I do a meditation focused on opening my heart chakra. I'm supposed to sit, breathe, drop down into my heart and feel love. I am not good at sitting. And being made to focus on my breathing sometimes makes me short of breath. My mind wanders. Do they mean my actual heart? Am I to picture the organ? No, of course not. I am to imagine love and locate that in the vicinity of the organ. I'm sidetracked, questioning what love is supposed to feel like. Is it a habit of familiarity? Fondness? I don't feel warm and fuzzy. Have I ever been loved? Do I know how to love? I work hard to emote. To conjure what love is supposed to feel like. Instead, I feel like a student during a pop quiz. Certainly, I don't know anything about love.
But then I go hiking. Through all seasons this is a place I come to; a living breathing shelter that embraces me. And isn't embrace love's address?
Ah, yes. This is love: to be embraced by birdsong and cricketsong, wind and blue sky. Embraced by vervaine, chickory,wild petuaina, milkweed, partrige pea, broom snakeweed, coneflower. By syamcore and oak and shag bark. Rabbit and dragonfly and deer. Embraced by a place that has existed beyond my imagination, that will exist in a different iteration beyond my imagination. All of this life going on and on and on.
Here, my heart opens, my breath deepens.
I know what it is to be deeply deeply loved by Earth.
This beyond-feeling knowing, I carry within me.