As I was getting dressed for my morning workout, a drop of water had appeared out of nowhere, landed on my leg and continued its downward journey. I looked around me perplexed at where the fuck this drop came from, I heard the voice quite clear in my consciousness. “It’s the tear of the Buddha” Very strange. I don’t know why that came to me. I thought briefly about my recent trip to a Buddhist monastery in Woodstock, NY and the peace I felt while I was there.
I wasn’t going to go on my morning jog for a number of reasons. One being that it was starting to rain and my asthma had been acting up. Somehow, I knew I had to go anyway. Within the span of twenty four hours, my heart had been cracked open. Perhaps it was the outpouring of love I received from everyone on my birthday. I think it was more so due to an unexpected gift from a friend in the early morning hours of my birthday. A gift that was like a feather which had gently landed on top of the brick wall I had built around my heart. With the landing of that feather, the entire wall has collapsed. A myriad of emotions are going through me at this moment. My heart is exposed. My safety net gone. This wall is how I have survived the last three years. Emotions totally getting in the way of my growth. I had to shut them down and shut them down I did. During this time my introverted self took refuge as the embodiment of the Major Arcana tarot card, The Hermit.
I tore out of the house at a full jog, thinking how I can put this wall back into place. I quickly reached the path at the bottom of the mountain. Traversing the side of it at a full jog, I surprised myself that I was still jogging UP the mountain at a full tear. My breath was in time with the rhythm of my feet along the muddy path. Rain had started and it had created a beautiful backdrop drone of nature in its finest. Pound, pound pound go my feet, through puddles, over poison ivy, startling birds and a baby chipmunk along my way. Nothing could stop me, until this one thing did stop me dead in my tracks.
On the path was a rock in the perfect shape of a heart. It was perfect in its imperfection. It had a scar running down the middle of it, but the heart had stood strong, right there in the middle of the path. How many people had trampled over this heart? It still stood as strong as ever. Then it all became so clear. That earlier, unexplained drop of water on my leg was a Buddha Tear. Perhaps one doesn’t have to shut down the emotions to achieve spiritual enlightenment.
I turned around and headed back feeling totally numb and exposed. I tried to poo poo away the significance of the message, telling myself it was all my imagination. Then I look down again and on the path was a leaf in the perfect shape of a heart. Third one’s a charm. I walked down the mountain with a completely different thought process from where I was when I started up the mountain. How can I show up in life with my heart vulnerable without the wall? How can I be the rock, which has not collapsed with the weight of being walked upon, but has gotten only shiner with each footstep upon it? I don’t know the answers to these questions. Perhaps showing up in a constant state of “I don’t know” allows the movement of universal direction to flow more clearly.
Jacqueline Glen
www.gaiastar1212.com
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