My Favorite Place – An Essay by Clara Neill
I love the beach and the mountains and the woods. I have sat on a hundred beaches watching the florescent blue ocean touch the crystal clear sky. I have lain back on the sand dunes of Montana De Oro and been washed over by feelings of pure calmness and tranquility. I have hiked through sunflower fields and played in butterfly gardens and I have experienced happiness. However, sitting on the beach and watching the ocean kiss the skyline doesn’t necessarily move me to the point of insight. Neither sunflower fields nor butterfly gardens are more beautiful to me or make me feel particularly happier than any other place. For these reasons, I cannot choose a singular physical landscape over another as my favorite place. In fact, it is something I refuse to do. My favorite place in the entire world is not one of physical standing. It is a state of mind. It is the space my thoughts and consciousness take me where everything becomes my favorite place. It is a state of pure appreciation for the world around me that manages to turn a trashcan into a Picasso and a landfill into a botanical garden. It is a state of well-being in which I can stare at a brick wall for hours, tearing it apart with my mind to fall in love with the people it has seen, the stories it holds, and the endless realities I can imagine it has to offer. It is the place I enter in my mind where my school coursework becomes my life’s work for the moments that I’m completing it.
It is difficult to describe this state of mind in words. The closest articulation I have ever come across was from a family friend who shared with me his definition of the Sanskrit word “namaste”:
“I honor the place in you in which the entire universe resides. I honor the place in you of love, of light, of truth, and of peace. And when you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us.”
This is the essence of this state of mind – my favorite place to be, wherever I am. It is a relatively recent discovery of mine, though from what I have since read it has been written about since ancient times. What is so meaningful to me about it is the sense of hope I feel now that I could experience the same degree of happiness, passion, and fulfillment if I were lost and alone on a windy night in the remotest corner of the Sahara desert as when I am sitting at the lunch tables with my friends at school. Without my access to this state of mind, filled with feelings of love and gratitude for everything, my experience of life wouldn’t be nearly as beautiful as I now know it can be. The more time I spend in this inner realm, the more it seems to bring me a sense of clarity and honest connection to the energy of the universe that I hope to carry with me for the rest of my life.
The “Miracle” by Bill Cumming
When I speak with people about what Clara is pointing toward, I often use the word “miracle” to describe it. The way Clara describes it in her essay is exactly why I use that word. In my opinion that state of being is miraculous, nothing less. It is about the ability to see possibility in everything, to transport oneself if desired, to really “see” the world, experience it in all of its diversity and beauty.
The universe is expanding at somewhere between 100,000 and 2,000,000 miles a second. (Grasp that, go ahead.)
There are somewhere between 10 and 50,000,000,000 (That’s trillion.) cells in every human body.
Most days, they all operate really well together.
Are you aware you have a head when you don’t have a headache?
Everything is inter-connected.
Without air there is no breath.
Without plants there is no oxygen.
Without nitrogen, there are no plants.
The DNA of each person is contained within every single cell in our bodies.
They say it would take 17 encyclopedic volumes to describe that DNA accurately.
Name one thing in the world, other than yourself which you control?
My experience is that if we take a moment to explore this miracle for a few minutes each day at the beginning of the day and read some material worth reading for a few moments, our equanimity is better. We are in touch with what Clara was describing, actually pointing to, because an experience cannot accurately be described. Then we begin the adventure.
The reason self-care (what we’ve just attempted to describe) is so important is that people who experience that they are loved, that their value and worth are a given and that there is always a choice are much more likely to be good to themselves and do much less damage in the world.
Damage like 35,000 people dying daily for no reason other than that we have not decided to end it.
Damage like thousands dying in “religious” wars.
That fully a third of the planet lives without surety of having a safe place to stay tonight.
The issue is that we have not committed ourselves to creating a planet that works for everyone. We have not committed to ending the conditions described above and all damage done between people. It is within our reach. There are a million rationalizations for why things are the way they are. The reason we cannot see the miracle is because we do not experience ourselves as responsible for creating it.
Let’s see what we can create if we commit ourselves to a world that works for everyone. If you are interested in reading “Care of the Soul,” e-mail me and I will send it along.
With all my love and every blessing!
Namaste!
