07/05/2019
Enchantment
I love the word enchantment, I really do. I often find myself stating “It was enchanting.” after experiencing a moving event, or seeing a miracle. “I was in an environment that was enchanting” or, “He was simply enchanting.” I wrote several fantasy and stories, some with enchantment and mystery. Jolly’s Sacred Songs is about a bird that comes down from heaven to watch over an angel that fell from grace and was changed into a human, another, Outer Room, is a mystery about a schizophrenic woman who believes she can enter a miniature enchanting Utopian world. Before I do anything, write, counsel, or perform a wedding, I always say a prayer.
I believe I am always in an enchanting environment when I am in communication with God. There is nothing that I can compare, to the sacred times I enjoy, when connecting with my higher power.
There was a time in my life, shortly after giving birth to my son that I suffered a heart attack and had to be rushed to the hospital. I will go into more depth in my column, ‘Spiritual Alchemy’ at a later time about it, but for now briefly, during that time I had a near death experience. To say the experience was pure enchantment would be putting it mildly, but does, in part, describe what I felt.
Life itself is, at times, enchanting, Picking up a kitten or puppy, in the mist of prayer and worship, cuddling a baby, winning an award for bravery, and in the presence of kindness, are just a few examples of enchantment to me. In fact I believe I live an enchanting life and always have.
Why would I do it any other way? I would rather be happy and interested then sad and bored.
I often explain my way of thinking, to the dismay of my friends, as “I am from the celestial world not the mundane.”
When describing a recent event, action or idea that may have confused them this is always my answer.
The seemingly never ending energy they see and ask me about comes from, I explain, my source of faith, light and being. One much less energetic friend states she can only plan one event a day. If she is going to the doctor, she says, she cannot go dancing that night. I love to plan as many events in one day that I can possibly fit in and it is always amazing to her. Some of my younger friends, though she too is one of them, plan two events in a day, sometimes three, rarely four, but there was only two people I met that seemed to be just as full of energy and one was a Street Prophet, a man I was dating, the other was a dear friend and mentor, a Rabbi from a school was attending. The Rabbi was 98 when he left this world for the other and still very active running his temple with services, traveling to the Islands to give lectures at the Yoga Retreat in Paradise Island, living half the year in Florida, the other in New York while mentoring all of us students on a regular basis. All this while entertaining a wife of over thirty years, forty years younger and visiting friends often.
Perhaps the energy really does come from above, so to speak. Is it not the direction we chose that guides us?
The choices we make lead us to where we land. It is the same as the way we perceive. One could perceive a serious learning event or experience as enchantment, another could perceive the very same thing as a terrible mistake.
So where do you stand on Enchantment, how many times in your life have you found yourself in the very middle of an exciting enchanting environment? Can you perceive such an event in your everyday world? There are various types of personalities on this planet, thank God for that, and all have their own ideas and ways. All perceive as they perceive, some are happy most of the time and grew up that way, some are sad and have always lived in a depressing state of mind with constant worries. Then there are those in between. We are, most of us, born with different views and ways of seeing our world. I agree it is not always easy, there are times we are blinded by our problems. Some of us have everyday challenges. it is not easy to look up all the time. However, what choices do we have to not look up as much as possible? I choose enchantment rather than dismay. I see every mistake as a lesson and though I wish I could say I have no regrets, there are a few I cannot escape, however I work on them often.
We are but mere humans trying to get where we hope to be, sharing our ideas and dreams with those around us and enjoying those moments when we can honestly state we are connected and in the space of true enchantment.
