In the mist, there are shadows, silhouettes and outlines, but there is also light. An opaque light, it mutes the colors into a black and white dream, a quiet glow, a soft tangible stillness. The air is thick. You can feel it between your fingers. The weight of it muffling all sound, as if a heavy blanket has been draped over the world. A vacuum-sealed calm. A pause, while the world holds it’s breath. Or has it stopped breathing? You are alone and everything is waiting…waiting.
You step forward. A large tree is within reach. It stretches above you, its great limbs disappearing into the mist above. You can see the texture of the bark. It is thick and rough with deep crevices and wrinkles in it. You haven’t touched it yet, but you can feel its quiet power. Its presence. Its size. It has been here for a hundred years, standing sentry for your arrival. Big, calm, patient, slow…almost as if it’s asleep, but it’s not. You are here now. You close your eyes and you feel a vibration. It’s coming from somewhere around you. Or is it within you? It’s building – slow, still, humming. You can feel it, and then you can’t. Like a dream you’re trying to hold onto after waking, it flows and ebbs as you tune your focus. There it is again…from that small, still space within you. What is going on?
Is the world still breathing? Are you?
You reach out and press your palm against the trunk. You feel the damp mossy bark, but there is something more. You wait, and you feel your hand press through, becoming warm. Your hand is tingling, vibrating. There is energy here. You are feeling the tree. It’s alive with vibration. It’s a connection. A connection to this tree, but also to everything around you. The web of energy, running between all life that you were unaware of until now. A low, quiet hum, and it is everywhere. A wonderfully smooth vibration that is impossibly complex in its vastness. Yet, it is so clear that you can simply experience it, like hearing a live orchestra for the first time. The complexity makes sense, it fits, and there is nothing complex in the listening. Only the wisdom of experience will allow you to recognize and appreciate, to really know the complexity, but the lack of wisdom does not take away from the joy of the experience. You bathe in the beauty of it. The intensity of the vibration increases, and the energy courses through you. It becomes tactile. Waves of pleasure tingling across your body – across your soul. As your awareness expands, so does your presence, your soul. You ARE the tree, the grass, the air, the ground, the millions of tiny creatures humming around you. You are them and they are you. The presence of your being, the presence of YOU, becomes a singular combined unity with everything around you.
Now do you see?
You open your eyes and the grey world has disappeared. The mist is still there. It’s the same world it was when you closed your eyes, but now it’s so much more. You feel the vibration of life swirling around you. The clarity is staggering. You are not alone, you are part of this world, and a part of everything is you. The air that you breathe, the towering trees, the grass, the water in the stream…The drop of moisture on a blade of grass. You are all of them. They are all a part of something much, much bigger, something that has no beginning and no end, only variations in the way it presents itself. Forming and transforming from one state to another. Energy.
