The morning light falls across the room like a familiar voice, echoing thoughts of “that week” so distinctly.
The week my son’s rare, noncancerous brain mass hit his hypothalamus, his body temperature hit 105.6, and the word impossible hit everyone’s lips. One year later, Hospice still whispers in hushed shock that surviving was supposed to be the impossible goal.
Unfathomably, Jon and I grasp forward momentum, like juts of hope on a cliff wall, suspending reason, time, and probability…our energy remains. Why? Perhaps, that has always been the wrong question, the real question should be: why not?
One of many late nights finds me searching for answers, googling “the Universe.” Since approaching my 9th year as a devoted practitioner of Yoga, I have shifted from seeking new poses to seeking the undefinable fabric of life. Through my practice, I have experienced a level of existence that defies vocabulary. I’ve simply felt it. Around me, this indescribable energy is pushing, pulling, and whispering awareness of my living breath in this incredible moving river of life. In my late night search, I stumbled across an article on the NASA website simply titled, “Dark Energy and Dark Matter.” Or as I have mentally filed it, “How NASA experiences Yoga.”
“More is unknown than is known. We know how much dark energy there is because we know how it affects the universe’s expansion. Other than that, it is a complete mystery. But it is an important mystery. It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy.”
Once I absorbed the article, I was inexplicably pulled to a passage in “The Path of the Yoga Sutras” by Nicolai Bachman. “If a piece of black glass representing the manifest world, is overlaid on a piece of clear glass, representing our inner light of awareness, our eyes see only black glass. The only way to distinguish between the two is to turn our attention inward and experience that which cannot be perceived by our external sensory organs.”
We are bathed in the energy of creation. Experiencing that which can not be defined is our birthright, our most ancient wisdom, and our cutting edge science. Perhaps Jon and I have survived because we chose to believe we could harness the impossible. Jon is my undefinable spark, in that sea of dark energy. In the practice of Yoga and life, he remains revolutions ahead of me.
Photo Credit: Amber Shumake