Gravity’s force roots us into the Earth and into ourselves, provides critical stability, and is predictable by reference to well-trodden mathematical principles. It is a central energy of our existence. Yet sometimes this grounding is too limiting, too heavy, the etymological link to one’s grave a little too on the nose. Shuffling along, barely able to lift one’s feet off the pavement, it is alluring to shed the weight, to be lifted, to face a travail with an insouciant attitude and the prevailing ethos of “pas grave.”
Clad in flowing garments of white and cream, we had climbed the adjacent mountain and now stood gobsmacked at the panoply of colors playing off the trees in the valley below. A journey real and metaphorical, the group had made its annual pilgrimage for the purposes of communion and exploration, each member arriving with personal perspectives and possibilities, insights and instincts, wildness and wounds. To be in the presence of this tribe was to move onto a higher vibration, the excitement coursing through the collective.
Sitting cross-legged at the summit, contemplating the preceding year, I was overcome. Burdens true and perceived pressed upon my shoulders, causing the rocks under my bum to dig in to the point of discomfort. I knew in these mountaintop moments that there was no more stalling the exorcism of my demons. Whereas there was darkness and heaviness in my past, maladies that I had rather successfully concealed, I was confident that there was brightness and buoyancy in my future.
I wanted, needed to be light, to be a light. I wanted, needed to traipse unburdened across the landscape, to be a beacon for those who need direction. The dual nature of light is not just its wave/particle dichotomy – to be light is to float and also to shine – and I wanted and want to embody both sides of that divide. To achieve either aspect of lightness requires not a small amount of energy, resources that can become scarce if not properly conserved, if pushed to the level of depletion. Lightness also needs its contradistinctions to be fully appreciated, to step from the shadows into the blinding flash, to spring up after being pressed down.
In that space and in that time, all was possible. Stepping across the threshold, it started with a series of deep inhalations and exhalations. As a SCUBA diver, one learns to calm and regulate breath, not only to conserve the vital air supply, but to manage buoyancy without having to repeatedly fiddle with the BCD. So it was when I began to breathe with attention and intention. Underwater, an exhale lets you sink further, an in-breath helps you ascend. Terrestrially, it is the opposite – when I let out a steady stream of air, I began to rise, to float, to lift.
A nurturer, a caretaker, a leader by temperament and training, my predisposition is to give service to those in need. Dimmed a bit by circumstance, I was lacking the lumens to be an effective lighthouse, without the wattage to cast a reassuring glow. Endeavoring to repair this state of affairs, I began by widening my visage into a smile, which illuminated my eyes, which lit up my cheeks, which arched my welcoming eyebrows. Soon, with only a modicum of concentrated effort, I was beaming my inner light to my compatriots, to the wilderness that surrounded them, to the universe that held us in its grasp.
These were subtle and yet profound shifts in attitude and outlook, results that were outsized to the exertion necessary to attain them. In purposefully seeking to rectify that which was holding me down, I had created a new paradigm, had found the ignition switch to light up my own happiness and that of my people. Bobbing happily on the surface, sparkling in the sunlight of my own creation, I felt that a new dawn, a new era was upon me, one in which I continue to live and one which I am keen to share.