LOVE IS THE ANSWER
My memory of an August day in 1981 is as clear now as the sky was on that day, the day I experienced the miraculous.
By some special grace, not having the normal mental chatter running through my mind, I was very present. I was aware of each breath as it was happening. I was feeling this immense radiant love at the source of every wave of inhale and exhale. My heart was immersed in a radiant warmth emanating from Source. This all-encompassing experience of Love was overwhelming and very swee,t the same sweetness at the core of the crystal clear, warm and sunny day on the outside.
I was utterly unaccustomed to the power of the love and bliss I was experiencing. I was barely able to simultaneously do things with my body and stay present to each breath as the Love created it. The power and tenderness of the experience had me intent on staying present to its amazing radiance inside.
My kids were little then and I worked only a couple of days a week for a gardener, a friend. This particular day he sent me with his full-time assistant to an old colonial farmstead owned by an elderly couple too infirm to walk the grounds. Their enjoyment of the gardens was restricted to the plantings that surrounded the brick patio off the kitchen in the ell of this old colonial home, as it set amid its homestead like setting.
In the outlying gardens, my friend had created a loose rambling array of wildflowers, meadow grasses and muted perennials, flowing together in a wild and natural fusion of subtle color that was never visited by the older couple.
In contrast the garden beds surrounding the brick patio next to the white clapboard exterior of the 16th century farm-house was a blaze of ostentatious, gregarious color, a mix of zinnias, dahlias, cosmos, marigolds, nasturtiums – all blended in with gorgeous fragrant tea roses for the owners to enjoy at close range.
My gardener friend had used every trick he knew to support this colorful garden of annuals and roses. It was a difficult spot for a garden, located beneath a large gnarly old oak tree.
When we arrived the Assistant gave me the job of fertilizing those flower beds around the patio. She went off to deadhead wilted flowers in the outlying grounds.
Focused within, feeling amazing love with each breath, I made my way across the gravel driveway to the old grey weather-beaten barn, where I located the fertilizer and the watering can in one of the empty stalls. I took them to the hose on the patio.
I had used this same fertilizer the previous week on another job. I remembered that the proportions were three to one. So without reading the directions, I mixed the watering can full, carefully measuring 3 tablespoons to each quart.
It was the kind of fertilizer that you sprinkle over plant, foliage and all, not just on the ground. Still wholly absorbed in this wonderful state of love and joy, I proceeded to carefully water the garden around the patio. I had finished all but about a 4 by 6 foot remaining area when I ran out of the mixture. So I returned to the patio where I had left the fertilizer can next to the hose nozzle to mix some more.
It was then that I noticed that the can of fertilizer, which had been full when I started, was now almost empty. This prompted me to read the directions, which gave the proper proportions as 3 teaspoons to the gallon, not 3 tablespoons to the quart.
I realized that the mixture I had just sprinkled over almost this entire garden was of a chemical potency that would surely turn it brown and kill the plants soon — if not momentarily. I looked up to see if it had begun to happen. It had not.
Even as I continued to hold on to the love I was feeling inside, possibilities began to whiz through my mind. An intuitive impulse to attract ‘wetness’ led me to glance skyward. But the radiant uninterrupted blue of the cloudless sky brought my glance immediately back to earth. Other possibilities whizzed through. Should I try to wash the poison off with the hose? Should I alert the assistant gardener to the situation?
I quickly realized any remedial action I could take would be futile; it was inevitable that the garden would die. Any action I might attempt would also surely result in losing my focus on the inner Love experience I was still present to.
I made a very intentional decision to surrender to the situation on the outside and stay with the experience on the inside. The immense love I felt with each breath was a priority. I knew that I could not keep up my focus within and attempt to take action on the outside. No action was worth the risk of losing the caress of that sweet love that was coming to me on the wave of each breath.
I felt compassion for all the people that would be affected. I realized I would possibly lose the friendship of my employer; he would possibly lose this long time customer of his; they would lose their beautiful garden, etc. All of this went through my consciousness in a flash. In the face of it all I was determined to stay connected with the inner experience of Love above all else.
I accepted that all I could do on the outside was to correctly mix another gallon and finish the job. In my mind I saw with surrendered compassion how it would look with the garden mostly dead and only this little patch left, as I carried the watering towards it.
As I bent over and began to sprinkle the mixture unto the remaining flowers. Suddenly my back registered what felt like wet hail pounding on it. Huge raindrops were falling fast and furious out of a cloudless sky. I looked up absolutely startled. Across the wide lawn I caught sight of the assistant gardener. She was also momentarily frozen in shock.
Then in the next moment we were in a dead run to put the equipment away in the barn and head for the truck, all the while being pelted with this downpour of rain. By the time we reached the truck we were both drenched to the skin.
As she drove off, a stream of profanity was flowing out of her mouth. At the end of the driveway the rain stopped and the dirt road was dusty as ever. A dust cloud rose up behind the truck as she gave it the gas in her agitation over the event. I think that we were both in shock; neither of us spoke a single word about what had just happened.
My shock was a deep silent dissonance. My mind reeled. This whole experience was so out of joint with the reality I took for granted. The love experience was still going on in side. But now it had a tangible intimacy that confronted every premise with which I engaged with life.
Rain, very tangible RAIN, and what appeared to possibly be just the right amount of rain, had come out of a sun filled cloudless August sky at just the right moment to correct a stupid error I had made.
This was an unthinkable reality. So I didn’t think about it or talk about it for about fifteen years. I just put the experience in the closet. Who would believe it, when I who had been there and ended up drenched to the skin did not know how to integrate it into the life I lived day-to-day.
There was no place in my reality to put this event. I had no structure into which it would comfortably fit. Years before in the mid-sixties, I “tripping” on LSD and had ecstatic experiences. I was not new to “other realities.” But this event had no resemblance whatsoever to an acid trip.
This was an intimate response in the physical world to an inner decision. This was not a hallucination or illusion. I got wet, very wet. So did the plants, the assistant and the truck. Etc.
With each decade that passes I see that day from a different perspective. In the nineties I thought perhaps it is an example of the laws of manifestation and attraction as articulated by Abraham and Ester Hicks. Or was it life at the frequency of LOVE in the map of consciousness of enlightened master, David Hawkins. Was it evidence that Life is meant to be a co-creative Love Story.
Now I see it as one example of the choice in each moment between Truth or Illusion, Love or fear. On that day the real miracle was the grace to stay present to Source inside, to accept the Love available from deep within.
It is evidence of our Elder Brother’s teaching, “Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven and all things shall be added unto you.”
I understand that in each moment I can choose Love and Oneness, the visceral reality of God’s Love NOW pouring into my life. In that moment I give up or forgive every other concern. That choice, that priority opens the door to every solution I could ever want or need.
However, in my current evolution, I lack the consistent intention to stay awaken within that Love. With more consistency I chose to seek the solution first, relying on myself as a separate entity. I separate myself from my Loving Source. I enter the world of illusion and uncertainty. I sometimes seem successful, but inside there is always a low mostly unconscious sense of need, anxiety, fear and guilt that keeps driving me to do more, have more, be more.
I have yet to decide for once and all to be kind to myself. That is my current reality. Fighting with my current reality is more of the same painful separation. I fully intend to repeatedly re-engage and recommit to being present to my Source within.
When I go for that Inner Stillness and the Love and Light that is there within I have no needs in that moment. Even in the sense of ongoing time, the more I am present to the Love from Source, the more the problems of my life seem to flow into resolution, perhaps less dramatically than that day back in 81 but just as effectively and unseen by the surrounding world.
Could it be that Love is the Answer to all and every problem? If so the solution is not in seeking to solve the problem but rather in looking beyond or forgiving the problem and opening to the Source of Love as the intimate Solution in which no problem exists.
As I interpret the enlightened master, David Hawkins, he asserts that ‘cause and effect’ that we consider fundamental to reality is not reality but an illusion. Reality is that all that exists comes directly from Source in response or association to frequency. Love is a powerful frequency.
On that day in 1981 I was experiencing my life emanating directly from Source. I felt each breath created directly out of Love. The rain also appeared directly out of Source at the command of Love – the One Love that is Source. It was not ‘caused.’ It simply responded to, was attracted into being by the Love that was Present.
© February 4, 2005 Maryanna Bock