Mystical Awakening

By Rev. Ellen Dionna, MSW, LCSW

I woke at 2:01 this morning, thinking it must be near dawn, only to find it was still the middle of the night.  I thought of poet-philosopher David Whyte and his encouraging openness to internal conversations of spirit at that time—the thin hours before dawn when one’s heart is vulnerable and darkness has its own light.

I had set my intuitive clock for 6:00 a.m. when I had to awaken for a breakfast meeting, and though I knew I wanted to be rested for that, I didn’t succumb to worries and fears, to fighting the wakefulness.  Instead I opened to it more fully, listening deeply for what might want to arise from wisdom beyond my ken, attuned to molecular stirrings.

A favorite quote from Indian poet-philosopher Rabindranath Tagore floated to the surface:  “Let your life lightly dance on the edges of time, like dew on the tip of a leaf.”

I let my body feel the words, silently resonate, hum with the felt sensing of the imagery.  I, who am not always embracing the light dance, who often plod with duty and obligation, or stomp with frustration.  I breathed into the words, the image glowing with new clarity.  A purple leaf slightly curved with the weight of the dewdrop.  The dewdrop resting at its serrated, pointy tip—balanced, neither clinging to the leaf nor anticipating its slide from its perch.  A dewdrop, shimmering with light, reflecting the world, fully present, and perhaps most exquisitely, surrendering in simplicity.  Surrendering to what is.

It’s nearly noon as I write this.  My breakfast meeting was full of rich connection and delight—in part because I held that dewdrop image—and myself—lightly.  In the lightness, vastness—the vastness of my unknowing and my vulnerability.  No clinging, no forcing, no exciting the tempo of divine wisdom.  Thus I came away inspired, flushed with creativity, quietly awakened.