She’s Just a Song

Tell them the story about the heart that couldn’t stop beating. It wasn’t long before she asked the question. Is it real? she uttered, nearly breathless.

No, he said. She almost missed it. His voice was muffled by the blanket of stars that wove the two of them together.

She didn’t know if it was real or an illusion; she couldn’t seem to find the lines, the borders of the context that she was playing in this time. Fear struck her like a hot blade to new flesh. She felt its sting and her immediate impulse was to pull back. But as she pulled herself away she realized that she had space to move, and if she had space that must mean that she was within a playing field of some kind. And if she was, then it would follow logically to assume that her voice was not hers, but belonged merely to her projection.

Who was listening to it? she asked herself. I must be outside of myself. The self that I believe to be me must be but a part of my whole. Questions flooded the room and strangled her; she felt her life force being snuffed out as she grappled with real, fake, here, there, now, then, future, time. Then the questions stopped.

She lie awake in bed, hardly breathing. She felt the pulse of her heart, the subtle rise and fall of her chest as she drew in the air around her and returned it to its source. She realized that she must have been here all the while, breathing, beating, living. She existed here, making sounds that didn’t belong to her, in a space that wasn’t hers, asking questions in a dream that didn’t need to be answered but rather needed not be asked. And she was again, afraid. If there are no questions and no answers, then how will I know that I am real? Will I lose myself? she asked. She wasn’t sure whose ears would catch her query. Or if ears were the direction of her aim at all. She waited, in stillness, returning to the reflection of the nothing that she belonged to.

But how could it be? How could it be that she was something, someone, with breath, a heart, a face, a story, a voice, but belonged to nothingness and was nothing more?

Relinquishing control, she slipped again into a slumber of sorts. Memories of other times and places flooded her awareness and made her sure that she had lived a thousand lives before the present. She understood, suddenly, that she was the accumulation of all that ever was and would ever be. The contrast of nothing and something lived through her. She stopped asking questions and her heart opened, fully, for the first time. She lived as a songbird sits on a wire and lets the world translate itself through its instrument. She didn’t try anymore. She left well enough alone. She felt not that she had figured it out but that understanding was her natural state.

Alone again in misery, her body pulled her. The urge to use the restroom was so human, so far from the divine, that it called her back to all of her fear and longing. She wished that she could return to where she had just been but wasn’t able to locate the state. She searched, trying to feel her energetic body woven between the lines of each of her cells, chromosomes, physical existence. Nothing.

She couldn’t find it.

So she waited, living like she was used to, following the call of thoughts to act in ways that seemed to serve her but didn’t. And she knew that she was coming up short. This wasn’t going to cut it, for she wanted that feeling of being truly alive and she wanted it all of the time. Not just sometimes. She was terrified of losing it, of being forced to return to the feeling of being separate.

Her eyes found mine in a mirror as she stared into space. How is it that I can see me, but I still don’t know who I am, where I came from, or how I got here? The questions buzzed in her mind like insects, feverish, searching for flesh, savage, careless, bumping into sacred structures and causing damage as they went. She knew, she could feel that it was all wrong, but she couldn’t find the way to leave it. Help me, she called out. To whom? I’m afraid. I don’t want to fail, I don’t want to fall, I don’t want to bruise, I don’t want to suffer, I don’t want to be less than connected, I don’t want to be me anymore, I want…I want to be more. I want to be everything. I want to understand. I want not to want. I want not to ask. I want to go home. But I don’t want to lose control, I don’t want to let go. I don’t want to fall, I don’t want to fail, I don’t want to lose this person that I have worked so long and so hard to craft because if I don’t have me, then what do I have? What else is there?

What is beyond these eyes that I stare into and ask, Why?

And as if another person had been standing with her, just waiting for her to give permission, she felt enveloped in a warm hug. An orgasm of the spirit. She was overcome with the most amazing feeling of trust and love. A feeling that she thought was unattainable. And she asked, Who was it that thought I couldn’t be here? Connected? Who was it that was so afraid that I would be lost by becoming found? Who was it that was so afraid of going home? Was that me?

The difference was clear to her. Her mission seemed to be arranged like a series of magnets attracting her, guiding her every step in the direction that would bring her joy and deliver it like a vessel to every other being.

It all seemed so clear and so silly that she ever believed she was alone.

Where do I end? she asked the mysterious mother who held her. Where is my start and where is my finish? she clarified.

Never my dear. You’ve never been, you never will be. You’ve never lived nor died, nor will you. You are simply me, my child, one of all and all in one. I will love you always and always have, and time, my dear, is but a story you’ve crafted to have a game to play. My love, you are nothing but a song. I sing you when I want to hear my voice, I love the way you sound and sing you often, and when I am finished with you, you will be no more.

Rest in that. Find peace here, it’s the only place, the only way, the only time. You have not been tricked nor tried, my dear, for you’re alive to be and you be because I am.

Rest in that.

And so she sat. In stillness. Her hands no longer moving. Her heart beating through the silence, and she was alive. She was told, she was sung. She. Just. Was. And all the others were. And all of her fear, her need to be accepted by them, washed away, fell to the earth and was absorbed, transformed. She felt energy flow up through her feet and in through her crown and she knew that she was a queen. She knew then that there was no competition. She was no less worthy of being sung than anyone else because all were in harmony. All were trying this out together, learning and living and breathing and beating and then they weren’t and nothing changed. So she let go and she let the world flow through her like the song that she was.

And she realized that her voice was but an extension of the infinite. This desire she had been harboring for all of her life to sing was coming closer to the surface. The mystery, why she was here, was becoming solved. Her ego mind struggled to hold her as she spilled over the sides and stained the earth and skies that held her in her truth. She felt the sky say, I see you, love. I see what you are here for. I sing you and you are mine. She tried to integrate it all at once, but her ego couldn’t hold her anymore. She was bursting at the seams and the pain of it alerted her to the fact that she was breaking. But instead of feeling fear as she normally did when she noticed this horrible, unbearable pain, this nagging, unquenchable thirst, this terrible, terrible lie, she decided to let it live, and let it die, and see what was on the other side.

One by one her chakras spun, her energetic frequency raised to match that of the sisters and brothers she flew with in other realms. She found harmony with the others who were all a part of her story, her song. She became the lyrics and the dance. She laughed and smiled and the people around her all knew that she was insane. Truly out of this world. Her reality expanded to include not only her truth but the truths of all, and in that place she had no doubt that she could hold it.

The last of her fears clung to her like a child afraid to leave its mother. This little story she’d created seemed to live inside her mind, but really, it was just a thought floating out in the abyss of existence alongside every other thought, pulled on by every other song who shared the same plane. She was sure she couldn’t let it go. She didn’t know a life without it. She had imagined it, many times. Dreamt of it even. A life unrestricted. A place where she was supported fully in living her truth as a being of light. She soared alongside the infinite creatures that secretly and silently guided her on her journey, but she didn’t yet look to her sides for fear that they were not actually there. But they are. And they are calling you. Look to your left. See how your shadow doubles? I do, she cried! What are you showing me? She begged, she pleaded. I demand to be shown what you have been keeping from me! We have always been here, baby, never left your side. Now is your time to awaken to us. To know that you are just one of many, and never less unique than the only one.

Wake up. The dream is over now. The pain is over, too. Look up. She said it, she called out the name she had crafted to represent her fear. EVIL. MONEY. I call you now and I set you free. I don’t need you anymore. I realize that you never protected me, that I didn’t need protecting. I’m sorry that I held you so close and didn’t let you live through me. I relinquish my control. I am open now to see how you would like to play through me.

And I trust that I will not fall.