A HORSE OF A DIFFERENT COLOR
On a night flight over the North Atlantic a few years ago, I found myself looking out the window at the starry night, my heart beating out of my chest in terror. It had been a smooth flight—it was my life that felt turbulent. I longed to feel peace. So I began to pray, as I have through all the other dark nights and bumpy rides of my life.
That’s when it happened. I couldn’t tell you now whether I was asleep or awake or both.
I heard: There is no me. There is only We.
I felt those were the most beautiful words I had ever heard.
I felt the sweet assurance of their simple truth.
I felt the baggage of a lifetime of trying to be “me” just dissipate.
I felt free, fully loved and fully loving, totally connected, whole.
In feeling truly one with everyone and everything, I finally felt the peace that passeth all earthly understanding. Then I watched myself float out of the plane window and slip away into the stars.
When I opened my eyes, the sun was coming up and a song was rising in my heart. For days I walked through Europe as though on air. Some part of me had flown out the window into that starry night sky, yet never had I felt so present in my own life.
I had traveled halfway around the world to come home to the Truth: There is no separate self; there is only Us.
I spent so much of my life wondering why I couldn’t show up to my best life as my truest self. I both wanted to be and feared that I was a horse of a different color. On that plane ride, I caught a glimpse of the unifying Truth that sets us all free.
These are the unlikely but inevitable glimpses of eternity that keep us on the Way of Being Lost. These are the true touchstones of healing to which we return over and over again to reassure ourselves with the law of Love. We find them out a window or in the smile of a little child, through the beloved gaze of our pet or among a field of wildflowers. We hear them in the lyrics to a song or on the wings of a bird.
Slowly but surely, we begin to trust that, whenever we feel the most lost, we are about to be found by the all-embracing Oneness of Love.