This morning I sat.
Fans humming.
Breath in the nostrils.
Chair rolling over plastic.
Cats somewhere far off.
Birds — layers of them — songs, chirps, whistles.
And underneath it all…
Silence.
Not the absence of sound.
The source of it.
So I opened.
Wider than the room.
Wider than the walls.
Wider than the idea that "I stop here."
Be the corners.
Be the space between them.
Be the field everything is happening inside of.
Then I listened out.
Past the room.
Past the walls.
Not waiting for sound to come to me —
reaching toward it.
Then I smelled out.
Coffee.
Morning air.
The particular quality of this house, this hour.
Something shifted.
The field got bigger.
And I got… less.
Less defined.
Less boundaried.
Less certain where I ended.
Then —
Jennie.
Not "over there."
Not separate.
Same field.
And it didn't come as pictures.
It came as a feeling.
In the chest.
Through the heart.
Honest.
Immediate.
Mine… and not mine.
That's not imagination.
That's contact.
Less separation.
And then —
come back.
Because you're not here to dissolve.
Not yet.
Death can have that.
Right now you're here to touch the infinite…
and return as a man.
So I contracted.
Pulled the field back in through the senses —
through the smell, the sound, the breath —
back into this body, this chair, this moment.
And then I felt it.
The skeleton in the stone.
The song underneath the silence.
You don't create it.
You get quiet enough to find it.
So I sat again.
I wrote.
I felt out, came back, and offered this —
through the heart — as a gift.
That's the return.
That's the action.
That's this.