Knowing, Awakened

It is early in the day and I am returning from dropping off my children at their before-school activities. So early, I am already carrying a lead weight of anxiety in the bowl of my belly, my mind racing between “shoulds” and my heart hardening with each breath. It is a grey morning, after a rain, with small puddles still gathered in pockets of asphalt. But I am moving too fast to notice.

And that would be my state on this day —this mindless, slightly panicked energy— but for an unexpected interruption. A robin’s chortle breaks into my self-absorption. Suddenly, I am aware of the veil curtain of mist, hanging close to the ground, and the cool scent of soil rising through it. New bird song rings, further away, then closer. I can feel the contours of my body, trace my breath through my lungs.

I am alive! I am here.

And I can see! I see the crabapple tree next to me, in the fog’s embrace. I see a tiny nuthatch hopping up its trunk. And I see the nubs of leaves, waiting to unfold, gathered on spindly branches.

I am here, in the damp mist and the echoes of bird chatter, and I am also home, hurtled by my senses through time and space to the landscape my Soul loves best: the contours of the mountainside on La Finca. And the awareness awakens this knowing in me, again: here, too, I am home.

When I stop to see, when I feel with my senses that I am alive, then, wherever I am, I am home.

Photo by Jay Simmons

Always Home

Today I was home again, with my child-heart open and feeling as free as I did when I spent the entire day away from people, wandering in the forests and fields of La Finca without concern about when I’d return or who knew where I was.

I didn’t take an airplane and rush to catch a connection. I let Reiki take me, allowed my consciousness to flow with the energy, and I found myself again in the hidden bower I went to as a child to quiet my mind. I found myself looking up into the sky through the fuzzy leaves and bright fuchsia flowers of my favorite tree there, a tuno roso. I could smell the little brook that runs only a few paces from the tree, and the warm moisture of the earth rose into my body as I lay there, basking in quietude.

As I lay there, I became aware that Casquito was with me, my horse companion who died so many years ago. She was standing in the shade, not grazing, just looking me over gently. I ran to her and embraced her, my face against her soft red neck. Inhaling her warm, familiar scent, something in my chest loosened and crumbled, fell away and opened new space within me.

A timelessness came over me, a sense of absolute expansiveness, without borders, without edges, just space spreading outward. It was like breathing deeply inward, filling myself, and discovering that my lungs had no end, just more space for more nourishing air.

Then I was simultaneously running through the grass, pushing my shins through its gentle resistance, and floating on the wind, like a feather caught in a breeze, passing over treetops and dropping onto branches.

I understood then, with parts of my Self that are not in my head, that this is home, this place that is there and nowhere at once, that I am always home when I choose to be. I understood that I can be earthbound and flying at once: that I am always free.