Heaven's Swing

Here's how it is. Unless, of course, you are one of those literalists who insist on things like . . . Eve ate an apple. Really. Then I query, what variety? Or, like some of my dearest loved ones, you bristle at me telling you anything other than the most common banalities of my daily circumstances. (Me and my dearest keep it on the surface, don't you know.) Believe what you will. Listen or don't. The Truth doesn't need an advocate or interpreter anyway. Truth is true. Not because some smarty like me says so.

If any of the foregoing got a little heat up in you, then maybe you have some metaphoric skin in this game. As they say, if the shoe fits, you'll wear it. My little girls use to sass back, "Whatever you say goes back to you!" Yes, indeed. But what about who's saying that. Touché! 

Look, all words are metaphors, just seems to be how close to the mark they fall. So ease your mind for this read. And if you don't like what I'm writing, be sure to check it out between the lines.

Each of us is born into this world with a Heaven's Swing way up there overhead. Never heard of that? Me neither. Just occurred, and it fits. At the first instant it's way up there overhead, almost completely out of sight. Note, almost.

As one matures there is a natural and automatic direction of growth toward that Heaven's Swing. At some point, however, there is a turning point. The inborn automatic growth appears to stop. It doesn't really, just that the context in which it operates gets transformed from what seems to be a purely physical happening to one of a more spiritual nature. Now these things are talked about separately because that is the nature of language and thought, to differentiate. In true fact, it's one thing, maybe just we see it from different perspectives at one point or another.

Let's just say that the swing is also always from the first instant lowering itself to us. Each according to our lot in life. Every thing and everyone has its own timetable for when we come and when we go. So I would say that at the end of days the swing comes and carries us away. How this happens in any one person's life seems to be different, maybe not in the actual structure of the fact of it, but more in the details; how it plays out.

I see it in these terms. You go on living through in this world and that swing keeps inexorably coming down toward you, lower and lower. Your days are numbered, don't you know? Somehow and sometime you get a glimpse of that Heaven's Swing. If you have the wit and the grace you can make a decision to keep one eye on it. To do something about it even. Form a relationship, if you will. I don't know how that is, just that like the fruit on the tree, you get to a certain ripeness and it becomes an obvious choice. Once made, you are on to something you could call a spiritual path. That's a big subject, or really a small one, depending how you look at it. But at some point some folks start wanting to learn the art of jumping on that swing. Others, it seems anyway, mostly just go about their personal quotidian narratives in ignorance, then get knocked down by it when their time comes. Never see it coming. Well, I believe we all do in fact see it; it's just that we seem to have the choice whether to ignore it. As a dear one had a habit of saying, I'll think about that tomorrow. Just that those tomorrows add up. And we shouldn't find ourselves in the position to start to be digging the well when the house catches fire.

Now this is something you either see or don't. I wouldn't worry about it either way. Early on I was very urgent about having others acknowledge this situation. Especially those most dear. In time, with some hard earned wisdom, I see that there's really nothing that can be done. Other than, of course, purify one's own heart. "But don't you dare tell me what to do!" In this world you have the blessed option to accept it all; all of it, even what you don't like and don't understand. My spiritual friend, Swami Muktananda summed it up, "See God in each other." 

Paraphrasing an old indigenous shaman priest, "Examine your conscience and cleanse your heart. Or, what is coming will seem to be a punishment." I don't know how what's coming will look, to me or to you. But, something is coming. Heaven's Swing I call it. Jump on, little grasshopper. It's not just for the ever after, but for the here and now.