Tag: Stories

Water Lily Wisdom

Water Lily Wisdom

It was just a regular paddle up the river to my usual turnaround spot and back. Occasionally, I’d pause to be still on the calm water and take in the symphony of the birds without the steady rhythm of paddling in the foreground. Before paddling back across the river to return home, I stopped to appreciate and make pictures with the water lilies.

I’d recently acquired a new lens that offered a fresh sense of both perspective and exploration. Before I knew it, I’d disembarked from my kayak in shallow water and was contorting my body into a sequence of “water lily photography yoga” asanas, to achieve the most pleasing angles.

Time doesn’t seem to exist when I’m with the water lilies. I fall into a water lily time warp. That’s what happens when we’re fully present and connected to what we love, or when love reveals itself through something or someone we’re fully present to and connected with.

When the nose of my kayak slid into the shore in front of my house, my sense of time returned immediately. I saw “10:30” flash in my mind. Could it really be that late? I had to teach a class at noon and had envisioned returning with three hours to spare. But when I looked at the time, it was 10:24. Somehow, I had lingered on the river for 3 1/2 hours!

However, when I’m with the water lilies, it is time well spent. They draw me close and whisper deep into my heart. If I were to choose a symbol for my life, it would be a water lily. No doubt about it.  

Out of the Mud

I’ve contemplated water lilies from many different angles over the 13 years I’ve lived on this quiet stretch of the Hudson River. This week, I became fixated on how a beautiful, white flower grows from the dirty mud beneath the water – and how we, too, grow from the mud of this human life we’re living.

There’s a tendency to perceive our challenges and suffering as interfering with our lives. However, the challenges and messiness are as essential to a human life as the mud is to a water lily. They are part of life and provide us with essential nutrients for growth.

The mud of suffering belongs. It’s the foundation from which we awaken and bloom.

But sometimes we stay stuck in the mud. Instead of surrendering to the awakening process and growing towards the light, we remain in the comfort of the stories we tell about other people, ourselves, and life. When I think about the times I’ve felt stuck, it’s incredible how much suffering was generated by dysfunctional use of my mind. My own mind was holding me back!

And it’s even more incredible to realize that all along, it was within my power to step out of the muddy narratives and into the present moment. To set myself free from the addictive stories, as if awakening from a dream of tremendous limitation.

Towards the Light

Awareness is the first step of liberation. We can’t transform what we don’t even notice in the first place. When we make a practice of noticing with kindness and compassion the stories we tell about life, real transformation is possible. From the inside out. 

I’m writing about this because it’s something I’ve experienced. I’m fascinated with how bored I’ve become with stories all of a sudden. Narratives that go something like: This is/isn’t how [my] life is supposed to be. Or how other people are supposed to be. Or my body. Stories that illustrate and explain why this person is a monster. Complaining stories.

These stories often carry some kind of judgment that generates a sense of superiority, inferiority, or separation…which reveals the author’s true identity:

Hello, Ego. I see you. I see what you’re doing. Thanks for trying to help. I’ve got this.

It feels like the stories have simply outlived their usefulness. Living in stories about others/myself/life pales in comparison to engaging freely with life. The stories and narratives are like a filter or veil that gets in the way of real presence and connection. 

And I’ve learned that I greatly prefer presence and connection. They are breaths of fresh air.

The more I practice presence, the greater the momentum becomes to choose presence instead of the trance of stories. Awakening from dream/trance becomes more natural. I catch myself when I’m beginning to tell a story about a person, a situation, or myself. An alarm goes off in my head: “Story!” Then I can put my attention on what’s here and now: perhaps birdsong, flowing river, clouds drifting through the sky, or the breeze in the trees.

The idea of inhabiting a story brings to mind an image of a water lily bud living in a river, before reaching above the surface. A river of thought. But when we become aware of the water all around us, we don’t become so identified with how we perceive things. We can see there’s a layer or filter that distorts our perception to some degree, that we’re caught up in. We become aware that there’s more above the surface of the water and continue growing towards the light, where intuition and deeper insights can reach us. Where blooming happens naturally.

Truth is, our mind doesn’t have to work so hard. There’s an easier way to navigate this life. We need not inhabit such density. There is light available.

With practice, we can develop the capacity to notice what is happening – what we’re immersed in – and, like a water lily bud in the river, choose to keep growing upwards towards the light. We can choose the kind of relationship we have with our mind so it can be used for growth instead of holding us down. It is possible to overcome the addiction to thinking and being at the mercy of compelling thoughts that keep us stuck in unhealthy situations and disempowering beliefs.

Like water lilies, we are invited to transcend the mud, grow through the water towards the light, and bloom in the fresh air above the water. To experience the sunlight directly instead of through the filter of stories, narratives, beliefs that distract us from presence.

We can choose to accept the exquisite invitation and become more than a closed bud in a dense environment. We can bloom and be part of the pollinating world: inspiration to other buds, evidence that blooming is possible. That flowering is our nature, and there is a blueprint embedded within us. 

We Are Not Alone

And like a water lily, we are not alone. Above the surface of the water, it might look like a water lily is a separate entity. But it’s connected with all the lily pads and other water lilies around it, part of the same plant, connected by stems and deep rhizomes. When I move my paddle gingerly through lily pads, it becomes very clear that everything is connected. The lily pads floating on the water gather sunlight and help the water lilies to grow and bloom.

Last year, I looked closely at the veiny design embossed on lily pads and was astonished to discover that it looked just like a water lily. That’s how interconnected they are.

We need only get a glimpse beneath the surface to realize we are not alone. We are connected with all the life around us, part of the same cycle or ecosystem. We have help and are in this life together. Our situation is not unique. Our suffering is simply the mud from which we rise and bloom, and it serves a purpose. It’s not something to be ashamed of or to regret. It’s essential to our being, and transcending it is essential to our becoming.

Time to Rest

The first time I visited my “water lily friends” this summer was one afternoon right after the solstice. I stayed up too late the previous night and got a late start in the morning, which meant missing the sunrise. I waited until I was done teaching to go on the river.

But there were only a few water lilies still visible above water at that time, and they’d already begun to close up for the day. That afternoon, I was tired after not getting enough sleep, and the water lilies reminded me of the importance of rest. 

My water lily friends begin to wake up a couple hours after sunrise then close up and retreat underwater by mid-afternoon. The next morning, they rise back above the water and open up again. Each flower does this for about four days straight. It keeps retreating and coming back again, until returning to the mud to decompose. I appreciate and am inspired by their dance of rising and opening, closing and retreating, and how resting and retreating resources their blooming.

Needless to say, I’m grateful for water lily time of year and what these beautiful flowers reflect to me about this human life. If I’m ever running late, you know where to find me: amongst the water lilies, where time does not exist.


© 2021 Susan Meyer. All rights reserved. You are welcome to share this post or excerpts of it as long as you give proper credit to Susan Meyer and SusanTaraMeyer.com. Susan Meyer is a photographer, writer, and spiritual teacher who lives on the Hudson River in Upstate New York.

What’s Going on Inside This Heart?

What’s Going on Inside This Heart?

Here we are in the uncharted waters of December 2020. It was dark when I woke up this morning at 6:45 and checked in with my heart. What’s going on in here? What’s the weather like inside this heart?

It feels a little weary, to be honest. Weary from one encounter after another over the past several months with people I assumed were “on the same page” and seeing the world through a similar lens, only to discover that’s not the case at all.

I remember back in March when we absorbed one shockwave after another as we moved into and adjusted to shutdown mode. It feels a little like that. But this time, it’s more about digesting realities about the stories we’re buying into that have solidified throughout the year, and how to be in relationship with one another when those stories differ radically. 

I keep reminding myself we’re in uncharted territory, and everyone is doing the best they can. I try to catch myself and shake off the seductive stories before they have a chance to settle in. Daily.

Earlier this year, things were moving so fast, and it seemed every week served up a different theme. At some point, themes didn’t seem to be so much of a thing. It just felt increasingly chaotic. But now I’m feeling another theme arising. In a nutshell, it feels like our country is divided into perceptions of government/authority being either protective or controlling. Maybe that’s a huge overgeneralization. But it was what I saw when I stepped into my heart yesterday and asked the question I ask many times a day: WTF?

The theme I’m digesting now centers on rebuilding, reconnecting, and caring about people who see things very differently. How to live in a world with so much difference of opinion and clinging to compelling narratives. (Are they fact or fiction? Or a mixture of both?) How to live in a world in which it seems so many people have been drinking the Kool-Aid, so to speak. People who would think the same of me. People I’ve known and respected for a long time. And still do.

Even though I catch myself repeatedly, to have that reaction in the first place… This is new to me. It’s an adjustment, a revelation. And it’s often uncomfortable. In this heart of mine, connection is more important than being right. So I listen and try not to offend. I try to understand what’s below the beliefs and find some kind of caring beneath it all.

Sometimes it can feel overwhelming, especially if you’re a “feeling” type. And if you’re not getting enough sleep.

The Power of Presence

When we get hijacked by emotions, awareness (a.k.a. mindfulness) gives us options. This happened to me when I was driving home yesterday. Realizing I was hooked in an addictive storyline that I called out as “romanticizing”, I surveyed my options and decided I could take a deep breath and blow it out, blow it along, release what doesn’t serve. Then it wouldn’t get stuck in me like fluffy seed fairies dispersed into the air looking for a place to land and take root.

The breath can be really powerful like that. It can blow those story seeds along, saying Not Here. With mindfulness, we can notice what’s going on and choose the seeds we allow to grow in our garden and what to do about the stubborn, subterranean root and rhizome systems that started a long time ago.

With mindfulness, every moment is an opportunity to choose what’s most important and what’s best (which can change). We can choose to get stuck in a limiting personal narrative or to step out of it. We can choose to drop down into something much deeper: a field of being I call Presence.

Dropping into presence actually saves a lot of time because you realize what is and isn’t ultimately important, and a lot of stuff you thought was important just falls away. Here, fresh ideas, insights, solutions, and perspectives are accessible. And lovingkindness.

I sense that all the division we’re experiencing in the world around us at this time and confusion about who or what to believe is ultimately calling us inward, to our our deeper wisdom, which is very, very different than sorting things out in our head through thinking and analyzing or being brainwashed by media. (If you haven’t watched The Social Dilemma, I urge you to.) 

Asking for Help

When we are caught up in the lower, addictive energies of a storyline, we also can ask for help. Especially when we’re tired and don’t have the energy to drop down deeper.

One evening this week, before falling asleep I asked for help. I had gotten triggered and was having trouble getting unhooked – like when those prickly hitchhiker seeds get caught on your clothes, and it’s really hard to get them off. Authentic movement (which is a new thing for me) has become my go-to for releasing and expressing emotional energy. But I was too tired to dance or meditate that evening. So I sent out an earnest S.O.S. to Unconditional Love (spirit guides, angels, ancestors, higher self, etc.). And I ended up having a very interesting dream.

I dreamed I was able to cross the border and visit Eckhart Tolle in his home in Vancouver. We were in his living room, which was modern and spacious. I was drawn to the patterned flooring, which I found lovely. I told him I was grateful to be in his Presence (“with a capital P”), meaning the pure presence coming through him.

I woke up feeling I’d received an energy upgrade in my sleep! I felt totally different.

Then I wrote down the words going through my head and put them on the image that came to mind. 

The image is of the octagonal apex of Inner Light Lodge at Light on the Hill retreat center. I spent the past few years doing a lot of inner growth work in that building with my Hidden Treasure tribe. As I worked on the image, I noticed the roofing of the protruding structure was very similar to the flooring in my dream – which took it to another level, literally!

So we can ask for help. Help that I’ve learned is always available if we can open ourselves to it.

Step out of the storyline, drop into presence, and see what’s there. Ask for help when you need it. This is my advice for these times, which I give myself daily.

What’s the weather like inside this heart? Feels more like peace now…because the energy was channeled into these words.

May we all find constructive ways to channel and release the energies coursing through us. And inspire one another to connect with our deeper wisdom and compassion, which is so much richer than any personal or collective narrative.


© 2020 Susan Meyer. All rights reserved. You are welcome to share this post or excerpts of it as long as you give proper credit to Susan Meyer and SusanTaraMeyer.com. Susan Meyer is a photographer, writer, and spiritual teacher who lives on the Hudson River in Upstate New York.

The model pictured is Hannah Zlotnick, https://www.anandagaia.com/ .

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