The Feather of Truth

In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, we are told that each of us will be judged at death by weighing our heart on a scale against the feather of truth.

I've often wondered about this criterion for a life well-lived. How light would one's heart need to be to pass the test?

It reminds me of one of my favorite movies, "The Unbearable Lightness of Being." In the movie are an interlocking set of relationships, with each character struggling to construct their own sense of existence, and a life of meaning. The narrator, at the beginning, states:

"What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?"

...deeming the import of existence itself as encompassed within these terms.

How many of us plod through our daily lives with the weight of the world on our shoulders? How many hold ourselves so lightly that death is not a threat? Where are we on this continuum?

In our culture, life is seen as a line. The longer that line, the more "fulfilled", somehow, we assume our lives to be. The American Indian had a different take. To them, life was more like a circle or hoop, which completed in puberty. From that point you were whole and just continued to expand that wholeness out. Wholeness wasn't seen as DURATION, but as the fullness in which one entered "each complete moment." Not something to be achieved by ticking all the items off our todo lists, but an experience, always waiting for us in the present.

These thoughts were, in part, sparked by Ayla's observations on aging in our culture. In part by Gerbean's ruminations on Pete. In part they've been brewing for a long, long time.

One thing I've noticed, which has been quietly changing with the passing of time, is the curious expansion of space and silence. I catch myself listening to the silences between words or behind sounds more. And not just because I may be harder of hearing ;-) But because there's something rich there that doesn't need to be filled.

I'm finding spaces more habitable, between the thoughts of "the next thing" that the mind is usually busy with. And when I'm not on that linear conveyor belt into the future, I can feel that hoop, expanding out into space.

Last night I walked my loop, thinking of these things. Until the stillness of the night finally seeped into my hard head and the glitter of the trackless snow ahead of me muffled the "story of me" and there was just a presence, without baggage, walking a path. At that moment I believe, my heart was a match for the feather.