shakti and the midges

As I mentioned, I had the good fortune to be taken to a migratory bird refuge north of Salt Lake City- literally an 80,000 acre of asylum in the middle of the desert. The birds there make the air breathe and they are brave and ravenous. Every one of these birds comes to be nourished before they're gone; some stay on for a while, others just blow through, but no one stays permanently. So I thought it was a perfect setting to give up and be nourished. There happened to be a midge hatch- a lunacy of bugs so heavy it bent the grass. These bugs do not bite do not even have jaws. But they serve as a kind of living energetic scrub- you move through the clouds of them and emerge feeling more awake and aware (and a little put off.) I made myself stand near them. Uncomfortable at first (the way I feel with any act of receiving,) and then more at peace and finally completely stilled. It was rocky and disorienting at first. Like that idea of inhaling and exhaling equally: when I make my inhale equal to the exhale it has always been somewhat unpleasant. A strange thing to be so thrown off by one's own breath... But I'm sipping a little at a time, readying myself to let It in. Whatever It might be.