If only my key were a bit more practiced

This will be hard to describe. Just a feeling. A fleeting sensation. Yesterday in the garden. A sense of my individual self erasing — no that’s not quite the right word… merging maybe (that’s better but still not quite right) into a larger sense of oneness. A glimpse of being part of the whole fabric. Just thinking about it brings a tingling on the back edge of my forearms. (For those who know Chinese medicine, it feels like my Small Intestine/ Heart meridians are vibrating.)

This happened to me once before. A long time ago. Maybe close to 40 years ago. I was listening to Music for 18 Musicians by Steve Reich and this similar feeling happened to me. I was so concentrated on listening to the repetitive, mesmerizing nature of the music that I lost my sense of individual self and felt myself diffuse into a kind of oneness. A universal oneness. I felt like a piece of an expansive (expanding?) whole– all of nature, all of life, all of all. I remember feeling wonderful, nearly euphoric, for maybe almost an entire minute. When I tried to reach that feeling again, by playing that record over and over again, it always slipped away from me. I know I was trying too hard and that was why I never found my way back inside the music again in quite the same way.

But yesterday. In the garden. Picking greens for dinner. An inkling of that feeling struck me again. A small whisper of it nearly washed over me. Through my mind’s eye, I felt that immersion in a totality, my edges disappearing for a nano-second. Just a nano-second.

My eyes watered a bit. Not sure why. It felt important, dynamic, absorbing, big. Dissolving, yet integrated. Even now, just sitting on the couch, I can sense that feeling at a close distance, just behind my blindness. Almost tangible. So close. The backs of my forearms, even the base of my tongue, tingling a little. If only my key were a bit more practiced.