Hearts of Light: Remembering A Teaching

I was walking in Mercer County Park this morning, and contemplating loss. After losing my spiritual teacher, David LaChapelle (in body anyway) to a battle with cancer, I have been watching the teaching aspects of grief. Today, these words came to me while walking: Life's griefs and struggles break our heart open again and again, so that eventually, the heart no longer can contain the light we are made of -- the light streams right through.

From a non-dual perspective, facing our pain is to also face the beauty. For there is no separation between these seemingly opposing aspects of experience. And the beauty, just like the pain, is astounding. In one of his emails to his students during his illness, my teacher said, "In the end, it's all about surrender." Surrender to what is before us: whether it be pain or pleasure or something in between.

Walking in the woods today, remembering my teacher, the woods never looked so beautiful. I remembered how he told me once to stand in one place, then turn, more slowly than I thought possible, in a full circle. While I was turning, he told me to take in everything in my surroundings. I was in Silverton, Colorado, visiting him at his home. I took in the grass, the little variations of grasses, the mountain air, the distant mountains, his modest wooden home, the gazebo where he led his students in chant and meditation. As I turned, my heart burst with the fullness of all that I saw. It was so painfully bright, because I was taking it all in --really paying attention, with my heart, to all that life was providing at that very moment. The woods today were like that. Bright green shrubs against the dark trunks; woody roots against soft sand, the smell of moss and ferns.

I have lost someone so dear, I can hardly bear it. And yet, looking around, I can see that he is close as breath. Because there is no separation. There is only being here, in vast stream of light we can only begin to touch with our awareness.

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An exercise: Stop what you are doing, and take a deep breath. Listen to the sound of your breathing, a function that happens all on its own, without having to will it. Consider all of the functions of the body that happen spontaneously, without effort on your part. Consider all of the ways in which it is a miracle that you are appearing just now, where you are, in this place and time. Greet the person you see next with this kind of awareness.