Lately, I have been a worried about a few things.
Unwelcome thoughts enter my mind, especially when I want to sleep. Ultimately I know I can solve these problems, but I also know 3 am is not the time to do it. Curled up to my pillow, I decide to mediate. This is not a formal mediation, but since the practice of meditaion means to place your thoughts, that is exactly what I am doing.
I place my thoughts in the spiritual birthplace of Jackson Dominic. It is a place I know well. When I was pregnant with him, I created a world where I could see and hold him as a part of a self-hypnosis technique I learned to help with labor. The hypnosis tracks I listened to for days on end brought me to there often. It was the calm, happy place where I was supposed to take my mind during the intensity of labor.
That never happened. I was fully present in the room when I gave birth, but before that moment, my vision allowed me to know Jack. I created a vibrant, fluid world that felt as real as anything I have ever known. Much of it is specific to my imagination, but I based my world on a passage from Chandogya Upanishad.
Within the city of Brahman, which is the body, there is the heart, and within the heart there is a little house. This little house has the shape of a lotus, and within it dwells that which is to be sought after, inquired about, and realized. Even so large as the universe outside, is the universe within the lotus of the heart. Within it are heaven and earth, the sun, moon, the lightning and all the stars. Whatever is in the macrocosm is in this microcosm also.
And so, as I fret about thoughts unimportant, I stop myself. I place my thoughts in the little house shaped like a lotus, where I first imagined Jack into existance. It is there I can always marvel at peace and the blessings of my life.
Jack, I knew you before you were born.
Max, although I did not have a specific vision of you, I got a glimpse of you in a dream. This happened before you were even big enough to show in my body. When you were a flutter of cells inside of me that I couldn’t even feel. My impatient heart so desperately wanted to see you, to know my heart’s desire was real.
The dream went like this: I was in my bed, just like I was while I was dreaming. I reached down and very carefully pulled you out of my body. You were tiny in the palm of my small hands. I looked at you in wonder. Our eyes locked. I gave you the tenderest kiss I could, almost a whisper. A moment later I put you back into my body because I knew that is where you needed to be to grow. Your father was snoozing next to me, but I didn’t wake him to show him our baby. This dream was so real I didn’t even realize it was a dream until later in the day when I remembered it and knew it could not have happened.
And yet, it did. On some spiritual plane I met both of my children before they were born.
People use the word fetus in our society to characterize an unborn child as something that is not a baby. In truth, the word, fetus, is Greek. It means offspring.
I think of the bamboo we are planting in our backyard. We intend to propagate it and grow it into a sort of hedge around our property. We only bought a handful of plants, because bamboo sends shoots, its offspring, into the world. We can plant and replant until our house is bordered by a multi-generational clan of of bamboo.
Where life begins is such a marvelous mystery. This is not a political essay. Cannot a mother speak of the spiritual life of her children with no greater agenda than to express her experience of the sublime beginning of life?
I knew my children before they were born. I met them in a vision I created and a dream that came to me. And yet there was even an earlier beginning.
Was not there some sort of magic the night my husband of five hours and I decided not just to make love, but to make a baby? There was a gasp and a pause right before we began, the thrill and fear of what we were embarking upon. The awe of our participation in creation. That night didn’t result in a baby, and yet somehow it did. We directed our spiritual energies to creating life and it manifested itself into two bodies. Two souls. Maximilian and Jackson.
In yoga we say namaste to each other as a greeting. It means, the divine light in me bows to the divine light in you. The moment I pushed my children into life, I crouched forward, bowing out of necessity. Even in the overwhelming haze of pain, there was reverence. The moment my babies were born, the busyness of birth stopped. The room fell silent, every one of us holding our breaths while the baby took his first. Namaste.
As I said in the beginning of this piece, I have been feeling a bit stressed, a bit out of sorts, a bit off. I remove my thoughts from my troubles and I return to a peaceful, happy place. A place where I first met my children and we were surrounded by nothing but love.
One day, they will ask me where they came from.
I will offer up multiple answers. The physical and spiritual possibilites. I am certain I will confuse them. That’s OK. The origins of life are complicated and mysterious.
Or simple.
There is also a one-syllable answer that is complete:
love.
You are made of it and you came from it.
Leave a Reply