I sit on a familiar beach, the one I return to in my mind during meditation, when I need clarity, or when I want to just touch something beyond words.
It feels like my favorite beach in Todos Santos. To the right and to the left, rocky cliffs and the outcroppings hold me in. A sense of closure, of safety. Behind me, palms rise from the desert, their palms whispering in the warm wind. Ahead, the Pacific stretches out towards the sunset.
There I see myself, dressed as a Sufi dervish. A flowing robe. A wooden bead necklace around my neck. Bare feet on the sand, adorning a purple fez on my head.
And I stand up and begin to spin. Turning and turning round and round, and as I do thoughts of this world, pressures, obligations, bills, dreams, regrets fall away.
Each turn dissolves another layer of the noise as I enter a state of ecstasy. The spinning silences my mind, quieting the ego, so that what is true and what is of me may emerge.
Love, devotion, surrender melt into the universe itself, spinning and spinning until the light within my heart grows bright, clear, radiant. The energy rises, my brow begins to glow, a current of light and clarity.
I lived from the sand up into the air, the scent of the ocean all around. I’m spinning, becoming a star, set in a great, endless universe. Love, devotion, ecstasy, and the feeling of boundlessness replace everything that was small or earthbound.
As I spin in ecstasy, the eagle dissolves, the true light, true love, true oneness emerges. I merge into the vastness, captivated by its awe and endless magnificence, and then I hear a voice, so let your light shine before men.
– Todd
