Mirror Lake
“One thing we do know: Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.”
On June 25, 2016 my best friend of four years, and former partner, committed to walking through life alongside another.
I couldn’t bare the idea of watching it all unfold voyeuristically through social media platforms. All of our mutual friends and coworkers would be attending, and posting about the big day. Instead, I drove into the mountains. With Mogli as my copilot, we drove high into the Uintas. I wanted to be far away from downtown Salt Lake City, far away from daily life, far away from his joy of beginning a life commitment with someone else.
Destination: Mirror Lake, about an hour and a half drive from downtown Salt Lake City.
It just so happened that I had audio cds of Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose on loan from the Salt Lake Public Library. I grabbed the disks and tossed them in the car. A guy I had met recommended Eckhart Tolle. I had never heard of Tolle, or his work, but had searched for him in the public library system and the audio book was the only item available. At the time, I wasn’t typically inclined to listen to books on cd, but rather preferred a tangible hard copy. It was fortuitous that A New Earth was available, and that I had it on hand the day I took this drive.
While this guy and I only spent a brief amount of time together, the introduction to Eckhart Tolle was immensely impactful. Each person we meet in life becomes a puzzle piece that helps construct the story of our lives. Each individual assists in the creation of a beautiful picture when we take a step back and look at the whole.
Mogli and I set out in the late afternoon, around the same time as the wedding ceremony taking place in memory grove park. I listened as Eckhart’s voice put elusive concepts of spirituality and consciousness into words. Everything he said, I knew to be true. I felt it in my body. His voice, and the precise structure of words, offered a path toward freedom from my current suffering.
“If peace is really what you want, then you will choose peace. If peace mattered to you more than anything else and if you truly knew yourself to be spirit, rather than a little me, you would remain nonreactive and absolutely alert when confronted with challenging people or situations. You would immediately accept the situation and thus become one with it rather than separate yourself from it. ”
We arrived at the lake as the sun was just barely hovering over Bald Mountain. The water on the lake sparkled in the sunlight, and ripples danced in the breeze. The 1.5 mile trail around the edge of the lake proved to be too much for little Mogli even then; even when he was still well. I carried him most of the way.
I watched a man floating in a small boat toward the center of the lake. He was wearing a wide brimmed hat, and gently reclined back in the boat. The image was so serene and peaceful. I admired him from afar, imagining this stranger’s perfect tranquility swaying on the water.
As we rounded the final stretch of the loop, the sun disappeared behind Bald Mountain and we made our way back to the car to head home. Driving up and over the mountain, and back down Mirror Lake Scenic byway, the sun shone bright before its final decent and set. I still have a distinct memory of listening to the Eckhart’s voice, and feeling the sun shining through the windshield of the car, with the glorious view of the Unitas out the side window. In that moment, I was present. In that moment, I had found peace.
Works Cited: A New Earth By Eckhart Tolle