bouyancy

Archimedes supposedly yelled, "Eureka!" while lying in a tub of water and happening upon the principle of buoyancy.  Eureka!  Just like that, he understood why things float.  Even things that seem solid and grounded are often floating, unobservable to the naked eye.  The earth's crust.  Icebergs.  Happy women. Yes, sometimes I am floating, even when no one is aware. The ten percent of me you see is the tip of the iceberg deceptively looking like the whole kit-n-caboodle, while the other ninety percent of me is below the surface.  Happiness is bubbling up from deep inside me, detectable only, maybe, in the curl of my lips. I sometimes find myself bobbing in a whole wide warm ocean of happiness and in danger of floating completely away. 

Like Archimedes, I have hit upon the laws that govern my personal buoyancy: when I can forget myself, or what I think of as "self"--a body and a brain, the tip of the iceberg.  When I can let go of the demands of my physical body and stem the constant chatter of my brain which insists on looking in at me from the outside and judging, worrying, planning.  When I am completely and utterly in the present, only in *this* excrutiatingly perfect moment.  As cliche as that sounds, as many times as I have read it and thought about it, it is only when I experience it that I begin to grasp the concept of "be here now."  I can intellectualize it, but I can only fully understand the phenomenon at a cellular level when my head shuts down and my soul takes over.  At that time, I'm no longer Ego, that chattering monkey on my back, that constant observer, commentator, judge.  I am not thinking at all.  I am not Julie.  I am not a mother, lover, programmer, runner.  My thighs are not fat, my wallet is not thin, I am not too much or too little of anything.  I am just joy.  I am an experience.  And it is only afterwards, when I am reflecting on why I felt so content, floating, peaceful, buoyant, that I get it.  I understand what was going on.  Eureka.