This week, my travels find me in the beautiful Hill Country of central Texas, at a lovely spot near Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Preserve. It is peaceful here, as I write I am listening to the night songs of crickets, frogs and the patter of water as it moves down its hillside course to the river below. The sky is big, dark, and full of stars.I am here to study an ancient form of yogic meditation, a path that takes us on a journey through the layers of our body/ mind by way of our senses, breath, feelings, emotions and thoughts, and into the place of deep, resonating joy. What we find at the end of this journey is literally the ground of our being- the place where our concept of our individual self, the ego, the "I"ness of who we think we are merges like a drop of water into the ocean of pure Awareness. Ultimately, we want to be in that state all the time, to see our connection to everyone and everything, to live in this state of pure awareness in which everything is unfolding.
Yesterday I did my yoga practice out on the deck overlooking the river that flows through the property of the retreat center. At the end of my practice, as I lay on my back, I gazed up into the cloudless sky- pure, stainless, wide open awareness. As I sat up to meditate, I became transfixed by a willow tree on the other side of the river. Its branches were moved gently by the wind, like an unseen hand softly brushing hair away from a cheek. Some of the branches dipped into the water and played in the current, moving with it but not swept away by it. I watched the gentle movements of wind and water dancing with the willow and saw the changing and changeless. The wind and water moving through the tree but not changing it, like our perceptions move through our own sky of pure, unchanging awareness. This was a perfect example unfolding right in front of my eyes, that it was possible to be in that state of awareness even when I wasn't actively meditating. Pure awareness is present in us all the time- it is the unchanging ground of being that was present before we were born and will exist after our body dies. We just get distracted by all the peripheral information from our senses, thoughts, feelings and emotions, and believe that to be the only reality we can experience. When we remember that we are more than just those things, we can connect to the that place of eternal, pure awareness, wide open like the big Texas sky.
