Panspermia

I woke as the thousand petaled lotus was speaking, just above my head. It said: 

You think that you 'should' know things that you do not know. You think that 'they' should know things they do not know. All of this suffering comes from thinking you should know things before you know them - and from the belief that knowing these things is important.

I wrote it down (because, paradoxically, it seemed important) and I moved into my day.

And the day after that.

And the next day.

And all the while, that early morning message descended

into my mind,

into my heart,

into my life.

Receiving a message is one thing. And writing it down is the next thing. And living with it is another thing entirely.

Because letting something like this drop into your life - when you don't have to - is terrifying.

At least it can be,
if you know the potential
these messages carry

the way they drop in
and turn everything
- all the stories
and the issues
and the projects
and the deadlines,
which hold the world together
- inside out,

the way that they untangle
the web of interstellar fascia,
which keeps everything sorted and separate,
everything in its place
and time.

If you know what you're getting into,
if you know that letting this in means that
everything
(including you)
will be pulled out of
the piles,
and the file folders,
pulled from the bookshelves
and the braids of really important things
you've so carefully made...

well, then, it takes some time.

At least it does for me.

These messages,
light filtered through murky green pond water,
flakes of crystal, chipped from the egg of purposes, which
I will never be wide or deep enough to understand,
take time to understand.
To integrate.

Panspermia,
dust of stars, each speck a seed, impregnated with a possible world.
So important
and yet, with every moment an infinity,
blowing in,
blowing out,
blowing by,
it's all just dream smoke;

Spider silk woven in the middle of the night,
which, when you open the door and walk into your life,
is gone. Another thread in the great weaving,
stuck to the sleeve of your jacket.

In the moment between receiving these messages and writing them down,
there's so much to do:

place the feet on the floor and
walk through the kitchen and
stand at the mirror,
washing and brushing,
without meeting your own eyes.

And the boiling of the water; and
the measuring of tea leaves, and
the brewing and the sipping of the cup.

It's a wonder the messages, if that is what they are,
ever land, ever last.

A wonder that we write them down.
We  don't have to.
This isn't dictation - and they aren't demands;
no more than rain is a demand that we drink
or air a demand that we inhale.

And yet, it all keeps coming:
Star dust, raindrops,
and sunbeams slicing through the window of the bedroom.

It all keeps coming
so fast so much so easily
that I sometimes wonder.
It's just a coincidence, isn't it?
- this thread crossing over that one,
this encounter at the coffee shop,
the jewel-clear tone that makes me wake up
or look up,
and listen.

Just a coincidence
the way the message arrives just when you were asking the question.
the way the voice on the radio is speaking directly to you.

We wait a lifetime -
to feel to open to experience this sort of thing
and here it is
every moment of every day;
we push open the door and here is the world
and this breath, offering itself.

It's up to us what we are going to do about that.

I understand now.
Experiencing even this is on me
- it's on us.

We can let it in -
let the early-morning messages mean something,
let the rain collect in our cup;

we can let the day
and the breath
come closer -

or not.

The message doesn't care
one way or the other; it just arrives
and keeps arriving
a teeming effervescent surge of color and shape and sound,
a dense, everything-all-at-once meta-data we will never EVER be able to contain in the single cup serving of one lifetime.

There is blessing in that, and freedom.
We are forced by the sheer volume of grace to miss most of it -
most of the sunrises, nearly every drop of rain,
these messages, descending,
and every particle a speck of star dust,
inhaled and exhaled on a steady stream of breath.