Instant recognition

There are moments in life when we recognize something immediately....

An opportunity
A danger sign
A new idea that will solve an old problem
A person we just met but already know
Home, in a place where we may have only just arrived

Where do they come from?

Some people call them insights...seeing inside, literally. It's as though we somehow pierce the outer shell and for an instant, see the essence.

Some call it inspiration...a word which means "breathed upon,", as in breathed upon by G-d. For that moment, we are graced with the divine gift of G-d's life-giving breath.

Sometimes our recognition gets buried under a mountain of expectations and old habits. The new and wonderful doesn't look like we expected, so we discard it and go on looking for what we thought truth (or beauty or love or home) SHOULD look like.

Sometimes we are so afraid of the intensity of this sudden breath or vision that we intellectualize it, analyze it. Kill it with living too much in our heads and not enough in our hearts.

And sometimes we just wait too long, thinking that such moments of grace can be put on hold until a more convenient time. Unattended, they vanish, so we convince ourselves that they were never really there in the first place.

Instead of all that, how wonderful it would be to live ALWAYS open to those moments. Always ready to receive that breath of the divine, that glimpse into the inner truth.

(Image from Soulbreath Pictures)