High on Happiness

Posts Tagged ‘Perfection’

Even here, on this plane where confusion runs rampant, or despite it, the Great Yes unfolds itself in perfection.   Sometimes it is easier to see.  Sometimes it appears before our eyes as portraits of paradise.

But always, beneath our stories and partial perceptions, it is here.

It’s the song of silence that rests between sounds and the vast, ineffable ground from which all matter rises.  It rides on our laughter and folds itself within our tears.  It emerges as stars and hope.  It shines in the face of each trusting child.

It pours like an endless waterfall into our parched hearts whispering its eternal song:  Be at peace, my children; you are loved.

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So swiftly they roll, these kaleidoscopic days, their hues tumbling past, their light and shadows dancing.

The moments sing to me, each chord so rich that I want it to echo inside me forever.

Perhaps it does.  Perhaps this beauty sinks indelibly into the stuff of which I’m made, its texture and shade coloring  my soul, following me into eternity.

But here, even though I cry out, “Stay! Stay!” these momentary treasures vanish in the blink of an eye, wondrously transforming into still more gold.

And all I can do is stand and breathe it in, enraptured by its perfection.

Now and then, an hour drifts past, rare in its perfection.  Thought dissolves in its beauty and peace. The line between you and not-you falls away.

Now you are the sky and the high wisps of cloud.  You are the blades of grass and the ten thousand leaves.   You are the rocks and pebbles in the stream and the stream itself.

The shadows and the light within you cast themselves across the calm waters.  The crooked and the straight, the rough and the smooth of you shine back from them and from their shores.

The distant laughter of children at play, the hum of insects, the coursing of your blood, and the rhythm of your heart all merge into a single song.

The soft air breathes itself through you until you, too, dissolve completely.  And all that’s left is the knowing that there is no outside.

The Maker’s stamp is everywhere, on everything in Creation. Nothing’s overlooked, nothing is absent.  The whole is a gallery of unimaginable gems, and every facet’s carved to perfection.

Above, the dazzling galaxies spin, worlds within worlds, sweeping outward into infinity.

Below, tiny flowers unfold, each one a masterpiece and different from all others.  Nothing is duplicated.

Every detail is original and unique, and each contains and conforms to the harmonies of the Great Song with mathematical precision.

And we who are focused through living bodies walk amidst it, and breathe it into ourselves.  And it plays its melodies within our hearts and minds, even when we are deaf to it.  And all the details of our lives,  and even the stories we spin to make sense of them, contain and conform to it, too, and share in its perfection.

The sun sails over the hilltops, wide awake.  I watch it float like a giant balloon over the roof of the vine-covered shed, spilling its lemon light in little puddles on the dewy grass.

Higher it sails, over the rooftop of the house.  Its rays glide across the red geranium on the painted deck and tickle the potted baby tomatoes that peek out from behind their lacy leaves .  They blush in its light, showing their first hints of orange.

I’m still in my pajamas, but the cardinal is whistling a come-hither song from the spruce and the fragrance of fresh coffee is drifting up the stairs to my room.  I follow its scent and pour some into a mug.  I walk barefoot with it across the wet grass to the garden just as the sun’s light illuminates the lilies.  A crescendo of birdsong rises.

Sipping my coffee as I watch everything wake to the light, I think I must still be dreaming.  How else could I be so lucky to walk amidst such perfection?

Exhaling, the Great Yes sends its dreams into the worlds.  They ride through the dimensions, each one finding its place, its season, and there they unfold.

From within the fields of time, what was, what is and what will be appear as separate things. Their unity is hidden.

The dreamers who live out the dreams experience their perfection as potential.  But they are perfect nonetheless, having sprung from the imagination of the Great Yes itself and wearing its stamp.  And their experiencing is perfect, too, regardless of the labels they make up from within their illusions.

Then the Great Yes inhales, and all its dreams return to it colored with the knowledge and understanding of what it was like to be in the fields of time.  And the heart of the Great Yes embraces them and glows with love, and joy and compassion, and it exhales, sending forth its dreams.

The afternoon was warm and still as I crossed the newly mown field, its stubble crunching beneath my boots.  Overhead, thick clouds floated lazily across the sky, casting long, sweeping shadows across the landscape.

I had been walking for ten or fifteen minutes, studying November’s neutral palette and the patterns of frost-shocked weeds, when the music of the carillon from the church in the village rolled softly across the field.

As I paused to listen, an enormous wave of gentle joy engulfed me.  Suddenly I was wholly awake and alive, my senses tingling with the vibrancy of the colors, the dance of the light, the stillness of the dry air, the sound of the distant bells.

Every detail of the scene around was bathed with an aura of perfection.  The grandeur of the russet oak at the field’s edge took my breath away.

Such a feeling of elation!  I was intoxicated with being alive in the midst of an enchanted world.

Joy is a short-lived feeling.  Like fireworks, it bursts across your sky, hangs for one timeless moment, and then gently fades away.  But its ecstasy lingers on and you remember the moment for a long, long while.

As the last sounds of the carillon faded away, I walked through the stand of trees to the creek.  The moss on the tree bark looked like jade, and overhead I saw a hawk circling in the sky.

At first, when I focused closely on the fuzzy little globes that decorated the bushes along the woodland path, I was surprised to see that they were, in fact, a cluster of tiny flowers.  “How pretty!” I thought.  They reminded me of the sequined Christmas bulbs my mother had crafted one year when I was a child.

But I wasn’t the only one who found them attractive.  As I looked more closely, I saw that they had drawn a whole battalion of tiny black bugs who were feasting on their nectar.

“Nothing’s perfect!” I laughed, and took their photo anyway.

The bug-laden flowers reminded me of a story I once heard about a certain band of eastern monks who always left one flaw in their otherwise meticulous works of art to reflect the imperfections that dot everything in the natural world.

“How wise of them!” I thought, “And how accepting!”  Standing as we do, just outside of Eden, one world removed from the gardens where perfection shows its face, we tend to rail against the flaws we perceive in our reality.  Something in us longs for perfection.  Our sense of it is so clear.  We war against ourselves for not meeting its standards. We punish others whose flaws seem even larger and darker than our own.  And so we create a downward spiral of darkness, feeding it with our anguish and blame.

The wise monks, on the other hand, simply look on the imperfections as a natural phenomenon, accepting them as an inevitable part of life’s expression in a material world.

Any true artist will tell you that their works always fall short of expressing their ideals.  What’s flawless in the realm of thought picks up debris in its translation to the physical plane.  The best we can do is to do the best we can, and then to celebrate how much we create that is good.

When we focus on what’s wrong or lacking or incomplete, our vision narrows, and our spirits contract.  We get locked into an imprisoning darkness of criticism, derision, helplessness and pain.  But when we focus on the goodness in things, we’re free to ask how we can make it even better.  Our creativity is unleashed, we reach for higher possibilities.  And thus we grow, and Eden seems not so very far away.

The front desk called.  “Would you please unlock the playground?” Doris asked.  “The landscapers are here.”  I always love getting that call.  It gives me a chance to escape into the outdoors for a few minutes to breathe fresh air and hear the birds.

I had spotted the shrubbery behind the locked gate as I walked past it when I arrived for the day.  A row of waist-high bushes were sporting hundreds of globes of white blossoms that looked like fat popcorn balls.

I grabbed my camera from my purse as I headed out the door.  This was a chance to get my daily photo; it would be raining by the time I left for the day.

As I approached the bushes I saw that the blooms were a miniature hydrangea of some sort.  My eyes quickly swept across the panorama, waiting for just the right groupings of flowers and leaves to call me.  And when they did, I focused in close.

Suddenly I was engulfed in visions of delicate beauty and subtle hues.  “Just look at these! Look at these!” I said to myself as I composed my shots.  Each globe was actually a small bouquet, fit for the hand of a bride.  “How lovely!”

As much as I enjoy framing landscapes in my camera’s viewfinder, the close-in views move me the most.  Seeing the artistry in the smallest details, the harmony and balance and grace of the lines, the delicacy of petals, awes me.  Deep in the woods, or here, in a locked playground, where no one may ever see them or notice, are these masterpieces of living art.

They unfold in beauty regardless, following the dictates of grand cosmic laws that, in their perfection, render beauty in everything they bring into being.  Whether we see or notice it or not.

I quickly snap half a dozen shots and turn away.  My duties call.  But I am renewed now.  And when I walk into the clinic’s lobby all the faces I see are touching and beautiful.