Stillness 8-18: In 1963 we lived for a time on a freighter that traversed the waterways from what was then Yugoslavia to Japan. We were docked in Mumbai for a couple of weeks, while exotic, mysterious crates were unloaded and bales of silks and fragrant spices (as I imagined) were loaded onto our ship. My parents wanted to visit the sacred caves of Ajanta, in the heart of India, and, because of time constraints, the only way to get there was by chartering a tiny propeller airplane.
If you’ve ever lived at sea for long stretches as a time, where you’re always somewhat in motion, and then stood on solid ground again, you know how strange it feels. Well, flying in a tiny airplane felt even more strange, especially back then. It was like being in a rickety, flying car. We bumped and wobbled, at first barely seeming to get off the ground. Once aloft, it was incredibly noisy inside—the sound making talking impossible. We dipped and glided and bumped along, hour after hour.
But the expansive view out the small window was one I’ll always remember. There were vast plains, some green but mostly brown and yellow, ribboned with endless dusty roads that thronged with colorfully-dressed people. Their clothing shone in yellows, golds, reds, purples, oranges, greens. Mostly they traveled in great big crowds, but occasionally there were just a few. They would all turn to look up at us as we bounced along through the hot sky over their heads. Where were they going? I wondered. What were they doing? I felt like a ghost, perceiving the world below with astonishment and awe.
I think of that funny little plane ride when I encounter air pockets in life, those bumps that jostle us and make us veer or dip from our supposed destination. I find it always helps to lift up and away from the situation and to take a broader view.
It’s our small, tense thoughts that keep us small and tense. Our thoughts keep anchoring us back into our tiny selves and make us think that we are just little bodies wandering around, feeling helpless and lost. But we’re not! We’re actually much larger beings of imagination and energy. That is what I think of when I remember that plane ride. In my imagination, I was one of the great, colorful throng below, playing with the children. In my imagination, I was a tea farmer on the shady slope we passed. In my imagination, I painted a small hut bright blue and made it my own. When we approached the emerald jungles where the cliffs and caves were, I became so many beings in my thoughts: handmaiden, stone carver, tiger, mischievous monkey, and I felt as though I were wreathed in floods of pink and orange bougainvillea.
We are much bigger than we think we are. Our energy expands out from our physical body through our feelings and our thoughts. Every time you speak to someone, you’re connecting outside your physical body. Are you thinking of a lovely island in the south seas? You’re far away in your mind’s eye. Your energy moves into feelings, intentions, memories, and plans for the future all the time. None of that is experienced physically, with your bodies—it lives in your imagination and in an expanded awareness of your existence. You’re not a lump of clay moving around the garden. You’re a being of light and delight! Follow your experience to its source. Are you hearing a bird sing out? Instead of hearing it inside your ear and wondering about its habits and habitat, lift out of yourself and follow the sound with your ear. Lift up and out of yourself when you look at the stars—don’t always be trying to figure things out. Your imagination can take you places you never dreamed.
When you were younger you did this when you read a book you loved—you were lost in a world of imagination and freedom. That hasn’t changed just because you grew up. You’re not stuck in a restricted concept of yourself. Lift up. Take off. Explore realms of consciousness that expand your awareness into levels of spirit that thrill and amaze. Connect with angels, guides, people who’ve died, and, most wonderfully, your original self of pure joy, light, and love.
Yes, there will always be bumps along the way—pebbles rocks, discouragements … but you can lift over them, flow past them. Don’t let them stop you. Blocking your flow creates your suffering, not the rocks and bumps. They are just rocks and bumps along the way!
Whenever I fly nowadays, I still feel that amazed surge as the plane lifts off from the ground and our small globe drops away from where I sit. I still see the extraordinary vastness of our possibilities. And I remember all the people, slowly looking up and watching as we flew past. There are billions of us, moving colorfully through the days on dusty roads, creating a vivid painting of brightness, movement, light and shadow, rest, radiance, and love.