As I showered today I stood under the hot spray thinking of how soothing and familiar the water felt I took the opportunity to meditate a bit.  I went with the feeling and imagined myself floating in warm water with no need to breathe, no concerns in the world, and no agenda at all for the forseeable future.  I put my head completely under the water and felt it envelope me in warmth and relaxation, and then raised my hands to catch the water as it fell.

I soon felt myself floating freely without even feeling my feet on the shower floor, and I imagined curling myself up into a fetal position.  I had the sensation of cleansing and preparation for a birth of sorts and inhaled the warm fluid that surrounded me as I felt my mind drifting along with my body.  I let myself feel totally protected as life went on around me but vaguely at a distance, and the sounds I heard were muffled and far off.  As I stretched my body back out and raised my hands over my head I felt a warm soft womb around me, and I felt the swish of fluid moving with me as I wiggled my fingers and toes in the warmth.   I twirled and swallowed the soothing fluid, and as I gently kicked off from the soft cushioning around me I thought of how I wasn’t sure what my original experience had been in a place like this. 

Was I welcomed, or was there yelling and anger when I was in a place like this originally?  I’m really not sure and as I considered it I realized that didn’t matter.  What mattered was that I can nurture myself now.  I can float, feel warmth and love surround me, and I can feel the softness of a womb that I can visit any time I like.  Yes, it is a wonderful thing to begin this life in a place of welcome and safety, but it is just as soothing and amazing that I know I can create my own place of comfort whenever I wish.  I smiled to myself as I bounced off the soft cushioning walls, did some slow flips and twirls, and thought about beginnings. 

We begin throughout our entire lives.  We are born, pass through infancy and start school, become a teen and then young adult, get jobs, maybe marry and have children, watch them grow and find their own beginnings, and along the way we begin each day with the possibility of making it the best we have ever lived.  We can create our own womb and nurture ourselves while we give ourselves opportunities to feel the love and welcome we all deserve.  It is within our power to float, kick, or squirm in that relaxing place at any time that we are stressed, confused or just need to cleanse ourselves and find a place to recharge. 

As I dried off after my shower I sighed with contentment knowing that I do not need to dwell on one particular beginning when I have the ability to create each day as it comes.  Now that’s a wonderful thing…the power to create our own beginnings.

My meditations have shifted lately to gauze and cotton candy, and the change is a bit disconcerting to me.  I usually have detailed, vivid, visions with a definite theme to them, but lately they are leisurely and very relaxing.  Perhaps that is indeed the theme after all when I think about it, and I will start enjoying them for what they are.  I have been learning the  Japanese healing art of Reiki, and I have been  experiencing a  shift in my perceptions since I began my classes.

I recently found myself once again drifting contentedly in gray mist, and since this seems to be a common situation for me now I felt comfortable enough to lie back and relax into the mist with no thought to lessons to be learned or messages to receive.  I felt no surface below me, but rather the sensation of drifting peacefully with no physical sensations at all.  I drifted nowhere in particular with no goal in my mind at all, and I felt as if my mind simply became part of a collective energy that simply existed.  It was a delightful sensation and one I highly recommend, and the only unpleasant part of the experience was dragging myself back down to earth and consciousness.  I now see how monks can sit and meditate for days on end, and I know I will be returning as soon and as often as possible.

Maybe there was a lesson floating around in that mist after all.  The energy that flows through all of existence, which is the energy that flows through all things and is a common current that connects everything to everything else, exists not only when we choose to acknowledge it or allow it to flow freely through us, but has existed since the beginning and will flow long after this planet has no physical life forms on it.  It flows through and connects us all every second of every day, and whether I choose to take the time to drift and enjoy the energy flowing through me, or to focus on the sharp edges of daily life and neglect that part of myself it will still exist without alteration.  Some might call this energy God while some might call it the natural order of the physical universe, but while I drifted in that exhilarating, relaxing mist of energy wisping all around me I had no labels for anything or anyone and needed none. 

Maybe that was the lesson to be learned after all…it simply is what it is and that is the beauty of it.

I’ve been pondering who I am and what place I am to occupy in this vast universe.  Yes, the age-old question that never seems to have a distinct answer has come to roost on my doorstep.  I have been learning Reiki recently, and this seems to have not only changed my body, but shifted my perspective as well.   I have been meditating on the issue of reality versus perspective and had some interesting thoughts on the connection between the two.

I found myself standing on rocky desert sand under a blazing sun, and I stood blinking in surprise for a few moments.  I looked around and saw only sand, rocks, and shimmering heat, so I decided to climb the small slope ahead of me to get a better view of my surroundings.  I trudged in the hot sand for what seemed like hours until I reached the top of that hill, and when I looked back I saw I might have walked five feet in all that time.  I smiled to myself about my supposed topic of the meditation and chuckled at my own perception of trudging for hours to walk a mere five feet, and then I set about exploring the desert. 

I saw at first nothing but rocks, sand, and shimmering heat, and fervently wished for a camel to ride to keep my hot feet off the ground.  As I was thinking about how easy it would be to perish from thirst here in this barren place I heard a snort from behind me and felt hot breath on the back of my neck.  I jumped and whirled around, losing my footing in the sand and landing awkwardly on my back with my face to the blistering sun.  I shut my eyes to the glare and shook my head,   felt  hot breath on my face, and opened one eye just enough to see a big mouth full of huge teeth a couple of inches from my nose.   After a few seconds of shock I looked upward around the mouth to see long, lush eyelashes that belonged to the camel I had wished for a few moments ago.

I started laughing and sat up, and he blinked those amazing lashes at me in surprise.  “You did ask for a camel, right?  What’s so funny?”  came to me, and I thought of all the sand monsters I was imagining and gave him a big kiss on his sandy nose.  I asked him if all I had to do is ask for something for it to come to me he nodded his head, and so I asked him why I was still standing in the sun parched with thirst if that were true, and he tilted his head at me as if to ask me me the same question. 

I closed my eyes, wrapped my arms around as much of him as I could reach, and I thought about a cool blue pool of water and a tall drink of something refreshing.  When I opened them I was standing with my camel friend beside the pool with a frosty drink in my hand, and I slurped it down and jumped into the chilly water.  It only took a few moments to cool off, so I stood up in the waist-high water to talk to my friend who waited patiently for me at the water’s edge.  I was about to ask him what the lesson was in our little visit, but then I realized I was uncomfortably cold and actually shivering.  I realized with a jolt I had knocked my ice water off my desk onto my lap and was sitting shivering in a big puddle of ice cubes!

The camel and the pool disappeared as I came back to reality and cleaned up the spill, changed my pants, and laughed at myself for being so immersed in my meditation I didn’t realize what was happening in reality. Then I thought of my camel friend and realized what the point of the experience had been.

Yes, I was immersed in my meditation, so for that moment my reality was the camel, the hot sand, and then the wonderful cool pool.  My perceptions of my interrupted journey were as real to me as the feel of the keyboard under my fingers as I type this, but the perceptions of someone watching me would naturally have been totally different. 

Whose version of reality was real?  Both events were occuring at the same time, but I was talking to a camel and the person watching would have seen a woman sitting at a computer desk knocking over a glass of water, sitting for a moment, and then jumping up with a gasp.  Both versions are accurate reports of the reality of the moment and neither are lies or misperceptions, so perhaps instead of one version being “right” and one “wrong”, they are just relative to each other and can co-exist peacefully.  I might have looked silly or dazed sitting at my desk meditating, and who knows if I spoke aloud to my camel friend or held my breath as I swam?  In the long run does it matter except as part of someone else’s reality? 

So maybe this time I end up with more questions than answers to my original question of my place in the universe.  Or maybe I got a partial answer in that I am whatever I perceive myself to be just as others are to me as I perceive them to be as well.  I am my own reality since I form my own reality based on my perceptions, and I am part of the reality of everyone who comes in contact with me, although I have no control over how I appear in their version of reality.  I can be a wronged wife, lucky mother, sad loser, innocent victim, camel campanion, content partner, or whatever else I choose to be based on my perceptions of the “reality” around me, so I do create my own reality. 

My reality is relative to all the other realities of the living things around me, and although I do appear in their realities and hope to contribute positive energy to them, the only reality I can create and change is my own.  What a relief and responsibility at the same time, and a beginning to finding my answer.  I am to myself who I perceive myself to be, and I am to others as they perceive me to be in their own reality.  Therefore my place in the universe is what I choose to make of my reality.  I can touch others’ realities as gently and positively as I can while I work on my own reality, and that is enough of an answer for me for now.  It’s all relative anyway in the long run after all, so there seems to be no one “right” answer anyway as I see it today.  Maybe that was the point all along…there is no one answer as to who we are meant to be or who others should be…it just is and we can strive to be as positive in all realities as possible.

I have been meditating this week on the idea of chance and how it relates to the paths we take in our lives.   I had a hard time focusing on it and kept drifting to places I had visited in my journeys and meditations instead of the subject at hand.  I finally realized during a yoga meditation why this was so hard for me and  found an unexpected answer.

We were to relax on a beach and listen to the waves, but I found myself walking along the water’s edge reflecting upon times in my life when it seemed that I was lucky or unlucky, or in other words things happened by chance.  I remembered playing at a friend’s grandparents’ house as a child and learning that her parents had died in a car accident years before, and I remembered thinking they must have been at the wrong place at the wrong time.  I suddenly found myself riding in the back seat of an old car and listening to a couple talking about getting home to see her, and I realized I must be in the car with my friend’s parents!  They chatted a bit and decided to go home a different way than usual, but as the man turned a corner there was a crunch and crash of metal against metal, and I could hear a horn blaring in the distance as I drifted away. 

I was so sad that she lost her parents and shocked at being present to feel their horror and pain, but I tried to figure out why I experienced that awful event even as the landscape shifted and I saw the same friend swimming in a nearby lake some time after I moved away and lost contact with her.  She swam alone, and since she was a strong swimmer had confidence enough to take the risk of swimming alone even when I had known her, but I was horrified when I realized what I was about to see.  She swam slowly and then floated on her back for a bit, and I tried to shout at her to get out of the water to safety, but nothing would come out of my mouth and I felt paralyzed with dread.  She turned to swim gracefully toward shore when I saw someone behind her and my heart leapt into my throat!   No!!  I knew what was going to happen and I tried to turn away but couldn’t.

She heard a sound and turned, looked confused, and started to say something to the boy who had swum up to her by now, but he came close to her and put his arm around her to cover her face with his hand.  She struggled and tried to scream, but he pushed her head under and held her while she flailed desperately.  I wanted to scream, cry, disappear, and stop the boy I knew very well who was indeed drowning my friend before my eyes, but all I could do was watch helplessly as she stopped struggling and he smiled that horrible smile I recognized so well.  When I had learned she drowned I knew right away what had really happened, but I couldn’t proved it and at least hadn’t seen it until now.  All these years later I saw it and felt her fear and surprise as the water filled her lungs, and I knew her last thought was why?  Why was he doing this?

I fought the urge to vomit as I drifted away again and found myself standing in my home in the desert many years ago.  I was leaned against my living room wall and sobbing in my empty home as I gathered courage to walk out the door for the last time.  I didn’t want to go through this again since it was devastating to me when I had to move to a less than desirable situation after living in the first place in my life I felt at home.  My dog was doing his best to comfort me, but I knew I was about to walk out of a place I still haven’t forgotten in the twenty years since I had to choose to do what my heart cried out for or what I felt was the right thing to do as a wife.   I saw myself sag against the wall to the floor, hold the dog while he licked my face, and pull myself up to take a breath and walk out to the moving van waiting in the driveway.  I never saw the house again and lost contact with the wonderful friends I had made there, and moving didn’t  save my marriage or give my child the stability I had hoped my choice would.  I realized I was holding my breath and released it with a loud whoosh as I felt myself fading from the scene again.

This time I found myself  lying back on the peaceful beach again staring up into a clear blue sky, and I breathed a sigh of relief as I realized I was now to think about the role chance had played in the experiences I had just endured and so many others.  I considered how many children die from starvation when governments withhold food and how they happened to be born in a place where such things happen, and how one man survives a plane crash when 300 others perish.  I thought of all the people struck by lightning or shot in robberies and how much of their fates were all sealed by this thing called chance, and how many marriages fell apart, lotteries were won, and so many other so-called chance occurences.  As I pondered the possibility that all these things might be attributed to chance I noticed a sound above my head, and I glanced up to find two  eyes staring back at me.

I sat up quickly to find myself face to face with a scraggly coyote who was regarding me with the most brilliant blue eyes I had ever seen.  He seemed to be laughing at my surprise, and I smiled as his long tongue hanging out of the corner of his mouth like a red flag at half mast.  He cocked his head at me and then I heard a question in my head.  He was asking me if I’d found my answer yet, and when I said not really he just gave me a silly coyote grin, stood up, and started padding off in the wet sand along the water’s edge.  I jumped up and ran to catch up with him to ask why he came to me if he was going to run off that way, but it occured to me that he was giving me a sort of answer by his actions.  He stopped and turned back to me with a serious expression, and I knew what he was telling me as he stared at me with those amazingly blue eyes.

After a bit he loped off down the beach and left me to ponder my answer, and I shook my head at how simple the answer was.  What we call chance or luck is a series of decisions made along the way to a particular event.  That doesn’t mean that someone who is killed causes her own murder, but just that no one magically happens to be at a certain place at a certain time.  There is no judgement, blame, or need for guilt involved, but a realization that choices involve consequences that we can’t always control or forsee.  My friend’s parents took a different turn than usual and were killed by another driver who made the choice to drink and drive, change the radio station, turn to talk to a passenger, or not sleep enough before getting behind the wheel.  We don’t need to judge him or her, but we can understand that we aren’t victims in a vast universe of chance occurences.  My friend chose to swim alone, and therefore she was easier prey than she might have been home with her grandparents.  She didn’t cause her death, but it wasn’t chance that she was there that day alone, and the boy chose to stalk and kill her in revenge for a perceived slight he was angry about.  Whether one believes in fate or luck or neither one, chance is really a series of choices along the way to a particular event,  and whether they were wise choices or not, they were still part of the weave of the universe and time unfolding. 

That may sound fatalistic on the surface, but choices lead to miraculous and gleeful events as well as tragic ones.  That is the fabric of life and doesn’t take away our power to choose our path or heal from pain.  Instead it means we can understand how things come to pass instead of being tossed along as victims in the floodwaters of chance, and it means we can make our own luck as much as possible depending on our interactions with others who are making choices as well.  It also means we are all tied together in one way or another at some point in time and affect each other when we make our choices.

At least I believe that was what the coyote was telling me before I ended up back in the yoga room.  It is posssible that he just happened to be on the beach that day and was simply deciding whether I would be a good meal or not, but I can safely say I’ve never met a coyote yet who depended on chance to find himself a good meal.  I guess that’s why coyotes are such resourceful creatures.  They must know something we don’t, right?:)

This week during yoga meditation I found myself on the beach again breathing the fresh salt air and watching gulls swoop in and out of the waves.  I was relaxed and content to just breathe, walk along the beach, and squint at the sunlight dancing on the water, so I thought this meditation would be the true vacation I needed so badly.  I looked down at the water swirling past my feet with each wave, and I turned to look at my footprints behind me in the sand and noticed a movement so far behind me I thought I imagined it.  I glanced back again, didn’t see anything, and continued my stroll with a contented sigh.

As I moved down the beach I thought I heard a sound from behind me and wrenched my head around with a jerk to see if someone was approaching, but again no one was there.  I rubbed my painfully twisted neck and began to get annoyed with myself for being so paranoid on a peaceful beach, so I promised myself to focus on the squishy sand between my toes and the salt spray on my face instead of some imagined danger I couldn’t even see.  I began to walk more quickly and savor the feel of the breeze in my hair as I laughed at my earlier silliness, and I began to jog slowly in the sand with a lightness of spirit that promised to rejuvenate me, but the mood was ruined after only a few moments.

From directly behind me I heard a familiar voice, and I jumped as my heart started racing with fear.  I knew that voice from my childhood and frantically turned back to see how someone from so long ago could be chasing me on a beach so far away in the present, but all I succeeded in doing was falling flat on my face.  I spat out the grit and rolled to see the monster chasing me, but again no one was there, so I laid still until my heart slowed and my breathing deepened before rising to walk again. 

Now I found myself feeling irresistible urges to glance back, but still no one was anywhere to be seen.  I was by this time totally annoyed and torn behind turning back and yelling at whoever thought it was funny to intrude on such a peaceful place and trying to regain my sense of peace while I walked on.  I hated to admit that I felt fear niggling at me by now and didn’t feel peaceful at all, so I jogged more quickly to put some distance between myself and that stretch of beach where I had felt so frightened. 

I had only jogged a few feet when the sound of footsteps thudding behind me made my heart race again, and I turned and tripped, landing this time with my chin hitting the sand hard enough to make stars shoot before my eyes!  I was breathing hard and by now terrified, but I made myself turn and look back at my pursuer.  All I could see was some shadows way off in the distance, and the echoes of another familiar voice drifted along on the breeze.  I laid there and collected myself, firmly reminding myself that I was on a beach and there was no one who could be here with me unless I wanted company.  When I had fairly convinced myself I was imagining these things I stood stiffly and brushed the sand from my hands and continued my journey at a slow walk, breathing deeply and focusing on the beauty around me.  I had succeeded at relaxing  a bit when I heard the beating of wings directly in front of me, and to my surprise my vulture friend appeared to walk beside me!

He said nothing, but I knew he was here to teach me something and was very happy to see him.  It felt good to have company on this particular day, so I let him know I was glad to see him.  He replied that he was surprised I had noticed him at all with all the backward-looking and falling on my face I was doing, and I really didn’t have any reply for that since I was rather embarrassed at my behavior already.  We walked in silence for a bit until we came to a grouping of  rocks along the water’s edge, and I looked up and saw him sitting on the top of the pile of jagged dark stones waiting for me to join him.  At the same time I heard that voice that made me a small child waiting for something awful to happen again and found myself on the verge of tears.  I didn’t want to run or look back, but I couldn’t help taking furtive glances as I clawed my way toward supposed safety.   

I was so distracted by trying to look back at the terrors coming after me and the effort of not screaming or begging him for help as I climbed the wet rocks that I didn’t notice when I was almost to the top.  I heard that voice again from right behind me, turned to see him surely close enough to grab me again, and didn’t notice I had reached the top of the rocks.  I stumbled over the top, looked back for a last glance, and felt space underneath my feet!

I had stepped right out over the edge of the rock while I was so busy looking behind me for my pursuers, and it hit me in a flash that even though I knew logically there could be no one from my childhood chasing me I had still wasted my whole vacation here in this peaceful place looking back instead of moving foward.  I looked up to see a large red object leaping  off the rock  with me into space, and I instinctively grabbed for it, pulled myself on top of warm hair and strong muscles, and I clung for dear life. 

I realized in an instant that I was sitting astride the largest sorrel horse I had ever seen, flying through the air in a graceful arc, and  landing on the sand below the rocks with a thudding of huge hooves!  I was totally taken by surprise and unsure of anything else to do but grab the red mane flying in front of me and hold on tightly.  We slowed to a stop at the edge of the beach near some low trees, and the horse stood looking at my vulture friend who was perched on a branch up ahead.  I nudged the beautiful animal closer to the vulture and noticed all my fear and feelings of being followed by events from my past had dissipated as I turned to face my fall from the rocks.  I no longer cared if anyone spoke to me from my past or tried to frighten me when I realized the only time I fell or truly was hurt by anything from so long ago was when I turned to look back in fear instead of watching where I was going in the present.  When I heard the voices and saw the shadows I felt little and powerless again, but when I turned and flung my hands out in a forward motion I felt strong and ready to face what was ahead, even if it meant a fall from the rocks.  I smiled wryly at the bird on the branch and asked him if that was the point, and he indicated there was something else as well.

He told me the horse had been there walking with me the whole time waiting for me to leap on his back and leave that scary place of shadows and echoes of terrors past, but I had been so busy looking back and trying to run from my past I had forgotten to stand up and look around me in the present.  Had I noticed the only time I truly fell on my face was when I was too busy being stuck in the past to remember how strong and capable I am in the present? I could leave any time I wanted, see and ride the beautiful horse if I chose to seek a companion, or fly from that place in the blink of my eyes at any time, but I had chosen to stay and be terrified by echoes of my torturers.  

I found myself in the yoga room thinking about my experience, and later I put the rest of the puzzle together. If you must look behind you to see where you have been and what lessons there have been in your life,  just make sure you aren’t running in terror in soft wet sand.  Stop, stand tall, and turn to see that the echoes are just that…echoes in the past.  After you see they are only shadows and you aren’t small and terrified any more after all, then you can see all the resources in your present and choose your path for the future at a leisurely  pace instead of tripping yourself up and ending up with sand in your mouth and a sore neck.   That bird is a wise one!