Tranquility Reflected in the Blue Sky…
The hotel breakfast had all manner of colourful juices, a green one, a pink one, and an orange one. I love healthy juices. I am easily pleased…
A run in a sunny park, with bright blue skies, tranquility in the centre of a city at rush hour, and then home to colourful juices; what more could anyone want?
Bright vibrant healthy juices, sunny skies and running have always been the ingredients of happiness for me; but I learnt really early that they couldn’t ‘make me happy’…. If life was feeling hard and painful, and the struggle was deep inside, then no amount of colourful juices or sunny skies – or even running – could change the state. They might ease it; a run could ease tension, a cup of coffee too…
How ever did I miss coffee out from the list?!
But they could not take the struggle completely away. When I was younger and my 
inner life felt harder, I remember going away to visit bright blue skies for maybe a week or two – or three – and seeing the cloud lift within me… I was able to watch myself step more into the flow, I could glimpse the possibility of a life with more ease… But then I would return home, and pick the bags of heaviness up again and carry them with me. Even though I knew that they affected everything at some subtle level.
And this is the weight of our pain, our tension, our unresolved hurt; it is a heavy burden within us, which we can get all too familiar with… But, through being willing to notice and surrender the tension; make the clearing of the pain more important than anything else, brings the reward of the bright blue skies clearing above us, nothing to blot the clarity, the tranquility of the expanse within us reflected in an empty blue sky.
When we watch birds that fly circling around, and see gathering clouds, scudding white or deep and dark; they represent the clutter the noise, the distraction within us…
But always beyond all that we see when we look upwards – there is the clarity, the expanse, the endless stretch into infinity behind it, and sometimes the emptiness is there, and we experience the still small voice of calm…
This is the ultimate meditation to see the gaps in the thoughts, the birds and the clouds and the planes are our thoughts; between them is stillness…
Life a meditation.
The run in the park was a delight, I love the running rhythm that can be found all over the world.
Even as far back as 1987 when I ran the New York marathon, I was there a week before the race and each day I would run to Central Park and circle the lake with hundreds of other runners – more than usual I suspect as it was marathon week – but still the same rhythm… Round and round, one foot in front of the other, simplicity.
Simplicity is an inner state, like tranquility. Life can be full of interesting projects and communication and connections to all manner of exciting-ness. But if there is tranquility at the centre, like the park here right in a quiet space in the centre of the City, then the possibility of expansion from the still point within is as vast as the clear blue sky above us.
I have been running all of my life – it feels I was born to run. In the running step I experienced freedom and my true expression. I came to see that I needed to ‘get out of the way of myself’ and let my energy flow through the running step; allow it to express itself in the dance and the motion of running.
I have also worked in the lives of others as a guide, counsellor, healer and teacher for over 40 years.
I lived as a nomad for 6 years with my husband Anadi, but my inner voice brought me back to the UK in May 2019 and I have been living and working and running in London since then….
Julia Chi
Teacher of Life Skills
www.JuliaChiTaylor.com
www.BodhisattvaDiary.com
+44 (0)7908 239 464
