I Climbed A Mountain -but this is not my metaphor

My husband and I climbed the ridge on Saturday. It is an hour and a half climb to a ridge that runs along the length of the mountains that my town nestles against. It is a beautiful climb. We start through a path ripe with bushes of full and sweet smelling yellow flowers. I am covered in yellow once we make it through. And then we are into the climb. A gradual uphill for most of the hike, with a steep grade at the end before we end up...up. On top of the clouds. 

During the journey up the mountain I reflect on the other journey I am on. A deep and soulful and acutely painful transition into self. And I am in it. 

So the mountain hike - the journey up , the goal of the climb and the reach for the top - I think this will embody my own journey.

But it does not.

Because unlike this climbing to reach a clear peak, my awakening is not linear. It is round. And full. It ebbs and flows. There are moments I am in it and times where the feelings withdraw back into a safe keeping place, waiting to reappear to me again when I am ready.

It is this not ready time that interests me now. Because in these moments of ebbing my stories come in hard and try and entice me away from my core. At first, I let them enter me. Because they are familiar. But not now. Now I see that they no longer nourish me. Now I see my stories outside of myself. Now I see them through the eyes of perspective because I see them from my heart. I see them from my truth. 

But still they come. 

And so there is a constant rhythm. My stories show up. I try them on - it is a habit. But only for a moment before I recognize that they do not fit. But I do not just pull them off my body. It is not a shedding that will serve me, it is an honoring. A recognizing that the stories that I have, the belief systems that I formed, and the experiences that I lived were the universe sending her message to move me on my way. The more painful the story, the more incentive to move. 

And so I sit in each story for just long enough to recognize her purpose. And I thank her for her time with me. It is only then that I let each story go, to sit in my truth and sink back deep into my belly - to my connection to self where my deep power lives. 

I am not worrying about what is coming next. I am nestled in my journey circle. And it is a safe place. A place of surrender. Of offering it up to the Universe and trusting where she takes me.