LIVES

Does it ever end?

Out of all the seasons, summer is “abundance.” Stars are brighter, the moon seems so close you can touch it and there are more insects than at any other time.

Although I like the stars and moon, the insects I enjoy the most.

This may seem like heaven, but abundance has a drawback because it can be boring and when this happens, I do what anyone does —

Mix It Up!

The way I go about it is to find a juicy moth. They are everywhere in the summer and any light will have a jacked up stoned out of its mind moth, but street light moths are my favorite because they are the biggest and trickiest to get.

The challenge has nothing to do with their size but the light. Streetlights mess with my sensors from the hum, pop, and crackles, but moths get high off them the most. The bigger the moth, the higher its tolerance.

I sat in a tree watching a moth bang its head against the streetlight since dusk. I am sure if I flew to another light I could have had a moth or even two, but I couldn’t stop watching. Bonk — bonk — bonk it would falter for a second and then back at it. This moth was a full-blown streetlight addict.

Since we can’t fly near the light, we let the moth get so high it loses track of where it is and stumbles away. It doesn’t take long with street lights because they are powerful, but this moth wouldn’t quit.

It finally reached its tolerance because its flight pattern wobbled. It spun, staggered, a bump, and lean one way and then the other, making it difficult to predict where to intercept and I needed to concentrate.

I opened my wings; time to make my move.

After sitting, it felt great in the zone — focus on the prize. I came down on it from above and although it was close to street level, I knew I had enough time to pull up at this speed.

Almost there — shift left, reduce airspeed, prepare for impact, slight right, blinding light —

BAM!

What the . . . !?

I still flew and couldn’t for the life of me see how that was possible after being hit by something in mid-flight.

In my disoriented state of mind, I became concerned about whether I ate the moth. It seemed only natural after I waited for it to stumble, flew with acrobatic precision to get it, and ended up getting hit by something or another. It didn’t feel like I ate it, but everything felt different.

I looked around and saw my body upside down against a car grill driving away.

What about the moth? Back at it, getting another hit and that made me so mad after all that effort. How on earth did the moth not get taken out too? I shook my head at the injustice of it all.

I was dead and certain there were not any juicy moths where I was headed.

It probably does not surprise you as life shifts to death it’s a tad unsettling and more so when a distant bright light showed up, pulling me toward it. I was fairly certain it wasn’t a streetlight.

As I drew closer, it was made of billions of little pieces. From a distance, it looked similar to the sun, which I never have been a fan of, but it felt like a massage or in bat terms grooming and was the only reason I was not terrified.

Halfway there, I ran into a ball of light named Pat headed in the opposite direction. Seeing I was a newcomer, he stopped for a minute. In his former life, he was a squirrel named Delirosa. We compared notes about bat and squirrel life, but I wasn’t impressed because he hadn’t been a flying squirrel.

He was headed back as a human and when I asked how this came about he shrugged the way balls of light do. One minute he was playing a game of dodgeball where everyone takes turns to be the ball and the next moment sent back to earth as a human whose name will be Pat. I asked him who told him and he shrugged again but added he wasn’t too thrilled about it because any humans he came across as a squirrel seemed anxious and on edge.

He asked how I died and I told him about the moth, the light, and the car that did me in. I was miffed about the situation, and more so when he laughed. I wasn’t at the finding humor stage and told him as much.

He apologized but kept laughing anyway, saying that someday I will find it funny because it was a metaphor he hoped to remember when he became human. He said,

“It’s silly the way humans live. They are so focused on their prizes, they miss what’s about to smack them.”

We parted, and I was soon surrounded by energetic balls of light playing dodgeball. Anyone reading this will have questions about heaven, God, and the prophets, but all I can remember is dodgeball, which isn’t a dodge, it’s a fact.

One day, between games, a voice told me I was being sent back to earth as a human. I was not thrilled about this one bit. I would have preferred staying where I was, or at the very least, either a bat or something that flew.

There isn’t an appeal process, and I was never clear on who was in charge nor why I was being sent back. The only other information I had was my name, Merlin.

I headed along the same path Pat and I traveled years before and got to thinking. I didn’t want to leave for the same reason I probably wasn’t thrilled about dying. At least this time, I knew in advance.

I knew what it was to be a bat and a few other things in my lives, but never a human. Do you have any idea what it’s like knowing in advance you are going to end up being human when you have never been one before?

Tell me you are going to send me back as a squirrel, and a non-flying one at that, or even a tree and I don’t think I would be scared. Being human did. I wish I had a choice, but no one does. And although I had reservations, I admitted I was ready to go back because dodgeball became boring and there wasn’t any way to mix it up. When this happened, all the rest of the abundance of the place did, too. Maybe that’s the reason they sent me back?

As it turns out, I got lucky by human standards. I am not sure how or why. I had a great childhood, parents, friends, and education with no knowledge of my former bat life.

It wasn’t until I traveled to study in an ashram that, through meditation, I experienced all my past lives and developed a sensor as I did as a bat to help guide flight in life.

Humans call it the heart and since it is difficult to do because I forget, get distracted and a myriad of other reasons, it is always a challenge and my flight path can be erratic now and then.

It was also where my guru, Pat, (yup the same one, and no doubt the bosses upstairs have a sense of humor) reminds me every time we play dodgeball -

“Focus in one eye.

Abundance in the other.

See with the heart.”

Note: I do not know whether bats are affected by streetlights. Merlin would know.

Thank you to my dearest friend Margaret who sent me a picture of a bat against the grill of her car that led to a story of life, love, and reincarnation.

Stories can live forever.