the sky is also your body
Nothing that happens is happening outside you. The boy in Gaza who’s been shot in the leg is inside your body. Your mother’s pain is inside your body. The sky is also your body, and the ocean waves and the herons, stitching the sky like needles. Your body is the body of earth made of stardust. Your bones are the body of earth. You are breathing the sky. If it feels too big for one body you are correct. Stop pretending this body is all you have. You do not end at the skin or even at the horizon. You do not end at this death nor did you begin at this birth. If it feels too big for this lifetime you have begun to sip the elixir of reality. You’re the meadow in the fog, the newborn body bathed in kitchen sink. If it feels too big for this identity, congratulations. You have begun to see that you were never separate.
What does a fish feel inside a school? What does a bee feel inside a swarm? What does a stamen feel inside a blossom? What does a cloud feel in the moment before it surrenders itself into rain? I am asking you to swim with me, into timelessness, into eternity. I am asking you to breathe with me, an uncast spell, the words before the words, the seeds that burn before they open. I am asking you to die.
Die, to the mind that shuts the apertures of senses. Die, to the rules you once agreed to. Wipe the cards from the board, lift the eyes. You have been playing at something that is not the real game. You’ve only been using half your intelligence. There are ways of seeing that ask you to stop seeing. There are things you’ve been told not to see. See them anyway. The pain under the smile. The truth under the mask. You are not the stories you’ve been told or even those you’ve written. You are more than you believe. You’re the urge itself, the open channel. Let things move through.
The pumpkins will ripen, and we’ll carve them. The leaves will fall and we’ll gather up the prettiest. If it snows, I want to catch it on my tongue and eyelashes. If it rains, I want to watch the sky as it ripples on the puddles. Tell me, friend. Why did you come here? To earth, I mean? Isn’t it just this: to be alive. To know myself in all things. To be in love with life itself.
Welcome all that stands in the way of your aliveness. Welcome it like the branch across the path, the one you gently move aside, or climb over. Welcome it like the spiderweb you see just in time to duck under. Welcome it like the wave that almost swamps the kayak. Yours is not a smooth road. You came here for something wild, something jagged. Who wants a straight line anyway, when a spiral takes you deeper? You came to learn. Welcome all that’s teaching you, especially the pain. Just don’t try to live there. Don’t stay anywhere. You’re not a locked room. Don’t grow stagnant. You’re meant to move. You’re meant to move. You’re meant to live.
