Eternal Remembrance Comes Silently

I am watching a gentle rain as it softly waters the expanse of trees in the valley laid out below me.

I am so blessed to sit up here at my bedroom window and see this view every, single day.It changes subtly year after year with the familiar coming and going of the seasons. At this moment the trees are a lush, full green, fresh with the morning rain, the tops tinged a slight yellowy red – a sure promise of the kaleidescope of explosive colour to come.

Often against this backdrop of ever changing beauty, I bear witness to breathtaking sunsets, rainbows, shooting stars, full moons, starlight, summer storms, deer grazing in the field below, coyotes howling in the still of night, tree frogs peeping in the spring, choruses of crickets and birdsong and cicadas, majestic blue herons gliding silently by, flocks of geese and sometimes trumpeter swans honking past my window, red-tailed hawks, and so many more too numerous to mention. And that’s just spring and summer!

Autumn offers up a panoramic colour fest that words or even photographs cannot do justice to. It can only be experienced with wonder and awe.

And winter too, in her often frozen nakedness has her gifts to share. There have been a few rare, bone chilling mornings when I’ve woken up to the sound of thousands of be-jeweled, sun-splashed, sparkling, ice covered tree branches tapping against each other and creating a mystical tinkling sound in surround sound that could never be recreated. Simply surreal. Then in the dead of night, unable to sustain the weight of the ice or snow any longer, I’ve heard the almost deafening crack and snap of entire trees breaking in half; the gift in this being a reminder that the power of nature has no favourites.

And it’s not like I live in the middle of nowhere.

There’s cars and main roads and shopping plazas and banks and restaurants and Starbucks and a university and a farmer’s market and a library and schools and buses and a hospital etc…all within 5 minutes of where I live.

It’s just that I live on the 12th (top) floor in a humble apartment that just happens to be smack in the middle of one of the world’s largest biosphere reserves, (the Niagara Escarpment) and that I have such a spectacular view of it all.

I live with the deepest of gratitude for this great gift.

And yet, more than all of this, my true home is elsewhere.

Often, when I witness the sunlight or moonlight or starlight beaming its way to me across the sky, it will remind me of a lighthouse signalling the way home.

It’s not that I don’t live fully grounded here on planet earth, (even though I’m up in the air!) or that I feel lost here. I don’t. Not anymore.

It’s just that I know now that my human form is only a visitor.

My real home is what I can’t see…the invisible realm of pure awareness. The backdrop against which all this life and existence happens.

Sometimes when I’m taking in all the beauty before me, especially anything light dappled or light filled or shimmering with light, I am flooded with a radiant, profound feeling of holiness.

This, in contrast to the contented feeling of the comfort and solidity of my physical home on this beautiful and enchanting Mother Earth.

The invisible realm feels basically beyond words; the visible – more like a feeling of gratitude and reverence.

Our true address is Infinity, that which always is. If it’s coming and going, it’s finite. Just like the seasons, just like the planets, just like the galaxies, just like us humans.

True home is that which never changes, that which always was, is, and will be forevermore.

We are the ‘before,’ which feels essentially like a vast, resonant, silent power; like deep love, the unconditional kind.

It’s more of a ‘what’ than a ‘who’.

And to remember this while we are here, is what ‘heaven on earth’ is all about.

Why?

Because it frees us to simply be and express what we are, to have fun and enjoy the ride while it lasts, to live fearlessly doing whatever it is that makes us feel alive and joyful, not what society or friends or spouses, or parents, or establishments dictate should be our joy.

Each and everyone one of us is our own individual point of expression with the ability to expand into the limitless oneness in whichever way we so desire.

How else can such diversity in every area of human life be explained?

How pointless is it to envy or disapprove of what another is expressing or creating in this world, to compare ourselves with what someone else is doing with their singular point of awareness?

All of life is moving us along it seems, back to this original place, this point of purity one way or another.

And being human on this earth plane is the greatest evolution our soul can ever experience in order to ‘remember’ our original self.

We don’t have to wait until we keel over and die to be reminded of this.

We just have to be quiet.

Quiet on the inside. Quiet in our mind, and let the Ultimate silence enter our hearts.

It is possible to talk and work and laugh and cry and eat and shout and dance without disconnecting from this inner grace.

In fact, it’s an absolute impossibility to be disconnected from it at any time because it’s what we are.

We simply tend to forget, that’s all.

We give our mind, personality, body, all things external, way more power and importance.

We make these first, when in truth, they’re last.

We have it all backwards.

It’s all about clearing the fog, and not identifying in the least with the mindless inner chatter and self deprecating voices in our heads. When we put our attention consistently on that which never changes, we can transcend the mundane need of the personality and all its ego driven drama, and as a result, become deeply, internally quiet which allows the eternal remembrance to surface.