In The Absence of Clarity: Gravity

Several new coaching clients have come to me recently for a hand as they stand at the crossroads of choice with confusion in their hearts. Moved by their yearning for clarity, I share a memory from my own life several years ago:

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Mother Earth embraces me on the mountain. Soul-weary, I surrender my mind’s turmoil to simple stimulation. Birds ruffle in the oak tree 20 feet from where I stretch out on the land. Weather-whipped grasses crunch against my back as I settle into comfort underneath the un-seasonal heat of the November sun. The hills undulate across the horizon. I can feel the aliveness of the Earth undulate into my heart and begin to smooth the erratic energy there.

My heart has become a fire-ravaged terrain, torn apart by the Molotov impact of change. Feelings of regret, grief and guilt are the alcohol that creeps up a ragged wick of disappointment and frustration. Choices I made which, at the time of my choosing, felt divinely directed now simply feel overwhelming. That combustible concoction of Spirit’s call and my own free will, lobbed into my heart’s longing, has bombed out my clarity.

When in doubt, sit. Mother Earth schools me with this wisdom whenever confusion trumps courage at the crossroads of choice.

When you feel scared, return to Me. Come home to Me, and I will embrace you with My gravity.

Mother Earth is home, is nurturing, is the Mother of all mothers. I agree with physicist-turned-spiritual activist Will Keepin, when he says that undefined force we call gravity is actually Love. The Mother’s pull toward her Earthly breast is an expression of her Love for us. I am nurtured by it now, on this mountain. I open my anxious heart to the heartbeat of the planet, and I reconnect with a larger order. It puts my comparatively small dramas into perspective.

The workings of this Great Mother are a mystery to me. Her gravity is one example. There are equations to describe the properties and effects of gravity. But no one knows what it really is — no scientist can say what causes it. We experience the force of gravity. We can observe that a body exerts a force on another body relative to the distance between them. But we don’t understand this phenomenon. We can’t say why matter is attracted to matter. This is a mystery.

Gravity, in this sense, is like God — a Great Mystery. And God, to mystics, is Love.

God. Love. Gravity. Experiences without explanations. Mysteries.

Unlike the scientist who seeks to explicate the unexplained, my response to mystery is to celebrate it. Feeling the effects of gravity on my burdened soul, I sing out a song of gratitude. Thank you, Mother, for all of this. Thank you for this healing. Thank you for your expansive embrace. Thank you for accepting me, just as I am, grief and guilt and all.

I appreciate the validation science brings to what I discern intuitively. It gives me a vocabulary for communicating with those for whom simple celebration is not enough. But it is not the Source I turn to when I need nurturing. I turn instead to praising the mystery in a gesture of accepting what is.

Gratitude opens my heart. It is the platform for all of my contributions to the Earth and her people… when I am in the practice of it. And when I am not, the messes and challenges in my life seem overwhelming. Reconnecting with the Earth, her Love, her God-nature inspires in me the gratitude I need to regroup around the difficulties my chosen path entails. I am reminded that “divinely directed” does not necessarily mean “easy.” And that clarity can be restored through an hour of meditation on a mountain.

But nature’s restoration of the soul’s weariness is not given once and forever by a single meditation. Healing — meaning returning to wholeness — is an ongoing process. A regular relationship with Nature’s sacred mysteries — a walk in the woods, a meditation on a mountain, a deep inhalation of a flower’s fragrance — gives me the sustenance I need to keep moving forward on my path. When my soul is frayed, I open my heart in gratitude, and I am replenished.

With the grounding power of God-Love-Gravity, I am empowered to return over and over again to my home-of-homes, terra firma, this Earth. Confusion melts away as I center in my heart, the balance point between Heaven and Earth.

Confusion is an invitation to be with mystery, to not race beyond the now. There is a teaching here at the crossroads, and it is conveyed through the comforts of gravity. Grounding gives rise to gratitude. And gratitude… well, that gives us everything.