istening with truly open ears is tricky. Sometimes the hums of the computer
and the refrigerator are enough. Then the refrigerator stops. I hear just
the humming computer and the tiny ringing inside my own ears and the
clicking of the keyboard when I stop listening and type a little bit. The
space-- the spaciousness when I listen and hear nothing else, no inner
chatter of ideas and words-- is beautiful, pleasurable. The sounds of
computer and neighbor's dog barking and now a car passing the house are just
right, are exactly what is called for in this moment, requiring no editing,
no judgement (they don't need to be told they are beautiful). I can listen
peacefully with utter enjoyment until I hear the next words that need to be
typed:
There was a little girl who lived in a cave under the ground. Everything she needed was given to her by fairies and gnomes and helpers, everything she needed to grow and learn and develop. She became who she was, utterly herself, a little girl who never grew up, who drew pictures and made up songs and stories, and played and slept and rowed on the underground river.
There came a time when she needed to grow in a new way, and the gnomes and fairies could not give her anything to help. She had to do this on her own. She knew she had to do it, she wanted to do it, and yet it was the hardest thing to approach, to get close to. She had to cast off everything she was, step out of herself, her skin, and trust that she would still exist in some way. The others could encourage her, but they could not do it for her or with her.
She felt it coming, felt her skin starting to loosen. Felt the thoughts in her head jiggling loose and trickling out her ears. She lost her equilibrium a little now and then. And she wept at what she saw through the cracks in her skin-- the light and beauty was overwhelming and so healing that she would weep tears of old wounds closing and tears of gratitude and great love. When she peeked out through those cracks, everyone and everything looked different-- more luminous and miraculous. All people were Gods, all of creation was an everchanging miracle of exquisite divine art.
She made plans for a journey. She would go to a place above the ground, a
place at the mouth of the river where people went to shed their skins. It
would be the normal thing for her to cast her old self into the river, and
she would be among her own kind, among others who had done it or were about
to. In the meantime, she busied herself with her usual activities. Her
pictures were already showing a difference. They glowed a little with the
vision of what she had seen through the cracks. Her songs, too, were all
about her heart breaking open, and they ached with delicate minor chords and
then sprang forth with lovely unexpected resolutions to major chords. Her
stories were getting fewer and fewer, and simpler and simpler as the chatter
of words continued to flow out through her ears and fall down among the
pebbles and into the underground stream. There was so little that truly
needed to be said. Each moment was already so full, did not seem to require
explaining or retelling or predicting. She had thought it would be hard to
wait, and harder to journey to the mouth of the river, that it would be
scary, nerve wracking. It it turned out that there was no waiting at all. It
was happening already. It had always been happening, and the closer she came
to the mouth of the river, the more she knew that she had been there all
along. It was not a journey. It was a homecoming. Still, sometimes she had
to lie face down in the soft grass and weep, and weep. And the tears flowed
down between the cracks in her skin and loosened and stretched until she had
only scraps and plaques of old skin left here and there. By the time she got
to the mouth of the river, there was very little left, and what remained
wafted away in the slightest breeze. No one at all was there. And she had
never felt less alone in her life.
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