Sunday, July 30, 2017

Under the New Moon

Soon after the video starts, he walks to the back of the classroom and sits next to me. He grabs my hand, turns it palm up, and begins rhythmically slapping his palm into mine. I don't know how much time passes, but it isn't until my hand begins to go numb that I finally ask him what he's doing. Feels like TV static, he says, not taking his eyes from the projector screen. You mean it tingles, I ask. No, feels like TV static, he says again, eyes still on the video, slapping his palm into mine. A strange sensation creeps over me, an indescribable sense that we've been here before, only now out of context.


Not too many days later he grabs my hand in the hallway and squeezes tight. If they ever make you cry, he nods toward my classroom, tell me and it won't happen againBaa na rok dok mai, I say stringing together the only Thai words I know. That makes no sense, he tells me. Of course it doesn't--the nuances of poetry lost to a 10-year-old.

My little guru, who always seems to know how I'm feeling and what I'm thinking--how many times our lives have intertwined, I don't know, but I'm learning that it doesn't matter. When souls collide multiple times, these agreements made in the in-between, it's something you simply know. These points of glowing light in all the darkness leading me down paths where magic blooms and miracles thrive.


Under the new moon darkness, candles lit, the seven of us sit in a small circle around the alter. We pull Goddess oracle cards and set our intentions for the month. We sit in meditation and connect with those things of the earth and not of the earth. All of us have the power to manifest, to create worlds, to rise beyond the invisible and dark and pointless constructs the world seems to have blinded us with--pushing us around aimlessly in the dark.


We have the power to see and tell our stories in any way we choose. If you were to look back on your life, what would you highlight? How would you tell your story? What if we told ourselves there's no such thing as luck or right or wrong choices or fortunate or unfortunate circumstances? What if all we could see were the miracles and magic and all those souls guiding us and teaching us? How would your story change?


Cada and I stomp up the side of the mountain in the mud and pouring rain. A monk runs by us barefoot and drenched. Once we reach the monastery the sky clears and we look over the city as the sunsets and a cool darkness lifts from the jungle surrounding us. Quiet, except for the sound of running water and the whispers of that voice I know all too well. And I know. The only story I will ever tell is how all the magic in the Universe conspired to get me here.


How would your story change through the lens of magic? How would your world open up and change if you began to see it this way?