River Spirit

If there is a river and if I’ve been dreaming real….I’m on it, in it, hearing the slap of soft water on the sides of my boat.

Undulations. Up through the flats of my feet, cradling my coccyx with hands of water. Cradle the bed at the base of my spine until, from that place, I am a gently waving fan.

That’s a great feeling: waving to the landscape as an intimate beloved. Not any other today. Not different from, far from, away from. Right now, I’m real in real time.

I’ve been tending to my vision lately - digging and shaping, watering and sleeping beside the steaming earth of it. Mineral spirits rise up. A million little suction cups of light on my cells, faster than sound, so silent, just fresh air on my body. Tender because I’ve been working my stuff so hard for so long.

Our visions, the deepest ones, are imbued with compassion. They wait for us to come closer, with full realization of the distance it takes to make our way back.

Vision is not developed. I believe we all carry one central vision inside us, the blueprint like the acorn to the blazing oak. Isn’t it true that we mistake vision to be so difficult to cultivate? Really, it’s about developing the skill of shifting awareness, sometimes just a tad, and then, poof, the veil drops and we are united with it again (or finally). It’s about seeing through what isn’t there so that we can see what is truly there.

I know my vision. One theorist says some of us will fail miserably at everything except that which expresses our vision. We can be aware of our vision as an image, a defining word, a sound – like the rest of nature, like the divine – it has a myriad of faces – the thousand faces of god. One of those is our own true face.

Do you know yours? Would you recognize it if it was revealed to you?

I imagine that when we cross over and leave the body, we might be shown our essential image, both entirely universal and also extremely particular, and asked, “Is this you?” As a password we would resound clearly, “Yes.”

Or would we? Would we look behind us for someone else -are they really speaking to us? What if we don’t know the texture of our own being?

I can’t think of anything worse. But that’s me. I want to know. I want to know so much that I have forsaken every other form of success. And so my resume reflects emptiness, large gaps, years amiss. Of course, I could have done it another way but I didn’t know that and that’s just how it is – we have to live it just the way we do.

Remember the bathroom floor scene in Eat, Pray, Love? Wouldn’t it be so redeeming to list those experiences on a resume – all of our down and out conversations with god? This hotel tub at 17, that mountain house floor at 20, the dirt road in India at 23, the cold house of divorce at 29, the purging in the dark of that hut at 35.

This is where I put in the hours, paid my dues. The promotions being more complex environments, depths of material to traverse, and realms of existential loneliness that just aren't fair.

And during those years I learned to hide. I went underground with my experience. It doesn’t really fly for potluck conversation and family dinners. The horrible question I came to outrun: What do you do?

“I seek out the seed of truth at the bottom of my personal barrel and tackle practices to help me weave it into universal wisdom and meaning. What do you do?”

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not graceful. I’m not especially wise. It’s just that I have experience being on that journey. Love writing and sharing about it. I love how I know deeply that metaphor is not metaphor at all. I love transcribing that.

Now it’s all changing. I’m coming out of the closet. Maybe it’s entering my forth decade and it’s not suitable to hide anymore – like watching an old women take off her shoes at airport security. I hate having to watch. Please, respect her dignity, don’t make her do that!

I’m beginning to honor myself. Walk on through, Prema. Don’t take off your damn shoes anymore. Just speak your truth. Speak in your language. Give it up for the soul of it.

(and if they do ridicule and stone me, I have women around me who would kick their ass!)

So, my dear friends, I’m preparing the ground, getting ready to launch, hanging my sign, and opening doors. Big wide doors. Big sign. Huge welcoming hands waving at the landscape. A million suction cups of light floating my wings.