The Thing Itself

Sometimes the most amazing thing about an experience isn’t the thing itself, it’s the print that it leaves on the body and on the mind.

I have a lot to say about TEDx Midatlantic. It was an intense and beautiful day, the speakers were wonderful and inspiring, and the environment -a day with over five hundred thoughtful people committed to sharing ideas- left me with a creative buzz that over twenty-four hours later is just starting to kick in.

I’m still a little overloaded, but here are two experiences that are sticking with me.

1. Serendipity has long been a theme for me -it’s how I know things are going right,- and I think that the majority of the presenters mentioned serendipity in their stories. I am convinced that it is not a mysterious force that throws fortunate circumstances our way, but a state of mind. Serendipity happens when we’re clear and tuned into the world, and receptive to everything before us.

2. This had nothing to do with any of the speakers: During the first session, each time there was a break, my mind started to run off. I had gotten less than two hours of sleep, thanks to an ersatz decaf latte the evening before, and my mind was everywhere. I was tired, wired, awkward, overwhelmed, disappointed because I wasn’t as sharp as I would have liked, ecstatic, trying to plan my next conversations, and generally a little bonkers. Then I noticed that my heart was warm – kind of like reiki, only a much bigger space than what would be under my own hands. In a flash, I realized that THIS is exactly what I’m talking about every time I teach, this is the body telling me what I need to know about everything around me at that moment, and everything around me at that moment was fine. For the rest of the day, even though I was kind of weird and wired, I was also committed to tuning out the monkeymind bullshit and trusting that feeling. So, I get it now, I really get it, how tuning into the body isn’t just about reading the messages of illness, injury, and stress. It’s about the good stuff.

I spent a while today waiting for my TED buzz to kick in and it did, but I was a little too tired tonight to do any real writing, Still, I feel like I’m on the verge of something big. I’ve been feeling that way about a lot of things lately – coincidence,  synchronicity and serendipity are everywhere, so I know I’m on the right track. Since I was tired, for no good reason I decided to go downstairs and stare at the bookshelf. I was eying all of the books on the shelf that I haven’t read, and pulled down one that I bought seven or eight years ago. This is the quote on the first page:

I have faith in all those things that are not yet said.
I want to set free my most holy feelings.
What no one has dared to want
will be for me impossible to refuse.
-Ranier Maria Rilke

Life is good.