Lesson from a rock

I walked up the mountain trail this evening. The sun has just set and mists were rising from the ocean blurring the sharp edges of stones, softening contours of blackened branches. The light was pearly and luminous and the mountains were silent. I walked up the path, with a solid wall of rock on one side. the rock was scarred and hacked into ridges, sharp angels and empty holes. There was a shelf, formed close to the ground, filled with dried leafs. “Perfect for me to lie on”, I thought, or rather my body felt, but I kept on walking. Farther up the trail there were three large boulders, sitting side by side. I looked at them and thought of sitting at one, touching the others with my hands. A nearby wall, made of cement or other man-made material, brought up no such urge when I looked at it, and I knew why I wanted to sit on the rocks. It happened to me once before, when a tree wanted to talk to me. I was passing a tall pine tree when the urge came to sit down under it. This was the same urge, I realized, and I sat on the rock. I became the mountain, immediately, I became the rock and nature, and myself. I was everything around me, present the way the mountains are present. I felt the rocks, not separate pieces of stone with sharp, defined edges but as they really are – beyond form, beyond separation, beyond the categories of time and the distinctions of space. They are unlimited and timeless. They are not of this earth, not contained by the earth, nor confined to it. They ARE, and they are present as rocks. I felt the mountains unlimited, boundless, without beginning and with no end. Beings that are not their form – they are present as their form. I saw that and realized that the mountain was teaching me. It was teaching me how to be who I am here on earth. Not a human, not a woman, not this body – but present as a human woman in this body. Not a human at all. Present as a human – but unlimited, boundless, endless. Present in this body – but God.