Mirabai:  A Hundred Objects Close By

I know a cure for sadness:
Let your hands touch something that
makes your eyes smile.

I bet there are a hundred objects close by
that can do that.

Look at beauty’s gift to us –
her power is so great

she enlivens the earth, the sky,

our soul.                                                                   

Recently I joined a group called The Mystic Poet’s Circle, led by Alex Riegel.  I've been quickly drawn in to the wisdom of a poetry that speaks to my heart in today’s world.  Having battled depression and sadness most of my life, I've learned that the cure often comes when I “let my hands touch something that makes my eyes smile”.  I take this figuratively, because it is often my eyes that notice something.  If I stop to truly see, my sadness and depression retreats.  If I allow my perceptions to let go of the merry-go-round of preconceived negativity and focus on the beauty that is close by, my eyes and my heart begin to smile.

I think of my lowest days and the healing power of sitting alone in my living room in the dead of winter feeling only dark hopelessness.  Something dragged me outdoors on that cold sunny winter day.  I slowly and tearfully put on my snowshoes and set off down the beach.

 In the stillness, the sound of my snow shoes on ice annoyed me, and I stopped to look out at the lake of ice.  I listened to the stillness, the breeze in the trees, the water gurgling under the ice.  A feeling of beauty swept me and suddenly all sound stopped.  Though I've tried to find words, none are adequate to tell what I experienced that day.  But when the world resumed its turning, something inside of me had shifted.  The power of beauty had enlivened my soul and brought a smile to my eyes and a song to my heart.

Though the intensity of this experience passed, the gift of my enlivened soul has remained.