Mathematicians say some infinities are bigger than other infinities. So be
it. Infinity shmininity. It is what it is, or, in other words, I am that I
am. Basically, it’s all the same. Nothing changes in the changeless.

Nevertheless, some things do get our attention. It seems that miracles still
do tend to stand out, like the one wherein I had the extraordinary privilege
of being invited to attend a dear friend’s labour and delivery.

For the previous year, she and I and a few others had been meeting to study
the Vijñana Bhairava, a 7th century Kashmiri Shaivist text, a great deal of
which is devoted to the recognition of true nature through the seemingly
ordinary experiences of life in the world, such as the delight in seeing a
friend for the first time in a long time, the pleasure of eating, the
intensity of strong emotions like fear and anger, etc.

I had calculated the number of aphorisms per session that we normally
covered and realized that we’d either have to lengthen our normally 3 hour
weekly sessions or increase the number of meetings per week if we were to
finish this astonishing text before the mother-to-be, already great with
twins, was to give birth. So during the summer we increased our meeting
frequency to as many as 3 times a week, not including preparation time. We
were completely immersed in the text, the suggested meditations, the
subsequent discussions and contemplations, and we barely finished up in
time.

Soon we found ourselves at the birthing center living the text we’d been
studying, mother-to-be wired to the monitoring equipment, heartbeats
broadcasting rhythmically into the room, as extreme body-sensing accompanied
contraction after contraction. The rest does not fit into prose :

For Rana-Jolie Tushti and Summer-Rain Ananda
September 3, 2010

their heartbeats
like distant hoofbeats galloping into the world –

it was long,
labouring deep into the night, before
the crack of dawn
gave in to the possibility
of incarnation

it was a long
night as being
made its way into manifestation

how the mystery of pregnant
found its way into form

of course it hurt – how could
heaving the one into many
not bruise the frontiers of the bearable

and there we stood, holding armfuls
of babies, our arms outstretched, welcoming
vastness into our little abode

with a whiff of a vow to remember
amidst the inevitable busy-ness to come –

the source, the ocean, flowing out
to the floor of the world

their tiny arms outstretched, welcoming
the world, time, bright lights,
welcoming us to this birth
day of being.

Birthing Twins

Dear Sweet Lord,

If you’d heard their first cries,
tiny and momentous,
even You
would have broken
Your customary Silence
and declared

I AM HERE