I have attempted to develop a meditation practice more than a handful of times. I came back from a zen-like writing workshop in February 2006 and asked my family to meditate with me just ten minutes a day. The plan started well enough but disintegrated within two weeks. Over the next year, I would try on my own, but I would first need to find my own space, a place where I could pursue a quest for Spirit. Once ensconced in Taos, meditation came easier but has rarely been the source of joy and awakening I've heard it can be. Then Silas and I started attending the Hanuman Temple on Sunday mornings for the Chalisas, a time of music and chanting. From my first visit two months ago, I felt I'd been dipped in a bliss bath. I left the temple with a huge grin on my face and even bigger one on my heart. But last week the experience was so intense, the sky wouldn't have been wide enough to carry my smile. During the chanting, I began silently humming my own mantra. Ham-sa, Ham-sa, which means I am That.
Inspired by my Valentine's Day resolution to love all aspects of myself, I visualized, one at a time, anyone who had inspired, enchanted, or educated me; all the muses, teachers, wisdom-channelers I could dream up. I pictured them one at a time, and as I did, I bowed before each one, while bowing toward myself. I am That. I then pulled into my inner court every person and scenario that I have envied. Every success, advantage or luxury enjoyed by someone else and not by me, I claimed for my own. I cheered my success, and then applauded the other person's. I am That. I then moved on to those people I have resisted, those who anger and irritate me, those who have hurt, repressed or rejected me. I am That. I am That. By seeing their qualities in myself--whether expressed in the light of consciousness or hiding somewhere in my shadow, unapproved of and rejected from my daily life--I pulled all the ugliness from the realms of rejection and brought them to my inner table with love. I am That. I became all things. All dreams. All beauty. All lovely, enchanting ideas and hideous, murderous intentions. And the all-ness melted into a great field of light, of potential, all mine. Vast and ecstatic, the field only asked that I play in it, dance in it, use it for my own delight.
On the movie screen behind my eyelids, I saw the field as a living thing, inviting. I stepped forward when something bright caught my inner eye. There on the sweeping field were red, fuschia and yellow roses, opening in such a way to drown me in their glory. I gulped at the air, suddenly overwhelmed that an object so ordinary as a rose was so wholly...extraordinary. How could I have relegated such a miracle to backyard decoration and Valentine's Day celebration? I could hear the fourteenth-century Persian poet Hafiz in my ear:
How
Did the rose
Ever open its heart
And give to this world
All its
Beauty?
It felt the encouragement of light
Against its
Being,
Otherwise,
We all remain
Too
Frightened.
Oh. Oh. My heart broke with the words, with the new meaning they held inside this music, this chanting, this reaching out to include and accept all of me, to welcome it all in. Tears leaked from my eyes and when I reached up to wipe them, swimming in front of me was, I was sure, a mirage. Human flowers? I blotted the tears with the hem of my skirt to see, standing before me on the temple's beige carpet, a little brown-skinned, brown-eyed doll. She could have been no more than two years old and no wonder I thought she was my rose bouquet come to life, for she was draped in layers of chiffon and tulle in bright red, fuschia and yellow. She looked like a rare flower from some ancient, mystic garden in India. She held a white baby doll in her hands and just stared at me, long, dark lashes unblinking. Transfixed by the spectacle around her, she stood perfectly still, drinking the sounds and movements into her twin deep brown pools. To say I was enchanted would be an understatement. I was certain she was real, and had a mother somewhere within the ashram, but if felt as if those roses...the most heart-stopping roses I'd ever seen... had materialized here, before me, their petals dropping like blossoms all over this little girl's gown.
Hammmm-sa. Hammmm-sa. I am That. I am That. I giggled, then cackled, then belly laughed looking at the manifestation of my own soul's petals, my own inner realms of beauty unfolding before me in the shape of a toddler from India. Beauty! I am That. Radiance! I am That. Wonder! I am That. Delicacy! I am That. Enchantment! I am That. Grandeur in petite form! I am That.
I shut my eyes again and spiraled with the music down down down the inner rabbit hole, letting the chant carry me to the unknown, not controlling, not seeking, just spiraling. And there, waiting in the center, were the red boots. I have a photograph of myself standing on the green-shag carpet of my grandmother's house on Christmas day 1974. I am five years old. I'm dressed in a red polyester short dress with gold piping, a white majorette's cap, red stockings and red boots. I hold a silver baton in my hand. I am thrilled with this present most of all. Standing there in front of the Christmas tree, I am a riot of flamboyant color, armed with a shining baton, which meant I could twirl and sparkle and lead any band to their greatest performance as we marched down Main Street in parade-formation.
This kind of dress was fine for Christmas morning, but when it came time for church later that day, the outfit was to be removed in favor of something more appropriate. A place of worship was not a place for rioting colors. The flamboyant attitude it took to twirl a baton could also be left at home. Petals unfolding to reveal their secret essence had no place in the Baptist church.
But thirty four years later, here she was in my place of worship, prancing and twirling to the music, asking for my attention. I grabbed her, internally sweeping her rioting colors into my arms. Freedom! I am That! Twirling! I am That! Flamboyancy! I am That! I held her to me, the heart of both five-year-old and thirty-nine-year-old, thrilling and trilling to the beat of the tabla. I grabbed her baton and held it aloft as we tapped a rhythm worthy of a march down Main Street. Laughing and twirling, dancing and swirling, we dripped our petals all over the floor of my inner temple, stirring up the fragrance of healing, of love and acceptance, and a beat so fierce it could lead any Rose Bowl Parade.
WE ARE THAT! WE ARE THAT! I looked down and smiled. She in her red boots, me in my turquoise socks, both of us with our crooked eye, our thick hips, our frizzy hair. I melted at the beauty of us, roses opening in the light of Being. Unafraid and unfolding.
Behold. Behold.
I am this.