by Sunni Chapman – TheDailyBreadcrumb.com

The first thing I think about when endeavoring to write about new beginnings is the inevitable end that preceded that urging.

Life is a constant spiral of beginnings and endings. Life itself is a spiral that seems to have a beginning and an end, but if you look very close, you will see that it’s never actually quite discernible where you are in that spectrum. And if you look even closer, you see that beginnings and endings are actually the same thing.

Endings ARE beginnings, and EVERYTHING in the universe is always, and constantly, beginning — in every, single, moment. In every breath we take, beginning.

Let’s use a very basic, but rather dramatic example to illustrate this truth:
Take a little girl, no more than 4 years old, happy, healthy, playing outside — when we look at her we see “beginning”, it seems obvious right? Now take a 85 year old woman, frail bones, heart condition, sitting in her living room wrapped in a quilt — when we look at her we see “ending”, again, it seems obvious right? Now cut to reality — outside of our minds preconceived notions about the “order” of things — and see that the old woman lived another 20 years of life, happily, and died at the age of 105. And that the little girl, died in an accident, before she even turned 5 years old.

This may be a tough example to swallow, it hurts our hearts to even think about, and it doesn’t seem “right” for these kinds of things to happen, but the truth is — they DO. Things like this DO happen, and if you’re willing to drop your defenses and LOOK at this truth, it will bring a staggering clarity to your life about the preciousness of every moment. It will dismantle all of your ideas about beginnings and endings, and it will land you right smack in the center of the present — where everything is always beginning.

The little girl has left the vehicle of her body, to begin again, new – in a way that is beyond all human contemplation. I won’t pretend to know what that looks like, or how that is, but a place deep inside me knows that when form breaks down, life still remains. The life that we are has no end, it is a timeless and infinite essence, a perpetual beginning.

You can take this rather dramatic example and apply it to the smallest things in life, what you take for an end (end of a marriage, end of a job, end of a relationship), is always a beginning, and what you take for a beginning, might quickly appear to become an end (which is always just a beginning of some other kind) — are you starting to see this spiral yet? Are you starting to see how when you look very close you can never truly tell where you are in this loop?

This is the kind of stuff that boggles the mind, it boggles it just enough to be QUIET. Our mind “understands” but cannot fully and completely wrap itself around the vastness of this, and so it essentially “shuts up” for a moment, and we sit in a hollow of pure awe and liberation, if only for a moment before the mind creeps back in.

I love how the mind cannot comprehend the divine dimension — that not-understanding with MIND opens up the emptiness that allows the fullness to flood right in. I love knowing that it is never our MIND that touches that beautiful void, it is our spirit – our essential nature, that communes with that sweetness. Just further proof of the intelligence of our design — Grace has made sure there’ll be no confusion when you feel that loving fullness inside, about where it came from. You simply can’t experience that kind of fullness from thinking, it comes from beyond. When your heart sings – it’s pure, you can count on it.

All of this saida, it is lovely that we celebrate and commemorate our beginnings and our endings in this culture, and in all cultures across the world. It is part of our human experience to do so, and I am a lover of these traditions just as much as anyone else! But I wonder how much more enriching these experiences would be if we looked a little closer, and knew the ultimate “I don’t know” about where we truly are in the spiral? I wonder how much more it would add to the experience because we would be that much more PRESENT and SURRENDERED and AVAILABLE in that moment?

Certainly, it’s worth some exploring, right?

All of this boils down to a very fine and heavily repeated point:
when we live for TODAY, there is no tomorrow.

And when there is no tomorrow, our heart is wide open.

And when our heart is wide open,
life is the thing of beauty it was always meant to be.

- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - -ABOUT SUNNI { TheDailyBreadcrumb.com }

Hi, my name is Sunni, (pronounced “sunny”) – and I am person. Just like you. I am a person who once hurt , a lot. I hurt until the pain got just bad enough for me to wake up. And when I woke up — whoa nelly — love swept in and blew the lid off my life. I was touched by a sweetness and strength that I cannot describe to you with words, but oh how I love trying anyway. That sweetness rushed in, and emptied me out, so I could be full again, and whole again. It left me with a joy and reverence for life that is so big, and vast, that it cannot be touched with fingers — words or thoughts. This sweetness didn’t take me away from life, it didn’t blast me off into some astral dimension, it didn’t float me out into the cosmos – away from the pain of the world, it rooted me in my humanity, it gifted me a bottomless compassion, and it made my heart a wide open space.

I write to share that space with you. I make art to share that space with you. I listen to share that space with you. Everything I do, I do to share that space with you. Because that space is you, and that space is me, and in that sharing we remember the truth of who we are. We are the pieces, you and me — the pieces of the whole. When we come together — magic happens.

Every nuance of your being compliments this world perfectly. Your path is a plan, not a mistake. And like a trail of breadcrumbs from the Universe, every piece on your path calls you closer to home. Home to that space at the center of you. I created The Daily Breadcrumb to help you pick up those pieces, I created it to help ME pick up those pieces, so we can bring those pieces together, and set the whole world free. One little “person” at a time.