Deep down, under all the words and stories, we know we are not alone here. Usually, our thinking takes up all the attention, endlessly repeating what we think we know. It doesn’t trust that the body and the heart can discern essential truths. But in a time of overwhelming uncertainty, even confirmed atheists may find themselves looking up at the sky and the trees, thinking, “Help me.” 

In times of crisis, there is often an instinct to be alone at times, to sit quietly or go walking outside, feeling our feet on the ground, space all around. The body innately seeks contact with the earth because we are part of the earth. It senses the life that is being offered to us moment by moment, literally breathing it in through every sense door. It knows innately how to open to a greater world. And given enough time, the heart also opens, feeling the inexpressible preciousness of what the body senses, revealing another kind of mind under our ordinary thinking mind, a mind that loves what it sees, and feels part of it. At such times, we stop being line people and become like children or indigenous people who haven’t forgotten the Goddess.

According to legend, the boy who would be Buddha pretended to be asleep under that long-ago tree. Once his minders went off to watch the plowing festivities, he sat up and crossed his legs in meditation posture to experience the joy of solitude, the joy of not needing to defend himself or acquire anything, the joy of being no one in particular, just open, flowing experience. As a little girl, I too was exploring how it felt to be fluid, not fixed, not separate but part of life. Remembering the tree that supported and inspired me, I realize that I was actually being helped to an essential truth. I was invited to experience being part of something wondrous and mysterious and vast. I got to feel what it is like to be free from separation, not in control of life but in harmony with it, adding my perspective and various pretend skills of spy craft and jungle knowledge and teleportation and what not to the very real feeling I had for life. I imagined what it can mean to serve, to have my life and expression come from a sense of connection. 

~Tracy Cochran

I can’t remember time before earth knowing….

inquiry for today~ what grounds you?

feet. earth. home.

Most of the time,

the universe speaks to us very quietly,

in pockets of silence,

in coincidences,

in nature,

in forgotten memories,

in the shape of clouds,

in moments of solitude,

in small tugs at your heart.

~Yumi Sakugawa