Everything I need to understand... is revealed through the way I meet this moment. ~Ara Parisien

Knowledge is not the beginning of experience. Experience is the beginning of knowledge.

The Shift In my latest retreat into myself, so many epiphanies have arisen that there is no adequate way to share them all. There is one, however, that absolutely stands out for me. It is the nature of "shifting." When we speak or think of shifting, we may believe it to be likef shifting gears and stepping up the pace or shifting our frequency. Both are true, I suppose. However, shifting now holds a very special meaning for me. As I continue to evolve, I have no doubt that understanding will evolve as well, and that feels perfect. Right now, though, this understanding fits me beautifully. For me, shifting is a realization rather than an action dependent upon doing something to ensure a shift occurs. A shift feels like a deeper experience. For quite some time, I felt as though I had been staring into a gaping abyss. An abyss that seemed to hold nothing except the certainty that, if I fell, I would most definitely hit bottom. Not in a dramatic sense, but in the sense of facing unknown variables. I seemed to lose my desire to anticipate, solve, or plan. All I could do was brace for impact. Then something occurred to me. If the abyss held unknown variables, then perhaps it wasn't vacant after all. It held something. So I asked myself how I could possibly make those unknown variables known. Surely that would help me feel more at ease. Then it hit me. What if the abyss was actually a spaciousness I had simply not yet recognized? Spaciousness would allow all that I was ready to meet—and all that was ready to meet me—to gently rise into my awareness. The unknown variables would become known in their own time. In that moment I began to see that a shift, for me, was nothing more than a perception pause and reassignment. Everything simply is until I assign it meaning. Once I began noticing spaciousness, more variables arrived to be known. That became unexpectedly joyful. As I noticed what was unfolding both within me and around me, I realized my energy naturally felt lighter. I wasn't trying to force my frequency to higher levels that couldn't be maintained. I was simply noticing.