I went back to walk in the cemetery, once again trying to contemplate death. I walked for 30 minutes, taking a few moments to gaze down at the custom wrist mala I made yesterday in preparation for the dark retreat—the Void-Walker’s Compass.
Yet still, I felt nothing regarding the cemetery, as if death was too abstract to contemplate. My mind would not let me confront its meaning and implications for life.
So I started to breath deeply and slowly. The following prayer came to me that I recited within myself as I let myself ease open to receptivity.
Ancestors,
Spirits of the dead,
Please grant me your wisdom,
That it may guide forward.
May I receive your loving guidance.
I then closed with:
I am but a stranger in a strange land.
Let it teach me.
I then learned how to “void-walk”...I did so for an hour. I wandered with my eyes nearly shut, only opening to greet others. I also learned how to perform a walking meditation, realizing how good walking felt when drastically slowed down to savor every step, the smooth motion of the legs and lower back muscles rocking in a leisurely cadence. I had always been walking to get somewhere, even when on a walk or hike until this very day.
I don’t know where the time went. When I opened my eyes, the trees seemed to glow with life. The world looked beautiful. I saw the blue sky, the vibrant grass, the sun and wind on my face. I saw the birds and started to identify them, the thing I found joy in doing as a young child. Grackles. Robins. ...A bluebird?
The wisdom received? Appreciate the now, find the profound in the mundane, slow down, and take it in.
The pleasure of walking? Most of them missed it dearly at the end.
A miracle happened this good Friday at the cemetery. I didn’t see just the tombstones. I saw the life within and beyond them. So the dead told me to walk more.
They don’t speak in words. They communicate in your understanding. They all arise and dissolve into your subconscious, the collective subconscious, the unseen, the Void.
“Now go and live!”
And I was sent on my way home.
P.S.
I stopped by the beach on the way and climbed onto a tall, dry, slanted rock near the end of the jetty.
And as I gave my legs a rest and stretched my lower back, I gazed down at what lied beneath my dangling feet. Glimmering stones, sparklingly water, shells and pebbles, rocks and sand and glistening seaweed. And I see Life is dancing before me, Its energy making love to my consciousness. This must be what it feels like to be alive.
Also I drafted this from my notes while still sitting on the jetty.