Consciously or unconsciously, every living creature seeks one thing. … The object of the quest is called by many names— happiness, peace, freedom, truth, love, perfection, Self-realization, God-realization, union with God. Essentially, it is a search for all of these, but in a special way. Everyone has moments of happiness, glimpses of truth, fleeting experiences of union with God; what they want is to make them permanent.

(Meher Baba)

Tumbling down mornings, foreboding new disasters, commenting about everything. Images expanding in notions and motions, inviting, accelerating moments -we must hurry. To do whatever needs to be done, in earnest and angst, otherwise, we will not reach our purposes and goals, while our teeth and hair fall, and our elders die.

Just passing by, inventing conceptual realms of mind with great pride, forgetting the real miracle of life. Jumping fences and barricades of debris accumulated, walking in these rooms of self-definition. Voices whispering, over incessant shouting, demanding frowns, assassinating smiles, eyes clouded with tears -not knowing why.

Wintry springs are about to explode, in subdued laughter that grows as one comes to know, after ages of trying to unwind, the entangled cords that define our fears and hopes, to know that we are naked, like the emperor with no clothes.

Laughter dries up all tears, all anxiety, all illusions, are gone. We pick up our bundles, still yarned up all around, and start whistling a song of joy, to cheer up our brothers and sisters as we walk beside each other, each with our own entanglements, each searching. For that timeless laughter, that breaks the spell of each versus the other. For that time of endless joy!

Today, as I write this, marks the 28,881 days in which I open my eyes in the morning and become aware that I am alive, and continue playing this me role defined by birth and circumstance. Just another member of the human species, as we call ourselves. Landing in the Caribbean last century, adding one more point of view, to an estimated 2.3 billion people living then on this planet. Today, the estimated number is 8 billion.

At the time that I was born, the second world war was still raging, and radio and newspapers were the existing media. At that time, as in all human times before, according to the tales of history, there was war and murder, and stoned-faced politicians, lying to manipulated crowds. As always, there were many with a hunger for power, prey to selfishness, vanity, arrogance, conspiracies, indifference, ignorance, ideologies, wastefulness and so on, at both the collective and individual realms of life (one being the sum of the other). Of course, there was also selflessness, sacrifice, compassion, empathy, wisdom, serenity, peace, and creativity. Just like today. A struggle between a fragmented, or a oneness conception of life, between making the other part of you, or having a each one to his own mentality.

A jumble of opposites is the human experience. A duality that seems to be the nature of nature. Like volcanoes, responsible in great measure to enrich soils that feed people, but then also kill them with their eruptions.

Day to day you read, listen to or see the news on different media, where happenings (mostly the dramatic ones with impact on groups or many are conveyed). But rarely there is news about bad things happening to one person in his intimate realm much less in his inner world. Numbers seem to be important. And tragedy takes precedence over humor in the media. Definitively things like the millions upon millions of smiles, or the feelings of gratitude brought about by empathetic gestures or compassionate acts, throughout the world at all times, are never registered by breaking news, nor analyzed by pundits on TV and radio, or written columns in paper or the internet.

There are so many realms of interest to which we subscribe to, betting circuits, foodies, cosmology, bodybuilders, religion, financial markets, celebrities, fashion, art, food, history, conservation, sports and so on. The diversity of our passions for knowing about things and our attachment to these various realms and preferences are innumerable. As we live, we choose our own sets and tend to ignore all others or become sort of dilettantes.

Then there are the natural surroundings of the universe. Our setting, our milieu, which we use, exploit, explore, admire, and ignore. Some see it as an external facility, providing elements for our consumption during our short journeys, while others feel it is part of us, forming part of a magic marvelous continuum of evolving being.

The fabric of it all, as told by modern science, is in itself a song. This continuum of atoms, baked in exploding stars, coupled in different combinations, making molecules, that in turn congregate in cells, and assemble in cockroaches, roses, and people. People, who serve as containers of mind, conveying a symphony of thoughts, the concert of civilization, the quest for knowledge, and the possibility of conscious love, the most sublime whole.

Take a look at the marvel. The average diameter of an atom is 0.1 to 0.5 nanometers. One meter contains 1,000,000,000 nanometers. If you could line up all the atoms contained in an 80 kg human being, the distance this would cover would be about seven times the distance to Alpha Centauri, which is about 41 trillion km away. These atoms make up the approximate 37 trillion cells in our bodies. An amazing continuum of energy and space, forming images perceived by our senses, also constructed by it. Universes vibrating an ancient song.

And then all the noise of mind! All the fragmentation of our perception creates this obfuscation, and makes us miss the concert of the ocean, and focus instead on the drops momentarily vaporized in the dream of life, that will merge again in the whole of existence, in a cycle of love sublime.

Today, on this 28th thousand and someday, of opening my eyes I am going to try to put aside, to ignore for one instant, the breaking news of explosions, ideologies, and all the other games that we people play, in the tumbling of this container of life and just be, or imagine to be, the content sublime of existence.

Eyes would open, to see a usual morning extraordinaire. Light flows painting images outside. The universe is there. Sounds cascade down inner caverns and play music in the brain, awakening ghosts of the past, and dreams of the future. Proprioception defines the limits of identity, the sense borders of touch. Breezes and temperatures alternate, in caressing the textures of the sensorial envelope.

Particles of the universe playfully distort tri-dimensional spaces within the tongue and nose, causing flavors and aromas to add themselves to the apparition of this everyday morning miracle, as all things come on stage.

Time melts like a Dali clock, as the never-ending film is projected. Portraying all possibilities, dreaming all dreams, and achieving all realizations. There is nothing to be said, everything lies prostrate within. Bundled up in potential, waiting for the unseen.

An ineffable feeling of inexplicable joy seeps in through inner doors so secret. Opening hidden alcoves. No special mantras can ever take us there, nor efforts in prayer and meditation. (Oh yes it can coincide if you do that all the time, the doors open as if a password was said, but it was just spontaneous grace.)

It flows without conditions, like true love, warming everything in a glow of light sublime. Making hearts meltdown, and smiles flourish in stern faces, making bodies acquire a special rhythm, that prompts embraces.

Yes, at those evanescent moments, suddenly, the magic of Antares and her legions of sister stars, appears in the dark of night, like a princess dressed for her wedding. What prompts that corner breeze to a whirlwind of all sudden inside? What can command the spontaneity of the divine?

No efforts, no mantras, no discipline, no austerities, no wealth, no prayer, no chants, no magic potions, no secret scrolls. No formulas can take you there, where the sun rises in miniature and yet is so bright, that its cool incandescence outshines daylight.

At those fleeting instants, the laughter of the spirit is so provocative and free, that one jumps up in the air (if the body is still fit) or sports a brightness in the eyes, or a tenderness of the skin, and has the urge to caress whoever comes across.

It is merry, happy, sublime, a perfect rhythm in rhyme. It is the engine that moves happiness, the summa cum of love. Yes, that little candle, that swift breeze, that primordial song which is found sometimes, somehow, somewhere unexpectedly, inside you and me.

So, let’s dance with it, and etch that moment, somewhere in our memories, while the dust of our actions and thoughts collects, and the debris of our point of vantage, accumulates, and asphyxiates our soul.

Let´s keep it in memories, icons, and traditions, till perhaps one day, in total serendipity, we find ourselves again bowing down in that secret alcove, pulled in by spontaneous combustion. Our hearts on fire, our feet tap dancing the only song, that can never be predicted or asked for or brought forth.

Let’s share the glow in our eyes then, and caress the tenderness in others, who in those moments of solace are nothing but one with us. Let’s rejoice with that breeze of sacred corners, that reminds us of our inner whole, and wipes out feelings of pride and laments.

Yes, let’s savor the kiss of the beloved existence as it catches us unaware and makes us be. It is an old story, a romance of spontaneity, which only love can see.

And remember, no coercion is possible, no bribery can enable this, no method or discipline, nothing can harness, that whimsical graciousness, that makes everything such a delight. The flavors of Existence once-in-a-while- kisses, are intoxicating. And you really can never know when they will be on your lips.

So may grace fall upon us, one of these days, and may we remember never to forget that ineffable feeling of inexplicable joy.