FOLLOWING THE RIVULETS



Confluence of Rivulets below Native American Village Site


FOLLOWING THE RIVULETS
 

     Often my soul has to thaw before I can immerse myself in a forest, as though a layer of ice that holds all of the ideas of who I am, good and bad, has hardened around my core. Thanks to recent rains, I have had little trouble losing myself, sensing eternity in the oaks, grasses, rocks, moss, but I especially forget myself when I encounter rivulets. Sometimes I follow the fledgling steams to their source, the rain fingering the slopes, seeping underground to surface from rodent holes as springs, or puddling and slipping, clear veins of water, through mountain channels (a few of which are segments of ancient Native American trails). Sometimes I follow them to the larger streams that meander through the woodlands and cascade down the slopes to join eventually with a river. If all the rivers around here weren't dammed and diverted, of course, the water would flow out to sea and begin again, but I still feel the eternal cycle as though it were part of my own circulatory system nevertheless.

 



Native American Path

      The magic of self-transformation begins with the dissolution of personality so that I experience every living thing as a form of light. In regular life I make a great many distinctions that separate me from this light in nature and other people, 1001 distinctions that create a hierarchy of importance that blocks the simple recognition that we are all united within this light that is usually so difficult for me to see. I weigh what is good and bad in myself and others, and too often the ideas become fixed, and I become enslaved by my own thought-forms, yet they melt away in the light as I follow the rivulets.



Large Rivulet (or Small Stream)

      It's no mistake that powerful rituals exist to banish both positive and negative influences. As I follow the rivulets, I lose both what I consider good and bad in myself and suddenly know the light within all living things and the Sun behind the sun. Don't get me wrong: I've been kicked in the face too many times and have seen the evil in myself and other people enough to understand that survival often depends on making some pretty hard distinctions. But there are spaces in the world and in the mind where the veils fall away, and all that is left is light, and I am happy if I can simply follow the paths of light all day through the mountains.