~ Why I Have Lived in India All These Years
Why I have lived in India all these years, or half of it, is the afternoons.
The afternoon light this autumn in Catalonia has started acting like the afternoon light in India does all year. Breathtaking, the light saturates every object. It brings out the heart-stopping character in whatever it touches, without idealizing anything. It makes everything beloved. The light reveals and makes delicious, without leaving anything out. Even shadows are enriched.
This is not only a metaphor.
It is not clear--does the light eat the rock or the rock eat the light? Or does my eye feed on the light-filled rock, the rock-filled light?
What does the light do--does it reveal itself, or unveil the objects? Or is it how the space around everything is alive with exchange? There is a boundlessness--is it within each thing; in the space around the things?
But one thing is clear: afternoon seems to last forever--trees are moving in the breeze, people are walking on cement or among olives, but time has stopped. The mind is quiet; thinking is without breath.
Our felt-knowing is allowed to breathe. We can feel and hear the line of the birds' flight before we see it or name it. We can more easily feel the underground belly-knowing of beauty; our knowing as organism, as visitor, as host. As organism, we can feel, in belly or heart of skin, what is important and nourishing even if it does not makes sense. And also even if it does. We can feel the non-mental tectonic shifts, called insight, which no one can honestly put words to.
As visitors, we can flow with change, we can leave behind what is gone and be blank as light for what is now. Like light, we can meet fully, and be met.
As hosts, we can welcome it all and feel friendly. Already all the world is us, eats us, is our food, in this light.