A siren wails in the distance as I head home from an early-morning stop for coffee. Not a police siren. Not a fire engine. Clearly an ambulance.
From behind the wheel, I send blessings. I have been doing this since my children were young, and taught them to do the same. I don’t think about it. The sound of the siren cues me to this. Pavlovian.
Its a good habit, a beneficial habit – it uplifts me, pulls me out of my pre-occupation with one worry or another, with one to-do-item or another. Pulls me out of isolation and into connection. And if you believe in the power of intuition and prayer, as I do, the blessing has some healing effect on the injured or ill one.
But blessing in this way is still a habit, beneficial only to the extent that I inhabit it. Bring awareness to it. Let the blessing live in my body. Let the blessing draw from a well of compassion that is in no sense “mine,” but that I can access and share, from which I can partake and pass on.
When I hear a siren, I don’t have to remember to send a blessing.
I have to re-member myself.
I have to re-member connection, Source, suffering.
When I can be all this, I re-member wholeness, and the blessing is real.
The patient, the ETs, the ambulance driver are blessed.
I am blessed.