We are all it ~ and the cactus couldn't resist.

The other morning I woke into the most velvet feeling moving through my chest. It felt material, tangible, alive, and it didn't even feel like a feeling! I didn't want to call it love although it landed me in that place, that aliveness which rather felt like a river flowing through my chest.

Generally, I hop out of bed, sit for prayer, and start the day. Not that morning. I was spellbound. And thankfully, it was the weekend; I didn't have to move. After a while, I grabbed a pencil and wrote the following, "Stay here, here, here in this alive, living flowing, captivation. Draw it in, in, in, like a substance, thick and breathtaking." Maybe this is what every Buddha monk sits in, what every yoga and mystic experience. Maybe this is why they can sit or stand in meditation all day if they choose.

"Several hours later, and here it is still humming, moving, and there doesn't seem to be any little me in the way. It feels so tangible, powerful. A thought, I am going to soak-pray every one I know in this liquid, oceanic love. Ah, then it dawns in me, this is who and what each person is made of. We don't have to be a monk, a yoga, or a mystic to experience this. I merely happened to wake in it."

Just breathing this pure feeling of high love, loving, moving kept reminding me of ocean waves hitting the shore endlessly, ceaselessly -- still coming and still humming. Certainly unnameable in every way yet, so beautiful I could have died in it and been in bliss. And, I was already in bliss, whatever bliss means.

If we could only know this is who we each are but it gets covered over with life stuff -- dents, conditioning, upbringing, education, and old patterns.

By next morning the feeling was beginning to fade, as I hunched it might.

Dropping in on a reader a day later, I began telling her my experience, that we each are this love, loving but we just get covered up with life-stuff dents. When concluding that this must be what every Buddha, yoga, mystic and an enlightened person sits in; she pointed over my shoulder and suggested, I turn around.

I honestly had to look four times. There was her garden Buddha and it appeared the cactus could not resist. It was growing toward the figure, wrapping its tentacles over its arm and around its neck. We both laughed at the seeming absurdity.

Yes, and isn't it great. We are all it -- at core, at essence, at soul -- this river of moving love flowing through this chest, this being, and this room is what we are made of, is our essence. Expanding as it does out beyond time, matter, and any me-ness. I say it, feel it, and have written it but this time the question is like God asking, "But do you really get it, Augusta?"