A Rainbow Bridge

Photo courtesy Kayla Kingston

A shimmering rainbow in the woods. A bridge of color and light between here and there. In Nors mythology, Bifrost is a rainbow bridge made of fire, water and air. It is the pathway that connects the mundane world we live in with Asgard, the world of the gods. As children drew rainbows during the Pandemic to bridge us from the challenge of that time into one of hope, we can use the image of the rainbow, or anything in nature that speaks to us, to link us from wherever we are into the present moment.  

Beauty especially occurs in the meeting of time with the timeless; the passing moment framed by what has happened and what is about to occur, the scattering of the first spring apple blossom, the turning, spiraling flight of a curled leaf in the falling light; the smoothing of white sun-filled sheets by careful hands setting them to air on a line, for the broad expanse of cotton filled by the breeze only for a moment, the sheets sailing on into dryness, billowing toward a future that is always beckoning, always just beyond us. Beauty is the harvest of presence.

~ David Whyte, Consolations

The Vijnana Bhairva Tantra, an ancient Sanskrit text, describes 112 ways to enter into the universal and transcendental state of consciousness - into presence. One of my favorites is the wonder and awe I find in the natural world: rainbows, fall colors, sunsets, snow crystals, a weed poking it's way through cement, ladybugs and flowers.  Where ever I look and pay attention, beauty is there.  In yoga, we use our bodies in the shape of poses to create a bridge to connect us to the beauty that exists outside as well as inside us.  Yoga invites us to the harvest of presence, here and now.  So much beauty awaits our attention.