Essence of Hands 🙏
Essence of is a monthly editorial deep dive into meaning.
This digital curation of words, imagery, and sound is an invitation to pull the curtain back on the magic, miracles, and mysteries embedded in everyday life.
Dear friend,
Most of my favorite things involve the hands. Writing, painting, swimming, canoodling, bringing fresh berries to my lips, petting black cats, leafing through cream-colored pages of borrowed novels, playing the same song on guitar over and over again…I could go on. The significance of hands began to dawn on me during my first-ever psychedelic experience.
It was a cold, quiet, night spent with a friend watching Fantasia atop a cozy pallet of pillows and blankets. Half a tab of LSD disintegrated beneath our tongues as we passed a bottle of orange juice back and forth (vitamin C allegedly enhances visuals), and leaned our heads back into the motherly hands of a sober friend who volunteered to scratch our heads. After an immeasurable amount of time sinking into those sensations, I remember looking down at my own hands; they were pulsing with energy. I witnessed a gentle aura hugging my skin and could feel the weight of each micro-movement in my open hands. Within the layers of lines, skin, muscle, bone, and the thousands upon thousands of nerve endings and receptors that live in the palms, I could see and feel the layers of function, design, meaning, and vibrance.
This was the first of many psychedelic moments in which I realized: there seems to be more than meets the eye. Perhaps my hands are more than appendages that help me grab things. Beneath the physical—the surface—what are the hands on an emotional, energetic, and spiritual level? We’ll be exploring this same question with many more subjects in Essence of.
Our hands are how we interact with the world. They provide opportunity to both give and receive in this endless dance with life.
This life is so generous with us, if we allow it to be.
With open hands, we can receive gifts of all kinds and bring nourishment to our lips. We can take another’s hand in our own and give it a squeeze. We can accept treasures of all varieties, whether they be thrift shop finds, heads-up pennies on the sidewalk, or the juiciest peach of the summer.
The trouble too many of us have, is choosing to receive; choosing to release our tight grip on what we already have that we fear will slip away; choosing to open and expose the soft palm; allowing it to be filled. This is vulnerable. And this kind of courage is always rewarded.
If we allow life to fill us, we have so much to give in turn. I believe the spirit of life wants to move abundance and love through us, and the hands are a vehicle for that.
We give and express love through our hands with touch; from innocent and friendly to intimate and erotic. Sometimes love is shared in the passing of a warm cup of tea to the soul sitting on your couch, or stirring a yellow pot of curry that will fill your beloved’s belly. In communication, the hands give us ways to send love from close or from afar, whether it be dialing numbers, writing letters, selecting emojis, or using sign language.
Love plays through our hands: scribbling our way through a Crayola 64 pack, making bunny rabbit shadows on the wall, gripping rope swings above the river. From this playfulness, creativity is birthed. The hands are then tools to bring the visions we have to life; to build what our imagination reveals to us.
I’m reminded of Avalokiteshvara, the famous Buddhist Bodhisattva of compassion. Avalokiteshvara has 1,000 arms so that he may be of service to the multitudes of humans experiencing suffering. His hands are an extension of the compassion that he embodies; they are vehicles for his love to move through.
I will leave you with this question: What do you need more of right now? Do you need to give more love or allow yourself to receive more love? And how can your precious, wonderful, strong hands support you in that?
How hands sound to me:
âś° In Your Hands by Nick Mulvey
An easy holiday gift for the:
bookworm
adventurer
vintage soul
in your life.