We all belong

Right before bedtime, I sat down to meditate. The bed was right there, promising a nice long sleep full of pleasant dreams, but I felt restless. As if it wasn’t time yet. As if I had to finish something before I slept that night.

Nothing came to mind, so I sat down and took a deep breath, hoping the right action will reveal itself.

The first moments were spent in humble confusion.
Why tonight? I wondered. Why now? 

A few conscious breaths later, I felt a soft knock on my mind. Someone else was present in my mind-space, asking for my attention. The knock felt humble and respectful.

‘I’m here,’ I answered with tired patience. ‘What do you want?’

An image of writing flickered in my mind and I understood. I pulled a pen and paper from my nightstand drawer and focused my head and hand to write down the visitor’s message as accurately as possible.

‘Go ahead,’ I thought towards the visitor, politely holding the space for reception.

My hand started moving.

‘We love you and we greet you in the light of the Infinite Creator. We wish to propose/proclaim a need/request for your evaluation at this time/space. Do you accept?’

I looked at what I had written, realising the limitations of language my visitors must be experiencing, trying to make certain I understand without confusion. Still, a small suspicion tickled in the back of my mind.

Not all visitors are benevolent. How can I accept a request when I don’t know what they want from me?

‘I will do my best to understand your need/proposal/request.’ I wrote back carefully, not wanting to agree on anything.

Their reply came as soon as placed my pen on a new line.

‘We wish for you to open your heart-space for the reception of universal love at this time/space. Can you do that?’

Umm, maybe? I thought and asked: ‘How?’ 

My hand dropped from the paper.

All my attention consolidated to the center of my chest, to the area right between my breasts. Something started brewing there, a small warm circle sending waves of energy through my body. Suddenly I knew that all I had to do was to feel into the core of the request they had made.

Open your heart and receive love. 

With my mind I held the space in my chest, allowed it to expand and spiral outwards on all sides. It felt as if I was in the eye of the storm, witnessing a primal power moving through and around me. 

I felt the presence holding space for my process as the physical sensation intensified. Spiralling waves grew into a steady current of moving energy. I caught glimpses of images within that current and my mind jumped to the task of making sense of it all.

I saw my heart holding and allowing all things, thoughts and people I knew and loved… but also people, structures and concepts I disliked or disagreed with.

The space inside me held the crooked and the benevolent, it held the fearful and the hopeful, the people who fight for a cause and those who fight against it. All the victims and all the perpetrators. Everyone who hurts, takes revenge, violates, suffers, wins and fails. All the rights and wrongs.

I did not feel myself welcoming nor shunning those people, thoughts or deeds. There was no gate. Nothing entered for everyone-everything was already there. The space in my heart already held it all. Everyone belonged and had always belonged there.

Every single life was there with every thought, belief and action.

My head was spinning. I was in awe of what I could feel and also a little uncomfortable. Did I deserve that experience? Should I do something with it? Should I tell them?

To ease my mind, I picked up the pen and wrote, ’I feel as if everything and everyone is in my heart.’

The pen replied, ‘Please continue.’

Encouraged by the message, I relaxed back into the experience, hoping to make more sense of what I was feeling and seeing.

Curiously, I could not label this as ‘unconditional love’, for the term ‘unconditional’ pointed to a lack of conditions… as if something was missing.

The love I felt was truly universal, it was absolute. It loved all the narrow-minded fearful conditions as well as the broad strokes of abundance. It held every single good thought as well as each bad deed. It contained all that was controlling and all that was surrendering.

No exceptions.

I felt small and lost within it and yet I had a place. I was perfectly insignificant to my own heart and yet also effortlessly important in my wants and needs. All began and was resolved within me.

A moment arrived when I couldn’t take it anymore. It was past my bedtime, my body felt tired and heavy. My thoughts began drifting towards my pillow. I grabbed the pen again.

‘May I sleep now?’ I wrote like a child asking for a permission to leave the party early.

The sensation across my chest lessened as the pen drew a reply to my request.
‘We greet your effort/endeavours in the love and light of the Infinite Creator. Sleep in peace. We love you.’

I love you too. I sighed in grateful relief, placed the writing tools on the nightstand and crawled under my blankets, delighted by the promise of sleep.

As I laid there waiting, I wondered if I could feel it again. If I could open my heart like this, allow everything to flood through again… to be connected to it all once more.

I touched the small circle in the middle of my chest, feeling the echoes of the space it had held just moments before. But I couldn’t activate it.

As if had been standing underneath a waterfall, but could now only wet my toes. Whoever my visitors had been, their need/proposal/request had strengthened that current of realisation towards universal, absolute love.

Alone, I could only feel a tickling shadow of it.
But it didn’t make me sad.

‘Because I’m not alone,’ I whispered to myself, wrapped the embers of my experience tightly around my body, sent a short blessing to my mysterious penpals and drifted to dreamland.

For I had been shown something which I hadn’t fully acknowledged before.

We may be and become different things in this web of life,
but one thing we can never truly be, is alone.

We all belong.