Om

I heard the conch shell through the fog announcing the early morning Hanuman aarti. Shells appeared often in the places where I stayed. Maine, of course, but Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City? And now here, on the top of Mount Madonna on the California coast. The blowing of the conch shell symbolizes "Om," the Unstruck Chord.

Om is the sound of creation, the original vibration, a sound made not by striking two things together as ordinary audible sounds are made. All sounds are made by this striking this and that; a ball and a bat, water on rocks, wind on grass, feet on dirt.

This and that. How many times I had stood there in that place in between here and there, now and then, memories and moving on, city and country, laws and derrumbas, handmade and high tech, vibration and matter, responsibility and possibility, inner worlds and outer worlds, earth and sky. So many times I had stood in that place in between things, breathing into Om, the calm in eye of the storm.

As long as you think in terms of this one or that one, then you are still caught up in the world of duality. But if you can stand to live in the paradox long enough, then a transformation takes place and a new consciousness is born.  -Robert Johnson