When the train leaves without you. Finding rest in the discomfort.

Slowing down as a true gift.

I recently had a dream in which I stepped off the train too early, before we reached the station, and couldn't catch up with it again. I ran, but my body wouldn't cooperate. Everything hurt. I couldn't catch my breath. I watched the train pull away, with my luggage, my colleagues from my dance company years, everything that mattered, while I stood stranded in an unfamiliar city.

The feeling lingered, long after I woke up.

The dream showed me what I'm currently sitting with: the fear of being left behind. Of not being able to keep up the pace. Of being separated from a version of myself that felt more capable, more on top of things.

Right now, I'm navigating through pain and illness, and seeing how my body no longer performs the way it used to. There's grief in that. Fear. Having the time to rest and reconnect with my deeper self feels like a blessing. A strange one, wrapped in discomfort and guilt, but a blessing nonetheless.

Our experience is shaped by our thinking, not by our situation.

The Three Principles (Sydney Banks) remind us that we live in the feeling of our thinking, not in the feeling of our circumstances. My dream wasn't really about trains, or a city, or even the time I worked for dance company. It was about the thoughts I carry with me: thoughts about loss, about not being good enough, about being left behind.

But what I keep noticing more and more is that those thoughts aren't the truth. They're just thoughts. And like trains, they come and go.

The invitation is to slow down.

To stand where we are, even when it's not where we'd planned to be. To let the discomfort be uncomfortable, without trying to solve it, understand it, or change it.

Because when we let go of all that hectic thinking, when we stop trying to control, solve and fix, space opens up for something else. A fresh insight. New possibilities. A deeper realization that we were never truly separated from our essence, from what really matters.

We just thought we were.

In that stillness, wisdom whispers, creativity arises, and we come into contact with our deeper knowing of what truly matters. Not by solving problems, devising strategies, or figuring things out. But by trusting that quiet knowing that everything will be okay, that innate inner GPS that guides us toward what's best.

Even when it seems like we've missed the train.

Especially then.

Which train are you currently running behind on? What would happen if you let it go?

Nathalie