Dove has many meanings, one being presence of Eternal Spirit. As you look back on your life, imagine Dove, or Eternal Spirit, flying through the more challenging experiences. Does your remembrance of a particular event soften or change?
There may come a time in your journey, when you glimpse the sacredness of everything, the preciousness of a lesson learned, forgiving someone you once thought was unforgivable or being forgiven when you did not deserve to be. It might be something as simple as Indian rice grass blowing in a breeze. In that moment, before returning to duality, you understand what it is to be one with what previously was other. That is a mystical encounter.
You ask, “Wasn’t it the wind that caused the grass to move?”
Presence answers, “It was I blowing through the grass, and also your life.”
Would it make a difference if you believed that every upset, whether by your doing or another’s, was put in your path to bring you to wholeness? Or if you discovered that each circumstance, whether pain-filled or joyous, was given to you in the spirit of love?
When we live from Brother Lawrence’s intentionally of practicing the presence of God (Love), Life opens to us in generous ways. Loneliness is not so lonely, but rather an opportunity to find unexpected community. You are never alone. Eternal Spirit may come embodied in a like-minded group, an unlikely person, a cloud, a tree or a dove. And all for the sole purpose of awakening Presence in us.
When you tire of fixing internal problems with external solutions, imagine Dove there with you. When you’ve exhausted lifelong regrets, allow Eternal Spirit to offer mercy. And when saving face seems impossible, let Presence transform troubled thoughts into peace-filled humility.
Presence may come as a single relationship or a host. One tradition speaks of a cloud of witnesses cheering us on. Another reminds us that ancestors on the blue road, are here guiding us.
Why not be present to your life experiences? Within them lives Presence, wholeness and love.
Making Spirit Flesh*
In what ways are you bringing chaos, frustration or remorse into your life? How can you be more attentive to Presence?