“Did you see those bubbles come up? Those were giggle bubbles.” And she laughed some more.  

Grace and I were playing in the pool. She likes to stand on my shoulders while I squat under water. As I stand up, she jumps off my shoulders, propels herself skyward, then splashes into the water and reappears as an underwater hug. My little girl is half fish, half bird. And in her lightness of being and form, she easily defies gravity which makes her laugh. Hence, the giggle bubbles. 

That was when I decided. I want to be a giggle bubble. 

I once experienced myself as a bubble that popped. I’m aware that sounds morbid and strange on some level. I was watching Grace and Kalvin throw rocks into a flowing river near our house. I have always been mesmerized by moving water, I’m not alone in that phenomenon. That day, as I watched each bubble float by, I imagined them as individual lives and I wondered when they would pop, and why and where and how. Suddenly I felt the strong pull of Shakti, pulling me up and back. The world went silent, and I was a bubble in the river. I was carried along in the happy flow of water for a bit, bouncing and cold, joyful and surrendered. Then I popped. The air of my being merged back into the air. The water of my bubble merged back into the water. And I was gone. No vehicle remained, only ecstatic expanding peace and the pure nature of bliss. The moment was the fundamental opposite of morbid. 

Aren’t we all bubbles of sorts? For a period of a lifetime, we perceive ourselves as separate. But this temporary separateness is an illusion. It is the illusion, the big game, and the fun of the return home. It is God’s Lila. But to be certain, we are already merged, we are already God, we never were not. We are bubbles of Source experiencing and expressing for a while. We mess it up by staring too hard at the temporary encasement of the vehicle a human body, thoughts, emotions, and calling the vehicle ourselves. No, we are not. We are ocean, we are air, we are already merged, we never left, there was no place to leave, we have never been separate. We merely took the shape of a bubble to float and play in this world of form for a bit. Pop. All is and has always been Brahma. 

But ifI’m going to be a bubble for a while, I’d like to be a giggle bubble escaping from Grace’s mouth in pure joy, experienced by a mother in pure love, and then gone again.  

~

A playful prayer

I am a bubble, make me the ocean.

Surrender me please to the permanent, infinite, uncontrollable pop.