I flop down on the ground to take my place in the meditation circle. The candle is lit, the room has warmed up, the biting winter chills courteously escorted outside. I gaze softly into the carpet that shapes the sacred circle, a round carpet of course, with facsimiles of Persian motifs in delicate shades of blue on a beige background. I have sat here countless hours, in contemplation, pondering on the mystery of life. I know this place just as much as it knows me. This is a space I tend to every day, carefully positioning the chairs and meditation cushions to respect symmetry and harmony: a place of love and beauty. Here, I rest in myself, nurtured by the sacredness of my daily practices and, from this place of deep rest, I open up to more of life.

Suddenly it is there, gazing back at mine, a very fine, pale line swirling between the motifs and connecting them in exquisite arabesques: a floreated ornamentation singing the elemental power of air, the source of breath, that “enables flowers to flourish and calls the […] trees to ascend into blossom”. [1]

I am astonished by the manifestation and, with the same innocence of a child who has just discovered some amazingly beautiful piece of art work that she can grasp, I laugh out loud, “How come I have never seen this pattern before?” Enthralled I follow the curvatures of the barely visible lines revealing a completely new pattern which gathers in wholeness everything that had previously been an elegant presentation of singular motifs. What other patterns am I not seeing that have always been there? What else might be revealed when I softly gaze into the incarnational presence of world? What is clogging up my perceptual lenses making me blind to the wonders of world? Fabulous questions for igniting a new quest!

Radical bewilderment is the passageway to a new journey, another iteration of an odyssey with wholeness. Our amazing, and amazed, questions gently nudge us towards the doorway leading on to higher levels of consciousness. It is time to start our journey through the eight pathways to selfhood, retracing the evolutionary thrust of consciousness unfolding unto itself and, subsequently, our expansion into wholeness.

We begin at the beginning welcoming the emerging pathway which arises when we make conscious choices to open up to new perspectives and to be matured by the exquisite patterns held in the art form we are called to cultivate and bring into world. In the resting place of sovereign choice, we allow the movements of abiding, cleansing and opening up to wash over us; we soak up the qualities of vitality, purity and availability bestowed upon us in a shower of blessings; we acknowledge and grow the capacities of responsiveness, goodness and readiness which reflect our willingness to fall upwards into wholeness.

Reference

[1] John O’Donohue excerpt from “In Praise of Air” from Benedictus. A Book of Blessings. London: Bantam Press, 2007, pp. 54-56.