Rivers of Our Delight Part II
first Story in The Rivers of Our Delight Stories Collection
At six o’clock in the morning, I wonder if I will be able to turn off the alarm fast enough to not awaken my husband. Nighttime is a tremendous comfort to me, so much so that I would sleep an extra hour in a heartbeat, given half a chance. I slip from my slumber into endless reverie about the night’s dreams.
Who was in that dream? Why? What snatches of truth do they bring me from my soul?
The morning seems a shade richer. My reverie has given way to task formation. The morning starts early because I want time to meditate. I hustle to complete my morning tasks. Then I begin: a breath in through my nose, then out through my mouth. Deep into my belly I breathe, following the flow of air. The air turns over in a circle. The breath begins to take on a flow of its own. I feel the breath on the inhale and the exhale, moving in a pattern and a pace all its own. When I return to an ordinary state of consciousness, I am intrigued by what I have experienced. I find I have to start again sometimes as my mind has wandered from breath to thought. Emotions follow my thoughts. Then something tells me to return to the breath. The soul knows the way back to the breath time and time again.
We walk alone in dreams, in meditation too, and yet we are accompanied moment by moment. The soul knows where we are and what we need every moment of our lives. Accessing the soul is a different matter. Sometimes we get lost amid the tasks of daily life. Finally, our souls help get us back on track. Life sometimes confuses us. In a manner of speaking, our souls are our inner compasses. They help us find our way. Our souls speak to us in dreams, in meditation also. They remind us who we are. The soul knows the way to our core because the soul is our core.
When we begin in the morning with a review of our dreams and then meditation, we have centered ourselves at a core level. Then to the world. The world is a curious place. It cradles us, nourishes us, allows us to sleep and dream. It refreshes our spirit, our psyche, our soul. When we wander off the path, it pulls us back to the realities we must face: a foolish thing here, an errant thing there – we are pulled back and return to the path. The world also humbles us. It makes us aware of our failings, our moments of exuberance and overexuberance. The world makes us recall our deepest longings of our soul.
So the soul and the world get us back on track. One brings us back to the core of our being. The other keeps us from wandering too far afield. The natural world does both. Standing on the bridge below Yosemite Falls trying to catch a rainbow with my camera, with the freezing wind whipping my face with the same spray now covering my camera lens, the falls thundering against the rocks, followed by the river roaring right beneath me, I am utterly blessed by the moment, and I am given over to a process where the wind will win. When we struggle against impossible conditions, the soul emerges in joy; when we struggle against impossible conditions, we come to know the world as it really is – far, far more powerful than we are. We find the edge of the rivers.
The wind is a delightful river of air that can drift past us, in a summer breeze, or lay waste to all we have created, in a hurricane. There are rivers of water, tame as a lazy afternoon, and then there is the Merced River just below Yosemite Falls in spring when the snow melt is highest, a thundering torrent. There are rivers of energy of all kinds that flow through our universe that bring us light to see the world, and that also bring us cosmic radiation, much of which is quite harmful to us. And then there are rivers of love that sweep our beings with grace and tenderness as well as those that bring us to ruin. The wind . . . the water . . . the sun . . . the love . . . are just a few of the rivers of our delight.
We need them all for they teach us the limits of our power and of the powers we can manage. Those limits keep us on track. They also inspire our souls with comfort, joy, energy, and love. Their pull is profound. It is the pull back to the path of the soul.
Meditation also calls us back to the track of the soul. Meditation teaches us how to access the soul . . . it shows us a path. It helps us go there regularly and often. It shows us what we need to know about our souls, including our limits. There are days when meditation brings me to a state of bliss, but there are other days when the inability of my mind to settle during meditation tells me that my emotions are running too high. There are days when meditation enables me to let go of things that are bothering me, and then there are days when I realize I cannot let something go. There are days when meditation fills my heart with a loving flow, and then there are days when I realize something in my heart is frozen and cannot flow just yet. These moments of awareness ground me.
