Below The Surface
Below the surface of a record player, discs swirl in a dizzying spin as the needle traces predetermined grooves, and the singer sounds a melody. In this tune, different pitches from various instruments—strings, wood, and plastic—meld together. Human voices vibrate their vocal cords to communicate in what we call words. John Denver serenades about sunshine but more is happening below the surface.
I gaze out the window; it’s a lazy, hazy, wet day. Looking deeper, water droplets of vibrating hydrogen and oxygen bond together and slip separately from water vapor floating in the sky. This water happens to be vital for life. We characterize life as capable of growth, reproduction, responding to stimuli, using energy, adapting to its environment, and being made up of cells.
How is it that this thing called water, sinking from the sky and carving crevices in the earth, is the exact thing splashing through our veins that we require to survive?
That’s just it, folks. We humans think too surface-level and refrain from digging downwards. When we dig deeper, everything is okay and happening anyway. It’s all below the surface. Also, everything is here for some reason or another. The things we need are placed here purposefully. Lightning for electricity and earth minerals for technological advancements are not coincidences.
Sometimes, it’s like we live in a video game with the goal being evolution. The answer to life lies within us - we are the missing piece. Humans accomplish inexplicable feats all the time. Yet, we don’t take the time to analyze them because they are deemed undeterminable by specific communities of thought. Like monks levitating, for example, riddle me that. I try to remind myself of one inexplicable feat each day.
Human thoughts and words are made up by humans. So, of course, there must be limitations. Feelings don’t seem to be made up to me. The accessible peace within that all meditators begin to feel is not made up to me. If we all developed our ability to access our internal intuition - who knows what we could do, and who knows what we could know?
My father takes my brother and me skiing nearly every year. He loves the thrill, the challenge, and the energy associated with it. These emotions are contagious. He also respects the mountain and everything on it. At least once a trip, he’d pause at a spot somewhere in the trees with the powdered snow so thick you’d go snow diving if you dropped a pole. Somewhere silent, away from any sound of others, he’d halt our journey and begin to look around the woods. We’d stop behind him and get still and quiet, respecting the magic in the moment.
Every year, he’d unknowingly deliver the same soliloquy. Like the Lorax of the evergreens, he’d revel in the raw peace and centeredness of the space. He’d lure us to notice the unutterable serenity and stillness; the sound of snowflakes, frozen water droplets, landing on our coats. The moment possessed an ethereal quality because below the surface, at its creation, it was weird, wild, and rare for everything aligning that needed to align, since the dawn of time, for this moment to exist. It was a feeling of connectedness with the true self - the consciousness intertwined with all living things. We felt it, but couldn’t put it into words, because it’s not something you can.
Instead, my dad said, “It’s so peaceful.”
The epitome of peace echoed externally what is always accessible within us below the surface.
