August 28
This was a letter I originally wrote to a friend so forgive me if I am a bit incoherent at times (more than I normally am that is). Do leave me a comment if you enjoy it.

Today I spent the whole day at the east coast park near the beach. It was so much fun. In the morning I noticed it was all cloudy and lightly drizzling, I checked on the weather sites and it said it would rain all day today due to some low pressure something. This made me decide that it would be the perfect day to spend outdoors! I know, I know, doesnt make sense, why would I want to be outdoors when it was going to rain all day right? Well, I can control the rain you see! ;-) Well, not really, but I have learned to trust divine providence in such matters. If my heart says lets go to east coast and weather channels say its gonna rain all day, I follow my heart, which is connected to something bigger than the weather people.

Anyway, so I am at east coast and I had a nice Coffee Bean breakfast with earl gray and started walking. As promised, it was drizzling, but I tried to find a nice bench with a canopy above it that would keep me dry. I walked all the way to the to the end of the stretch (about 1 kilometer) but no lemon. There were many benches but all wet and rainy! Hmm.. thought I could control rain huh? What happened now? Well, I told myself, happiness is something you decide on, not something that happens to you, so I was going to be happy anyways :) I got in one of those covered sitting areas with an indian fellow enjoying his beauty sleep on one of the benches and I sat on one of the other ones. I hooked up my mp3 player and started to listen to Bruce Springsteen: Streets of Philadelphia.. and it was magic! The world dissolved away for 5 minutes and all that remained was me, Bruce, the endless drops of falling rain, and millions of waves of the sea crashing on the beach and turning into foam.

It always happens like this.
Sea turns itself and foams,
and with every foaming bit
another body, another being takes form.
And when the sea sends word,
each foaming body
melts back to ocean-breath.

I looked for my self, but my self was gone.
The boundaries of my being
had disappeared in the sea.
Waves broke. Awareness rose again.
And a voice returned me to myself.

The song came to an end and I started walking again. I had understood a lesson one more time: the magic and the miracles are never out there somewhere, it is always in you. Sometimes in our obsession to control outcomes according to how we want it to be, we forget to trust the wisdom of the Father who weaves away the universal fabric of infinite time and causation in the most inexplicable way. When you learn to trust that wisdom, you can relax, for it is always working out in the best possible way.

I came back to coffee bean, right where I originally started (funny how these things work out), ordered the brewed coffee of the day (anything else is milk in disguise) and a cranberry michel.
I sat outside in coffee bean in the part that overlooks the sea, opened my book on the nature of electro-magnetism and its relationship quantum mechanics, and studied for 3 solid hours! It was so much fun! I made some connections that I had been studying upon for the last 7-8 months and couldn’t connect the dots! I was so happy. It was like for the first time when you learn how to tie your shoe laces. Remember the excitement? Thats how I felt. And it was so beautiful and pleasant. The falling rain, the sea, the ships floating at the distance like old men with umbrellas in a bus station in the rain, the soft music from the Irish Cafe next door singing, of all things in the world, “…what if God was one of us…”

Later in the evening, when my brain was completely saturated with my new found knowledge, I decided to go biking. The bike rental people gave me a water bottle along with the bike for $6 and one hour free ride.

Anyway, I went biking but it was so breezy and chilly that it got too tempting for me. So I sat down on the bench that had a coconut tree exactly 3 feet away and very close to the sea. I sat there enjoying the breeze and watching the ships slowly turn on their evening lights. The waves were crashing and crashing. The one sound in the world, I imagine I could never tire of.

The sky was so big… the breeze was so strong… the sun was setting and the colors were all red and orange. I felt that enormous love inside of me that began to swell my heart. I didn’t know how to handle it. I walked over and touched the coconut tree and said: thank you, I love you, I am so blessed, thank you, I have no more words, thank you, you are my life, my love, my purpose, my everything. Guide me everyday and allow me to unfold you through me everyday. It is such a magnificent and glorious life. And I thank you for giving it to me.

The moment was perfect. But then, once again, I realized… aren’t they all?

Shafin