Columnists
Listening To The Land:
Part III -
Letters From Espanola
EK ONG KAAR KAUR
Gaia: the personification of the Earth, one of the Greek primordial deities. In mythology, she was the great mother of all: the primal Greek Mother Goddess; creator and giver of birth to the Earth and all the Universe. [Wikipedia]
maata dharat mahat ...
The Mother
Is the great and honored
Earth. [Guru Nanak, Japji]
My subconscious loves to work overtime. From time to time, when I sleep, I have powerful dreams that teach me something important.
Some months back, I had one of those very vivid, meaningful dreams. In the dream, I was looking at Gaia - the biosphere of the earth - from the perspective of space.
She was dressed in the most beautiful colors - greens and blues, the gold of the sun reflected off her atmosphere. In the dream, I felt her as a conscious being. Aware, vast, whole and infinitely mothering.
Without any words, she reached out to me and showed me how I was a tiny little baby on this vast planet. She personally fed me every breath that I took. She was the one placing a minuscule morsel of her life force in my mouth, in my lungs, moment after moment.
Giving me life.
It was a surprising juxtaposition.
How many years have I meditated on my breath, always seeing it as "my" breath?
But in the dream, the perspective changed. Here was a conscious, living global Being feeding me each breath that I took. It was a gift. A little drop from the immense power and prosperity of her life force. For a period of time, that breath was being fed to me so that I could be human, and have an experience.
This last year, I have struggled with some health issues that have had me contemplating the veil between life and death. We all have to cross over at some point. The older we get, the more the body reminds us that it is a temporary, not permanent, vehicle.
But the dream reconnected me to life in a new way. It showed me there is a Mothering Awareness caring for me, wanting me to live. Feeding me her energy in every moment.
Since that dream, the slok of Japji Sahib has taken on a new meaning for me.
pavan guru paani pita ...
The Wind
Is the Guru,
The Teacher,
The Guide,
And Water
Is the Father.
The Mother
Is the great and honored
Earth.
Day and Night
Are the two nurses
In whose lap
The entire world
Plays.
We think these words are just poetry. We never stop to think that from a Cosmic perspective, they describe exactly what is happening here for each soul.
We are children being mothered by the earth, being nurtured by water, the father.
The only thing we have to do with every breath is to play and to learn.
To learn to be human, to learn to love, to learn to be vast, Infinite, limitless.
To learn to appreciate the gift of life and be grateful when the breath stops, the body drops and we move on.
As the days and nights pass, we keep playing. We keep learning - evolving and growing, on a soul level.
This is the deepest experience of “listening to the land” that I have ever had. The vision of Mother Earth feeding me each breath. That vision keeps me connected to what Guru Nanak described – how the wind, the air, is there, keeping us alive to teach us how to live.
And how much love and kindness there truly is behind it.
May 26, 2014
Conversation about this article
1: Bhai Harbans Lal (Dallas, Texas, USA), May 26, 2014, 1:46 PM.
Well said. Sikhi is to live within and with the Creation.
2: Sangat Singh (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia), May 26, 2014, 7:23 PM.
"Jaagan tay supnaa bhalaa basee-ai prabh sang" [GGS:816.9] - "Even better than being awake is the dream in which I dwell with Waheguru."