Cultivating a feeling of flow

Take a slow breath.
Imagine for a moment that you are standing beside a river.
Not a rushing one, not a torrent — but a steady, living current.
The sound of it is constant.
The water glides over stones that have been here far longer than you.
It moves without hesitation, without second-guessing, without apology.

This river does not worry about where it’s going.
It doesn’t ask if it’s moving fast enough,
or if it’s taking the right path.
It simply follows the shape of the land — responding, adjusting, surrendering to what is.
And somehow, it always finds its way home.

John O’Donohue once wrote:

“I would love to live like a river flows,
carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”

That’s what trust feels like —
a willingness to be carried by something larger than our plans,
a quiet confidence that there is wisdom in the movement, even when we cannot see its destination.

The sacred, too, has a current.
There is a rhythm, a timing, a direction that invites us to soften, to listen, to trust.
But so often, we fight the flow.
We dam it up with expectation.
We churn its surface with worry.
We even try to scoop it up in our hands — as if we could hold water still.

What would it mean to stop fighting the current?
To soften into its pull?
To trust that even when we’re still, the river is still carrying us somewhere holy?

Rumi reminds us,

“Try not to resist the changes that come your way.
Instead, let life live through you.
And do not worry that your life is turning upside down.
How do you know that the side you are used to
is better than the one to come?”

What if flow is not something to achieve,
but something to remember —
a natural state we return to when we stop struggling against what is?

Sometimes, the river is calm and luminous.
It nourishes and cools.
Other times, it swells and floods — a season of change we didn’t choose.
Yet even then, the current knows its course.
Beneath the motion, the stones are being shaped.
The banks are being carved.
Even in what feels like chaos, creation is quietly at work.

The river teaches us this too:
when joy comes, when stillness arrives, when love opens —
step in. Let it move you.

Perhaps trust begins here —
not in knowing the destination,
but in remembering that we are of the river.
That life, the sacred, is always moving through us —
washing away what’s done,
refreshing what’s tired,
and guiding us forward in its own time.

So maybe we can stop asking the river to move faster.
Maybe we can stop measuring how far we’ve come.
Maybe it’s enough — for now — to stand here,
to feel the cool water around our ankles,
to listen, to breathe,
and to whisper, “I am part of the flow. I am being carried. I can trust this.”

“Be like water,” said Lao Tzu.
“Water is fluid, soft, and yielding.
But water will wear away rock,
which is rigid and cannot yield.”

And so it is with us —
the more we soften,
the stronger our faith becomes.
The more we surrender,
the freer we are to move with grace.

May you live like the river —
curious, patient, unhurried,
trusting that every bend is part of the sacred’s unfolding.