Spirituality – Page 2 – KM Huber's Blog

The Expedition of No Return

Posted on July 19, 2015July 19, 2015 by KM Huber in Consciousness, Inspiration, Spirituality

“You are one injury away from becoming a quadriplegic.”

“Now, you are not pregnant, right?”

Both of these sentences are great openers for blog posts. Certainly, each could be its own blog post. Yet, these two statements reveal the range of emotion as well as the kinds of obstacles that marked my recent health expedition.

In my last post, I referred to my mind-body expedition as the exploration of the two as one, a single continent. I knew I did not have a map, not that I am one for maps. They are so…directional.

This was not that kind of expedition. That, I also knew. And it turned out I was correct. The number of detours/new routes still stun me. I am not returned from the expedition–not really–for I am no longer the person who left.

With detours, direction constantly changes. Consider the issue of my being pregnant, at the age of almost 63. “Almost” is the operative word. Neither the fact that I have a uterus and have not had a tubal ligation would have been questioned if I had been 63, as I will be a month from today.

The pregnancy test was a pre-op procedure requirement. The morning of my spinal cord surgery I was informed the test showed lightly pregnant, whatever that may mean. Another test was required, which showed negative.

I could not have waited any longer for the surgery. The statement regarding quadriplegia was no exaggeration. My spinal cord was pinched at the C3-4, C4-5 vertebrae in my neck. Each day, the deterioration in all of my limbs increased.

This was no detour but an entirely new route, and a life-changing one at that. There are no maps for life-changing events for the route chosen is, ultimately, the new life to be lived.

Yet, there is order in chaos, always has been. I think it is Buddha nature, the permanence in impermanence. Life plays out against this backdrop of constancy where all is ever in balance. It allows us to meet the chaos of our present and then, to let it go.

Returning to the land of traditional medicine was full of detours/potholes/obstacles too numerous to mention but too many ever to forget. But this is not a post about traditional medicine. That is for another day.

This is a post about meeting life anew. I am not what I was, which was its own kind of strength. Now, I am the mind-body I create. That is the test of strength I face.

Strength, as Brenda Shaughnessy writes, is to “acknowledge each…feeling, question, and idea in faith and terror, a meeting that comes with the full force of your heart.”

I do my best to keep my heart over my head as I make decisions. I suspect that may be why I woke up from my surgery “happy.” Truly. A friend said I was beaming. It felt then and now like new life.

It is early days yet as the cervical myelopathy surgery was July 6. Essentially, I had surgery to decompress my spinal cord. The surgery involved removing two discs, replacing the discs with bone and then fusing the two with a plate and screws. The cause was not lupus but degenerative disc disease, first diagnosed in 2000.

The surgery is to keep more damage from happening. It is not a surgery to recover sensation. That said, 70% report some improvement. I am glad to be among those who see consistent improvement.

Before the surgery, my gait was like a Frankenstein, drunken stagger. I had to have a surface to touch to be able to walk at all. Now, my gait is almost normal, if I use a walker.

A cane will steady me, and in my apartment, I practice putting one foot in front of the other, literally. There is progress every day. My gait is the best it has been in months.

I have returned to using voice recognition software for typing is still too frustrating. The numbness/tingling/grittiness in my hands and thumbs remains but is decreasing. I am able to grasp and hold onto objects with more than reasonable assurance.

This is a new life, an unknown, part of the chaos of being alive. And in the background is the permanence of impermanence.

The generosity and support of online and off-line friends has been like winning the lottery. I do not purchase lottery tickets and now, there is no need. I already won.

My refrigerator was always full, rides were available wherever I needed to go, and friends waited with me for hours and hours as we made our way through the medical maze. Online messages of support appeared daily.

I have read and reread the comments of the two preceding posts. Just know each word is its own bit of light, day or night, and I carried your words with me then and now.

I am not who I was when I began this expedition. It could be as long as a year before I know how full my recovery will be. There is no returning to what was nor should there be. I have a better idea of my mind-body continent. I will begin there.

Early on in the expedition, I was given these words for my journey. I have kept them with me in all moments, and before every morning’s meditation, I look at the Chinese characters:

“Be patient and endure while

The wind will calm, the waves subside

Draw back a step and realize

The boundless ocean, the vastness of heaven”

And so I do.

The Highest Good: No Fight, No Blame

Posted on April 12, 2015April 11, 2015 by KM Huber in Consciousness, Inspiration, Spirituality

Without a fight, there is no blame. This basic truth can be found in the Tao te Ching—no fight: no blame—as well as in the major texts of many spiritual traditions. Blame seems that integral to the human experience.

In last week’s post I chose the phrase aflame with blame as a reference to its incendiary nature. It is quick to flame, this blame, although it is not a trait with any substance.

Whatever person or event we blame is not what causes us to suffer (Byron Katie). Blame is a distraction, and it is easy to get caught up in its mindset.

We suffer when we hold onto a mindset; in a blind stance, we dig in for a last stand. Mindset is a misguided attempt to avoid the inevitable.

Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us

what we need to know

Pema Chödrön

It would be hard, maybe impossible, to provide an example of a life experience that does not teach us for in every moment there is something to be learned. At a certain point in life, each of us becomes aware that what breaks us open is what we need to make us whole again.

It is how we learn. It is hard to accept, at least for me.

But time and again, I have realized this one lesson: when I open myself to learning rather than blaming and struggling against, I find the highest good in any situation. The flames of blame and the smoke of striving fade away.

Often, I turn to the teachings of the Tao (in translation) for I treasure its basic truths. Such reflections soothe and instruct every time I return. I am refreshed.

Water gives life to the ten thousand things and does not strive

(Tao, Verse 8)

And like water, the highest good is life-giving, “flowing in places men reject and so is like the Tao” (Verse 8). All we need to remember is that water will flow—even through rock–rather than reject the route.

The highest good never rejects us, either, even when we do our best to shape what will not be shaped. There is no blame, no fight, no mindset.

Chronic illness is my greatest teacher, as I have mentioned many times. Even in my more difficult moments, I am more aligned with learning than striving, which is not to say I do not have some fiery moments of blame throwing. They are not as frequent.

I find it easier to recognize and to dismantle a mindset, and to do it with self-care and love. After all, a mindset deflates quickly for it is only made of air. And once I breathe it in, I can breathe it out.

Mindset is only a thought no matter how often it may appear. In my experience, mindsets return for they have unimaginable power IF they are allowed to attach and become unassailable belief.

We can learn from observing a mindset if we let it go for what it is. That is the way to keep learning rather than to continue struggling. I find hope in impermanence no matter how many times I meet similar situations. It makes the highest good in any situation seem not only possible but realistic.

We are more like water, wanting life for all and strife for no one. It is ours to flow, like water through rock if we must, open to the ten thousand things and like the Tao rejecting none.

Looking into Nature’s Mirror and Finding Grace

Posted on March 22, 2015April 5, 2015 by KM Huber in Inspiration, Oneness, Spirituality

The cycle of seasons is nature’s mirror, ours for the viewing. Mostly, we celebrate a new season but not always the length of time nature takes to make the change.

We assign spring a date, anticipating an event that may or may not arrive as assigned. Arrival is always a mystery. In a moment of grace, nature unfolds in its own time, in its own way.

“I do not at all understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.” Anne Lamott

I do not understand the mystery, either, but I am content for the experience of it. All I do know is that grace transforms. And like spring, it is its own mystery.

Grace flows with the majesty of a meandering river. Part of its mystery is the gradual eroding of its course, without beginning or end. We do not know the precise moment we are transformed. We only know that we are.

In grace, we do not wallow or stagnate but discover and re-discover the spring of our lives not so much as to re-live but to be reborn in yet another season.

Spring is not a one-time event.

Grace moves us to deeds we once thought impossible. In each spring of our life, we emerge anew. Grace allows us to bare ourselves as we are—to take the risk again—to meet each new spring we are allowed.

We are given only one body to grow but we have the gift of grace to transform, to meet yet another spring. Our seasons cycle within our hearts, bold with the opportunity each affords.

We need not remain wrapped in winter, blanketed in its protective shell. Like nature, ours is not to stagnate or to wallow but to transform from a winter’s day into a spring’s blossom. It is the way of grace.

The bud opens, and life begins anew, yet again. There is grace in this falling away of one season for another, a radical change replete with uncertainty.

As we are revealed so are we seen. Grace unlocks our softness.

A Day in Search of the Theory of Everything

Posted on March 15, 2015 by KM Huber in Consciousness, Cooper and EmmaRose, Inspiration, Spirituality, Writing

I am at the point in my life where I can appreciate every day of the week as just another day. I keep plans to a minimum. It keeps me open to just what any day can bring.

Every once in a while, a day does take on a life of its own. Often, when there is a plan involved. So it was with last Monday and my plan to see the movie, The Theory of Everything.

The day began like any other Monday as I perused my WordPress reader for a #MondayMusing post to share on my Twitter feed. The first post I read–Core Spirit–made an indirect reference to the Theory of Everything.

It is a thoughtful essay on consciousness, in particular the differences between the scientific perspective and the spiritual experience. These differences are centuries old.

To me, science confines itself to the natural world, what it can prove/observe. Those in the spiritual community—poets, philosophers, religions—confine themselves to the experience of just being alive.

In the Core Spirit essay, scientists seek to define the natural world; the spiritual seek “communion” with it. Yet, it is a world we all share. That we have unique and different perspectives should serve to broaden understanding—fuel curiosity—ultimately, it still divides rather than informs.

As for the Theory of Everything explaining all the laws of nature and accounting for all that has ever happened? The essay ends with: “Einstein said that knowing this equation would be reading the mind of God” (Core Spirit).

To my mind, agreement upon that equation will not come readily but then I am one who immerses herself in the wonder of the moment. Science may find the equation; some say it already has. For me, science only adds to the awe.

I was pleased at the coincidence of coming across the post on the day I planned to see the movie about the Theory of Everything.

I checked the movie’s show time once more before leaving but paid no attention to the movie theatre location. That, I was sure I knew.

When I arrived at the third movie theatre location, I was told the movie is now out on DVD. The movie theatre employee looked at me askance, of course, but she did have to make a phone call to discover that information. We both learned something.

If I had read the complete movie listing, I would have discovered the fourth location where the movie was, indeed, playing at that specific time, out on DVD or no.

Of course, it was too late to drive to that location. I was not dismayed. There might be a day to see the movie but it was not that day.

Once home, I checked my email. Within the last twenty minutes, I had received an email from the Washington Post, asking to re-publish “Learning Zen from a Beagle,” my post about a blind beagle showing me the way.

Had I gone to see The Theory of Everything, I would have missed being available for a back and forth email session with the Post editor. I would have missed this moment in my life. Maybe, I would have missed everything now unfolding. Maybe not.

As for my next plan to see The Theory of Everything, my name is in the local library queue. On another day, my name will come up. Who knows what will unfold.

* * *

For a thoughtful and concise post on the equation and the Theory of Everything, here is Matthew Wright’s “How Stephen Hawking Reconciled the Irreconcilable.”

For a considered discussion on consciousness, here is “The Akashic Field and Consciousness.”

If you are interested, here is the link to the Washington Post’s republication of “How My Blind Beagle Taught Me Zen.”

Monarch Meditations on Butterfly Warriors

Posted on January 18, 2015January 17, 2015 by KM Huber in Consciousness, Florida, Inspiration, Spirituality

It is just dark, the morning darkness that precedes every dawn, the stillness before the splash of the sun that becomes the light of day. This is the pause—the moment of stillness—before the stirring begins yet again.

Most mornings I immerse myself into the stillness—my meditative state I call it—for when I do, there is a shimmer to the day that seems to rub off onto me as well.

Yet, there are days upon leaving my sleep state that I am aware of a mind-body consensus considering “what if we just rest today” and not really awaken. Mind knows that skipping meditation means body will not have to stretch itself with yoga.

There is a cascade of memories—perfect in their replaying of such lazy pleasure—of what past days of rest have meant: comfort food, marathon movie watching, binge reading.

It is the escape offered to the day at hand. Almost always, I decline the escape route. But every time I do, there is an acknowledged appreciation for what that escape once meant. It remains an old friend rarely visited.

Instead, I sit and remember the warrior monarch butterfly, a true bodhisattva and a welcome memory on the mornings I hesitate to meditate. The complete metamorphosis of the butterfly reminds me why I meet each day I am given.

It is the butterfly who gives up one way of life after another—each stage fraught with life-ending possibilities—for to fly is to know the freedom of walking on air. From the stillness of the larva the caterpillar stirs to its search for sustenance, consuming one leaf after another.

There is a reward for all this eating, and it is not one of rest but rather it is the spinning of a pupa—the chrysalis—a chamber of life as tissue, limbs, and organs of a body that once crawled become a body that now flies.

No new life emerges until the old is transformed into what is necessary for the life that awaits.

And for the monarch warriors, there is a 2,500-mile migration critical to its survival, a quest that relies not on individual warrior monarchs but on all monarch warriors living their lives to ensure the species.

The monarch warrior moves through one form of life after another without wondering about the ways of existence. Such consideration falls within the realm of the human species.

We yearn to be like the monarchs, warriors working together, not singularly, to ensure our species survival. We might ache for metamorphosis but we do not easily let go of our accumulated experiences, especially those that seem to require so much of us.

“We don’t want to go through that again,” we say, which we won’t, of course, not exactly. Perhaps the monarch warrior does know this.

We want to spread our wings without changing who we are. We are agreeable to making necessary changes—an adjustment of our very being—as long as we are allowed to keep what is most dear.

We may not be as fearless or as selfless as the warrior monarch but we are just as connected to existence. We are born with the capacity for complexity rather than the singularity of purpose of the warrior monarch.

I have to wonder just what the warrior monarch might know for it is my nature to wonder. And so I do. On most mornings in the stillness before the stirring begins yet again.

Releasing the Fragrance of Forgiveness

Posted on January 11, 2015January 10, 2015 by KM Huber in Inspiration, Lupus, Spirituality

Lately, I have been writing about transformation, in particular the changes I am experiencing with my health. And this week, there is even better news. For the first time, my acupuncture physician felt all of my pulse points. For me, that is huge—to say it is remarkable is not an exaggeration.

It indicates more movement than stagnation. It is as if a way of life, a mindset, is dissolving, breaking up. There is still some stagnation but the decline is being reversed as my cell structure changes in my body’s attempt to balance itself.

Transformation offers what has never been. If not a new body, literally, then a body and a being “falling in love with life, again” as reader Val Boyko so generously offered in the comments on last week’s post.

That more life is pulsing through me accounts for my increased energy level; also, it seems accurate to say—now–that my pain level is also in decline, albeit a slow one.

Transformation occurs in its own time—patience is essential–but the benefits are life-changing, literally. I find I am more present in each moment. I do not want to miss any of the unfolding of any day so I am less likely to pay attention to mindset. There is so much new to explore.

Still, the mind prefers calling up the tried and true of old, a series of steps followed again and again until they are, well, set, as if in concrete. Mindsets are the known, limited in effect and thus, predictable, perhaps even stagnant.

Yet, I do not believe that a mindset is without its worth. Not at all. Rather, it is our own bank of experience. Mindset makes us who we are.

Mindset is what we bring to the moment we meet transformation. Then, we have a choice: same-old, same-old secure or the unknown of transformation.

“Patience, grasshopper” is a line I have met many times these last months yet sit I did and do still. My impatience is less for I found that in being patient, one finds forgiveness, the ability to let go of the debt that accrues from all regret. It is the way to open one’s heart to all.

Not surprisingly, I returned to a favorite quote. Forgiveness is the “fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” Though often attributed to Mark Twain (since the 1970s), it seems its present form is a compilation of phrases from centuries past.

No doubt the thought stays with us for forgiveness is such a struggle for humans.

There is a firm delicacy in a violet petal forgiving the heel that crushes the life out of it. Soon, the fragrance dissipates but it lingers just longer than life. That is forgiving the debt.

The fragrance reminds that in forgiveness we are transformed–a mindset shattered for what is yet to come with no regret of what has been.

Transformation requires we accept every step we have ever taken; it requires we acknowledge every action or decision, given or received. None can be undone. All steps are ours to own, to accept, and to release.

As always, forgiveness—a journey deep and often dark—begins within us. We cannot offer to others what we do not give to ourselves. In the moment we accept all that we have been, we release the fragrance of forgiveness.

We focus not on what crushes us but on what releases us.

Finding Refuge on the Eve of the Winter Solstice

Posted on December 21, 2014December 20, 2014 by KM Huber in Inspiration, Oneness, Spirituality

It is early morning on the eve of the winter solstice, neither dark nor light but both—in a way. Even for north Florida, it is cold. I have the car heater on low as I drive to St. Mark’s Wildlife Refuge on the Gulf of Mexico.

It is perfect winter solstice weather.

The solstice celebrates the dark during a season given to light, a reminder that in light there is always dark. Yin-Yang. Oneness.

And there is the inherent stillness of the solstice. The increasingly dark and deepening autumnal sleep culminates in the pivotal moment of the winter solstice.

After this day, every dawn will mean more light and less night, as slumber gives way to the awakening of the spring solstice.

Every year, I write these words or similar ones regarding the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere. Usually, I celebrate the event with a walk around Waverly Pond but this has not been a year of “doing things as usual,” even holiday traditions.

Rather, it has been a year of firsts. Some may mean new traditions for me, among them driving to St. Mark’s on the eve of the solstice. Perhaps more than any other season of my life, I am immersed in transformation.

It is not surprising that I am drawn to the Refuge where transformation is in evidence everywhere.

Areas of longleaf pine stand stark in their burnt orange and black beauty against gray, morning skies. Wiregrass is the color of wheat ready to harvest.

It is the season for prescribed or controlled burning, a matter of survival for the longleaf and wiregrass ecosystems. They depend upon the transformation fire brings–first alight with flame and then, darkness.

Transformation always involves the falling away of things we have relied on,

and we are left with the feeling that the world as we know it is coming to an end

because it is.

(Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening)

As I look across saltwater marshes in seasonal slumber—timeless transformation–I cannot imagine being anywhere else on this dark, gray morning on the eve of the winter solstice.

In the quiet dark, I am mindful of the necessity of letting go in life. It takes time, transformation does, time to awaken to the light of a life yet to come, time to welcome the world anew.

Mindfulness gives you time. Time gives you choices. Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom.

Bhante Henepola Gunaratana

The solstice seasonal slumber reminds me to quiet myself, to observe the dark that is as much a part of this festive season as is the light. In the stillness of the dark, the light swirls.

On the marshes of St. Mark’s on the eve of this winter solstice, I let a life lived end as a life I have not begins. Each ending is yet a beginning, a time for slumber in anticipation of awakening anew.

In keeping with the light and dark of the season, regular blog posts will return in 2015.

Reading Both Sides of the Label

Posted on November 30, 2014November 29, 2014 by KM Huber in Consciousness, Inspiration, Lupus, Spirituality

It is the “giving season,” wrapped gifts are tagged to identify who is receiving and who is giving. These labels tell us that we are thought of, sometimes in a way that surprises and, unwittingly, may separate us.

Labels do exclude as well as identify—they play a necessary part in our lives—sometimes, we come to rely on a label as finite when in reality, it is not.

This labeling of life as a known quantity is easy to do. Some labels last a lifetime.

If the doors of perception were cleansed
every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up, till he sees
all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.

William Blake
(“The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”)

For most of my life, I did not appreciate there are two sides to any label, much like the dark and light wolves that live within us. Just as both wolves require feeding, both sides of any label balance the life experience.

It is not merely a matter of turning over the label—that is sleight of hand, yet another illusion—it is in the turning transformation occurs. The unknown emerges as the known fades.

Right now, my health is somewhere in-between what always has been and what has not been. I do not know what the other side of my chronic disease label may reveal.

It seems fair to say it is still a blank. It is also more than fair to say I am a bit befuddled but just as intensely curious. Amazingly, I seem rather patient, something I am not, usually.

Wear a label long enough, and it is how the mind wends its way. If the mind—the head–leads the heart long enough it will grow silent, aware it cannot be heard.

What matters lives,

Hidden or not,

Within us

So that when the right words come

We recognize them as something

We tried to say but did not know how.

Fanny Howe
(The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life, “White Lines,” P. 70)

Let me give you the right words that came to me as I began to peel back the label of chronic disease: I am no longer waiting to die; I am creating a life new to me.

The choice between no longer waiting to die and creating a life is not an obvious one. There is a chasm, decades deep, between the two sides of this life label. Grief is what bridges them.

I grieve for my life of chronic illness that consumed all of my middle age and most of my youth. I have to grieve so I stop trying to regain health that was possible only in the years then but is not in the years I have now.

“People wait until nothing else works,” is what my acupuncture physician told me. Yes, it was only when I believed I had nothing to lose that I was able to lose the label of a lifetime.

Who knows what life will emerge. What I do know is that it has not been nor is it about what I might gain. There is no desire to wrap up this gift and slap a label on it. As it is given, so is it received.

Monarch Moments in a Sunny Land

Posted on November 16, 2014November 15, 2014 by KM Huber in Florida, Inspiration, Oneness, Spirituality

It is some weeks since I spent a morning among the monarch butterflies at St. Mark’s Wildlife Refuge. On their way to Mexico to overwinter, the monarchs make a multi-generational trek of 3,000 miles in spring and fall.

It is in the sunny lands they survive.

It seems to take at least four generations of butterflies to complete the trek. Only the monarchs know when it is time to go and for that matter, where to go. Some monarchs live as long eight months but others only long enough to mate and to lay eggs—a life of two to six weeks.

Because the trek is multi-generational, how do the butterflies always know? That is the mystery of the monarch migration. Inadvertently, mystery may be the greatest asset the monarchs have as they struggle to survive as a species.

Humans love a mystery. Often, we will take steps to preserve what we “have not yet figured out.” Recently, the monarch migration attracted the attention of the Canadian, American, and Mexican governments.

Perhaps the uniqueness of the monarch migration—its mystery—will hold their attention span long enough to restore butterfly habitat, thereby helping other pollinators as well. Perhaps….

At St. Mark’s Wildlife Refuge, there has been a Monarch Festival for 26 years but in 2014 there was worry as less than a handful had arrived–but the monarchs did not miss their festival—they showed up one day before it began.

All these thoughts were mine as I sat among the monarchs—and that is almost literally true—for I was the lone human on a bench by the sea, next to bushes of butterflies. Gulf and sky were one shade of blue, shimmering in a sunny land.

Knock on the sky and listen to the sound!
Zen saying

In my moments with the monarchs, there seems no mystery, just a longing for sunny lands whether north or south. Neither the trek nor the distance matters. It is a migration for sunny lands, a yearning for survival, realizing that in order to arrive one must leave.

I watch the monarchs flock to saltbush, goldenrod and dotted horsemint bushes, diligent and methodical, trusting in the sun of this day as they spread their wings. They are on the move, after all.

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy

He who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in eternity’s sunrise

(Eternity, William Blake)

So it is to knock on the sky and listen.

Postscript:

As I sat among the monarchs that day, the refrain of “Sunnyland,” a Hot Tamale original ballad, played in my mind. On one level, it is a song of the human desire to migrate to sunny lands but like the monarch mystery, it has other levels.

Within a week of my moments with monarchs, Meredith published the succinct, “Milkweed Meditation.” The milkweed is the monarchs’ favorite bush.

Finally, the initial count of monarch butterflies may be up this year, a first in a long time, and the migration mystery remains.

The Eddying of Experiences

Posted on October 19, 2014November 11, 2014 by KM Huber in Inspiration, Oneness, Spirituality, Uncategorized

We are stardust—we know that—but as we are dust so are we energy. It is from this energy that we have a momentary experience as a human being, a blade of grass, or an armadillo.

And when we are no longer in this physical dimension, we remain energy, perhaps to know an experience in some other dimension or maybe to return for another physical life, leaving only our dust once again.

Our physical experience is unique to us—each of us has our own vibration—sometimes we’re a wave and other times, a particle.

Since subatomic matter makes up everything we can see and touch and experience in our macro world, then in a sense we—along with everything in our world—are also doing this disappearing act all the time. And so if subatomic particles exist in an infinite number of possible places simultaneously, then in some way so do we.

(You Are the Placebo: Making Your Mind Matter, Dr. Joe Dispenza, p. 183)

The quantum model is staggering with possibility, fascinating and even spellbinding, reality rooted in the pure energy we are. That’s the power of possibility, revealing that magic is real.

I have always believed in magic, always sensed we had not yet grasped its true nature. For me, the quantum model is a magic carpet ride where the magic is the pure energy of life riding on reality, soaring and swooping, sometimes swirling.

The energy comprising the oneness of reality resembles a whirlpool as it “…fades out and the water passes on, perhaps to be caught again and turned for a moment into another whirlpool,” each its own eddy of experience (Charlotte Joko Beck).

Each whirlpool caught up in its own moment of existence yet ever connected to the energy of coming and going. Sometimes, we’re the whirlpool, and other times, we’re a drop but always, we are the river.

There are many names and beliefs for the energy animating existence–God, the Universe, the Source. Each expression of this energy—as a human, as a blade of grass, as an armadillo–is a unique experience of life, a momentary whirlpool in the river that runs eternally.

When we learn to move beyond mistaken concepts and see clearly, we no longer solidify reality. We see waves coming and going, arising and passing. We see that life, composed of this mind and body, is in a state of continual, constant transformation and flux. There is always the possibility of radical change. Every moment – not just poetically or figuratively, but literally – every moment we are dying and being reborn, we and all of life.

~ Sharon Salzberg ~

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