My friend Nikki returned to gazing with me this morning. She did about five minutes to my nine minutes, which impressed me because she left off six weeks ago at about two minutes and thirty seconds. She drank in the light, commenting on the unfamiliar brightness that made it feel more like noon even though it was 6:10am. She was right. For the second day in a row the sun appeared white hot and uninviting in the sky as I gazed. Both yesterday evening at sunset and this morning at sunrise the molten disc of energy was in rare form, showing up to the party fully dressed and looking brilliant. Way too brilliant. For the first time in a while my brow muscles pulsated and did the dance in my forehead that feels like they are trying to hide behind each other for fear of getting burned. I imagine the little muscles in my forehead and face fighting with each other and pushing each other out into the line of fire…sun fire. It felt like bullets made of lava were hitting me right in the face. My eyelids didn’t have any interest in putting up a fight; they kept involuntarily closing. I had to use my fingers and literally hold my eyelids open to let the sun pour through my sockets into my body.
Interesting that the little cavern in our face that holds our eyes is called a socket. It makes me think of an electrical socket and when I gaze I am plugging myself in to get recharged. I am a battery, the sun is the power grid, and the direct light reaching my eyes is the cord. I just open my eyes wide and plug the sunlight into my battery, and the best place to do this is the electrical socket, straight through my eyes. After the gazing these last two days my face felt hot. My eyes and the area behind my eyes felt dry and stretched, but more than that, I felt charged. Now that we are gazing for longer and longer stretches I expect the sun’s effects to get even more pronounced.
After finishing the gaze we hiked up and down the mountain, feeling the glorious sweetness that comes from making healthy choices. I have been ingesting marijuana lately in joint form, and I felt this in my lungs. As I huffed and puffed my way up the mountain I thought about how in phase two of the gazing (4-6 months) the sun is supposed to heal my physical body. So my asthma would be a thing of the past. I have been considering the idea of switching fully from smoking to vaporizing my marijuana, but when that puff of dry air hits your lungs there’s just nothing like it. So I started thinking I could just bide my time and over indulge on my inhaler a little while longer and when month 4 rolls around I will be miraculously healed. But the sun whispers to me: wasn’t I just saying something about making healthy choices?
I don’t want to go through all the work of cleaning up my lungs and being a smoke free human being, I just want a miracle healing, I protest. Is that too much to ask? Well, yes, actually the sun seems to reply. When we talk about Jesus and his miracles we don’t say he did miracles we say he worked miracles. So I think a miracle is just a speeding up and a completion of an outcome that we individually have to set into motion ourselves. If I want to heal my lungs I need to start making the choices that lead to healing. The miracle will be that I am healed more quickly, instead of taking years for my lungs to bounce back. The sunlight has been leading me more and more back to my sense of self, and self love. So when I wonder why I would voluntarily continue to destroy my lungs no answer comes. There is no answer, it’s simply preposterous and dysfunctional. I need to make another healthy choice, deliberately change my pattern and then respond from the new place when I experience the echoes of my old desires that were not rooted in self-love. The miracle isn’t going to come without the work. If I want miracles to work, I am going to have to work my miracles.
SIDE EFFECTS: The bright sun lit my face and eyes on fire today. I could barely keep my eyes open due to the brightness.
BENEFITS: I am realizing that I am a miracle worker, and I’m starting to love my work.