I believe that each of us is born with a natural leaning toward looking or not looking - unsurprisingly I lean towards the looking and in that looking she cracked me wide open.

This keeper of secrets and discoverer of truth makes me feel like sunlight. I catch her looking at me, hear my name on her lips and in come the rays. But, like staring into the sun too long there are times we musn't, to preserve our sight; more often I look to stay alive.

Like all of us I struggle; though no one can tell me how. We have to work this battle again and again, to leave the underworld, to not harden, and to make our way to back into the land of the living - into her light.

Perhaps this friendship is a methaphor for another kind  - that of our lifetime kinship with truth and love? If so, does the inner task become how do we make a lasting friendship with the unities that are larger than us? How do we keep their light in our heart when no stars appear in sight?

These words resonated 'What is the use of talking and there is no end of talking. There is no end of things in the heart.' How can fear and love sit so comfortably inside such a small space? Is she a star in my constellation, a brief but enduring point of light, that forever flickers in my deepest fears?

The difficulty then has always been how to make it across the dark; from point of light to point of light? Is this the province of faith, the preservation of presence when we are not light hearted. She, my point of light.

We've opened up to each other and been hurt in the process - the distance between us seemed easier - and now it appears we're in the corners of our minds - quietly huddled in safety - wanting to reach, wanting more, but within the constructs of our consciousness and within the safety of not being hurt again, or more.

But the reaching and growing doesn't offer us that comfort. The nature of the reaching and growing offers us nothing but the promise of freedom because, just as fish can't see the ocean they swim in, we can't see the spirit that sustains us.

In life, as in water, when we curl up we sink but when we spread and go still we are carried by the largest sea of all; the sea of grace that flows steadily beneath the turmoil of events. Again and again the onset of pain makes us cluth and sink. But life has taught me that how we first open after doubling over is crucial to whether we heal at all.

This morning, in that half awake half asleep space, I dreamt that our days were starting together. We rolled into reality with banal discussions on the smallest details of a life being lived and, in time, she pulled up a chair to sit right next to me. In that movement and moment the space between us was barely visible.

My deepest desire wanted to move my hand to touch hers but the invisble line of her emotional connection was, for now, stretched to it's core and that is the understanding I have come to breathe in.

"Everything in the Universe is inter-connected. Within each is reflected." I think this explains why we are so drawn to certain things. Why, of all the fallen branches I will choose the one that most resembles the way I have had to bend all of my life. Why, of all the places you could return to you choose the lip of a cliff featureless by wind because it lets you choose the worn lip of your heart that you show no -one.

A theme keeps coming up for me - I was alerted to this a few years ago by a well meaning friend - and since then a special someone keeps pushing me back to it - relentlessly but lovingly so.  Showing up, really showing up as yourself, that's harder than it looks. It made me think of these words;

"Mining the moment for something that feels good, something to appreciate, something to savour, something to take in, that's what moments are about. They've not about justifying your existence. It's justified, you exist. It's not about proving your worthiness. It's done - you're worthy. It's not about achieving success, you never get it done. It's about 'how much can this moment deliver to me?'. Some of us like it fast, some slow, no-one's taking score. We get to choose. The only measurement is between desire and allowing. And our emotions tell us everything about that."

I have a busy life, blessed by a work and home life that never ceases to amaze and push me into more and more. This past weekend was no different - every waking moment crammed with busy-ness and it seems, at times, that I'm speeding along a track laid down by others, going so fast that I'm passing everything by in a blur.

But I was also pulled into a stark reality that I need to slow it all down, to really be present, for myself and the people I love. That is where the real growth, the real life is. So I'm not going to do that - blur anything - anymore.