Beginning with today’s entry, I look to the garden and meditation as the response to those who have commented on my spending quality time with old friends. A reminder that we are never alone.  

I think of and turn to Rumi and the whirling dervishes and keeping to an inner mystical dimension that connects us to the universe and with eternal spirit.

The dervish embraces all humanity with love, since Sufis believe that the human being was created with love in order to love. As a quote by Rumi states that, “All loves are a bridge to Divine love.”    

For myself, moments of meditation and silence are as if I am meant to be spinning, joining with others both past and present. Thinking of the whirling dervishes and the bliss found with meeting up with old friends, being at peace comforted by universal love. A couple Rumi quotes to help take us there would be “What you seek is seeking you”, and “The garden of the world has no limit except in your mind”.  To this I would add… who you seek is seeking you as well.

Mediation should be meant to take us to places where we are not alone with our thoughts.

Spending time in silence meant as a portal that opens the door to our highest aspirations – and to what takes us there. I know this may run counter to focusing only on clearing our minds of present-day clutter, or what my Buddhist friends would call eliminating “monkey mind.” But when leaving “monkey mind” behind, just where is it we are to go and what or who is it that takes us there?  

Simply adhering to the silence is not enough. For myself, this gives ultimate meaning to the journey ahead. After meditating for more than thirty years, I have discovered that doing so alongside a mentor (often more than one), that where I want to go and where I need to go often merge as my writing brings an alignment with the past. It is like a gathering of old friends, or a homecoming of sorts.  

Through evolutionary means, it is believed that our brains are wired in a way to make connections between memory and our senses. Hearing a song as mentioned before or smelling something like newly baked bread or wood burning in an outside fire pit, can serve or tend to reset our memories. And just where is it that it takes us? 

These things can connect us to our past beyond genetics, to a time we may have known but simply forgotten. Even taking us to a place some have called “the scent of eternity.” To what the ancient Egyptians called the “scent of eternal life”.  

Where we are given the opportunity to breathe in the fragrance of history with the ability to live again, or even to be reborn into what is to be continued.  

Into what may be called a continuum acknowledging that our eternal spirit never dies. I think the ancient Egyptians may have been on to something; however, their methods though were not all together there or complete. Like attempting to complete a puzzle with a few missing pieces thirty-five hundred years ago.

Something science and quantum physics tries to answer more clearly for us today.  

Our spirit floating about looking for a new home anxious to complete tasks that have been left undone. With some looking for a new home and others not caring or needing to do so. Perhaps even just coming to see what has changed since their last visit.

As though for some, this place, or scent of eternity has been found. We learn that caring for our lives and others are like tending to our garden, regardless of how big or small our reach.

Institutional memories gained over time and maintaining nature’s core structure tells our story. With this, we learn that if well-kept, tending to the edges is all that is needed. 

It is our fear of the unknown that creates an illusion that reflects us. We often cannot see ourselves through our own eyes, needing a mirror to behold ourselves to what may be real or simply imagined. So that the perception we have of ourselves becomes a mirror-image, or illusion. The same can be said for how others perceive us as we are but an evolving spirit. With others seeing what they want to see we illustrate this so-called fragrance of history through our actions. Showing others what we want them to know or see. 

If we are untrue to our inner selves, that means simply that everyone sees nothing but an illusion…

As smiles, or nodding heads appear in the background as you go about your day. Or as a favorite from the Sufi mystic Rumi says we are to “Be the maker of your own myth.”