I put my bare-naked hands down on the wintry ground.
On the soil.
On the mud, actually. Wet, gushy, and colder than ice cubes. Nothing melted under the remaining warmth in my hand; ice cubes would've melted under my fingertips.
But not this mud.
I closed my eyes.
I breathed. Deeply. In. Out. In... Out... Innnn...Outttt...
Before the frigidity took hold and my fingers lost their typically acute sense of texture, I recall feeling small pebbles, twigs, and silky, half-rotted leaves in that handprint of soggy earth. I heard a breeze blowing faintly through pine-needled boughs high above my squatting body. I felt the quick, cold touch of my dog’s nose on my cheek before she darted off to some other exploration. I crouched a little lower and got a faint scent of decaying stuff, last summer’s glory now ground cover, becoming energy for unseeable living beings.
I put my bare-naked hands down on the wintry ground.
I became one with that impossibly cold mud. And in the instant that my hands were no longer able to feel separation, distinctness from that mud, I felt the overwhelming flood of warm, melted calm that is the gift of inseparability-felt.
Separating causes pain, often. Because we are naturally one. Separating things out in our thoughts hurts because it is unnatural; the natural way, nature’s way, the truth, is that we are inseparable. “Becoming One” is the road to peace. I’m convinced of it. The mud taught me this the other day.
I put my bare-naked hands down on the wintry ground.
I became whole. Again and again and again.
I put my bare-naked hands down on the wintry ground…Won’t you?
(Originally posted Jan. 2016)
