Remember.

My mind is like a colander with holes of various sizes and there's no way of knowing what will roll out and what will remain. That is to say, I forget a lot. I forget what I was doing last Saturday. I forget where I put the combo to the locked lock I have in my junk drawer. I forget when I last washed my hair. There are large periods of my life that are completely hazy but for flashes of memory that stand out clearly, some of which seem so inconsequential.

Forgetting can be extremely useful...for healing, for forgiving, for grace, for innocence, for daily functioning. There is actually a chemical that our brain produces called Anadamide which helps memories to fade so that we don't recall everything we've ever seen and smelled and said and heard and done. Apparently the human brain doesn't have the capacity to contain so much memory, so it helps us to forget. In many ways this is a blessing.

There are things we cannot afford to forget, though. We must remember to go to work, to feed the cats, to get the oil changed, to say I love you. Most importantly, we must remember who and what we really are. Each of us comes into the world completely clear and as we experience life, our memories get murky. We begin to create a personality and identify with the bodies we were born in to and the things that happen to those bodies as we walk and dance and tumble through life. We make choices that compromise our well being, choices that both create and indicate a feeling of being separate from ourselves. We talk about being disconnected, lost, missing something.

This separation is an illusion, a sort of dysmorphia of our internal state. We cannot be separate from ourselves, we cannot give away or lose any part of ourselves. We have simply forgotten the truth of our being, the eternal truth we were born with that lives like a fertile seed at our core. No matter what transpires over the course of a human life, this truth remains unchanged. We are pure, perfect expressions of the Divine...glorious, shining spiritual beings having a human experience. No matter how much muck is piled on us, that truth still lives within us. It cannot be lost or destroyed. It is only forgotten or remembered.

In this moment I commit to remembering who and what I really am, and letting my choices reflect that memory. How fitting that today, after months of work, I was finally able to do the full expression of compass pose. I find myself guided back to the place I never really left and being reminded of the light within that has never gone out, despite the wind and rain.

Across lifetimes...
I am infinite.
I am love.
I am free.
Forever.