Monday, February 14, 2005
A Brief Moment of Grace
This is Valentine's day. Here is how mine arrived this morning.
Today, because it was a bit cold, I decided to do my chi gong stretching in the kitchen, rather than in my usual place. As I did my movements, I glanced down on Nora's (Nora is my dog) water disch--and voila!--there was a perfectly shaped yin-yang symbol seeming to "float" on the bottom of the metal dish, complete with the dot to indicate the beginning of change in the midst of the full unfoldment of the contrary sign.
I took this as a very good omen--that here, in the midst of chaos and confusion and the disarray revealed each day in the monrning's headlines, a new impulse is forming. As I watched the symbol in the water, I saw this center dot grow larger--just as the current spiritual renewal is growing in intensity each day. And--as it grew even loarger, it seemed to lose its dark center. I felt that this could be taken as a warning--that too much public display of an intrinsically esoteric mode, too much commercialization and trivialization of the essence, would diminish its spiritual power, and it, too, would become a hollow movement, devoid of any real postency for effectual change.
I then experimented to see if I could see this symbol from other angles (oddly, I wrote angels in the original text)--the answer was no. As with the pigeons in the park, I had to be in the right moment at the right time, a moment which will likely never again repeat.
But what a blessing it was to see such a sacred image displayed in my kitchen, there in the bottom of Nora's bowl. There is no end to divine ingenuity in communicating with us if we are but willing to attend.
Today, because it was a bit cold, I decided to do my chi gong stretching in the kitchen, rather than in my usual place. As I did my movements, I glanced down on Nora's (Nora is my dog) water disch--and voila!--there was a perfectly shaped yin-yang symbol seeming to "float" on the bottom of the metal dish, complete with the dot to indicate the beginning of change in the midst of the full unfoldment of the contrary sign.
I took this as a very good omen--that here, in the midst of chaos and confusion and the disarray revealed each day in the monrning's headlines, a new impulse is forming. As I watched the symbol in the water, I saw this center dot grow larger--just as the current spiritual renewal is growing in intensity each day. And--as it grew even loarger, it seemed to lose its dark center. I felt that this could be taken as a warning--that too much public display of an intrinsically esoteric mode, too much commercialization and trivialization of the essence, would diminish its spiritual power, and it, too, would become a hollow movement, devoid of any real postency for effectual change.
I then experimented to see if I could see this symbol from other angles (oddly, I wrote angels in the original text)--the answer was no. As with the pigeons in the park, I had to be in the right moment at the right time, a moment which will likely never again repeat.
But what a blessing it was to see such a sacred image displayed in my kitchen, there in the bottom of Nora's bowl. There is no end to divine ingenuity in communicating with us if we are but willing to attend.
