I had heard the word epiphany before but it wasn’t until I was reading a James Joyce passage that I internalized the meaning of the word. The words as if spoken from a boy that was my age paralleled my own internal thoughts about want and lust. Joyce’s writings, steeped in oral tradition, were able to transcend the written word and become spoken word and the spoken words related to my own emotional state.
Once you internalize the meaning of epiphany you can begin to recognize when they happen and sometimes why. There was a girl on the beach in Maine that threw mud at me for no reason, that was the moment that Joyce wrote about when writing about his own life, real or imagined, so many years ago. A connection was born between the past and present and those seeking knowledge and those providing wisdom or looking to inspire.
The first kill, witnessing two bobcats hunt a rabbit in the middle of the snow, miles from home, the bobcats won, my innocence lost. Years later I read “Brian the Still Hunter” and shivered in recognition of shadows within. The primal connections between man and beast the Animal Kingdom Community play out in the imaginations caverns mixing imagery, scents and visions. At what point do you become what you kill? Is there a need or desire to kill? Is it just under the surface?
Hitting a home run, I was a bad baseball player. To me it was boring, until one day when I needed to pass gym class and the coach eyed me warily and said, “you better show me somethin’ today!” It was senior year and I preferred going to the Park to hang out than to go to gym class. Of course the ball hadn’t been hit to me so I was hoping to show off at bat. Mike was really good at all sports and he was at bat before me. I watched, really watched how he swung at the ball. He hit a triple into left field. Without thinking I walked up to the plate and swung just like he did. I hit a home run. I passed gym class. There is a difference between paying attention and really focusing. Really focusing reveals hidden nuances, subtle shifts, and sometimes the answer to what you are looking for.
Getting lost in the woods, I went for a walk in the woods and let my dog off the leash, he saw a deer, hours later I was lost but had found my dog. Logging roads don’t always lead to civilization as it turns out. There was a moment of true panic combined with a bad adrenaline rush, there was also a connection between nightmares of being lost and actually being lost, where one world mixes with the other. Then there was reason.
Zen Motion, doing something so well it becomes effortless and a reflection of nature. For me this is skiing and occasionally mountain bike descents. There is a moment when time slows down or fast forwards and you are simply there free-falling with purpose. It is it’s own reward, it is what keeps many of us moving.
The elements, they connect us to our most ancient selves and still hold a lot of knowledge for us to uncover. Material principles lose meaning when compared to spiritual value and spiritual value is all we have in the end. This is a recurring theme in my own mandala and whenever it revolves it gains more meaning.
What truths or epiphanies have you?
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What you said about focusing, really focusing, resonates with me.
I will share one sort of epiphany experience I had. While I was in school, studying to be a conservator, one of my projects was to recontruct a ceramic vessel that was over a thousand years old. It was a large pot and was broken into hundreds of pieces.
I would spend hours and hours after class sorting all the pieces with my eyes, looking for variations in colors, as one would with a puzzle. Then one night while I was doing this, I was so tired, I closed my eyes and let my fingers do the sorting. With my eyes closed I focused through sensation and started to feel the marks left by the hands of the maker. What had taken me forever to do with my eyes, my other senses, my touch, my soul reaching out to the soul of the artist long dead, allowed me to arrange all those pieces just as they fit.
Now, years later and many many pots and other artifacts later, I still approach each object with my left brain, my open eyes, and my right brain with eyes closed. I still get chills when I find the thumbprints, thousands of years old.
My epiphany then, was to allow the unconscious to help my conscious. It allows the healer in me to make things whole again.
My state of mind being what it is, all I can come up with are epiphanies tending towards the negative, or “reduction of hope” moments. But I suspect I’ll come up with a few more than the sports one just below, given time.
My major sports epiphanies – which link into that part of me that still lingers, always waiting for the right moment – are mostly tied to that time twenty or so years ago when I could swing a golf club just right. That downswing that has no down in it, that perfect arcing pendulum comprising timing and execution and speed and describing a tilted circle through a space only the golfer occupies. There really is no need for the ball to be on the ground at point of impact.
There isn’t a need for a ball at all when the swing feels right.
I haven’t played golf in nearly seven years.
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careful, when that happened on KOS it created a small tremor.
I finally gave up trying to find my way out. Sat down, looked at the sky and said,”ok I’m lost and I can’t find my own way out and need help.”
Then I heard the sound of cars and realized I was but 3 yards from a highway.
I was told to NOT sing. By three different teachers, one was my brothers band director who said I’d have to leave because I was throwing the whole band practice. For long, long years I only sang bymyself.
We were on a road trip, MrD was sleeping, I plugged in my fav 8track & soon I was singing…he woke up & joined in, never said I was good but never said stop. That was all the encouragement I needed. I could now sing with HIM anyway (he’s a guitar-man) Years later at his cousins 50th b-day party, we had arrived early & I was drinking my wine too quickly, they began playing Bobby McGee…I closed my eyes & started singing my fool heart out…it just felt perfect. When the song was over there was a huge round of applause, statling me. The rest of the cousins and friends had arrived. I realized those teachers were wrong, anyone can sing, maybe not always in tune or on time, but everyone Should sing.