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Small though it was, the bridge itself had never actually moved. I thought it had been removed by human hands because it was in relatively poor shape, but the fact was that I had just stopped seeing it. I had assumed that it was gone, and in its place was a relatively small stretch of water which I could just as easily jump move for walk around to get to the other side of the embankment.
All of that changed this morning, after six odd months of getting my shoes wet while navigating the stretch of water. The bridge reappeared in my awareness, where it had always remained, slightly hidden beneath the overgrowth. It hadn’t been touched by human hands, because some of the boards were still missing and others were still broken. A few feet left long, about a foot wide, just enough to support one human’s or deee’s crossing at a time, over an invisible body of water.
My delight at meeting this old friend was instant. It wasn’t that the friend had walked away from me. I had just stopped noticing my friend by thinking that it had disappeared from where I thought it once used to be – over that same patch of water which I was now regularly jumping over or walking around. It was a beautiful reunion today, as I walked through the tall grasses, stepped on the first of the boards gently, and slowly crossed over the few feet that held me as surely they always had in the past.
Once on the other side, I looked back and said thank you for reappearing, for giving me space to explore alternate pathways to the other side. It felt like a reunion with a long lost friend who I had stopped observing because I was too busy or distracted, or because I made the assumption that they did not want to be seen by me any more. The power of observation works in many different ways, doesn’t it?
Have you have ever experienced the sense that you have been observing certain things differently within you on your walk of life? Which observations tend to come from wisdom, and which ones come from assumptions? How has the power of observation affected your relationships with others?
Kumud
As I was leaving for home, the Sun started emerging from behind the clouds above the tree line in the distance and I realized that like the bridge, the divine rarely move away from us – it is we who shift our heart’s focus of observation. The good news is that it remains within our powers to shift our focus back to divine awareness, whenever we so choose to observe it again.
P.S. Join us for our weekly gathering and conversation, Sunday Feb 26 at 9amET / 2pmGMT on twitter in #SpiritChat. We will discuss our powers of observation among friends who are with us in our journeys. Namaste – AjmaniK
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