Like many other people, I woke up early on the last day of January 2018 to see the full lunar eclipse of the Super Blue Moon. The second full moon within the same month is known as the “Blue Moon.” The full lunar eclipse occurs when both the moon and the earth align with the sun and the earth casts its shadow on the face of the moon. During this eclipse, the moon orbited closer to Earth, making it appear larger and brighter than usual. We call this Super Moon.

Venturing outside at 4 am, I saw the curved shadow of the earth shading the upper edge of the moon. Sitting on the picnic table in the quiet darkness, I watched as the earth totally eclipsed the moon at 5:30 am. As I drove to work half an hour later, my last glimpse of the eclipse showed an ellipse of light shining on the upper edge of the moon as the Moon began to emerge from the shadow.

That day at work I had the best day of my life. Everything was going my way as Santana would say. I was so happy all day. Returning home to my front yard, the picnic table where I sat to witness the eclipse looked different. It glowed in a numinous halo of blood-blue supermoon, total eclipse energy. We did a crescent pose in our night yoga class to commemorate the magical morning.

A few days later, while processing the experience, I was reminded of the notion by physicist cosmologist Brian Swimme that humans are the culmination of a billion-year process of the evolving universe. In his book, The Universe is a Green Dragon Swimme forges a cosmology in which humans are “a space, an opening, where the universe celebrates its existence.”

Swimme knows, when he looks at the night sky, that his feelings of wonder and wonder at the majesty of life do not arise only in his being, but are the feelings of the universe reflecting on his own greatness. He describes the universe as this unique energetic event, which is a unified but multiform outpouring of being. Humans embody all the cosmological powers of the universe, such as gravity, which we manifest as attraction and love. We are connected to everything.

“Living”, he reminds us, “is to enter this beauty, surrounded by charm, summoned by magnificence.” Great minds think alike and another principled scientist from a different discipline confirms Swimme’s hypothesis.

Biologist EO Wilson coined the term “biophilia” to describe our affinity with life, or as he puts it, “the innate tendency to focus on life and real processes.” Wilson argues that the freedom that human beings seek is inextricably linked to the green places of the planet. He exhorts us to “explore and join life since our existence depends on this propensity, our spirit is woven from it, hope rises in its currents.”

While describing how the eclipse had affected me to a nurse friend, she reminded me that the moon was closer to the earth during this event. She recalled that when she worked at the hospital they had to hire additional staff at the midwifery clinic during a super full moon, as more babies were being born during these times. The moon attracts the waters of the earth and humans are also composed of water. A baby’s first environment is amniotic fluid, the watery ocean within the uterine placenta where the baby develops while in the womb.

If he didn’t think he was connected to the whole thing by then, he was certainly more convinced now. While discussing this transformative phenomenon with Dr. John Galaska, my neurofeedback practitioner at Ojai, he suggested that just as a single bad event can create lasting change in someone, so can a single good event, which seems to be what has made him or her. happened to someone. I.

Hindus use the term “darshan” when referring to what we might call “sight.” This could involve a particular philosophical perspective, but it is also popularly regarded as a blessing, such as when the mountain looks down into the valley, giving darshan. The eyes painted on the temple roofs are meant to convey the darshan of the temple’s resident deity. This must be the reason why I can meditate outdoors much more easily than indoors. I really am present in the now without a monkey mind. Darshan flows between the universe and me.

When I learned that yoga poses may have emerged millennia ago as a metamorphic embrace of habitat, it changed everything for me. In honor of the recent celestial spectacle, instead of practicing the series of postures called “suryanamaskar” (salute to the sun), I will be reliving a lesser known practice: “salute to the moon”.