Journey of Gazes

 

My spiritual path has been a journey of gazes, the eyes of the Other an infinity sign leading me back to the Self. Gaze of friend or perfect stranger, gaze of lover and teacher, gaze of the animal guide, gaze of my infant daughter, mother, wife, gaze of my gaze.

Yet through these sparkling corridors of darshan, there were three gazes above all others that took me to the highest peak, where Dante stood with Beatrice, to see the empyrean through her eyes.

The first Great Gaze was the gaze of a fawn. My wife and I were just married, walking through a Maryland corn field. We came upon a newborn deer. We could only spend a moment there, for the mother doe was stamping the ground furiously at the edge of the forest.

Just for a moment we gazed into the bluest eyes I ever saw. Only my daughter's blue eyes come close to that bejeweled Shakti. The word that comes to mind is "familiar." The eyes of that fawn made the entire animal kingdom a clan of cousins. I felt welcomed and warmed into the planetary community. Ever since passing through those faun eyes, I've seen one and the same Soul in animals, angels, and human beings, a single Spirit gazing out through myriad facets in the diamond of God-Consciousness.

The second Great Darshan was the gaze of a dolphin. My young family was spending a week at the Jersey Shore, in Avalon. It was late June, solstice time. Every morning I would go to the beach at dawn, practice Sudarshan Kriya and meditation, then swim a mile down the coast in the rising sun, out beyond the breaking waves. Swimming quite a distance from shore, I suddenly saw an enormous shadow-form sweep silently beneath me. My heart shuddered with primordial fear of the deep, the unknown.

I stopped and looked around. I was completely alone. Then a face emerged from the water about three yards in front of me, with perhaps the most intelligent and benign expression I have ever beheld,  a smile of respect, parental care, and benediction. A gaze of unconditional love enfolded me, and filled me with the certainty that I am protected, both on earth and among the stars, by a much more advanced and ancient race of Friends.

The third Great Gaze of my journey came at a meeting with my Teacher at a meditation course in Nova Scotia, more than twenty years ago. That was the moment when I knew I really had a "guru," because Nobody is my guru. Let me explain.

Courses were small and intimate in those days, and on the final night I managed to visit alone with him in his room for more than an hour. At one point toward the end of our conversation, I asked, "There is so much chatter about who you are, that you are one of the great avatars or world teachers from a by-gone age who has returned to us. I need to know who you REALLY are!"

So he showed me. It was very simple. He said, "No, no, no. I am Nobody." And he meant it. Then I gazed into his eyes and saw pure Presence unveiled, no name, no story, no expectation from the past superimposed by the mind. Truly, I looked into Nobody's eyes. Nobody is my teacher. Nobody is my supreme authority. Nobody is my Lord.

That gaze: twin galaxies in-spiraling toward the formless source of creation through billions of light-years. Wells of eternity where I fell inward and outward at once, like a thrown pebble, like a lost meteor, in the motionless explosion of a dark sparkling rose of infinite circumference. This was the flowering of divine love. Golden petals gently, silently exploding from the empty stillness of the Self we all share. And gazing into each other this way, we make peace.

Jai Guru Dev. 

 

 

Photo by NASA, Helix Nebula