We are now in Kunming, our last stop on what has become a hugely impactful voyage for me - much more than just transporting my body from place to place, flying all about this exotic country like a locomotive on fire, but the journey inward has been heavily laden with grand opportunities to practice the divine art of patience. Each place we go it’s a whole new environment, a whole new group of people; get your bearings, find where to put your stuff, get to work, try and make the best possible art you can no matter how you feel or where your mind may be at the moment.
It is not for the faint of heart, but it nurtures my soul in such a way that is hard to describe.
You can have these moments when nothing is working, you can’t get the simplest detail to come through, you feel like all is lost and that you’ll never find your groove again. Through the weeks of everything piling up it seems insurmountable and unattainable that you’ll get just one more good moment out of these weary ‘ol bones. And then it hits - It’s like a flash of light, coming from somewhere deep inside, in the moment when you feel like there is nothing left in you it comes on like a final wave of inspiration, opportunity, energy - call it what you will, a simple change of perspective and things start to move once more. A flash of light - letting the air back in the room, mounting that final surge of effort to make something happen out of nothing. No matter how tired I am, how long the road has been, I am so happy to be doing what I’m doing. Getting to practice patience just may be the hardest part of the job, the rest of it is easy: you just have to keep on moving forwards.
with Chogyal Rinpoche
