Chapter 15 · 2 min 57 sec
The Sacred Drift
The courage of revision — the grace of returning to say what you should have said.
Lyrics· 274 words
[Verse 1] At the end of all the searching / at the end of all the roads At the end of every teaching / every sacred book bestowed There is nothing left to conquer / there is nothing left to find There is only the drifting / of the pure and open mind
[Chorus] The sacred drift / the sacred drift Everything is grace and everything's a gift The sacred drift / the sacred drift Where the ego finally lets itself be rifted Into / something / larger / than / itself
[Verse 2] This is what the mystics drifted toward / this is what the shamans found This is what the meditators / heard beneath the sound Not a destination not an answer / not a goal to be achieved The sacred drift / the sacred drift / is only to be breathed
[Chorus] The sacred drift / the sacred drift Everything is grace and everything's a gift The sacred drift / the sacred drift Where the ego finally lets itself be rifted Into / something / larger / than / itself
[Bridge - all mantras returning] So hum / sat nam / om namah shivaya Tat tvam asi / neti neti / aham brahmasmi Om mani padme hum / nada brahma / jai ma All the names / all the paths / lead here / to the same
The sacred drift / the sacred drift I am that / I am that / I am that
[Outro - mantra fade into silence] The sacred drift / om / the sacred drift / om Om / om / om / om ... (silence)
Short Story
*The arrival and the journey are the same thing.*
He'd been trying to get somewhere his whole life.
This is not a criticism — it is just a description. He had the quality, common among the driven, of always being slightly ahead of himself. The present was the approach to the future. The achievement was the platform for the next one. The arrival was never quite arrival because arrival meant you had to begin again.
He noticed this in himself at sixty-one, which is not when he'd have chosen to notice it but is when it arrived.
He was sitting on a boat in open water. His son had taken him sailing. They were becalmed — the wind had dropped, the sails were slack, the boat was drifting without purpose.
He'd started to feel the restlessness. The sense that they should be doing something, going somewhere, working the situation.
Then he looked at the water.
The water was doing what water does. Moving without urgency, without destination, in the directions available to it. The boat was doing what the water did. His son was leaning on the rail looking at the horizon, entirely at ease.
He tried to find the ease.
He looked at the water.
He had been trying to get somewhere his whole life.
What if the drifting was the somewhere?
The water went on doing what it did. The boat moved slightly. The horizon was the horizon.
After a while the wind picked up and they sailed on and he spent the afternoon watching the water and not thinking about where they were going.
It was the best afternoon he'd had in years.
He had arrived, he understood on the way home, at exactly where he needed to be.
He had been there the whole time.
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*You are already where you need to be. You just have to stop moving long enough to notice.*
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