Lucy Doodle, 2002
To be found by our souls, to be connected, reconnected, and connected again to that whoosh of silent, flowing energy, to be returned and renewed by source, these are the gifts of awe-filled moments. Quieting the chatty, gossiping mind prepares us to lean in the direction of grace. We are not the ones to create the awe; we, mere humans, simply create the circumstances in which the awe is revealed. Our practice is to be there, to notice and to participate.
How do we create the circumstances for awe to emerge? I have a humble, perfectly imperfect meditation practice. I walk my mantra; I pray in my body. Nevertheless I am often elsewhere when the Glory lands on my shoulder, where the woodpecker calls my name, when the red-winged blackbird winks at me. My practice is that of returning.
Here is my list, in no order of importance, of a smattering of the multitude of awe-filled memories that live in my heart and my body:
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Watching the Blond Bombshell, Lucy Doodle the 12-week old puppy, come out of her crate at the airport, having flown from Minnesota on her own, ready to fully disrupt and rebuild my life, my heart exploding with giddy joy
- Walking into the room filled with cheering friends and family, post guru-falling-from-grace, preparing to be married, Ras and I the first same-sex couple in Kripalu’s history to do so, holding that miraculous community healing for all of us in my trembling body
- Feeling my mother’s last breath, watching myself taking the next one without her, for the first time in my then fifty-nine years of life; in this excruciating and exquisite moment, I have never been so fully alive
I could continue—the list is surely massive. But now I turn toward you, dear reader. What moments have shut down your brain and whooshed open your heart? What were the images, the interruptions to the habitual, the reunion with grace with which you have been blessed? Please share your awe-filled moments—here I am, aruni@rnetworx.com.
How easy it is to not look, to keep our eyes planted on the earth and on the habitual. How easy it is to forget our connect to the Divine, that energy that throbs and fills every breath. Let’s remember, just for this moment, the preciousness of our place in this sacred moment.
All blessings,
Aruni