Bells and Rainbows
Bells and Rainbows
You’ve probably heard of the “cocktail party phenomenon;” that ability to suddenly filter out a roomful of conversational noise and tune in to a particular word, such as your name. This week I had that same event, but I wasn’t at a cocktail party, and it wasn’t my name.
At the risk of sounding corny, I think it has to do with Christmas. And more.
In the type of yoga I practice (Kundalini), there is a teaching that if we do a particular exercise or meditation for 40 consecutive days, it unblocks us from negative thoughts or behaviors that hinder our personal/spiritual progress. With 90 consecutive days, we solidify that new habit and free ourselves from old ones. After 120 days, we permanently integrate the new habit and redefine ourselves. After 1,000 days, we automatically call upon and implement that new habit as needed without even thinking about it.
This “layer cake” notion of how positive habits impact us is, for me, motivating enough to compel me to have carried it out while coping with grim life challenges. I don’t have a problem keeping up my new habit (usually a meditation or breathing and mantra practice) because I figure I can do any reasonable thing for 40 days.
But I confess that on the 41st day, I tend to breathe a sigh of relief – “that’s done!” and move on to other ventures.
Recently, with current events in my personal life and the world, I found myself craving deeper, more lasting reinforcement in the form of a singing, moving meditation that is said to “remove negativity,” invoke peace and prosperity when feeling overwhelmed, and draw the Divine into the everyday.
With the holiday season peeking right around the corner, I didn’t set the 40-day resolution, lest I feel guilty if I couldn’t keep it up. I simply decided to do the practice as long as it’s enjoyable.
Starting on Day 1, and on every day since (now on Day 68), it has been so enjoyable that when waking up in the morning, I literally can’t wait to do it. And after so much steady practice, I pretty much figured I’ve “mastered” it. After all, my life feels gratefully blessed, despite the usual aggravations, disagreements, insanity, and hardships of the world.
I know the words and meanings of the song inside and out; my hands automatically do the gestures; and I’ve memorized every note of the flute, the vocal tones, the guitar, the harmonium, and the bongos. And I can tell by each of those exactly when the 11-minute point has come, signaling the end. That song is a part of me.
Or so I thought.
Imagine my surprise when I sang today and heard something new. There were bells. Like the bells of a sleigh. Impossible! I’ve been listening and singing with this recording for more than two months, and there were never bells before.
But today, there they were, clear as . . . well . . . a bell! Jingling and joyful bells ringing all through the background. Dare I even say it? Like Santa’s sleigh. Aye aye aye!
Disbelieving, I finished the song, closed my phone’s music app, and started it up again. Yup. Still there. Bells.
They must have been there all along, right? There is no physical explanation for bells suddenly appearing in prerecorded music that anyone can hear anywhere, anytime.
The music could not have changed. Which means that it was me who changed. Or rather, my attention.
Was it any coincidence that just yesterday I ordered Christmas cards from UNICEF or started drawing up a gifts list? Did that simple shift in thinking render me more aware of Christmassy-sounding bells in my meditation song?
That is the only answer, of course. Not such a mystery, really. But one that leaves me pondering, what ELSE might I be missing with my attention so deliberately carved out and bounded by the concerns of the day?
Was this just another form of the “cocktail party phenomenon?” Or is there SO MUCH MORE to see, or hear, to smell or taste or feel, than what we miss by zooming in so intently on the routine and expected? What mysteries, delights, insights, and messages might we be moving past or through, unaware, distracted, with our all too human blinders and earmuffs on?
After my father passed away, my husband hung a sparkly glass crystal ball that Dad gave us years ago. It dangles from a length of fishing line just outside our kitchen window where the sunlight transforms it into a generator of rainbows on the wall.
And even though I’m the main cook in the family and spend much of my days in the kitchen, I didn’t see the rainbows until Tony called my attention to them, a troupe of multicolored arcs doing a jig on the kitchen wall.
Am I really that oblivious? Apparently so. Or do we all become so engrossed, so totally absorbed and preoccupied, we miss out on the bells and rainbows right in front of us?
Based on life experiences described in earlier posts, I believe we intersect and overlap with multiple dimensions and possibly with Beings in those dimensions. What if I could relax my attention and perceive them at my own choosing?
The only answer I can call to mind is to try and make ourselves childlike at least once a day. To look around, see, and hear with the clean, open mind the Divine gifted to us so that we might behold the magical, the ethereal, and the unexpected.
I vow to do exactly that from now through New Year’s. For at least 40 days😊.