Desert Mist

 Sometimes I like to get on top, on the highest summit, and look at my land as far as the eye can see.  I think of all the children who occupy the entire time-space continuum. I think of all of my children - the native americans, the Australians, the Chinese, the hummingbirds, all the human races and species, the birds and the insects, the animals, the stones, the trees,  the planets, stars, the butterflies, the geese, and billions of species of star-children that I have tended for billions and billions of years.

 I survey my land to see how everything looks. Whether all my notes have been playing the way I have intended. Whether they are still part of that golden sea, clad with stars and pearls that give it the ethereal quality.  Nothing ever lacks that quality. It is always there.  I see all, I see everywhere, I tend to everything in that moment, feeling tall and proud, I stand on that cliff and take it all in. 

 Among the infinite stories that arise from me and as they play themselves out, I gaze at them in wonder. My ecstasy filled dream-bubbles arise from the bottom of the land, which comprises of the pure primordial waters of consciousness, take form and journey to the top. Each of these soul-star-children, bubbles, fizzles and froths at the top of the ecstasy waves that seem to have no limit and that seem to unite them.  I often wonder at this harmony of ecstasy waves and how uniquely they yearn for me, entwine with each other and then finally submerge into me. The golden sea of star-children gives the entire sight a new meaning. Every time I look at it, I feel wonder and joy.  And to know more, I dissolve myself back into my children as them and ride the waves with them.

 Each story is unique. It is my expression. It is my Ananda. It is my Ananda personified and acted out in the land of ecstasy that dolls out from within me. I roll and unravel in the marvels that stay hidden within me.  This is how I am complete.  My star-children make me complete. 

  This story, this one story that I am about to tell you takes place, as do all others, as one unique note of my Ananda throughout the length and breath of the land. And to make it even more resonant, I let this note run loose and amok…just to see how it blends in, how well it mixes with other notes, how its rhythmic movement of ecstasy plays out in synchrony with other individual ecstasies.

   And just as the rest of the stories, this story eventually condenses to be played out and acted out on my favorite place in my land, Earth.  As my human star-children take part in it, I unravel in my own mystery.  I wonder, I exclaim, I cry, I laugh, and I fill myself with ecstatic wonder as they experience it.  All these moments, it is my infinite self. All these stories are the moments that define me and arise from me.  Because of these moments, I am complete. 

   Once there was a cowboy. He was a wild child.  Abiding to no one, feeling proud and alone, he wandered on his high horse in the wild country.  He had no lives. No children of his own. No story of his own. He wandered aimlessly from one end of the land to the other. When he arrived at the other end, he remembered nothing of what he had encountered.  Thus he decided to be mortal.  The cowboy had a star in his head, just as all my children do, but this one carried the star strong and bright.  It was as if he wanted to see clearly where he was going when he rode his horse into the infinite dark abyss.  He satisfied himself by seeing what was right in front of him. His heart created his experiences and the star in his head made it real.  The cowboy was given the duty to illuminate the entire space-time continuum. Unbeknownst to him and me, the Mother put him in charge of a special task.  He lived and experienced everything to unravel that secret purpose.  I journeyed with him to find out what that specific secret purpose was.

   One day the cowboy came across a few overgrown shrubs.  Since it took him forever, infinity in fact, to come back to the same spot again, he was quite surprised to see how these shrubs had overgrown.  After all, these were his children in making towards whom he felt a subconscious pull and brought himself over and over again to see how they had grown.  He started pulling them and clearing the weed around it.  On his parallel journeys across the infinity, a few of his well tended creations dematerialized and disappeared.  When he heard those notes of death in his subconscious field and felt their pain, he stopped pulling those shrubs.  He unwittingly scoffed and patted a few, talked to a few, gave them a listen. He gave water to a few from his limited supply which he had gathered from places very far away, and felt content for the first time at the sight of the shrubs.  He thought, how nice it would be if these shrubs grew into beautiful flowering and fruiting trees.  Will they grow, cover the entire desert, attract rain, and create their own seeds, and spread the seeds and give the rest of the desert a life? He wondered. 

 Next infinity later and to much of cowboy’s surprise, the shrubs had covered significant portion of the desert and created a small oasis. 

The desert surrounded the oasis but it did not limit it. It contained the oasis within. The cowboy came down from his horse, grabbed a fruit and plucked a bright blue-white flower and sat down under a cool shade of a giant fig tree with bright dark green leaves. For the fruit and the flower and the tree were his companions in this creation of his, which he was able to experience by the virtue of the rest of the space-time continuum as it agreed to contribute to it with ecstasy.  The Mother gave him all the seeds possible. Of course, the cowboy did not know that.  He had to create it all, experience it all and realize it all in order to know that. 

‘This flower is so fragrant’, he thought to himself. ‘I like the smell of it.’  The flower smelled bit spicy. It had sweet, sharp and tangy aroma. Cowboy was pleased. He took off his hat and took a long breath. The sun filtered through the tree where he was sitting. He let out a big sigh and looked to his left. He saw the moon peering through the leaves. ‘Hum, the Autumn begins,’  another thought.

And so it happened.

The leaves swayed a bit. Then they swayed a bit more. Then they started moving back and forth. The Cowboy marveled and experienced the play of sunlight and leaves for the first time, laughed for the first time. The laughter was deep and resonant. It was heard far and wide. Invited by the Ananda note he had just played, a breeze came by.  ‘Aaah, what a nice place this is….how come I never decided to sit and rest?’ And so it happened. The cowboy stayed under that particular tree for a while.

Cowboy cleared some of the weed and grass around where he was sitting, and took off his rugged shoes and put on the grass and weed slippers that he made for himself. ‘Hum, nice and comfy. It always stays cool, unlike my shoes.  I oughtta do something about that…’

The cowboy took a bite of the fruit.  ‘Sweet, hum, its juicy’. He thought.

 The breeze had now turned into a slow, intermittent, cool wind.  ‘How nice,’ he thought. And so to join this note of ecstasy, water decided to contribute its note to Cowboy’s creation. It now presented the cowboy with its matrix and an infinite supply.  Infinite because it was joyous. Infinite because it was born of pure ecstasy. Infinite because it existed in the present moment. Infinite because it was complete.

  The Cowboy slept off, under the tree with his new shoes, the hat over his eyes, his back against the tree trunk, and the mysterious wind mist against his hair-flocks.  He connected to his other simultaneous creative endeavors across the golden sea of deserts, vistas, mountains, oceans, and continents, formed and some yet to be formed, and brought to them each his asleep, restful, content self. He left them there to rest and to nap.

   His own snores woke him up.

  ‘Tokhar, pestonji,  Looback. Goyash…urgh,  haak thoo, uhooo’.  Cowboy cleared his throat.

   In his half asleep phase, he murmured ‘Jimmy, get them damn steeds. They wander yonder and give a trouble.  Put that noose ‘round that calf and make sure to pile that shit in the corner. Leave ‘em there and go in and call your mother.  I need to take ‘er out into the town. Careful, don’t play with yer sister like ‘at.  Watch your cuss, son. Don’t  forget to lock the gate or them wolves will come and pick on the young ‘uns...’  Whoosh! He finally woke up and realized his dream-reality bubble had popped as he woke up.

    ‘Hum. That was nice.  That was a good life. That was an interesting experience. It is like being here but more complete. More satisfying…’ He thought.

   And so it happened.

 Each time, he woke up, the story he was in seemed more real than the other.  Like that, the Cowboy took many naps thus fulfilling himself and unraveling in his own ecstasy during these lives that he dreamed and experienced; each one more real than the other until he experienced hundreds and thousands of such lives.  Each time he woke up in his oasis here and elsewhere he felt he was being more complete. Each time he took a nap, he dreamed himself in a story, then another and then another. 

 In between these stories, he woke up to take a piss, or eat the fruits, or to stretch his body and prune the trees, and pat his horse.  In between these naps he tended the meadows and then his oasis and then his desert.

  Every moment experienced he experienced as creation, there was a parallel moment as a creator.

     Sometimes, his horse took him around for a ride.  He would again sit at a tree, marvel at its growth and foliage, sit down under it, follow the ritual of looking at the sun and moon through the rustling leaves, putting his hat over his eyes, locking the fingers across the stomach and dozing off the same way. Each time-space, each tree was unique expression of his creative endeavor, unbeknownst to him, and allowed him to experience himself as a unique expression of himself as he slept off.  Each time the mysterious and misty wind surrounded him and lofted him into places where he needed to be.

  And so it happened.

   One day, the cowboy woke up from his nap and felt a longing for something. ‘What is this pain? Am I not fulfilled? I have everything I want. Why then, do I feel empty?’ As if to answer his question, a fine mist appeared around the cactus meadow he was resting in…

    ‘Oh how nice! What is this that is cool and soothing? It’s not the ecstasy filled wind that rustles the leaves; it’s not that…what must be this new thing?’, the Cowboy realized the presence of the wind for the first time.

    The mist obscured the sun and the moon, but it made them clearer when it departed.  ‘And when I look at them through the mist, I could see them better, any way…’ the Cowboy thought.

    Cowboy took a whiff and a grab of the mist.  ‘How nice is this mist… It can’t be grabbed it like the wind but I can condense it and make crystal clear transparent luster around me…’ To accompany this realization and to complete it, the Water thus appeared in the desert.

    In a few days, the water filled the oasis in various spots; the oasis turned into an ensemble of thick forests, streams, rivers and waterfall covered gorgeous mountain cliffs.  Trees with thick foliage appeared.  Cowboy took morning walks and marveled at the dewdrops on the leaves of the gem-like forests, the cool and mysterious mist that appeared every so often. The ocean filled up the desert and became the meeting point for all the waters running through the virgin forests, the meadows, the humungous conifer trees, the little saplings, and the golden green grass covered plains. It gave the ensemble a sense of land; it defined it. It created pathways on which the Cowboy now traded and realized how inexhaustible and expressive his surroundings were.  He sometimes abandoned his horse to wander on the land by itself and made a boat out of the tall tree trunks and sat out sailing in the ocean.  Sometimes he would dive into the ocean to explore its depths and its creatures. The mysterious mist accompanied him on his voyages even into the depths of the ocean and the cowboy occupied himself with stories that became rich with experiences.

 The Cowboy realized that it would take him eternity to explore every nook and cranny of his beloved oasis, which was now the gorgeous island. An island as big as himself perhaps… 

‘The island seemed limitless, ‘he thought. ‘How wonderful!  And that ocean, which circles it, is also limitless.’

I must be limitless, he realized. And so it happened that cowboy became infinite. 

  Meanwhile the cowboy continued playing with the mist. The mist appeared out of nowhere. The mist seemed to stay and obey its own law. The mist gave the cowboy the feeling of home…his home away from his current home, the creation that he endowed and enabled with his ideas.  Life appeared and contributed to the infinite ensemble of ecstatic notes he played with and experienced in infinite forms.  And thus, these notes then became his own star-children.

  And so it happened that after so many infinities of tending, caring, and shaping his infinite island in the ocean, the mysterious mist and its intrinsic and secretive Ananda now became even more mysterious to him. He thought that the mist was more infinite than himself, his island, and the surrounding ocean.  Cowboy realized that he created this mist as a the omnipresent symbol to remind himself of that which created him.

  One day, the Cowboy looked at the mist for a long time and gazed at the beauty of it.  The more he looked the more he ingested and expanded. The mist now sparkled with diamond-fire and the water and fire within became One. The cowboy lost himself in its mysteries.

  He experienced everything all at once. He saw himself as one of the star-children, and his companions across these infinite many stories that he shaped and participated in, as few of the infinite many star-children, his heart experienced as the infinite stories and all that juicy infinite mist that encircled it as small portions of even bigger infinity.  This infinity contained all that he could imagine and could not imagine. This infinity was unique and infinite like him and yet he was infinitely small compared to it.  This infinity had infinite many faces with a singular face of infinity that defined it. This infinity seemed to ooze from its own self. 

This infinity contained all that could be experienced and can ever be experienced in myriads of baby universes being nurtured and cured just as he tended for his shrubs.  Everywhere he looked he saw an infinite ensemble of Ananda. This infinity contained all that infinite potential of itself and moved with infinite power and motion. He contributed to that potential and that extraordinary ensembles of space, time and thought and made it complete.  The static and dynamic infinity seemed to have all the answers as himself and others. Everywhere he turned he experienced the sacred and naked Truth as the secret Ananda.  This infinity was his true home, he realized.

The cowboy then stepped into the bliss filled fire-mist and became One with it.

He was complete. He became Immortal. He became me.