The digital world is so alluring. It can leave us breathless, invoke love and even bring us to ourselves when it moves us to tears. But still it is not real when our emotions tell us it is real. We feel it is interacting with us. Our emotions tell us it is. But it is not the same as interacting with nature herself.
Interacting with “something” that interacts back – therein lies the real spirituality. A relationship and a connection that is reciprocal. Be it lovers in the flesh, God, a child, a guru, an animal, Nature herself.
And now I am going to risk it all. I am a closet mystic trained well in the structure of scientific experiments, which I have gradually abandoned as the heralder of truth.
I was obsessed with getting to the eclipse and did not know why. We suffered endless confinement driving. The traffic was so congested that distances the GPS promised were true before the mad rush, were two and three times longer.
But I got there and discovered that a Russian friend of mine had texted me an old “Russian wives’ tale” – a procedure that one must do during totality. Here it is for anyone to use during the next eclipse:
When the Sun is eclipsed (and actually any time for 3 days afterwards) take a favorite piece of jewelry, one you will wear often, and placing it in your left open palm, say so that your breath touches the item: "Universe, I am asking you to heal me (your name) of (here you many indicate any health issue or tendency you would like to get rid of). This is my birthright. I have the right to be happy. So be it." And then add thank you or Amen.
Either it was doing this procedure or the eclipse itself, but I have felt a shift in myself that is lasting. I am home, my inner home. I am peace and stillness. And suddenly I do not want to be in that digital world of Netflix, internet correspondence, and internet searches on google scholar. I crave sitting out in nature and am doing just that.
What interacted with me? Usually it’s animals, trees, plants. This time it was the Moon and the Sun.