Journey to the edge of the world

I have journeyed to the edge of the world, awake. No one ever told me route and yet intuitively I found it. I recognized the path because I loved the ones whose turn it was to walk it. I walked side by side with my beloveds right up to the threshold, and gazed past as they departed on their way to the next journey.

Luz-frijol showed me her infinitely small perfection at 8 weeks. Curved like a seed pod of becoming, carving a home on earth. Infinite and absolute delicacy. She showed me that life is as irrevocable and absolute as death.

Ward evoked absolute, brilliant friendship and love; slipping into the deep blue-gray night just as dignified and delighted as he was. His sharp intelligence scared some people; I understood unconditionally as I looked into his twinkling eyes and reveled in his committed love affair with discovery and revelation.

Lila showed me the world’s luminescence when she passed. A crimson tree lit from within, stones aglow as the moon rose and the sun set. This was her lilac winged gift. She was born with a spirit so big and fierce and strong that it scarcely fit into her small body. By the time she went she was completely transparent.

After he passed over, Uncle Jay, for years a New York then San Francisco taxi cab driver, played games and had me drive him around as he chuckled at the irony. We spoke at the Ashram a couple of weeks before he died about his burning question: "Did the soul survive physical death?" He seemed worried, so I asked him what part of him was worried about the answer; turning the light on the question in this way set him at ease. Before I left, he told me he did not want to live without his beloved tennis game which he could no longer play, and nothing else would do. I didn't know then, he had secretly worn an exit door through his heart which swung open wide two weeks later when his heart slowed then stopped.

My mother, Marianne, showed me silence, deepest silence. Love of deep black velvet night of no-thing, peace. I washed her tar encrusted ashtray until the glass shown. She said this gave her a choice. I hung a rosy pink cloth over her broken mirror. She dreamed she saw herself and she was beautiful. I massaged her gorgeous vuluptuous body; I annointed her feet with oils; I washed her long hair which fell past her waist to her hips. We forgave each other for everything. This absence was a difficult one to reconcile; the silence following her passing heralded the existence of an absence beyond pleasure, beyond relief; a place where meaning is not eked in the usual way.

There was no time between one passing and the next to return from the edge. No one had told me the need for leaving crumbs to find the way back. For me there was no ceremony no ritual words no prayers to repeat, for my soul to hear calling me return, to re-enter life.

I stumbled, not understanding why I was here, stumbling, sometimes swept up in the currents of strong rivers, swimming hard, tumbling. In those tumbles, I hit upon stepping stones, pulled myself up on them, then continued wandering and dancing my way back into life, responding to the call of my teachers, to the call of the red tailed hawk, to the call of starlings and ravens, to the call of the ceaseless waves, all with a voice and something to say which the soul must hear.

I have come to realize that the wisdom distilled in each being's passing is as individual as their journey, each passing and its wake like a impermanent snowflake, precious, no two alike. Each passing leaves an interdimensional pattern, a very special symphony.

From the deepest unknowing, I responded to the call of the nobility of the earth, the beauty and miracle of this planet… and I cried for its tragedies even harder-- melting snows, poisened waters, sea turtles washing up dead, plastic bags clogging the sea, the list is so long of unnecessary suffering born of deepest ignornance. Intelligent eyes gaze back at us from everywhere... I listened and I responded to an invitation I heard… and I keep listening… dancing… finding the path back to the center of life again and again… attentively, I return again and again to here, right here. And sometimes here is so deep it opens up to a place that is beyond-- a no place, an ALL place in this very place.

by Lorena Lobita © 2010