Landlocked In Fur
I was meditating with my cat the other day
and all of a sudden she shouted,
“What happened?!”
I knew exactly what she meant, but encouraged
her to say more – feeling that if she got it all out on the table
she would sleep better that night.
So I responded, “Tell me more, dear,”
and she soulfully meowed:
“Well, I was mingled with the sky. I was comets
whizzing here and there. I was suns in heat, hell – I was
galaxies. But now look – I am
landlocked in fur.”
To this I said, “I know exactly what you mean.”
What to say about conversation between mystics?
From: “Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West” (Ladinksy, 2002)
How do you relate to the notion of being "landlocked in fur" - that ache of remembering a vaster self, mingled with the sky, while living inside the beautiful constraints of a body and a life? Can you share a personal story of a moment when you suddenly felt the gap between the boundlessness you somehow know yourself to be and the small, specific shape your days have taken - and what it was like to let that feeling speak? What helps you hold both at once: the comet and the cat, the galaxy and the ordinary room you woke up in this morning?
