Spiritual wisdom can best be imparted from the heart. I could speak from having my Ph.D., life experience or my recent week's stay at The Golden Door, but not like from my heart, where the highest truth will always prevail.
After spending a week at The Golden Door in classes for fitness, meditation, yoga, Tai Chi, spa cooking, ballet, pool aerobics and a sensational list that goes on for days, I think I have found my own answer to that, which allows for the un-plugging and re-charging of the spirit and finding the sacred. It also allows the soul to awaken and embrace the spiritual and does so in a way that is a very Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thoreau-approved answer for our contemporary times.
I will tell you this: It is not something I expected to find at The Golden Door spa. At this San Diego oasis, I had magical massages, I had the best fresh food, grown right there, with vegetable gardens as beautiful as they were pleasing to the palette and homemade deserts that included chocolate cake that was so sinful there's no way it could be spa food (but it was!).
I had a personal trainer, Suzanne, who showed me how to hold the weights perfectly when I work out. She also showed me a sensational "in place" workout that I can use while traveling. Was this where I found the divine in the ordinary? Perhaps you might guess it to be in the morning hikes that call for a 5 a.m. wake up call. This is early but well worth it when you arrive at the top of the mountain covered in avocado trees and see a lake on one side, being enjoyed by ducks, and an ocean view on the other. It doesn't get much more beautiful. But nope, that's not it either.
Buddha said something about looking at the beauty of a flower and then everything else making sense. Many know me for my "flower" artwork and jewelry, so you might guess it to be my flower photography but, surprise, surprise, it was not. So, here's where I confess my productive key to wisdom with but one hint: What is this Chinese New Year?
This is the Chinese New Year of the Rabbit, and so it was that I had an adolescent bunny outside my room's window, which must have been a fashion model in a former life (Buddhists believe in reincarnation), for it was this tiny bunny posing at every angle outside that not only stole my heart by posing for my camera but charmed me with legs that it would tuck and then jump up and out upon as if to show off its strength. Then it would move on to nibble on another bush or patch of grass. It would look at me with this soft gaze, and I swear it kept saying, "Love." And I don't think I imagined it. I even photographed it with a butterfly. If love is the most powerful force in the universe, and it is, then maybe it took The Golden Door to frame it so I could write this haiku:
Love is powerful,
Can make you jump like rabbit
All the way to moon!
I watched this rabbit for hours and in it, I saw humanity. I saw the struggles, and I saw the victories. I saw the skittishness when the rabbit was in fear, and I saw every manner of the human condition. I saw the need to become fearless, because we need to be. And we need to personify love more than anything else. We need to come from love at all times. We need to be in a place of love. This love is at the heart of everything. If it took the Year of the Rabbit and The Golden Door to manifest this love rabbit, then so be it. I filled a book with haikus. I suspect there was some hocus pocus spa magic going on! Until next time, abracadabra!
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You sound wonderful and your words are lovely, too! You are creating a spa experience in your life and living it is what it's all about! Just as the yogis ask you to concentrate on your breath until it is second nature, spa living become a way of life, especially when it comes to diet and exercise. I can share more specifics in future columns! Keeping the quality of your thoughts positive and pro-active is divine! Good for you! Very akamai!