The prompt for this blog was 'Openness to the winds of how and what next'. I'm starting with a little detour around how important it's always been to me to use the language and metaphors that resonate. Wind is not what happens to me around change. I'm a water person on this issue, and for me it has to be the language of tides, flows, currents and waves. Metaphors like this are part of our soul language, so I think it's really important to use the words that open you up to those deeper layers of meaning and possibility. 

The tides are something I primarily feel in my gut. Sometimes there's not much to feel, which is fine. Not everything in life is a big drama or a huge shift. Sometimes I feel when change is coming, or possible, or is happening in a way that I need to be alert to. It's never really occurred to me not to be open to this sort of thing. Change is inevitable, and fighting it can be exhausting and pointless. Learning when and how to go with the flow and when to swim fiercely against it is a thing.

Dead things go with the flow, and life often swims the other way. Then there's the salmon, swimming upstream to spawn. Sometimes flowing with the tide isn't the answer, but often it is. When you aren't going with the flow it can take a lot of effort just to stay still. 

The metaphor that has become most important to me comes from surfing. This is curious because I've never tried to surf and never will. About as close as I've got has been floating towards the shore on my stomach. It's all about catching the waves, letting the approaching swell of it lift you and knowing how to travel with it. When that happens as a life/magic issue, I feel it keenly. I get a strong sense of the rising wave and the possibility of riding something out to good effect. And like actual waves, there's usually an element of danger in working with this energy, trusting to it, surrendering to it and seeing what happens.

It's not always a passive choice. Often to ride this kind of wave I have to be highly alert to what I need to do and willing to trust my intuition and time my moves based on that alone. Of course there's often no rational, external way of monitoring any of this, and I don't talk about it when I'm doing it - except to Tom. 

Being open to change often means being open to being changed, not just having the situation alter. It means being willing to become an agent of change, an active participant in a rising tide, part of the flow, part of the wave. Sometimes it means deciding to be the water rather than being something in the water. No one gets to be static, whether they like it or not. The question is how we choose to participate in change, how we make change, and how we let change happen to us.

(With thanks to Karen for the prompt)