September Morn

Usually I don’t listen to a lot of music.  The birds in the trees, the dog barking next door, our windchimes on the porch, and even the sound of the traffic on the busy road outside are usually enough to provide a lovely ambient background as I travel through each day.  But today, was a bit different.  Today after the kids went to school, I opened Pandora on my phone and put it on shuffle.

As the music began to play, my ears and my heart recognized a familiar tune.  Seemingly out of nowhere, Neil Diamond appeared through this magical app singing his ballad “September Morn.” It’s not exactly one of his most popular songs, but my heart knows it well.  I grew up listening to Neil with my parents.  By the time I was 12, I had seen him live in concert 5 times.  There are fond memories in the back of my mind of 1981, when all 4 members of my family could sit on the bench front seat of my dad’s Oldsmobile, driving home in a snowstorm and singing “Forever in Blue Jeans” at the top of our lungs after a night out at Ponderosa steakhouse.  And even though Neil was not exactly considered 'cool' for a youth in the 80's, I secretly loved the emotions his music evoked in my family and myself.

And somehow, this song… it wrapped itself around the deepest reaches of my life’s experiences and brought them bounding to the forefront of my mind… as if every moment of my life was happening in that very moment.  As Neil’s words sang a song of the end of innocence, and a certain coming of age, I re-lived, with deep intensity, the days of playing in the driveway with my sister, summers at my grandparents’ home, helping my Granny freeze the peaches in August, silly days of high school antics, the tragic accidents of two close member of my family, meeting my husband, the illnesses and deaths of my grandparents and dad, the birth of my children…

All of these past experiences and all the vibrant emotions surrounding them, happening in the single moment of Now… triggered by a simple song.  Amazing.

It’s as if, through our minds, we can travel through time.  These incredible, inter-dimensional experiences of memory and projection, when experienced in the form of thought, can create and re-create the past and future as if they are happening now.  All of this done through the lens of the emotions we feel as those thoughts arise. 

So in this sense, the emotions that arise through projection and memory can be our greatest teachers in fine-tuning our awareness.

By simply watching the reactions to thoughts in the form of emotions and physical sensations, a certain space is created.  It’s as if we are experiencing the thoughts, memories, and projections of the future from first-hand experience, while at the same time a deeper part of ourselves watches as an observer or witness from afar. 

It’s one of the magnificent gifts of being human, actually: to be an active participant in this Dance of Life; to feel fully the greatest joys and deepest pains, and at the same time rest in that sacred, deeper space and KNOW it all as the grand Dance of Life.

Watching and feeling… feeling and watching… sliding ever fearlessly and playfully between these two.  As this perspective broadens, we let go with more and more ease of the thoughts and emotions, memories and projections to which we so tightly cling.  There comes a profound realization that everything we have been striving so hard to achieve is not what it has appeared to be.   This can be shocking and terrifying, even, to the surface layers of our persona: that part of us which “holds it all together” and “looks good” from the outside.  But when witnessed from that deeper space, there comes a sweet sense of relief as we realize that we can let go of the tight grasp that we are Somebody or that we need to BE Somebody.  With a deep exhale, we can settle into that vast space of Being beyond the thoughts, memories, and projections, creating the space for the totality of All Life to flow through us effortlessly.

We can realize that the details of our lives are part of a much larger picture, all twirling and dancing around together to create what we know as the Universe. We can play in this experience of being human without taking it so terribly seriously; seeing all events, creations, experiences, and the emotions surrounding them as that Divine, creative force bursting into existence in every way possible.

 

And with this, comes an overwhelming and innate gratitude and peaceful joy: a reverence for all that exists in the Universe, even our own judgments, emotions, and pain.  Arising from One, blossoming fully, and returning home again to the unmanifested yet ever-present One Love.