once
while attempting to clear my mind
I looked out and saw a sea of faces. Blurred at first, they seemed turned in my direction, as if watching me, awaiting what I might say. Having nothing prepared, I mutely returned the collective gaze, speechless, hoping they might all disappear, wondering if I could catch a better glimpse of who they were, what they were looking for, why they were all peering in my direction. Gradually, it became clear that they were not strangers. It was me, all me suspended there, me of a thousand embodiments, me from an uncountable number of moments in my past, in my present, and in my future, watching, judging, smiling, and frowning, me drinking the fullness of whatever it was being sought. As I blinked, hoping to dissolve the mirage of timeless memory into a surface of vast emptiness, I realized I was mistaken. It was not me, after all, but instead a multiple of identity from across the stretch of humanity. The young and old, the feeble and strong, the selfish and the selfless, the wealthy and the poor, they were all there, eyes, visions, even those clouded by cataract or blindness, seeking, searching, yearning to bring something into focus.
It was not me in their line of sight. I was not what the crowd was watching. Rather, there was something behind me, something I myself could not see, something I could feel without turning to observe. And so I asked to turn, and to observe, and wonderfully I was indeed turned, no longer facing the many but now mercifully one of them, pointed in the same direction. There I was, elbows brushing against myself, with strange versions of me I did not recognize, with an unimaginable ocean of identities with whom I felt an allegiance, a bond, a sameness.
Suddenly the spaces between us vanished. There was no me. There were no others. We were one, a singular desire of belonging, a shared sense of being, separate forms with a common purpose that was felt yet could not be said. As I let myself sink into the mystery of the moment, everything began folding on top of itself, it all simply melted, as if solid became liquid, liquid floated like air, and air could feel the energy holding me, it, us, everything together. I was gone. I was endless. I was like the surface of a smooth lake with neither top, bottom, or edge.
There was a formless calm. No trying. Only effortless acceptance.
Life simply inhaled.