An Ode to Alignment
DunCaan on the Isle of Raasay
On the fierce, messy, and beautiful friction of listening to the yearning in your gut.
I’m pushing the pedals hard, my old trusty bike and I weighed down by panniers full of camping gear. This hill is long, slow, and getting steeper. Here, half-way up this narrow lane covered in pine needles and shrouded by a thick young pine forest, the ground is dense with moss. I push and push, smiling my way up the hill as I’ve learned to do. Thank you, Thich Nhat Hanh.
Suddenly, out of the gray Scottish sky, a bursting shaft of sunlight illuminates the forest ahead. I push harder, aching to reach the rare sunny spot. When I do, I pause the pedaling for a moment and let my feet come to the ground to give my thighs a rest. They’d told me in the small village, now far below and behind me on this strange skinny island, that away up on top of the hill is a tiny youth hostel where I can hang my hat. Little did they or I know that I’d stay there alone for more than six weeks.
There was always something about this island that captured me. The first moment we set eyes upon one another was the day of my 19th birthday. I was weeks into a solo cycling adventure across northern Scotland. Arriving at the coast at sunset, I felt my feet pulling me toward the great bridge that stretches over and away from the mainland.
The bridge is gloriously curved, rising high into the sky. Standing at the top and looking north, my breath was taken away.
All year long, whilst attempting to complete my last year of high school with a semblance of inner peace while the world around me fell apart, I kept having recurring dreams. Dreams of a wind-swept, table-top mountain, located somewhere in Scotland. I had packed my bicycle into a box and shipped it across the Atlantic for this year-long adventure just to find the location of that desolate mountain that kept calling to me.
The sensations were rich as I opened my eyes wide, feeling tears burn my chilly cheeks. The wind was getting bitter as the sun plunged behind the hills. It was, after all, October 1st.
Have you ever had a dream that comes to pass? Have you ever experienced a moment of such deep resonance, rich with the sensation of a wild yes? Goosebumps pimple your arms, hairs stand on end, your heart races, and eyes sparkle with tears of recognition. There’s both a hollow feeling in your belly and a fullness swelling inside your chest: alignment.
Literally from the French and Latin roots of coming into a line, alignment is a visceral sensation of landing in the right spot at the right time. Akin to attunement, the process of coming into harmony, alignment is a felt-sense that things are just as they should be. This sensation is beyond concept, beyond a materialistic achievement of a goal.
Alignment.
Arrival in a forest, halfway up a mountain-once-dreamed. Basking in desired sunlight, inhaling deep pine freshness, wiping sweat from my brow, and drinking deeply from a water bottle—then re-harnessing the pedals to push, push, push up the rest of the unknown single lane wending through a once-unknown forest, now dearly beloved.
Alignment.
Pushing up past the trees and arriving at the wind-swept edge of open moorland, the browned heather sweeping away to the horizon, where above it all rises—just like the dream—the table-top mountain, the ancient Scottish volcano called DunCaan on the Isle of Raasay.
Alignment.
Following a yearning in the gut and choosing to practice shamatha-vipashyana meditation over a span of thirty years, watching the effect it has on the mind and heart in the midst of all of life’s challenges. The power of presence is the most reverberant gift. It opens the path of attunement to that which serves a state of presence—a cycle creating cascading possibilities of fresh insight arising from fundamental awareness. Or in simpler words: the effortless pleasure of sitting still and watching the smoke curl and dance out of a burning stick of fragrant incense.