Epiphanies cannot be orchestrated.
Epiphanies prefer to arrange all the details and splendid timing of their own surprise party.
I think this when the sun catches my heart.
I trip up on a sidewalk that I’m still learning the nuances to and one I am beginning to walk every day during my stay in Marfa.
I trip up, look up, and my heart lifts up into the resplendent rays of the rising sun.
The landing for both feet and heart is honeyed, liquid-light capable of complete grounding, a warmth that can communicate a visceral presence that reassures and empowers. An embrace that circles the sides of my ribs, the back and front of my heart. An invisible hug that feels like a beloved’s unconditionally compassionate gaze.
There’s an instant pop of stagnated energy, like bubbles fizzing to the surface of a sparkling beverage, a joyous and spontaneous releasing that brings the flow of breath and an embodied expansion of awe that starts from the clarified heart and echoes out to the quiet morning street.
I was expecting this, this reawakening of the soul-lit heart, at the edge of the field where the lavender-brushed mountains reign in the near distance.
I was expecting this a half-block back.
I was expecting the truth to be spoken from my being soothed by the lavish scenery of vistas and plains and a flirtatious flourishing of sunflowers. I was setting up the external to make room to inspire the internal.
But it happens when I almost trip, when I am caught off-guard, when I am moving through a mundane moment, a stroll back to the adobe, my temporary Marfa home. I’m contemplating toast and cold brew, and thoughts are interrupted by the obstacle seen just in time of uneven pavement, and a rebalancing act occurs and there the sun sees me and I see the sun.
I am illuminated in all my messy perfection, my meandering humanness that’s seeking routes and rituals to commune with the divine, and I am loved for it all.
I am still held, and brilliantly held, even and especially when I have momentarily forgotten. I don’t need to sketch and sweat my way to the bottom of a mountain to connect with a truth that travels with me always.
It’s when I am living life, in mid-step, immersed in it all, perhaps a bit distracted and a little trying, that the co-conspirator that is the benevolent Universe sends me a wink, an encouraging wave to help me breathe out and recalibrate back to center, back to heart-center.
And in that loving luminosity, there’s a catalyzed remembering that there’s nothing to rush toward, that the rhythm of the Universe does have my back, and healing is non-linear.
It’s not a direct path to the mountain and back.
Healing happens in a flow that propels backward and forward and sideways in time.
All that is needed is showing up, surrendering to a life-giving intelligence that gently and consistently nudges me along, and receiving wholeheartedly the remedy, which is the remembering that we are already healed.
The epiphany on that uneven patch of sidewalk in Marfa, Texas, unfolded in effervescent eloquence.
A trip up to a step up to see the loving wholeness already present, and so ready to catch, cradle and celebrate all of me.