordsworth walking in the mornings around the lake – five miles or more…

One Easter Monday we walked seventeen miles to Guildford Cathedral – a group of us from the church – hours and hours it took until we looked up the hill to the cathedral standing tall and straight and red, the late afternoon spring sun shining on its windows – the organ playing inside…

And then I started to run instead of walk…

For years and years I was too tired to walk – when I wasn’t running I sat and reflected – or drove my car or took a train…

But in March 2020 when we were all locked in, walking walking and walking has all come back again…

Walking the streets and the parks with Anadi – hours and hours, each night we walked and through the weekend too.

And we haven’t stopped.

Time standing still in the step and the next…

The miles going by – the journey mirroring life – leaving it all behind as we go nowhere

The past melting into each mile and the next

No future on the walk

No purpose

No where to get to

But to be in the step and the next

And the experience of being alone together…

When I was twenty a wise person said to me about running that Van Aaken ( a renowned coach at the time) recommended walking breaks on the run. I listened to this truth, but didn’t hear it for many years…

I had somewhere to get to – the land of faster times – and I couldn’t afford to stop and walk…

But the land of faster times proved to be a chimera

I chose the best myth to chase 

My faster and faster times reached a point where they started to get slower and slower…

This irony wasn’t lost on me.

My spiritual quest of inner peace, silence, stillness always prevalent in the race to win.

And so after many many years I won my own race

I found out how to let go…

And walk out each morning – sometimes running, but with walking breaks as well; when I want, and so my soul follows the dream of the step…

Whether it is on the same well trodden routes around the parks and up the Kings road 

Or across a vast expanse of land

Spain…

Two years ago I finished my own walk out on the run – in my naked feet in the same town that Laurie Lee had ended too…I had forgotten this; not having read the book for almost forty years.

A Journalist alerted me… ‘So you chose to finish where Laurie Lee finished because he was your inspiration?’ she asked…

‘He finished in Almuñécar’? I asked with incredulity

Yes, he finished in Almuñécar too’…