While the following recollection is of a trip in October 2018, I hope the reader will see the trip as a metaphor for living an awakened, sacralized life. While life is already sacred, we engage a wisdom path to learn - or remember - the how of living in tune with life. Likewise, to be awakened, or mindful, is not merely to be aware of the appearances present with us, but we awaken to the quality, or presence, concealed by the appearances. We do not try to bring forth the intangible through matter; we posture ourselves in a way that invites the hidden grace to be felt and known. In receptivity, spirit manifests to the degree we are prepared to receive - and, possibly, sometimes beyond our capacity to receive.
When traveling from the far SE USA - Florida - to the far NE USA - Maine - in 2018, a total of some thirty hours and 1358 miles between where I left to where I was to arrive, a moment of beauty arose. In fact, the trip from High Springs to Georgetown Island of three days, and oft with no sense of where I was, was a continuous moment of beauty. Hence, the journey was a pilgrimage, for it had a quality of what I call sacred.
For those who have welcomed and recognized these moments, they know such times remain unnamed and live on: they are timeless. These unveilings are reverberations of oneness. Such spontaneous arisings change us. Context, however, can provide the setting for materializing a meeting with this grace.
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In my over-loaded Ford Ranger, moving along I-95 N. on the second day of the trip, an embodied sense of joy arose. This sensation did not have any precise location in the body, being pervasive, and was internal and external. I was driving along outside time in an atmosphere of contented, quiet bliss, not creating this atmosphere but part of it. I did not turn on anything to listen to on the trip up - such would have been a distraction.
This joy was not happiness, in the sense of an emotion arising from a pleasant happening. This bliss was more subtle, more intimate. I could not point to a cause of the joy. The context was moving at the moment, my being taken out of "my" ordinary frame of reference and being with no one, nowhere. The voyage was like an extended religious rite, as religious rituals are intended to remove one from the sense of a separate self in time and place and, so, universalize the particular, lifting awareness from the tangible to the intangible - matter to spirit.
For most of the trip, I had only a vague sense of location. The second night, after about 14 hours of driving, I stopped at a hotel for the night. I did not even know what state I was in. I asked the woman appointing me a room where I was. She said, "Maryland." Well, there I was, surprisingly, in Maryland.
Over those days, I felt an odd contentment in moving without a felt sense of needing to know the location. All the senses were focused but relaxed, like in awareness meditation. And this calm remained even as I moved through Washington, DC, at night, bumper to bumper, exhausted, and I could not do anything but keep moving in the apparently right direction. I was notified by a sign pointing directions to a bridge of my being near the White House. Otherwise, I would have left Washington, not knowing it was Washington.
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Now, having given context, back to the one moment of subtle beauty referred to above... I almost picked up the phone to call a friend to share what was happening. Next, the awareness arose of a desire not to move away from this pervasive sense. So, I placed down the phone. I rested. I relished. I drove on. I realized the need to stay in the moment, not even share a report. If I needed to share about it, I could do so later. Now, I needed to hold this blessing close.
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This was, to me, a teaching in needing to hold close all such moments of intimacy. One could compare this to having Love make love with you. Now, amid an orgasm of grace, would you want to jump up, go to the phone, and report to a friend the ecstasy of the beatific union? Hopefully not! Persons, however, do this all the time. They escape the glory, following a distraction from the life they long for. Part of discontinuing this escape is to see one does this. One may find it helpful to inquire in the Silence, "Why do I need to run away when this bliss arises?"
Part of a spiritual path is growing in tolerance for joy. We learn how we escape beauty and develop an attraction for what invites it.
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when introduced to beauty by Beauty in the one moment
harmony arises, felt in the body, beauty corresponding with Beauty
beauty will be located, even if pervasive, in space and remains secretive in solitude
Beauty always present, sense-less, finds opportunity for reflection of itself in a sensed loveliness
sensed beauty differs based on the seer sense-less Beauty is other than seer and beauty - yet, no separation
the beauty may be named, as in an object or objects, or unnamed while Beauty is so is nameless, not locate-able
beauty is a contraction of infinity, like all creation opening to expansion at varying degrees ~ based on the capacity to receive
the fruitage felt bodily is intimacy and joy and the quiet intensity may lead one to seek escape
we each are ready for varied degrees of heaven, some more, some less
learn to rest in this beatific intimacy sensing the escape before the escape
your capacity to embody glory grows as you allow the Light to subsist felt-within
this luminosity - close beyond close - being sublime quiet, immaculate joy, delightful affection
acclimating to resting in this glorious appearing you, as embodied form, are clothed with like nature
you become progressively a means of blessing in being life luminous with Life
*Use of photography is allowed accompanied by credit given to Brian K. Wilcox and notation of title and place of the photograph.
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse.
