One day on my lunch break I was at Shoreline Park watching a young seagull perched on a picnic table a few feet away. Perfectly still except for his soft, brown feathers ruffling in the breeze, he gazed at me for a long time. I thought about the Eastern concept of darshan—the sight of a holy person. Just being in the presence of a Master, a highly evolved being, we receive grace. When they open their eyes and their gaze falls on us, we are blessed—we are seen in a way that transforms us. When I open my eyes, I thought, the only thing that happens is I see out of them. No one gets blessed as far as I know.
A train whistled in the distance as it chugged through town. I ate my lunch—a turkey sandwich on gluten-free bread and organic carrot juice—and watched the ocean gradually disappear under a blanket of misty fog. It drifted silently over the trees in the park, shrouding everything in its path. I lived in fog for a good part of my life. Many days of the year, in southern California where I grew up, it creeps in from the ocean concealing, veiling, enveloping, keeping things vague, hazy, uncertain, unclear. It dampens sound, mutes colors, and carries the salty smell of the ocean through the air. It is comforting, and at the same time, mysterious.
The seagull still hadn’t moved. Everything about him was soft except for his hard, black beak. He seemed so present, so real. Maybe we’re all capable of blessing each other and just don’t realize it, I thought. Human beings are encoded with amazing abilities that we are just beginning to recognize. These powers are wired into us as a species. Just like the fog drifting in from the ocean, our limited minds obscure these abilities from our consciousness, but they become obvious if we decide to notice. At the very least, could we hold a silent desire for the happiness of those we encounter each day? Not just our loved ones, but strangers, too. Can we recognize that at a fundamental level, we are all one, and that in wishing for others to be happy, we are wishing for our own happiness? When we realize our interconnection with all that is, grace naturally flows from everything we encounter.
As I watched the seagull, I imagined it giving a silent blessing from its perch on the picnic table. The people walking by were completely unaware they were receiving gull darshan. I thought about how we live our lives oblivious to the countless hidden influences that are continually affecting us. We assign a specific cause to our changing moods, thoughts, feelings, life circumstances. But really, we can’t know all the complex factors interacting with each other that impact us on different levels of our existence. For instance, scientists have confirmed we are being bombarded constantly by invisible cosmic rays from the Sun and distant galaxies. We are influenced by the planets, the phases of the Moon, Solar flares, the collective human consciousness, our karmic imprints.
We are vibrational beings—an intrinsic part of a vibrational universe. As we evolve, and the fog of the delusion of limitation clears, we can experience our deeper nature which is expansive and capable of much more than meets the eye.
The seagull flew off and disappeared into the fog over the ocean. I finished my lunch and drove back up the hill to my office at hospice to see a new client. She had recently experienced a devastating loss, and I held a deep, silent wish for her healing.
Consider This: Connect with the silence within that is always present, radiating its grace to everything, including yourself. See that this silence is grace. Experience the vibrational nature of your being—your oneness with all.
