The Shift.....

As children we were quite often given the puzzle wherein there was this picture of a sardarji. And we were prompted to find the girl in the picture. I remember the exquisite thrill when the pretty young thing appeared suddenly in the picture for us for the first time.

It was the first 'Eureka!' moment truly coming alive in our lives.

It is something to experience rather than learn.

Once it happens you look forward to other such experiences. It becomes an eager wait for us till the next such moment arrives.

And then, sometimes, in the day to day existence for survival we lose our ability to feel...

Alive Again...


Earlier my journeys into myself
Confused, uncaring, accepting,
Directionless.


Fragments of an earlier time
Of living within and yet sharing without;
A period aeons past in memory
Natural,
Flowing into a sea of tranquility:
Alive, joyous, creative;
And then something happened;
Not suddenly, 
But gradually over the years......
Why?


The acceptance of the realization:
Perhaps,
It was just a part of growing up,
Inevitable, natural, not to be undone.


          *               *               *


Now
In these moments of heightened awareness
As I journey into myself,
Walking up the sloping hill
Reaching the peak
To see the mist snuggled cosily 
In the folds of the valley below,
I become the first beam of sunlight
Gently warming it awake.
And it wakes with a flurry
Rising up into the lightening sky.


Far below I can see the silver thread
Of an undulating stream.
A part of me not known before,
Or perhaps lost in memory
And reborn today.


And the cave still there as before:
Dark, foetid, fearful.
Fear not of the graveyards
Or the terrifying beings of a child's imagination
But fear of doing, of being,
Of inadequacies, of doubts and uncertainties,
Imprisoned within those moments of
"What could be and what could have been."


I am yet unable to keep my knees from trembling
When I came face to face with these fears;
Yet
I also know
That soon I will speak the words:


"I say and so I will."


In that moment 
I will touch, feel, smell, see and hear them,
And one by one they will flow within me
And become mine
In completion.


No longer fears -
Rather inadequacies become adequate
And doubts dissolved 
As if never there.


For within one
Nothing dies.
Moments once lived, never change;
They become eternal as they are.


Only perceptions change;
Different facets of the same truth.