Let the River Flow & Butterflies Fly 🦋
Lately I’ve been thinking about something Ram Dass said. He talked about the mind like a river. And how our thoughts, emotions, and old patterns are like leaves drifting along the surface.
Some days the river feels calm. Clear. You can see straight to the bottom.
And then there are the other days where it’s murky and jammed with branches, old wrappers, and all kinds of emotional junk.
Not just leaves anymore. It’s trash. And I feel that. There are mornings I wake up and I already know the river’s full. I’m not even out of bed and I’m swimming in it.
The tricky part is, we don’t just notice these things and let them pass. We dive in. We go chasing after every little thought. We scoop them out, we analyze them, we carry them around like they’re meaningful. Even when they’re clearly garbage. Old guilt. Some unspoken tension. A look someone gave you two weeks ago. We carry it all. And then we wonder why we feel heavy.
But it builds. The body starts reacting. Sleep gets weird. Energy feels off. Maybe your chest gets tight or your digestion flares up. It’s not random.
It’s the debris we’ve swallowed.
And the real practice at least the one I keep trying to come back to, is not fixing all of it. It’s not following every thought. Not every feeling needs a backstory.
Not every memory needs a response.
Some stuff just needs to float on by.
And then, on the flip side when the good things come in: joy, love, peace—we try to cling. We want to bottle it. Hold on tight.
But you cage a butterfly, and it dies.
You cling to a perfect moment, and it slips away.
You smother a relationship with fear, and it wilts.
The work, I think, is becoming the kind of person that butterflies want to be around. Where the river flows on its own. Where you don’t have to fight to keep the good or push away the bad.
Some moments will stay with you. Some will pass.
You don’t have to chase them. Just tend to your garden. Come back to your breath.
Let the leaves float. Let the butterflies fly.
Come back to yourself.
