I, the Sky

I am . . . human, woman, white, German/Italian, tall…Texan, American…

I am my high school mascot, my religion, my political affiliation, my favorite football team, a drinker/teetotaller, vegan/carnivore…

Extroverted introvert, dog person/cat person…

We define and define…taking large pieces and chopping them down smaller and smaller…dicing our identity like an onion…

Labels..

We’re raised with them…asked to pick teams at an early age. Convinced to compete with the “other,” we learn to define ourselves not just by those we love, but also by our enemies. Layer upon layer of complications…We are like a work of art covered with Post-It pads, our beauty and truth hidden by haphazard arrays of colored sticky paper and attitude.

Labels trap us…labels of victimhood…labels of expectations…labels of history…

             good daughter, winner, loser…

In the past few years so many of my labels have been ripped away, painfully. I was a runner until I wasn’t. I was a sister, a daughter, a leader, a helper…until death and circumstances took those away. And with each designation carved away, I felt like I was floundering until I could latch onto another purpose and identity. I’ve lived my life throwing myself into roles, becoming a caricature with obsessive chase for a title.

I recently participated in a guided meditation. Sitting in silence, I was lead through a stripping away..each label was removed….layer by layer…until there was only truth. And I imagined myself as a Rene Magritte painting of a window or door frame against a clear blue sky. I realized I was the sky…not paint or canvas or frame or images.  I am the sky…without borders or boundaries, without labels. There is no opposite, no enemy, no reason to define the undefinable.

The most profound spiritual experience of my life was a feeling of complete oneness with “all that is.” I’ve shared it in my blog years ago. I was walking my dogs in the pasture and it started to rain. I began to ponder how I was more space than matter…and how my boundaries are temporary. My molecules…my atoms.. could disperse into the air around becoming one with the dogs, the rain.. returning to “all that is.”

I think about death a lot…probably more than what one would consider healthy. I don’t like the idea of a heaven where my ego lives on. I really want to lose that burdensome identity. What if death means we just dissipate and become one with everything…returning to our true state…no label, no role.

One of the most comforting works of wisdom in my opinion is Thich Nhat Hanh’s “A cloud never dies”

When the cloud is no longer in the sky, it doesn’t  mean the cloud has died. The cloud is continued in  other forms like rain or snow or ice. So you can  recognize your cloud in her new forms. If you are very fond of a beautiful cloud and if your cloud is no longer there, you should not be sad. Your beloved cloud might have become the rain, calling on you, ‘darling, darling, don’t you see me in my new form?’ And then you will not be stuck with grief and despair.  Your beloved one continues always. Meditation helps you recognize her continued presence in new forms.  A cloud can never die. A cloud can become snow, or hail …or rain. But it is impossible for a cloud to pass from being into non-being. And that is true with your beloved one. She has not died. She is continued in many new  forms. And you can look deeply and recognize herself in you and around you. – Thich Nhat Hanh.