The life that is living you

The life that is living you is older than you, it has lived many lives before, passed on through generation to generation. Consider well its past and all the lives it has lived before it came to live you.

Ask what of it will pass on beyond you? Ask what of it radiates out from you?

Knowing this is to know that you are merely its guardian, its custodian, its keeper; it is on loan to you just for now from this planet that has let you be born and has sustained you through every breath you take.  

But an eye blink in its journey

The life that is you has lived a million lives before:

it was your mother,

it was your father,

it was your grandparents,

and your great-grandparents,

it was all your ancestors

back and back through time

until it was the first people;

and then before,

when it was not quiet human

but human becoming,

and then not so human becoming,

more ape,

more proto-ape,

more mammal that would become ape,

more early mammal,

more proto-mammal,

than anything recognisably human;

and then reptile,

and before,

even back to before any life crawled on land,

even back to that that swam in the sea,

to the sea microbe rich,

to many celled,

to single celled,

to the first life,

to the very seed of the first life itself.

We are all the first life grown old

with the passing through so many lives;

so many ways of being,

till,

just for now it flows through you.

What are you but an eye blink in its journey?