Tag: Awakening

The First Steps and The Last

By Jane Tawel

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The first steps are the hardest;

I really don’t want to run this race.

My breath struggles at the start

and every aspiration

becomes the hardest to catch.

The last mile that I run

(and this is all by choice, mind you)

is pretty darn hard too –

Maybe I could just walk it?

Or crawl?

Or quit?

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I wonder if the last lap of this race

I’ve called my Life,

will be as hard for me

as my first lap?

Birthed into struggle

from the womb of the bed I’ve made,

will I run well the race towards Death?

Or will my passing on The Path

be the painful struggle

the agonizing effort to breathe

a battle waged as all the last steps

of the last journey I make towards Home?

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Or will Life’s Finish Line instead

be the first lap

of the next journey which

will no longer be any kind of race at all.

Will that final step

always be a breathing into

a beginning — 

effortless, weightless, sweat-less-

cleaned from the placenta of Death

into the Quest beyond questions,

Stilled and Resting, Peaceful, Floating

Reborn, restarted, re-breathed,

Dancing forward

into New Life?

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© Jane Tawel, 2026