Along about November of 2023 as I languished on my bed, I became aware of what appeared to be an interruption in the breath as it moved upward along my spine. Curious about the little hiccoughs in the flow, I brought my attention to them and encouraged the breath to move more freely.
In that moment, my inner eye perceived a person, a mere stick of a man, dressed from head to toe in red. His long black hair was tied and loosely hung down along his back. Initially, he appeared to be standing at a distance on a sort of rocky, grassy hillside. Yet, the instant he saw my gaze, he was at my side, lying next to me. His arms encircled my shoulders. Strands of his thick hair somewhat veiled his face, so I didn't see it clearly. But he'd pursed his lips, offering a kiss to mine.
Instinctively, I turned my face ever so slightly away and missed the kiss! In that second, his form disappeared, though his presence has remained with me.Â
I am not given to such "visitations!" Over the next few days, amid my curiosity (and disappointment) at having turned away, a patchwork of clarity began to emerge as I searched my heart... and the internet.. for some clue as to who this personage might be. After a few days, I felt I knew.
I'd held a persistent, decades-old yearning to write "my story." Though I've kept journals all of my adult life, a sense of boredom would overcome my mind before completing the first chapter as I approached actually publishing a book. Writing of past events never had the immediacy and spark evoked, even now, when I write, or dip into one of the hundreds of my journals. I've wondered, "What in the world are they waiting for?"
Concurrent with the vision was an inner message, "It's already written." Puzzled, I looked to my journals for the answer. The poems! Scattered among all of those words are my poems. I'd burned many journals in 1985 whose dim light I knew was holding me back. I still had a single poem written at age 28 in 1968, another from 1973, and a whole raft of poems that accompanied an awakening and journey that began in 1979.
I found many images on the web of a sage, a poet/saint with a shock of thick black hair, dressed all in red. Narada is a devotee of the Lord. He is well-known as India's "first journalist," having penned the Bhakti Sutras, the "Philosophy of Love." I've had an edition of this work among my collection for years but never read it. Not until his visit.
I poured over this brilliant book and accompanying commentary which explicates the nature of Divine Love, which resonates in my heart as "being loving and kind to yourself." Because I'm pretty sure I didn't know what it meant to love myself up to that point. Since then, I've let my guard down, deepened my understanding and opened my heart in visceral, experiential ways that had not yet become apparent and available in the closed system harbored by my mind that preceded this time.
Was my knee-jerk reaction to turn away a misstep? What did I miss? It's hard to say. A friend shed fresh light on it when she said, "Maybe your book of poems is the kiss."
In any even, I wish to share the title poem of the book of my poems that I subsequently published in 2025. Though written in the late 1990's, the poem reflects directly upon that experience of "Breathing Life into Death" that ushered in the vision.
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