I look out the coffeeshop window. Sun is shining on the wet roadways and tennis court. I tell a lady I’m moving out and going traveling indefinitely. Her whole face breaks into a smile, a huge warm embrace of delight. She is so happy for me, and asks me to please enjoy it.
I realize that I am through a watershed moment, on the other side. I am yearning towards, and being pulled by the gravitational well of the leaving, rather than being pulled backwards by the staying. By the structures that used to keep me in place, supposedly safe. The inevitable reality wave that is coming towards me like a tsunami – I am now fully turned towards it and getting ready to dive in, rather than looking back towards the high ground behind me that was where I was last week.
Renunciation is a path that has been followed for thousands of years. Giving up everything. When I look forward now however I don’t feel loss or lack. I feel lucky, and appreciative, and like I am receiving a huge deluge of gifts. It feels the total opposite of giving up things. I feel like the sun is shining on me in a continuous flooding flow – I look towards it and follow the light beams that are playing over the landscape. Sunbeams and moonbeams, illuminating a floating world of flotsam and jetsam in the air, over the plains, in the forests, in the mountains, over the oceans, the dancing particles so clearly lit up by the beams of sun and the beams of moon.
I play and run following them. This is the landscape I now see as I stand facing the tsunami wave; it is so close that I can see through the clear wall of water about to crash, the clear high wall I am now running towards and about to dive into. A few days ago I could feel no joy or magic. I felt cut off. That is because I was looking back at the high ground behind me that I was walking away from. No wonder I could not see through the wave to the magical landscape on the other side.
