Lightning

“I want to be cremated and have my ashes spread near the creek on the Big Tesuque Trail in the Santa Fe Mountains.”

On a sunny spring morning, I sit at my dining room table and write this in the will I am preparing. I think little of it. It is but a directive for some day in the future.

Later, while I eat dinner in that same spot, I pause from my chicken and brussel sprouts, my appetite suddenly gone. A wave of nostalgia washes over me. In my will, I am talking about this body that I have inhabited for a half century.

In those years I have kayaked it over waterfalls, stuffed it with rich food and wine, entangled it with lovers’ limbs. I have nursed it through illness and exalted in its strength.

And yet…

I never thought of it as burning to ashes, vanishing into dust.

I call on the Beloved, and the sadness eases but still lingers. My appetite returns enough so I can finish dinner and go to bed.

The next morning, I’m reading a contemplation note in my sauna, the warmth seeping into my bones. Suddenly the light blinks off and the hum of the infrared emitters quiets. Is it a power outage, I wonder? I climb out, tiptoe across the cold concrete and see that my surge protector has died. I attach the plug to the wall socket and resume my practice, the power full on.

Later in the morning in my office, I click on a YouTube video called The Thunderbolts of the Gods. Through vivid images of the cosmos and interviews with scientists, the documentary presents recent findings in astronomy. Apparently Einstein’s theory that the Universe is held together through gravity is being replaced with a theory that electricity instead infuses all creation. The science is beyond my comprehension, but I do get a sense that the Beloved is showing me something profound, though I’m not sure what.

Later in the day, I stand in the guestroom of my house, massaging my friend, the air infused with the scent of sesame oil. Each week we exchange massages, a relaxing gift for my body and hers. As an Enya tune plays on the stereo, I rub my fingertips along her arm and down to the palm of her hand. Suddenly, in looking at her fingers, pink and plump with vitality, I see the opposite, the day when life will leave them. They will be dry, crisp and then dust.

I recall a date I had early in my spiritual quest. My new boyfriend at the time, a pre-med student, snuck me into the cadaver lab at the University of New Mexico Medical Center. In a state of shock I wandered around the fluorescent-lit room that smelled of formaldehyde and held twelve bodies, each lying face-up on a gurney. I finally stopped next to an old woman. Her body lay thin, gray, lifeless, but her irises retained a mind-blowing sapphire hue. Looking into those marbles, I knew without a doubt that a body is only a temporary home for something much larger.

As I massage down my friend’s legs and feet and run my thumb between her toes, the Beloved takes me on a trip. I see the current that fills this body is like the electricity that powers my sauna. Except the Divine current never blinks, never ceases. It is an eternal charge running through all life—charging the whole Universe—including me. (For more on this, see Love Energy.)

I look at my hands as they knead my friend’s muscles and recognize that this body, this temple where I reside for a time, will surely go, but I won’t. I am the everlasting current, and the very basis of that current is love.

When I finish the massage, I move quietly to my living room. My feet dance across the floor, my heart so light I feel as though I am flying. I look out the window, and the piñon trees, the blue jays, the sky with puffy spring clouds seem to shimmer with a sparkly light. Today’s trials—health concerns, tension with my neighbor, uncertainty about the future—are but blips on the screen of my eternal radar. I can overcome anything. But most all I can be—relish—my true spiritual self.

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