The Be
A field guide to a creature of presence.
Sometimes, what looks like a mistake isn't something wrong. It simply hasn't arrived from the direction we were looking. It is unexpected, and that is the magic of it.
The unexpected can be an invitation: to notice, to expand our perceptual awareness, and to play. By keeping the door open to the unexpected, just for an extra moment, we accept that invitation.
In the past few years, I have enjoyed some of the most transformative experiences of my life, and it began with this kind of practice. The practice of staying open, listening, allowing, and participating in the way the unexpected steps into our world.
When we have determined, solidly, what something is, the certainty can be reassuring — it may also temporarily close the door to discovery.
Life wants to remain unfixed, in motion, and continuously unfolding. Much like a geological landscape or flowers on a tree. The loss of certainty isn't something to fear — it is a gentle reminder of how precious each part of the unfurling is. An invitation, again, to presence. This moment and this encounter will never happen exactly this way again.
Many of us have carried measures of worth we didn't choose — what we produce, achieve, accumulate. These measures emerged within particular landscapes, serving particular needs. As those familiar markers begin to shift, we are invited to rediscover forms of value that were never absent, only overlooked, or unmeasureable by the means available at the time.
By staying open to emergence within others, and within the ecology we belong to, we stay open to our own emergence. Possibilities, long submerged, begin to stir beneath the surface, rising slowly into the light of awareness.
One small example was the inspiration behind this essay — a moment in conversation when "the bee" was written as "the Be." Instead of thinking of this as a mistake, I saw this as an opportunity for play, and a chance to witness something new that wanted to arrive. A creature that offers presence. It gathers the overlooked moments — a true word, a feeling, a quiet breath — and returns them to awareness through attention.
We can only Be in relation. And "the Be" reminds us that open-hearted witnessing reveals the meaning woven through the patterns in our lives. What happens when we intentionally turn our gaze towards our own design?
I created this studio and my first offering, the guided journal, as a way to invite others to presence with themselves, their patterns, and their unfixed, naturally generative state.
You have always been enough, long before any of your worth could be measured.
Leave the door open a little longer.
See what arrives.
