Small Shifts = Fresh Starts

Feeling and experiencing LIFE

Stream of Life

Rabindranath Tagore [1861-1941]

The same stream of LIFE that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same LIFE that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same LIFE that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth

and of death, in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of LIFE.

And my pride is from the LIFE-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

Article by Linda Sechrist

In the early 1990s, I first heard this poem by Rabindranath Tagore recited by a spiritual teacher whose work I was studying. I was listening to a series recorded on cassette tapes. I stopped the tape and kept rewinding and playing it back so I could write the words on an index card and reread it. I wanted to soak in the experience and the words because it felt so good.

The only thing I’ve changed in the original poem is capitalizing the word LIFE, which had once appeared in print in capital letters as I was writing in cursive style in my journal several years before I heard the poem. The act of my printing the word LIFE had captured my attention just as much as the LIFE in Tagore’s poem. I recall thinking to myself in the moment that I was writing the words of the poem, “I need to add three words at the end of the last stanza, “It is the same LIFE that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow, “and in me”.

In that moment, I knew the LIFE force in my body was the same LIFE force that made up my body, made my heart beat and my lungs breathe, through no effort of my own. That moment of realization shifted the Consciousness/LIFE that shows up in this world as Linda Sechrist.

As I reflect, that precious moment of recognizing the TRUTH of who I AM seemed ordinary, but it really was nothing short of miraculous. Considering all the years of my programming, recognizing the universal continuity between myself and the cosmos, even for a few seconds, was an important marker in my expanding Consciousness and moving forward in developing an expanded worldview rooted in interconnectedness and unity. I considered that small shift as a fresh start and each time I have one of these "aha moments", I have another fresh start.