REFLECTIONS OF KORIANA

Koriana awoke with a start on the morning of her ninety-fifth birthday. What just happened, she thought, wondering what the vivid dream experience meant that was still reverberating in her mind, if it was a dream. Maybe I was astral traveling, she thought.

Just before awakening, she had been walking down a path leading through a dense forest when she came upon a clearing in which she found herself being drawn to a Light Being beckoning her to come nearer. She was strangely unafraid. With each step she took nearer, the Light Being shimmered with more light. Koriana could feel the light touching her body bringing love and courage coursing through her blood nourishing every cell and then she awoke in her bed in her house filled with memories. She surrendered to the memories.

Each memory was a story unto itself. She decided the dream was a birthday gift from the Universe for her to reflect upon, and ultimately, to encourage her to journey on unafraid. Lying in her bed, she drifted on the river of memories for a time. Yes, she thought, life here on Earth truly is a journey, not a destination. As humans, we are born, we have experiences, and we die. Perhaps the only real destination is the portal of death and our return to the great mystery from whence we came. Surely, everything we experience is meant to teach us something, she concluded asking herself aloud, “What have I learned so far? What might I learn as my journey continues?”

This reflection on the journey was not a new mental exercise for Koriana. As was her custom, she started by reviewing the core gifts she had received. She knew that life itself was the first gift, and she had received that gift at birth. Hers had been a difficult birth for her fragile mother, but they both survived the ordeal with the help of the tender love showered upon both babe and mother by her mother’s parents who were staunch allies of love for them both then and throughout their shared life.

The second core gift was love. Without a doubt, love had been, and still was, the fuel and theme of her long life thus far, as she continued to strive to learn and grow in her understanding of what it meant to be living on Earth as a human. Along the way, she had learned much about the power of love, and yet mysteries still remained.

Koriana had seen and experienced much change in her life. Change was to be expected. However, it was the third gift of free will that sometimes had led her to make choices that brought surprising change, whether for good or ill, to her journey.  Making choices, she realized, is definitely part of being human. She had learned that when the winds of change stir, life choices are affected. She had witnessed that some people build walls around themselves in hopes of escaping the consequences of change, though that isn’t truly possible, but only seems so. She had learned that things were frequently not what they seemed. She had consistently sought to understand changes she saw in the world rather than avoid or deny them. Her experiences while questing for understanding had led her to realize that no matter what happened to her and which path she chose to follow, there would always be challenges. These might arise from obstacles and/or new information she encountered over time. Her path might lead to new opportunities, some with good growth outcomes, and some not.

Deep in thought, she shifted her position, but remained abed contemplating her life journey. As experiences on her life journey had accumulated, she realized she had truly never been alone. Relatives, companions (human and animals), acquaintances appeared and disappeared from her life. She was grateful for their presence when they shared bits of her life journey and missed them when they were gone. She learned to “read” cosmic signposts that seemed to appear in the most unexpected ways. For instance, there was the time she was walking along a cement sidewalk in a town where she once lived and was revisiting when suddenly there appeared scratched into the cement sidewalk the words, “YOUR SPIRIT IS FREE.” She had immediately stopped in her tracks that day and scribbled the message in her ever-ready notebook. Years later, when sadness at the death of her first husband threatened to overwhelm her, she remembered that message, and found thinking about his spirit being free soothed her. The remembrance of that experience made her realize how important that message was for her, because it always instantly uplifted her beyond the limits of earthly material reality.

Little by little, experience by experience, her quest for understanding continued unceasingly. One day while reading a favorite author, Madeleine L’Engle, she read the words: “Just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean the explanation doesn’t exist.” Ah, ha, she thought, yes, the explanation just isn’t yet known but exists. Maybe the sources of explanation haven’t yet been discovered, maybe the right questions haven’t been asked, or maybe the right technology to unlock the needed explanation doesn’t yet exist. That realization widened her worldview and thus the scope of her quest. She began asking herself: “What is reality? What part does love, or lack thereof, play in one’s personal reality, understanding of others, and development of one’s worldview?”

Slowly but surely over the years as experiences continued to happen, she confirmed again and again the power of love in her own life. In her quest for understanding, love had been her guiding light and fuel. She knew with every fiber of her being that love is the key to understanding, because it is ever-expanding love that grants any of us the courage and desire to seek beyond our comfort places. She sighed and smiled reflecting on the river of love shown her through the kindness, mercy, forgiveness, gratitude, empathy, and tender loving care she had received and given all along the way.

She murmured a prayer of thanks and sat up in the bed secure that as long as she was on Earth, her quest for understanding would continue. Whatever questions lingered still, would inspire her to quest further and reflect on how each piece of the puzzle of life fit together into a whole. All the while, she would express gratitude for everything her journey had brought her so far: challenges, triumphs, defeats, gains, losses, joys, sorrows, all of it. She affirmed that this journey meant she had to hold fast to her life-long commitment to connect with others to create a better world through understanding. She smiled and felt her spirit soar. Yes, that’s a good goal, a destination of sorts, but she knew she must always remember that the journey is life itself wherever, whenever, however life unfolds on Earth, and then there’s the ultimate great mystery of what happens when one dies.

She arose from the bed and stretched looking out the window at the brilliant day outside and chuckled. After all, if it should turn out that consciousness does indeed continue after death as her journey so far  suggested, it would be fascinating to continue her quest for understanding after crossing through the portal of death. It could happen, but only time would tell.