How appropriate to write a few words about the silent retreat I was on last week, from way up here above the
earth, riding in an airplane between the hazy cloud mountains, chasing the sunset west. I’m going home to the ocean, family and amazing friends.
Diasporically yet perfect
in nomadic implication, I am listening to Aman Iman singing Tinariwen on the
“Transitions 2013” playlist filling my lil shuffle. (Ben Loomer gave me this
track a few weeks ago, when I spent a weekend packing up my apartment and making
a journey soundtrack. I received lots of great suggestions from friends on FB. I’ll post my Top 9 list to the Compass page coming
soon in the tabs above.)
Appropriate to write up here in the stratosphere, because
this is the same larger perspective that I was helped to rise into within the
silence. Pir Zia Inayat Kahn, leader of Sufi Order International, led the retreat. Eloquently he narrated us
along a soulful river through territories of astrophysics, biochemistry,
evolution, consciousness, universal spiritualism, ecosystems science, every few
minutes inviting us to breathe and sing together. So our silence was a tuning
out of ordinary chatter, a reserving of our voices only for the exercise of
celebration and unified harmonies of gratitude for all that is glorious.
“Fourteen billion years ago there was an eruption of energy
from a single point…crystallizing into galaxies. That primal energy continues
to reverberate. When we walk, when we grasp…we are availing ourselves of that
same energy, of which we are beneficiaries. Thus we are privileged agents. So
with it, what shall we do?”
Many months ago I had started to pray for the return of my
wonder. Wonder like a moment I remember once as a child in our first house
standing at the bedroom window. I looked at the big arbutus while I brushed my
hair. Out of my absentmindedness, something strange dawned in my consciousness. Hair along my arms rose to attention. I looked at the hairbrush and it looked at me. Dark
black bristles each one implanted in the blue plastic handle with the swooped Johnson
logo. And I, standing there with a strong sensation of my arm – warm and soft compared
to the hard plastic I gripped.
A wash of time and space
rushed through me and the brush as I realized myself against it, how many thousands of ideas and creations
occurred leading up to this moment, an epic story written like a secret right
there in my hand. Particularly interesting to me was the thought that somehow
plastic got invented.
Of course all of this went through me without the words I
have now. It was more like a kaleidoscope of flashing images all tinged with a
sense of Wow! and the wonder How? How did all that happen? And how did I get to be standing here, on the fresh growing end of a long thread?
And other wonders- my first bonfire on a beach at night, an
anniversary celebration of some family friends. I watched sparks rising up from the fire into the stars and saw that the little sparks and the giant fires out there all looked the same size from my perspective. Tears
rose up on the tide of that overwhelming perspective – joy, amazement, that delicious taste of seeing.
Recently I noticed that my wonder muscles seemed to have
atrophied, a deadness had crept into my
relationship with the world. Even when I tried to pull awe out of a sunset, it just seemed commonplace, predictable, boring.
I realized that my whole life felt like that time after I had my wisdom teeth out and my mind woke up inside a still
sleeping body. I screamed and fought to sit up for a many long seconds before
conscious will beat the drugs. My body jerked awake with a weak “Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!” and heart
pounding.
Sitting for three days in meditation in a large tent raised
up amongst the trees, learning to hold a contemplative focus on all of creation
while the birds sang loud overtones to our melodic prayers and the wind blew
through, we entered what he called “mystic relaxation”. Perhaps this is the
effect of prolonged alpha-gamma-theta-delta wave vibrations thrumming in the
body?
With all of us in this state for three days together, it felt like we
pulled heavenly paradise right out of the air between us.
However it may be described, what I know is that wonder
broke back into my body like a sunrise in my being. So, I will leave you with
this poem that came to me in the midst of a song, I guess it is my first Sufi
poem! I presented it to Pir Zia as an echo of his guidance, and a small gift of
thanks:
Sunlight through treetops,
these long rays of sunset
flicker morse code into my eyes.
A message from the beloved
fills me, altering me –
Yes, I am with you!
Yes, I see you seeing me.
Isn’t it glorious?
With deep gratitude and winged blessings
~sab
Thousands of feet above the Rocky Mountains
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