Cosmic Events Move the Soul

A Milky Way Meditation

I lost myself in awe of The Solar Eclipse this week. As the Sun disappears, and shimmering crescents appear on the ground from rogue sunbeams filtering through the trees, I can’t look away. Eclipses have always been an event of huge magnitude for me. They keep everything in perspective. I remember laying on lounge chairs with my daughter in our LaGrange, Il. backyard, wearing our solar glasses. Wish I had a picture! One eclipse found me at a seminar in California. Everything, everyone stops, as pinhole viewers, reflecting mirrors on cardboard, and solar glasses grab our attention. This is a celestial moment in time, as we little ones seek to participate in any way possible. The Eclipse draws us in, just as it has drawn our ancestors for thousands of years. The Earth works, the scrolls, the cave art, all record the magnificent phenomena of the past, from asteroids to eclipses, to mark the time when men stood still and paid attention.  Star connections are rooted deep in our genes, body cycles, and emotions.

My Grandmother told me of a time in the early 1900’s when she saw the sun spin and hurl toward the Earth, emitting radiant colors and lights. Then the Earth clouded over, as all became shrouded in darkness. The world grew quiet and still in the hush of the mystery. Talk was of the Virgin Mary, the end times, and secret prophecies given to saints. Revelations were coming of a new dawn. Religious prophecies ran rampant as the Miracle of the Sun spread around the world. She never forgot this whole body emotional experience that she had as a young women in Chicago.

Equal in magnificence to the Sun’s phenomena, is the vast Milky Way. I’ll never forget a summer night in Flagstaff, when we were enveloped by the Milky Way. Up in the mountains, the air is different, very still, clear, and sacred. We barely spoke above a whisper. It was easy to let go and just feel swallowed up in the inky darkness covered with billions of stars flowing endlessly in a path across the Heavens. All the ancient lights of long ago, finally made their way to us in the splendor of an arch, a white bridge, the Sak Bih ‘White Road’ of the Maya, the Road of Awe. When the Great Lord Pakal died, a carved sarcophagus shows him falling down the Milky Way into the Southern Horizon. It was said ‘he entered the road’, the Great White Road that connects the Earth to the Heavens. The Milky Way is also called the Wakah-Chan, the Great World Tree in the Mayan Cosmos.

“When you are struggling with just about anything, look up. Just ponder the night sky for a minute and realize that we’re all on the same planet at the same time. Then you start looking at the stars, and you realize that the light hitting your eye is ancient, some of the stars…no longer exist by the time that the light gets to you. Just mulling the bare-naked facts of the cosmos is enough to thrill me, awe me, freak me out, and kind of put all my neurotic anxieties in their proper place. ” Stargazing as Therapy, BJ Miller, in the Tim Ferris book ‘Tools of the Titans‘.

So find a dark clear sky somewhere, and settle down for awhile to gaze up at the vast, unending, mystical sky, and contemplate your place in the Universe. Do this in your minds eye when the world gets messy. See if it puts things in perspective for you, as being one small spark of life, thoughts, and emotions, in the Great Scheme of Life. Connect to the Ancestors, and as one humanity, allow yourself to experience the Miraculous. It can change everything.