Meeting the Light Completely

I swim laps two or three times a week. At the pool I have gotten to know - sort of - the other regular swimmers. We don' t really stop and chat, what with being scantily clad, goggled and swim-capped. But still we recognize one another. I frequently see a guy who is extremely large.... probably 300 - 400 lbs. Sharing a lane with him is no fun because he swims like a tsunami and I get water up my nose. So, when I see him trolling for a lane to share, I make sure not to notice, not to make eye contact. And I spread out in my lane doing big sloppy strokes to make it look like I am a very bad lane-partner. I hope he will move on. 

It is a non-namaste moment: The "Light in me" is definitely not seeing "the Light in him". 

But a few days ago – after spending the whole weekend teaching a Yoga Immersion with the theme of “Open to Grace" / "Open to the Light", and really aiming to practice just that, to embody it, I went swimming. He was there. Trolling for a lane. Lo and behold – he seemed lovely. I felt friendliness towards him. He seemed vulnerable and real. Just a fellow swimmer doing the best he can. A perfectly imperfect human like me. And I waved him over to share my lane. 

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I don’t see the world as it is – but as I am. 

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Sadhana (practice of yoga, meditation, contemplation, prayer, etc.) is how I gradually but inevitably train myself to align with the Light, to meet the Light inwardly more completely.  The "Light" goes by many names (God, Sacred Mystery, Universe, etc.).

Union / communion with the Light within, when I experience it, feels like a glow or a light at the center of me (sushumna), an inward meeting of the Light. When I meet it, align with it, I have no doubt whatsoever that it is Love that is literally holding me up. 

When I have turned inward to the Light - to Sacred Mystery – the Light follows me back out into the world. And at least for a time, I see the Light outwardly more clearly.  

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“Meeting the Light Completely” by Jane Hirshfield.

Even the long-beloved

was once

an unrecognized stranger.

Just so,

the chipped lip

of a blue-glazed cup,

blown field

of a yellow curtain,

might also,

flooding and falling,

ruin your heart.

A table painted with roses.

An empty clothesline.

Each time,

the found world surprises—

that is its nature.

And then

what is said by all lovers:

“What fools we were, not to have seen.”

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“Because Even the Word Obstacle is an Obstacle” – by Alison Luterman

Try to love everything that gets in your way:

the Chinese women in flowered bathing caps

murmuring together in Mandarin, doing leg exercises in your lane

while you execute thirty-six furious laps,

one for every item on your to-do list.

The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the water

like a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side,

whose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.

Teachers all. Learn to be small

and swim through obstacles like a minnow

without grudges or memory. Dart

toward your goal, sperm to egg. Thinking Obstacle

is another obstacle. Try to love the teenage girl

idly lounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:

'Cette vie est la mienne', This life is mine,

in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.

Be glad she’ll have that to look at all her life,

and keep going, keep going. Swim by an uncle

in the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephew

how to hold his breath underwater,

even though kids aren’t allowed at this hour. Someday,

years from now, this boy

who is kicking and flailing in the exact place

you want to touch and turn

will be a young man, at a wedding on a boat

raising his champagne glass in a toast

when a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.

He’ll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,

but he’ll come up like a cork,

alive. So your moment

of impatience must bow in service to a larger story,

because if something is in your way it is

going your way, the way

of all beings; towards darkness, towards light.