You will miss most of the sunrises and nearly every drop of rain. You cannot possibly gather the star dust that comes streaming over your head every moment of every day.
You don’t have to listen, don’t have to see. Don’t have to let the Divine look you straight in the eye. You don’t have to but You want to.
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I woke as the thousand petaled lotus was speaking, just above my head. It said:
You think that you 'should' know things that you do not know. You think that they should know things they do not know. All of this suffering comes from thinking you should know things before you know them - and from the belief that knowing these things is important.
Paradoxically, this seemed important so I wrote it down. Then, I moved into my day.
Receiving a message is one thing. Writing it down is the next.
Living with it - well, that’s another thing entirely.
You don’t have to listen, don’t have to see.
Don’t have to let the Divine look you straight in the eye.
You don’t have to but
You want to.
You want the message.1
You want the floorboards to rattle,
collapsing the hierarchies, dissolving the borders between one thing and another.
Four years ago, when I realized I’d contracted the virus, I stood in the kitchen shaking with fear. It was April, 2020, the very beginning. When there was no way to test, no Paxlovid, no vaccine. I was terrified. For about ten seconds. Then,
Your body can meet this. It’s a virus - like any other. Support your immune system. Rest. Trust your body to heal itself.
And so, for the next 30 days, as Covid burned through my body I drank my potions and swallowed my supplements. I inhaled fragrant steam. I trusted and I dreamed.
I could feel the virus remaking me. I could feel it delivering gifts. My doctor, an acupuncturist, told me, “A virus never leaves. The body makes peace with it.” Then, I had a Covid dream.
I was hovering above a map of the United States watching a little red car travel from state to state. At the wheel, I saw the planet - a blue marble, swirling with oceans and clouds.
As the car crossed each border, the entire state turned this beautiful shade of gold. In the dream, I understood. This virus will change the world.
In the dream, it was all so beautiful but I woke up uncertain. Is this dream gold a good thing — the stuff of wedding rings and crowns? Or was it a foretelling, of dried crops and desiccated earth? That’s up to you, the dream whispered as it slid away.
Anything can happen. Gold or devastation. A virus, a flood, a fire. Who decides? You? God? The president? We live in a world where everything is always changing. A.I. is writing love poems. Aliens are real. Everyone is channeling.
We sit on Zoom calls, looking into our own eyes. Meanwhile, messages streak by - light through green pond water as chips from the crystal egg of purposes float around us.
We bathe in sea salt and lavender.
We send whale songs and symphonies into space.
Is anyone listening?
TWO
What was I made for?
Seriously. I am asking you to tell me.
THREE
There is so much to do: We have to walk through the kitchen. Stand at the mirror, brushing and flossing without meeting our own eyes.
So much.
The boiling of the water; the measuring of tea leaves,
the brewing and the sipping of the cup.
So much.
”I can save the planet or I can curl up with my daughter,” I tell Lianne.
”These things feel the same to me,” she says.
FOUR
Open the door. Step outside. Get to work on time.
And then, the day comes2 when, while walking through the shoe department at Target you notice the strand of dream stuff stuck to your sweater.
Can everyone see this? You look around, panicking.
FIVE
This is not a simulation. These messages are not dictation. These signs don’t ask anything of us — no more than rain is a demand that we drink. They are gifts.
The encounter at the coffee shop,
that jewel-clear tone that you hear in your ear.
Gifts — straight up offerings from something that seems to be aware of you, to be watching you, helping you.
The way the answer arrives as you are asking the question,
the way the voice on the radio speaks directly to you.
It’s up to you what you make of that.
Let it go or let it in.
Drink the water or pour it on the ground.
Either way, it’s a miracle
— and part of the streaming meta-data of the everything, everywhere force of Grace that you will never be able to catch in the single cup serving of your life.
You will miss most of the sunrises
and nearly every drop of rain.
You cannot possibly gather the star dust that comes streaming over your head every moment of every day.
So, breathe.
in and out,
in and out.
Give thanks in the only way that’s possible: hold out your cup and live.
There is only one message, always the same: We are here. You are here. This is it and all of it is blessed. That message opens outward, endlessly unfolding, a great origami bird, a hive dripping with honey, a sky filled with galaxies. Everything a fractal. Everything a song singing itself.
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ― Anais Nin
Reading this was like finding a book written in my native language while at a thrift store in my adopted homeland (which never truly felt like home).
Love this (and all of Amy's essays). So profound, resonant, and synchronistic.