Right through the rainbow, right through the sky.

These words came to me while in half-sleep, not long after reading that we should always heed our dreams and unhinged thoughts. I’d also had my birth chart read and I was told my sun and moon were directly aligned, so I was heading toward spiritual expansion while holding awareness of the grounding, material plane.

I come from the sun, I thought, and the ground.

I am its child.

I’m soaring toward the sky, the moon and everything else that I know, believe, must be out there—but was I really ready to fly? Would I even recognize the signs I might find along the way.

And then this happened.

I became calmer as soon as I got to the airport; a wash of serenity encases me every time I travel.

My flight from Canada to Bangkok was over-booked and I lost the aisle seat I requested, so I asked the attendant if there was anything she could do.

No dice.

As I sat down, a Sikh man wearing a burgundy turban said to me,

“You are most welcome.”

Normally I would have noted I was sitting next to a chatter and found ways to shut down entirely. Yet somehow I eased into his presence and soon forgot my angst over leaving home indefinitely, with absolutely no agenda.

I immediately responded to his kind brown eyes and warm demeanor. When I told him I was going to Thailand hoping to do some meditation, he immediately invited me to his hometown of Darjeeling, India. He moved to Canada twelve years ago, His origins included wealth and a job as an engineer at a tea plantation company.

“You came here and I was waiting for you,” he said, to my great shock.

“I prayed the right person would come to sit next to me. You were brought to me.”

He started telling me more about his life as a devout Sikh and growing up with his grandmother.

“My grandmother’s candle was lit, and she lit my candle. She gave me the light. You light a candle and it keeps on burning.”

Then he told me some incredible stories about yogis, Gods, and his own life. When he was young he had an accident and his leg was badly broken, but he didn’t want surgery. One night the hospital’s power went out, but in the middle of the night a great light came in from outside and went all the way through him. The next day, the doctor ran into his room.

“How did this happen? There is nothing wrong with your leg anymore.”

He said he had been given the power to heal.

Other times he has levitated and left his body (dangerous, though, as he said the temptation to stay away was great) and he has been sent guides who have saved his life on occasion.

He lives in the knowledge that God provides when you ask.

“You take two steps, and God will take three. He was waiting for you to take these steps.”

I told him I didn’t know about God.

“Finding God is simple,” he said.

“First you are looking one way, and you just have to look the other way. But the road is difficult. Many people get mad when you start to look this other way. But God is always here. Even now.”

This was scary. Moments this momentous….that you know are vital as you are experiencing them seem to work on the emotions, and the brain, and something that transcends them both—-all at once.

I knew he saw it in my eyes; an uncertainty when it comes to belief.

He told me a time comes when people know things need to change.

“This talking we are doing, this is meditation. You can only meditate in silence when the body can sit in meditation. But this is meditation too. You have given me this time, and I can do something for you.”

“We are connected,” he said, looking at me.

“This is not a new connection between us. When you come to see me next in Canada, I will tell you more about it.”

“Remember, your mother is God. Your father is God,” he said as we were landing.

“Sit and meditate.”

I helped him carry his bag to his connecting flight when we landed.

“I could see that you were starting to go a little bit in the wrong direction and God asked me to help you. He brought you to me and you’re going to be okay,” he said.

“You are going to be happier.”

We hugged deeply. I left him full of wonder, but also terrified. Here was a path and a teacher, sent directly to me, and if I followed his advice, I would plunge into something vaster than I could as yet conceive.

I hadn’t even arrived at my destination yet, and I had a looming choice ahead of me: to take or not to take this leap of faith.

Months later, I talked with the man who’d become my life partner about my airborne encounter. He listened attentively and I was shivering as I told it. When I finished, he said,

“Do you think he was real?”

“I mean, I don’t know,” I said, tearing up. “He was there.”

“Yes,” he said, “but maybe he was there in that way for you. Maybe that’s how the universe provides, for you—according to your needs, in the name of growth.”

It’s true that I have never felt more receptive to this kind of encounter, but did I create it?

We continue living life and run the risk of forgetting that there were brief moments when we were in a position to grow. When we uttered words in half-sleep and wrote them down for their obvious significance: right through the rainbow, right through the sky.

Then, without knowing quite how it happened, we’ve divested ourselves of earthly belongings and responsibilities, and headed off in search of the moon, or the very self so long taken for granted that it almost disappeared; that teachers come to help us remember.

And one day, when this journey takes me back to the country I come from, as the intensity in his eyes said I would, I can meet my teacher again.

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Assistant Editor: Kathryn Ashworth/Editor: Bryonie Wise

Photo: Rwangsa