Start with the first step...
the step you don't want to take
Start with the first step.
The step in letting be seen what doesn’t want to be seen.
Your fear. Your shame. Your anger. Your despair. Your self hatred. Your others hatred. Your weakness. Your addiction. Your goals. Your perfection. Your unmet dreams. Your rights. Your entitlements. Your greed. Your neediness. Your not enoughness...
The very thing you grasp tightly too that makes you stand with fists to the world.
There is no other place that Love wants to meet you.
Not because Love wants to eradicate those things from you. But because those are the very places that all kinds of transformational adventures incarnate into this life.
Start with the first step. The one you don’t want to take.
inspired by this David Whyte poem
Start Close In by David Whyte
Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first thing close in,
the step
you don’t want to take.
Start with the ground you know,
the pale ground beneath your feet,
your own way to begin
the conversation.
Start with your own question,
give up on other people’s questions,
don’t let them smother something simple.
To hear another’s voice,
follow your own voice,
wait until that voice
becomes an intimate private ear
that can really listen to another.
Start right now
take a small step you can call your own
don’t follow someone else’s heroics,
be humble and focused,
start close in,
don’t mistake that other for your own.
Start close in,
don’t take the second step
or the third,
start with the first thing
close in,
the step you don’t want to take.
A David Whyte poem from River Flow: New & Sel