eyes

eyes

We have to have that hope.  I know we can re-member it. 

Today I sat in a tattered seat in a combi (minivan) in the Northern Andes in Peru, frustrated at my lack of understanding. And awed by life.  The sweat of the early morning sun clung heavily to our clothes, the warm wet heat now dusted with the shadows of the afternoon clouds, heavy rains arriving everyday from expectant clouds.  I looked up from my seat, my mouth silent, black smoke pouring in from the exhaust of the van into our wide-open windows, quick Spanish tongues rolling into my ears, the scent of cilantro finding its way from the wet Alpaca blanket wrapped around the Campesina farmer.  She held a baby in her left arm and rested the bag of plants on her right, sweat beaded on her forehead below the line of her traditional hat shaped to give her weathered skin cover from her hours in the sun.  Her baby stared at me.  She had the most transfixing brown eyes.  I stared back.  We found one another there in our togetherness.  Silence surrounded us suddenly, as we shared the human condition.  I thought about how someday she too would have her own words for joy and for sorrow.

She gazes at me with eyes of perfect hope.  She smiles with her beautiful bald gums, spit wet against the dirt on her cheeks.  Her long eyelashes blinking against her coffee eyes.  She speaks to me in her stare, Why are the people so sad?  Why is there pain?  Why do they worry so?  Remember Maggie, we have to remember.  Remember you were once like me, you all were.  You reveled at life.  You breathed simply.  You rested.  You laughed.  You cried.  You were innocent and unscathed by the hardness of life.  You looked out of eyes of Hope too.  Before you created definitions and labels, you were limitless about possibilities and how to relate to the world.  But you STILL CAN.  You are limitless, you still can see out of those eyes.  Tell them for me.  You can be.  You ARE.  We still ARE.

I sit in the combi, caught in her eyes.  Together we take a trip.  We rise from the seats we sit in and she shows me the world.  As we rise into the atmosphere, we look down and see the amazing field of light below.  We look at the Human Being, the one unit of all Personkind, the connectedness of all the smallest and largest of possible thoughts.  But a haze of gray covers the brilliant white light of life below, there is a blanket of despair and fear that covers the Human Being so that it becomes obscure and dulled underneath the layers of our collective attachment to power, greed, ego.  We blur further, briskly seeking to increase the pulse of our individual lives, even in exchange for the collective Human Being.  The collection of anguish blankets us now, whether we feel the security behind our own closed doors of the warmth of our spaces.  The Human Being is affected.  We share the fact that we are all born and everyday we are moving toward the disintegration of our bodies...no human can transcend this.  We share this condition, in this way nobody is better or worse.

I see the light under those layers.  It is there.  We make the collective commitment to lift that veil that hides it.  If we all decided at once to release the ego, the fears that keep us clinging to power and need, fears that cause us to treat others as less than part of the Human Being...if we decided at once instead to emanate the healing and hope and light into this world, in ONE instant the entire world would be changed.  I know that it is so easy to forget that we each have the capacity to do our part.  I know what fear tastes and feels like too.  We don't want to lose anything.  BUT WE will if we live in this fear. We must make a conscious decision to turn our attention to the Human Being, that which we are a part of.

Those innocent eyes guide me further in my dream.  They guide me back to a peaceful path where I can see the green land below me, a stream winding through the land.  I think about the miracle of that land, how it created itself as I step down, my first step toward the brilliant blue caught by the sun.  As I step, I am suddenly caught in fear itself.  I am crawling among the thistly branches and my hands are stuck deep into the mud.  I am breathing hard and I cannot see in the darkness of the twisted branches.  There are spiders crawling near me that make me breath shorten.  I close my eyes, remembering the light inside of me and when I open my eyes I am looking at the shore of the blue waters I had seen from the landscape above.  The sky is brilliant, my color blue, the one I dream about, it has an electricity that beams upward into the sky.  My eyes feel as if they are filled with opal currents of light as I look up.  There is no darkness, no branches, no mud, no spiders.  I know these fears are within me.  I know how when I release them, I change the landscape.  I know how much I want to escape from it.  I know how much we look outside for the fear to leave us.  But it is inside, it is inside.  I look at the still waters of the river.  It looks like a lake of thin ice, the water is so still and peaceful.  It is a perfect stillness, one that is unmolested by anything.  I close my eyes to see the light and when I open them I am awake, floating on my back in the warm waters of the river.  I am buoyant and my ears are below the water so that I hear the steady and calm beating of my heart.  My body is floating, I am weightless and unafraid.  My hair floats out in white strands, suspended by the water.  The clouds in the sky billow in soft white above me, they dance lightly with the breeze, soft and delicate, causing tiny ripples in the water.  Ripples that change everything, everywhere they disperse, they move out into the water, changing the form of the water.  I hear my breathing and I see figures around me, different people I know and love.  Teachers, friends, those I once called enemies.  They hold my body from hundreds of directions.  And we whirl in the waters together.  I understand their meaning and place in my life in this instant, the reasons I asked for them to be in this dream of mine called LIFE, what place they would have, what lessons they would teach, what information they would give to me.  I float in gentle circles with all of them supporting my weightless body and I feel the empathy in my heart for each and every one.  For I played my part and so did they.  Sometimes my part was difficult, and other times I can feel the hurt and sadness they had to take on to play their part.  Like I can see my Dad, a man of eight children, who knows not one of them and cannot express the love he has inside, the part he agreed to play in my life.  I love him more than ever for accepting his part, I have ultimate empathy for him.  I give thanks to each of them, knowing the choices I made, knowing the way I judged them at times when I really didn't love something inside of myself.  They tell me I can always come here, to the journey river, to meet with them, to understand what is inside of me.  To know the layers of life and how they all complete one another, and always will.  For this is reality too, and so too is the life outside of these waters, we exist in these layers.

Suddenly I hear moaning from the other side of the shore.  It is a painful slow moan that repeats itself.  I worry, it is sad to hear and I feel the hurt in my heart.  I do not want to leave the peace of these waters, but I feel as I hear the sounds that part of me too is dying.  For I know that we exist together, that when one of us hurts, well we all do somewhere deep, some of us do not want to feel that, the responsibility is great.  I crawl to the shores and I hear the moaning loader now, it comes from the heart, slow and sad.  I can hear the muffled heartbeat of pain. As I leave the water, my body is dry instantly.  I see a figure in a corner by a tree, they are folded over and their spine is bent over in grief, the moans continue.  I walk toward the figure, scared, wanting to turn away because I do not want this sadness in me as well.  But I know I must see.  With my eyes.  I cannot ignore it, I will be there and is there.  I touch the back of the doubled-over body and a man turns around.  His face is worn and hideous, disfigured from pain.  His eyes are drowning in sorrow.  I look at him, I look at him with my eyes.  I acknowledge him.  I love him and want to take his pain away from him.  I know my place in his life. He catches my eyes and I see light fill his.  He is a person he knows this by looking into me, he is acknowledged, he matters. He does.  He is cared for and about.  He is part of the same body of life that I am.  He fills with light and I stay filled with light, I am not afraid that I will be drained or filled with fear.  I know that we serve one another.  He face softens, the pain of his feelings of aloneness drains, for he is recognized by a fellow be-ing, and he is part of something.

I drift back into this layer of my life and I smell the exhaust of the combi once again.  The baby is staring at me with her wamr eyes.  In the quietude of her eyes, I can think about all of you.  You are my greatest gift.  In my reverence for you, I engage in giving thanks for Life that is beyond form, beyond what can be bought or obtained.  I honor this unfolding of Life and all of our places in it, for we have come together to help heal the splintered parts of our Be-ings.  I give value to that, and to you all and the people that you.  I value how you have helped me to see that evil or badness is really the absence of Light, and the only way to heal that is with the Presence of Light, or with compassion.  Reverence for you makes me understand our interdependency and the protection and honor of that.  When I think of you with reverence, I stand in awe at the experience of Life and I walk with a sense of Gratitude.  Because of this, I can be and will be a spiritual being in an Earth that is sometimes disrespected by people who have forgotten how to be spiritual.  My reverence for you family, originates in my heart, an authentic power that allows me to love you in all the form you appears, a power that helps me to see your meaningfulness and purpose in my Life and this Earth.  My dear friends, the present that I can give you today is the Presence of my absolute love for you.  And so, no matter where I am and where you are and who you are with, my love for you is undeniable....and always will be.  So know that I am there with you in every beautifully spiritual action of Life.

Reverence is in

the contented glaze of happy eyes

warm skin sharing a knowing embrace

the innocent power of a young child's ideas

the bloom that always grows from the melting snow

breathing windy air deep into your chest

emotions falling inside crystal tears

dancing your inside out to life

laughter birthing more bliss

the humility in emptying what is full

the growth in filling what is empty

light reflecting against radiant eyes

a child dreaming in a warm blanket

letting your actions be your most stunning art

the love that is wrapped within a kiss

fulfillment born from random acts of kindness

counting on the rising sun and the watchful moon

shared stories recounted in circles of comfort

music that speaks the words for you

the wet renewal of a fresh rain

the brilliant light gifted from a smile

shared LIFE with your family

            meant to continue on in every new soul.

        
blessings.  amor.  magdalena