For beauty does not seek its adequate, proportionate level. It is not like water that will find a place to lie flat, or a temperature at which to freeze or boil. It always exceeds the mark; indeed, if it did not, would we even call it beauty? – A.G. Harmon

   Amid playing that odd game called golf a member of my foursome suddenly shouted, "Hey, look at this!" I knew it must be something important for Steve to have broken his laser focus on the game.

   It was.

   Gathered beneath a spray of grass edging a pond (also known as "a water hazard") was a nest holding eight brown eggs. Like a Norman Rockwell painting, we four golfers, putters in hand, leaned forward in silence until the nearby mother goose honked a warning.

   What do you see in this tableau?  Grass, water, a twig-thatched nest. Your eyes gather information. Your mind translates. 

   But, what lies beyond your senses? A photograph tells you what the camera saw. An attentive viewer experiences more.

   Artists and lovers know what their five senses cannot: "It is only with the heart that one can see clearly. What is essential is invisible to the eye." (The Little Prince.) 

   You create your best work "in the dark" because you cannot "see" Love's energy.

   Leonard Cohen wrote eighty verses before paring them down to his immortal song, "Hallelujah." Where did that song come from? Why does it move millions? Neither you nor he "knows."  

   Cognition and intuition – two such different ways of experiencing life as you attend, each day, what a friend of mine calls "Earth School."

   One of earth's best lessons? Change requires humility. Humility triggers the three-step move to transformation: From awareness to acceptance. From acceptance over the bridge to picturing your new life. From that vision to a new life practice. 

   Your senses alone cannot take you to that new life you seek. Only your intuition can lift you to transcendence.

   Next autumn when that signature V wedges the sky, I will imagine that eight of those fliers came from this nest. 

   Meanwhile, listen to Leonard Cohen sing of "a secret chord." (link below.) With eyes closed ask, "What if I painted this song? 

   What has been born in the nest of your meditation?

Download 1-13 Hallelujah

-Erie Chapman