Spiritual Holiday

Luckily, I spoke to Vijayalakshmi Aunty, a dear family friend this week and she rightly interpreted my year of reflection  as essential, in two simple words calling it  a Spiritual Holiday.  

I have been here, present, performing, creating, falling sick, taking care, responding, reacting, in relationship. But I have been away, away in another space resting, bringing together my essential core, in touch with the deepest spirit of my soul, disconnected from this time and space I am bound to, tuned into another time and space that I belong to. It is natural for me to live parallel lives, as it is for many others I know. Perhaps we all do live one of our lives in eternity and the other in mortality, forever playing hide and seek with ourselves. 

Like the shadow of a giant tree that dances with sparkles of light on the ground, I have been swept away in the dance of a spirit far greater than my own, dissolving my limited being in its unlimited ruthless compassion. The shadow has spread across the earth and I cannot fathom where this giant tree grows for such a vast expanse to be covered and the dancing lights laugh at my perplexed awareness.  I think I am drawn to the shadow and I look up to find the light filtering through me, disintegrating my physical sheath into a billion particles of wondrousness. I am lost and then something puts me back together, all those billion particles from all their diverse paths and speeds. I embrace, I allow, I let it be.  I am left with a newer material sheath, unfamiliar, yet not completely unknown. And then again the disintegration happens and again I am woven together. Again and again like a lullaby, the rhythms of this rocking, changing, manifesting, un-manifesting shadow and light sculpt me into something that I cannot fathom. Oh! I am still bound to form, seemingly ever more than before, and then I am not. I am light of body and heavy of being. Can a heavy bird soar in flight, I ask myself and before the question acquires its words thousands of tiny swifts lift the heaviness of my being into their light joyous flight.
And I am left interwoven with their bodies, thousands of them, as my own. I don't ask why this happens anymore or even question the reality of the parallel worlds. It is easy to bring doubt into the equation and abruptly lay a heavy boulder in the path of a volcanic eruption or a sprouting seed. Neither seem to be stopped by the mythical boulder of this world.  I naively presume that I can keep both worlds from colliding with each other as if celestial processes are my concern or in my capacity

I spot the tree and as soon I catch hold of her roots, she disintegrates into a billion particles of light, or perhaps dust and caught unawares I let myself go. And seemingly one of me falls to the ground taking root again, and the others are lost with that laughing disintegrating mighty tree. I wonder which ones of me are on a holiday, a spiritual holiday, the rooted, the flying, the swimming or the dissolving?

The paradox of existence and non-existence cradles me in its infinite playful love. Everyday life goes on. I react, I respond, I exist, I own something or the other. We are in relationship, Life and I.


 The tree laughs, or perhaps the shadow or is it the dancing lights?