There are times when my morning practice feels empty. I’m stuck in my head, acting by rote, as if reciting a poem for school. I stoke the embers with a grinding will, but nothing comes to life. The mirror is fogged. That’s okay, I accept this. I answer the call and keep the appointed hour because I know consistency builds good habits, and good habits create the door through which transcendence comes, arriving in its own time.
But other times, the morning ripens and the fruit falls. Sight peels back on itself and the world comes into focus. A breeze soft as breath dispels the fog. The mirror clears. I slip the halter and run free. My good habits have done their work.
At those times, my place in the scene shifts. I am entered by the world instead of observing it apart. The air in the room breathes with me. I see the vivid solidity of things without imposing my interpretations. My awareness expands, or is it artificial to call it mine, but only awareness itself that is sitting here? Our boundaries soften into pure presence. We are unpartitioned.
The Vedic tradition teaches that we are cocooned by sheaths of experience called koshas. As we progress inward, the koshas reveal themselves through levels of perception, from the material to mental, emotional, subtle, and higher. Is this what I am seeing? In Christian theology, Paul teaches that we are simultaneously separate individuals and also part of a larger conscious collective he calls the Body of Christ. Is this what I am feeling?
On these mornings when clarity sparkles, my individuality thins out and interrelatedness becomes primary, intimate. It seems blindingly obvious that my spiritual growth is not a solo effort to enhance the well-being of one tiny life. My efforts are adding drops to the ocean. I’ve been commissioned into a fellowship that is awakening the thread that runs through everything. I am borrowing gifts left by others, leaving offerings for those who will follow, all of us inching Consciousness forward.
By whatever name, this river of communal growth is radiant, nourishing, thirst-quenching, life-affirming. I cannot feel alone when riding on these waves. I am eager to participate, grateful for the morning call.
Photo by Daren on Unsplash