back to the center*

me behind a fountain in san francisco, taken by boho boy

This morning I snuggled in bed later than usual. After my husband brought me a warm mug of yerba mate, I grabbed my copy of Eat Pray Love from our bedside and opened it up to a place I wanted to return to. I am rereading bits that resonated with me. Bits that transform what can be my limited way of thinking or being. This pretty much means almost the entire book...bless the author and her wisdom.

With my cat curled up next to my hip and her head laying against my bosom, this is what I turned to:

"Imagine that the Universe is a great spinning engine. You want to stay near the core of the thing - right in the hub of the wheel - not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you can get frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness - that's your heart. That's where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers out in the world. Just keep coming back to the center and you'll always find peace. "

~ says the Yogic Irish dairy farmer to Elizabeth Gilbert during her time in India at the Ashram

After reading this I felt warm all over. Beyond the warmth that my 100% bamboo sheets offered me in my bed. I looked around at our indigo blue walls and ahead of me at the arched doorway that my husband carved. My head and body felt light. The walls felt like they were pulsing like a heartbeat and closing in on me but I didn't feel suffocated or claustrophobic. I closed my eyes and felt the room enter into me and me into it. There was this sense that we (cat, bed, walls...even the socks on the floor) all became one. I opened my eyes and a knowing flowed through me that we are all indeed one and everything is God. I reached my hand out to our indigo blue wall, knowing that I was touching God.

I took a deep breath and smiled to myself, to my cat that was looking up at me because she must have felt a shift in my being. Lately God has felt so very far away. Perhaps because I had stumbled out beyond the center and was trying to make sense of what I thought was chaos in my world, in our world.

God was sending me a message through that passage in the book and through what transpired after reading it.

I glanced over at the part of our bedroom that used to be a closet but is now a light green painted nook where a bassinet has taken up residence. Above it are wooden letters that read "Le Bebe" (the baby in French). I felt a peace. I heard myself whisper out loud "In this very sacred moment, I understand what trust and gently releasing means."

I have had moments with God similar to this while walking in a forest draped in redwood trees or sitting in the warm sand as the waves thunder and crash up ahead but laying in the center of four walls surrounding me, away from nature... this was a first.

Tears of gratefulness trailed down my cheeks. I took my aloe Kleenex and slowly wiped them. I tore off a small piece of my tear soaked tissue and placed it in between the pages where I could come back to those wise words from the Yogic Irish dairy farmer when needed.

"Just keep coming back to the center...and you'll always find peace."