when i was little the world around me was huge.
i remember walking around lake waban feeling like the trees were touching the heavens, the stretches of grass were far reaching meadows, the lake itself a vast body of cool dark water.
i remember my back yard going on forever, the top of the hill seeming like another place entirely. the blue stone patio a world of flat rock.
i have always thought they world was larger because i was smaller. you know, only a few feet high. that the world i lived in simply appeared to be larger because i was looking at it from lower down.
today in my meditation i realized suddenly that when i let go of my single minded way of living – my non meditative, non grounded, non spiritual way – my world suddenly grows larger.
i feel myself expand, i feel my energy expand, but i also feel this sense that the world is huge, spacious, awesome.
do you know that feeling? oh my it is so comforting and freeing and energizing and calming.
then i understood that the world was larger when i was a child because i was living from a more present, real, connected place. because i was just alive in this amazing universe and that was that. because my ego hadn’t yet developed it’s powerful ability to shrink my world into should’s, should not’s, have to’s. because i wasn’t protecting myself from the expansive universe i was just soaking it in. the world was larger when i was little because of where i was living from not because of my height.
so in the meditation today i allowed myself to stay with this sensation that arose. to feel it deeply. to have the full experience of this largeness of universe. then, before my meditation ended for the day i told myself, “you can get back here in an instant. now that you have been here you can return anytime. just set your intention and you can arrive in this big expansive world.”
once i was done i thought about this a little bit.
what if instead of simply trying to be silent at the time when i feel out of balance, at times when i want to yell, grumble, snip and snap at those around me (especially the littles) – what if instead of just being quiet i reminded myself, “the universe is so big.” what if instead of only being quiet i connected myself to the much much greater peace available to me?
so today i found myself saying several times, when other words wanted to come out instead, “the universe is large and expansive. the world is so big.”
the benefit of spending the day with your children is that you can discover them painting the playroom couch, start to get upset, and then say to them, “the universe is expansive,” and they just kind of roll with it. they don’t say, “what kind of a crazy person are you?” they just turn their large blue eyes up at me, “yup.”
“the world is such a big place,” i’d chant and then feel myself moving back toward the feeling – the belief in this sense.
then i wouldn’t need to yell anymore. and even if there was some discipline that had to happen it was coming from an entirely different person and place.
even now, feeling slightly overwhelmed by the final tidy up of the house and making my own dinner, doing the last push for pajama’s, stories, and sleep – even in the low of my day i can whisper to myself about how big the world is and know it is true. and in that big big world my own misplaced grievances seem to shrink to nonexistance and my heart seems to grow and spread open with love.
so, for now, it’s my mantra.
woowoo mama 