I love being human.
What an interesting sentiment. What else would I be? No one truly knows what lies beneath our sacred skins, but what I do know is how truly beautiful and extraordinary we are….”it” is. As I sit here listening to a moving piece of piano music, reflecting on life and all of its wonders, I am brought to tears. Tears of joy, tears of pain, tears of everything. EVERYTHING. When you open your heart, it’s like the universal energies come pouring in...almost to the point of being unbearable. It’s so grand. Perhaps that’s part of why we close our hearts over time. We were never taught how to manage that amount of energy. It seems that as we get older, we either learn to reopen our hearts and allow that energy to flow in, or we become physically ill as our bodies are cut off from the source.
I was not raised to believe in god. I attended church once to see my grandmother sing in a choir and temple once to see my cousin during his bar mitzvah. There are two moments in my young life that I remember distinctly that inspired me to begin to ponder life’s great question….”What is the meaning of life?”
When I was 20 years old, I moved to Boulder, Colorado. At this time I was young, free, and not terribly introspective. I moved in with a group of young adults, one of which gave me the book “The Celestine Prophecy” by James Redfield. This was my first exposure to the idea that we are all energy…. “It” is all energy. Twenty year old me experienced her first conscious expansion. This book really did change the way that I viewed the world. I adored the idea that I can share energy with plants. My energy could help them grow, could help other humans shine brighter, and their energy could lift me up. I never found comfort in the idea that there was a man sitting up in heaven that judged people to determine if they would go to heaven or hell. Or that if you didn’t believe a certain idea, you would not be “accepted.” Religion felt off-putting, but THIS….this idea of energy… it made sense.
The second experience occurred at 28 years of age, in nursing school. We were learning about the anatomy and physiology of pregnancy and birth. I remember thinking how fantastic and truly miraculous it is. In order to conceive and grow a human, an amazingly complex system with a million tiny cells and molecules must perform in the most intricate of ways. At this moment, I began to understand that we are energy bodies that are a part of something remarkable. Something entirely bigger than our little human bodies. The intelligence, the perfection...how can there not be a greater force that lives within us all?
I still felt uncomfortable with the word ”God.” My understanding was that God was a man. God judged. God was created by men. The word God just didn’t fit. I began to speak of this energetic power as The Universe. The Universe is neither man nor woman. It’s vast and unthinkable, and we know it exists, but it remains mysterious. Have you ever been staring at the darkened star-filled sky and become lost and almost frightened at how large and vast it is? Or get lost in a satellite photograph of a Nebula? It’s magic. It’s the only thing that can describe what you see and feel. Eventually, I understood that what one person may refer to as God, the other calls The Universe, Allah, Spirit, The Source. We are all talking about the same grand energy that we feel in our most loving and magical moments.
Over the next decade, my spiritual practice deepened. My career path as a nurse taught me that I was a healer by nature. I learned that I was an empath, which was part of the reason that I drank alcohol in excess as a younger human. I felt “too” much and that was a way for me to dim that sensation. When I moved to
Colorado, I learned that the mountains were my sanctuary. They were my church. This was where I began to feel that nature was healing. It was quiet, with fewer distractions, and provided a deep connection with her….Mother Earth. I found that when I would hike alone, and the sun shined in just the right way to illuminate the snowflakes falling from the trees, like glitter in the sky, I took note of the beauty, and my heart would burst open as tears would flood in. In these moments, I could feel the energy move through me, like a buzzing sensation down through my fingertips. Hiking officially became my therapist.
I find that when I become busy with tasks and to-dos, I forget to remember. I forget that there is connection to God in all moments, even the most mundane. Like the feeling when your heart swells as you're petting your most beloved furred friend; the wonder you feel when you look closely at the intricacy of a flower; the chills down your spine when you hear your favorite song; watching the geese fly in formation through the evening sky; looking at the crescent-shaped moon on a chilly, star-filled night. These are the everyday moments that bring joy. They are easy to overlook, but remind you to stay present and appreciate the amazing universe we live in. A universe filled with joy, grief, creation, and LOVE.
Comentarios