Never Underestimate the Power of Dawn

I went away to Cuba to restore my body and soul, for a week, this winter, when I couldn't be without light and all its warmth and growth any longer. My hope was to wake up early, walk everywhere, swim in the ocean, and return to my yoga mat...

I arrived at night so I couldn't see much of the outdoors, I was exhausted, and feeling a little fragile being on my own and feeling unwell. I went to bed and this is what woke me up on my first morning!

I can't describe how restorative it was to wake up with the sunrise pouring red gold light into my eyes: I felt six years old, all my malaise slipped off me slowly over the next three days, and I spend every morning doing yoga on my balcony. Miraculously, with the assistance of the early morning sun, I was able to regain my practice in ways I had almost given up hope for. It took time, and my stiff body was sore at first, but there was healing going on on so many levels, and the salt ocean in the afternoons completed whatever the morning sun had begun.

Every day, outside, coffee at dawn, yoga in the morning sun for a few hours, walking barefoot almost everywhere, especially on the soft sand, and leaves, and swimming all afternoon in the warm turquoise blue ocean. This was so much more than exercise - it was colour therapy, light therapy, immersion in air and water and salt (earth) and fire - and by the fourth day I felt like a version of myself I had almost forgotten. I was literally a new person, in the way that we are new people when our cells completely renew themselves or a new state of mind changes everything. In this case it was some of both.

A few more facts. Right. It's true that my room overlooked a vacant lot with two dumpsters, and come construction materials, and that I'd hear the staff at the nearby Iberostar arriving for work in the kitchens at 6am, because my room was positioned at the edge of my resort, overlooking the back end buildings (at a distance) of the one next door...but who cares about that?! My balcony was very private, so no interruptions of my sun/yoga morning sessions, and being on the third floor I had a view of sea beyond the windbreak of trees which blocked the view from lower rooms. Not to mention the fitness opportunity of multiple stair climbs each day, which overwhelmed me initially, and became a great part of my workout by the time I left (which was about 6 weeks too soon)!

I once read, in a book about spontaneous healing, of a man in Japan who had kidney cancer. He went out at dawn and experienced a feeling of the sun piercing through him, healing and restoring him, and also felt it in his consciousness...the story cited his clinical remission following this. Who knows what is possible? I have always felt something profound in the presence of sunlight - physical, emotional, and spiritual - which I find hard to put into words. I have always remembered this story though, because it speaks to me on an experiential level. Like the energy work I've encountered. Like the indescribable and profound effects of prayer and meditation. These are more powerful forces than we are and I am grateful that I am able to sense and benefit from them to the extent of my awareness.

A Walk in Tall Corn

I took a walk in the tall cornfield, because I like to push the edges of things: rules, boundaries, knowledge. I know that you are not supposed to walk in a cornfield because you can become disoriented and lost. I wanted to know where the edge is between knowing where you are and losing yourself. It was a warm, late summer afternoon, and the land literally exudes beauty and joy at that time of day. One step at a time I ventured in slowly, alone, looking behind me from time to time, to see if I still knew where I was, and how to return... where would the edge be? 

There was light above me, shadows against the light, light below me on the earth floor, also shadows. Behind and in front, all the shades of green and gold you can imagine. I think that the edge is found at the step when you can no longer see a marker of your way back, but you remember what the step before that looked like. There's a slight gap, a leap of faith, as you step back into sensory knowing, from just (for a moment) only believing you know where you are. Beyond that I have not gone yet.

But going to the edge of knowing, then one more step, and returning, that was something I remembered three weeks later, as I sat with my father on the last night of August, as he disappeared into the tall corn of many past summers, and did not return. Now I have a foot always over that edge into not knowing but believing: his spirit has gone far beyond the edge of knowing the way back, far beyond the edge of belief, beyond edges of any kind. The corn is gone, even the land has changed, the only markers left are forming an edge in my consciousness between knowing and believing...