The Teacher Will Appear

There’s something happening here. Here, inside of me. Deep within layers, underneath the skin, in the space where there is no such thing as “me” but only light that fills and spills and is.

I am traveling back, back, back to that place of knowing, of floating, of being the dew drop on the piece of grass, of being the piece of grass under the dew drop. My human shape disintegrates and I feel a rush, a gust of wind, a holy breath moving through me, lifting me up until I touch the sky.

I am the sky, the Earth, the expanse in between. I am nothing and I am everything, completely emptied yet filled to the brim. I have lost my ego-mind and can feel the eternity of this moment, the bliss of all moments, the perpetual birthing of moments within moments.

I rest. In the light within that pours without that flows in all directions, I breathe and know that I am safe.

I could stay here forever. Here, in the glow of the flickering flame, sheltered from the illusion of impermanence that has made the world go mad. It is here that I feel most well, most alive, free.

But now the light in the hallway has gone on, the toilet is being flushed, the smell of freshly brewed coffee wafts from the kitchen into my very human nostrils and I open my eyes to the dawn of another day. I feel my union with the sacred soften as I return fully to my earthly body and the stillness within scatters like confetti.

I am meant to be here. Here, on this planet, at this time, with these people. I am meant to experience this corporeal life, to learn, to grow, to heal the wounds that render me vulnerable, the soul scars that have yet to fade away. I have chosen this and I am grateful.

Yet, I struggle. Not with the choice itself, but with the balance I must achieve in order to deny no part of my being.

I want to be grounded. On this terrestrial plane, I need to be grounded. I need to feel my feet firmly planted in the soil and to trust my basic instincts of survival. I need to honour my tribe and treasure its history passed down through blood and bones and bedside prayers. I need to bite into the sweetest orange and savour its nectar as it drips down my chin, celebrating the humanness of the experience. I need to feel at home here. Here, in my human flesh, sharing the planet with other wandering souls.

But under the dark blue veil of early morning, before the sun makes itself known, as I sit by candlelight and bask in the wisdom of the ages, I often find myself wishing that the moment would not end, that the smell of freshly brewed coffee would not come.

It is not that I am unwilling to embrace my human journey, but that I am reluctant to let go of the powerful awareness of inter-connection that comes in those tranquil morning moments of peace and contemplation.

It is, I know, unnecessary to let go. The wise enlightened souls speak of mindfulness not only as a daily practice, but as an all-encompassing way of life, an acute appreciation of the present moment infused with a deeper awareness of the divine matrix from which all is born and in which all is intertwined.

But I am not a wise enlightened soul and often feel as though there is a rupture somewhere along my energetic landscape, a divide between my desire to be grounded and my longing to fly, and an inability to harmonize these two seemingly disparate aspects of my being, even though I know they are not entirely dissimilar.

Nothing in this world is wholly one thing or the other; everything exists in relation to something else. Humanity and divinity - like star-crossed lovers - cannot be kept apart for very long. They emerge from one another, transform into each other, and exist because of the other. Every human experience contains a speck of the divine, and every divine encounter is perceived as such because of this human experience.

Oftentimes, when I am in nature, I sense a joining of these two parts of myself and I become whole. I see my flawed humanness seamlessly intersect with the flawless light of consciousness that connects me to the trees, the lake, the top of the rocky mountain and I am filled with a kind of joy that is undefinable and limitless in its power.

But there are other times when, in spite of my best efforts, I become entrenched in the world of the mundane, like a spider caught in its own web. I become entangled, confused, trapped in thought and emotion, unable to unsnarl my limbs from the muddled mess I've created.

I get tired. My body aches. My resolve drains out of me drop by precious drop and my frustration builds. I hover somewhere between anger and sadness, feeling completely cut off from the Source from which I draw my strength. My peaceful morning meditations fade into the background, like a mirage I am not even sure exists.

Where is the balance here? Why - with all of the knowledge I’ve acquired and the bits of wisdom I hold in my hand - do I allow myself to get dragged down by the troubles of a society I know isn’t entirely real? How am I to avoid these moments of imagined segregation from the light within that pours without, that flows in all directions? Where is the map that leads me back home? Where is my guide in these troubling times?

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear,” says a famous Buddhist proverb. I open my arms, open my heart, ask my teacher to find me. (Or whisper my name and I will find you.)

I am ready to be a human girl in a human world who never loses touch with the force that percolates under the surface. Ready to grow roots and wings, to kiss the ground, the sky, the expanse in between. Ready to be the curved line that both separates and connects the yin and the yang, to be the pivot around which the divine dance takes place.

Ready to learn how to seek nothing, grasp nothing, resist nothing. Ready to ask the hard questions and hear the hard answers. Ready to surrender to the Now - the wondrous Now that lasts but a moment yet extends until forever.

This student is ready. She patiently waits.

The End Of the World As I Know It

A friend once told me that while she was having an impassioned conversation, a beam of light shot out through the top of her head, astonishing those around her.

I did not doubt this story for a second. This friend moves through the world the way birds fly in the sky: joyful, free, and fearless. She trusts her inner-voice and makes decisions based on how they feel in her body, not on how they may be perceived by other people. She possesses that rare kind of knowledge that is usually reserved for elderly folks who have lived remarkable lives and acquired wrinkles and wisdom along the way.

If any of my friends were to have a beam of light shoot out of the top of their head, it would be her.

I remember the night she told me this story. It was back in 2008 and we were both working at the tea shop. We had just finished our closing duties and were reluctant to go home. We talked and laughed and confessed. Our discussion touched upon the menial details of our day-to-day existence and grew to incorporate the cosmos.

I went home feeling deeply connected to this friend, to the planet, and to the entire world. Although my own spiritual journey had begun years earlier, I suddenly felt an urgent need to renew my commitment to it.

I had already started breaking old consumerist patterns and was working on simplifying my life. I was surrounding myself with people who shared similar beliefs and whose experiences and insights propelled me further on my quest. I was noticing gaps in the carefully orchestrated order of things and was aware of the Otherness that permeates the physical realm. I was reading books about transformation and ways to escape the ego’s grasp. I was traveling the path of awakening and feeling the seeds inside my heart start to sprout.

But I had never had a beam of light shoot out of the top of my head.

I had never come that close to converging with the Light. I had never experienced such a powerful and glaringly obvious connection with the realm of Spirit.

My experiences were more like whispers carried in the breeze or specks of sunlight piercing through my early-morning dreams. They were beautiful, but brief. I knew they were there and I knew they were real, but I longed for more. It was not Nirvana that I longed for, but simply some kind of confirmation that I was indeed sprouting and grasping some fragments of Truth.

I knew that I was - just by the way I felt in the world and by the synchronicities that kept seeping into my reality. I just wanted to know it more. I wanted to be one of those people who are unshakeable in their beliefs because they have experienced something extraordinary. I wanted to touch the untouchable.

So I continued on my quest, hoping that someday, somehow, soon, something would happen. I listened with rapture when people shared stories of enlightenment and I anxiously waited for my moment, my beam of light.

It did not come.

The whispers and the specks of sunlight still came. I still saw the beauty and felt a sublime presence guiding me on my path, but I did not feel as though I was growing. I was at a standstill, spiritually speaking. I wondered if I had reached my plateau.

At some point I realized that I was OK with this. Perhaps I was not meant for any great transformation or life-altering big bang. Perhaps I was meant to notice the small things. Perhaps the small things were the big things.

But there was something in me - a push I simply could not ignore. A voice that kept telling me that there was more. That I wasn’t crazy. That I needed to be brave and do the thing that scared me.

What scared me was leaving my job and returning to school, at my age, to embark on a whole new voyage.

I wondered if I was losing my mind. I wondered if it was normal to live a life of semi-contentment and if this constant “search for more” was just a way for me to avoid committing to anything, a way for me to avoid “growing up.” I wondered if I would ever feel as though I was in the right place and I wondered if I should just stop seeking, settle down, and be quiet already.

But I didn’t want to be quiet, and neither did the voice inside my heart. There was more and I was getting closer and closer to dancing with the divine.

So I applied to a school I felt a deep connection to. I got accepted-paid tuition-left my job-and never looked back. Things happened that quickly and, before I knew it, the push that had propelled me forward grew into a force, a flame, and then I was flying. Flying so high and so free and seeing my reality from a newfound angle.

I had made the right decision. I knew it in my bones, in my blood, in my flesh, in the surrender that occurs between every beat of my heart. I knew it the way birds know how to build nests, the way newborn babies know how to reach for their mother’s breast.

It is this knowing that spurs me on - through mid-terms and exams and more acupoint quizzes than I care to remember. It isthis knowing that pats me on the back as I pour over readings - so exhausted I can barely make out the words - and it is this knowing that guides my hand as I locate meridians on my own body.

When I found out that there was a mandatory weekend workshop last weekend, it is this knowing that gave me the energy to not only attend the workshop, but to show up alert and open to whatever lesson or message I was meant to hear.

I had no expectations. I was not searching for illumination or hoping to reach some great understanding. In fact, had I been given the choice to attend the workshop or not, I probably wouldn’t have. I would have stayed home, caught up on some much-needed sleep and studied for two upcoming tests.

But I was not given that choice, so there I was. In that room. With those people. Listening to that teacher - a teacher bright-eyed in her bliss.

And it happened.

Words were spoken and I felt the shift immediately, but it was subtle at first - a nearly imperceptible flutter in my chest. I looked around: Had they felt it too? No. This was me. “This” - this unnameable, untouchable flutter of recognition - was happening to me. Things started coming together really quickly - moments, memories, faces, feelings, times, places. I felt the seeds sprout, the sprouts bloom, the cosmic dots connect, line up, and encircle the entirety of my existence in one fell swoop and I scribbled on my piece of paper: Oh my God.

I lived with this flutter for the duration of the weekend, knowing I was on the brink of something extraordinary and feeling intimately cradled in the arms of the universe. The teacher spoke and I felt her voice resonating in the inlets of my heart, shifting the axis of my being in a way it had never shifted before. I do not use the word shift metaphorically. I felt a moving, a sliding, an unblocking taking place in my core. I stepped out of class, on Sunday evening, and was unsteady on my feet, as though my body was adjusting to my new internal constitution. I told my classmates: “I feel weird right now.”

After a few hours of putting aside the experience in order to study for the next day’s test, I walked home as fast as I could, burst through the door, hugged my guy in a way I hadn’t hugged him in a long time, and started to talk. Using the languages I know I did my best to explain the feelings, the realizations, the magic of the weekend. I looked into his eyes as I spoke, half expecting him to laugh it all off, to say, “That’s great Vic. What do you want for dinner?” But he didn’t laugh and he didn’t interrupt and he didn’t change the subject. He was right there, with me, goosebumps on his arms, aware that something special had taken place.

I talked and talked and talked and together we came to even more realizations, reached a place of greater awareness, fueled each others’ inner discoveries, and collapsed - two hours later - exhausted but glowing from within.

He whispered: “You know how the best things always happen near the end of something? The best scene is near the end of the movie? The best chapter, near the end of the book? The best song, near the end of the concert? Maybe we're nearing the end of the world...”

I knew what he meant. He didn’t mean the end of the world, as in massive extinction. He meant the end of the world as we know it. He meant the Apocalypse, if you will. Though the word Apocalypse has come to be understood as “the end of the world,” its original greek meaning was “lifting the veil” or “revelation.”

Maybe this lifting of the veil really is upon us. Maybe these 2012 prophecies are indeed telling us that we are on the brink of a great revelation, a new sort of existence - the next crucial step in the evolution of mankind. As someone who studies traditional healing, I have tremendous respect for our ancestors, for the pieces of information they left behind. It is foolish not to take their messages seriously; we must expand our narrow-minded idea of the world and embrace their wisdom.

It was after our sharing - after he had fallen asleep and I felt completely emptied - that the flutter in my chest began to flourish. This flutter, which had spoken to me all weekend and guided me through a series of transformative moments, wasn’t done just yet.

It grew. It became a thump against my ribcage, a pounding in my head, a warmth that spread like a star from my centre to my extremities. I laid down in my bed, breathed, and acknowledged the phenomenon taking place inside my body.

It became noisy - like a wailing wind. It went from warm to hot and filled my body with fire - when I closed my eyes, I saw red. It started buzzing, the way bees buzz in the middle of summer. The buzzing started in my head and then, like an electrical current, whizzed round and round my body, never ending nor beginning, just moving in me and through me, up and down my spine, below the surface of my skin, fast and burning and electrifying. I thought I might spontaneously combust.

The buzzing continued until six in the morning when, finally, it faded. My heart rate returned to normal. My skin cooled. I closed my eyes and the red was gone. I slept.

I woke a few hours later with more questions than answers: What does it all mean? And where do I go from here?

I am still processing the experience and figuring out how to best utilize the knowledge I acquired over the weekend. It is knowledge I am keeping close to my heart, insights I do not feel ready to share.

But what I can share - and have shared in this lengthy piece of writing - is that it is not by desperately searching for Spirit that one encounters it, but by letting go of fear, by surrendering to the voice of Truth that comes from within, by opening our hearts, honouring our own odysseys, and noticing the small things which are, in fact, incredibly big.

Longing for spontaneous transformation is futile. The spiritual journey is made rich by the very act of journeying. The cracks and crevices in the road, the things that scare us the most, the people who challenge us - these are the things that move us forward and inward, towards greater understanding. The parts of ourselves we think of as weak or broken or less-than-perfect are those parts that offer the most significant gifts, the most amazing opportunities for growth.

I have not reached Enlightenment, nor do I claim to possesses divine wisdom. But I have heard my name called - heard it loudly and clearly - from a place other than the here and now. I have scratched the surface of my own ethereal soul and, though I have not had a beam of light shoot out of the top of my head, I have felt a fire buzzing through my body.

The Mayans were on to something. The veil is indeed lifting.