A magical moment found, while sitting in the morning mists

Sitting out in the mists this morning, watching the air clear as the sun came shining through, I realized once again how grateful I am to be alive. And to actually FEEL alive. There are so many stupid things I've done in my life to 'try' to feel alive, if just for a moment, when I didn't really know how. I haven't known until just a few recent years how to really live - how to really 'be'. Many are the mad times I've frantically tried to force pleasure, or pain, or intensity of one sort or another, into being the experience of aliveness I sought.

Real life has no substitute.

There's nothing like it - being in a body, experiencing firsthand your own living, breathing self, and being at peace with the divine nature of all that is. No matter who's heaven, or where it may be, that's 'IT' in my opinion. In this, even breathing is easy and every burden is light. And it matters not whether you're geographically located in Biloxi, Mississipi (where I was just recently) or Muir of Ord, near Inverness in Scotland (where I stopped through last Fall); nor does it matter your personal circumstances, however they seem. If you're human, the experience of being really, truly alive is the same the world around.

I remember many, many times sitting just as I was this morning - legs stretched out, with one boot piled on top of the other, with the promise of morning light beginning it's beaming through the wonderful swirling mists - and not experiencing anything but the painfully wide shelf inside. It was that dark shelf of fear and self-doubt that kept me from deepening into myself - into the peace I know now. All I felt then was the pain, and I mistook the shelf for the bottom of my own soul. I felt myself as shallow and a bottomless pit all at the same time.

Many were the years I searched desperately outside myself hoping to fill the void. I chuckle now, in self-forgiveness and compassion, for that scared boy and man that I was. I see now how blind I was, and how confused, to think that I should look always OUTSIDE myself to find that which only be found within.

What a journey. And it ain't over yet! There's more yet to learn. It's rather exciting really. I still have struggles; And I don't know what'll I'll find around the next corner. But the way is easier now that I've ever known it to be. And yes, I feel alive. Really alive. If that's all I get to take with me when I leave this planet, I'll count myself a happy man and life as having been worth the while.