It’s in the pauses between cycles,
the seemingly still,
that the transfiguration occurs
where form churns to formless.
In each retention of breath
the physical dissolves,
self hangs suspended, naked, vulnerable.
All I once knew disintegrates
and all that remains is pure consciousness,
the delicate hum of spirit
decorating my cells with wisdom,
beckoning an altered state of existence.
In that moment of radiant expansion
duality is shaken from its slumber,
the sensation of hot and cold,
the illusion of I and other,
the separation of man and nature,
all comes together in one sip of ecstasy:
a pause
coalesced,
union dancing with infinity,
a quiet dissolving.
Then just as quickly the layers of self trickle back in:
the sounds of the birds, I reside in California;
the smells of the air, I am in spring;
the thought of my husband – I am a wife;
the murmurs of my babe – I am a mother.
I observe these layers that make me me,
that aren’t me.
And crackling in the background
my spirit stokes fires of freedom,
constantly chiseling at fragments of separation.
I become more whole, connected, embalmed in form
for I remain human on this earth
enabled to observe the process,
empowered towards compassion,
tending towards joy.
And the heat of my primitive knowingness
rises into the conditioning of my mind
and burns away the illusions of fear, scarcity and hate
so I can trust the divine organization,
the bounty of nature,
the benevolent universe,
the tendency towards good.