In mid-October I backpacked into the Wheeler Peak
Wilderness, to Williams Lake, a favorite of hikers. It rained off and on all day, which made for
some lovely cloud formations hanging down into the crags, licking the lake, and
swirling lazily upward through the trees.
I was the
only one camped in there. I had to dodge
in and out of my tent all afternoon to keep out of the periodic rains. But it stopped raining enough for the full
moonrise. The moon peeked through gaps in the clouds, brightening the lake and the trees at
After a
half-hour meditation, I sat on a log beside my tent watching the clouds playing
with the craggy moonlit scene.
I had an experience,
which raised an interesting question. As
I allowed my attention to flow out to all around me, I had
the eerie feeling that I was not opening my awareness to it all; but that I was simply
allowing myself to join the awareness that was already all around me, everywhere. The awareness was out there already. I was just opening up to it.
So the
question remains: Is there awareness in everything in the
universe, and we just ordinarily have a snippet of it? Or, is it, as we commonly think, our
individual consciousness that we open up to the world around us?
At the time, it brought to
mind lines from an Upanishad, which makes the case that, at our core, we are
one with all things:
The Self is one. Unmoving, it moves faster than mind. The senses lag, but Self runs ahead. Unmoving, it outruns pursuit. Out of Self comes the breath that is the life
of all things.
Unmoving, it moves; is far away, yet
near; within all, outside all.
Of a certainty the man who can see
all creatures in himself, himself in all creatures, knows no sorrow.
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