2014. My daughter is two years old. I am in my parents’ house with her in a small Turkish town visiting for the summer. She is still nursing and I am exhausted. One of my go to replenishments is reading. One night I finish reading Thomas Ashley Farrand’s book True Stories Of Spiritual Power. In it he talks about greeting a new born baby with the Jnana Mudra, the hand gesture of wisdom and the spiritual understanding that the Divine and you are one. The baby he meets for the first time puts her hands in this mudra for a few seconds. Thomas feels that this was his sign for proving him the existence of past lives and soul memory.
The next morning, my parents and I take my daughter to a public playground. As she climbs on the slide another little girl catches my eye. She is about 4 years old, gleefully lingering at the top of the slide. For an eternal moment, she looks deeply into my eyes, smiles, and holds her hand in jnana mudra. I smile back at her. In this little town where there has never been a yoga studio, this little being has just greeted me with the eternal sign of oneness. At that moment I am certain of two things: I have a soul connection with this being even though I have never seen her again, and to quote Shakespeare: there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.
With love and light,
Damla