Back in the Driver’s Seat
Destination - Home.
Dear Friend
I have the key to my first car on my desk. I keep it on a piece of stone that was discarded from St Francis of Assisi’s Monastery in La Verna Italy. I found the stone at the bottom of a wooded slope below the monastery.
It was in La Verna that Jesus appeared to St Francis. You can sit and meditate in the cave where Francis sat, before the monastery was established. The cave looks out over a woodland ravine. During the summer you feel like an exhibit for the constant stream of tourists who visit, as if it were a museum. It becomes part of the meditation, wishing each one well, as if they were bees visiting a meadow of flowers. My false self arising in a mix of annoyance and self congratulation. Watching that show unfold, you can gradually untangle the sticky web that holds us separate from one another, watching judgements melt away in the light of present moment, focused attention.
For me, the monastery is a powerful place, the voices of the wind in the trees mixing with the hushed tones of the visitors. There’s ego in it too, fancying myself as some kind of modern day disciple, but the power of the place is enough to deflate the ballooning, holier than thou false self as it puffs up it’s peacock feathers.
The car, a Skoda Fabia, who we named Clover was hard to sell.
Selling a friend.
She’d carried us on holidays when Mam, Dad and Santy were still alive. Other lifetimes, other realities.
Everything is alive with spirit.
It’s been that way since I was a kid, I lost sight of it while enthralled to idea of being an adult. Now the attraction of materialism is wearing off, the wonder of a living world emerges.
I remember, before learning to drive, standing at the side of the road, waiting for a gap in the traffic, taking Santy to the park wondering how so many people could do this impossible thing.
Driving a car looked like steering a small room around.
Being in the driving seat was frightening at first. The power of the engine. The mass of the vehicle. The potential of it. For good or bad.
It’s astonishing how quickly we adjust.
Learning to drive was a quicker process for me than learning to meditate. Through meditation we place our soul in the driving seat. The body, our vehicle. The mind the co-ordinating intelligence operating the body. The soul serene, setting the direction of travel.
When the vehicle wears out, we enter a new one. Navigate a different time and space.
It’s only a metaphor.
Our collective destiny is to realise ourselves as soul.
Returning to soul consciousness.
Who can separate the destination from the journey?
Our destination, home.
Till Tomorrow
Love
Mikey