Instant Recognition

Poetry by The Irrational Sage

Jun 11, 2024

Sometimes we meet kindred spirits at the gas pump, coffee shop, on a hike, while traveling, or any other “ordinary” place where the encounters are anything but “ordinary.”

Sometimes kindred souls walk in the periphery of our lives until one day, in some divinely ordained time, paths cross.

Sometimes these connections only live in the digital space, yet carry the same recognizable weight that give room for friendship to bloom, kindred spirits simply know they are that.

Some people we know we have known before and when we meet them we feel a sense of excitement, ease and/or eagerness to reacquaint ourselves, as if meeting an old friend, except instead of years, it feels like a lifetime (because it is). It’s irrational, yet clear. It’s strange and wonderful, yet may spark melancholy. It can be confronting and make us run away or comforting and make us want to run to. These encounters can “shake” things up, even if only subconsciously.

In our humanness, we may sit back as an observer and stay quiet when this happens, yet we know we know them in an unexplainable fashion and we know they know and that they know we know, even if nothing is said. (did you get all that? ha!)

The exchange of familiar strangers meeting again changes something inside of you, ever how subtle or grand, you know there has been a purposeful pivot to what you thought life had planned. Something about their words holds more weight than others, even if few words are spoken or the message is cryptic, feels broken, it’s still inspiring…a numinous nod walked through a portal and planted a seed in your mind that was meant to somehow, someway, for some reason beyond our total comprehension, open our eyes to something else we’re supposed to see or do or be, but had yet to fully discover.

Synchronicities meet serendipity and something ignites inside life’s mystery. We must remember the signs from the Universe don’t only arrive and/or communicate in numbers, dreams, music, animal encounters, meditative states, downloads, or messages, but with people too…like me…like you. The wheel moves by will yet fate intervenes by pre-ordained appointment…at least that’s how it seems and has been throughout my own life experiences.

The gig is paid in unusual ways, a new road is paved, the rendevous brought deja-vu. Both science and the spiritual communities love to try to explain away the magic or give labels to something that, in truth, you can’t, nor ever will be able to fully know, no matter how much you analyze it or attempt to extrapolate meaning in order to appease your mind.

Purposes intertwine, the Divine is working to nudge us back in line...to break the mold of doing as told and learn the lessons, become more bold…the blessings wait for us to catch them, not to bottle them up, but to share them…after all it’s like finding a diamond inside a chrysanthemum, an invocation to jump into another aspect of our wholeness becoming….it’s a bit maddening, an unfastening sent in, just when everything felt so good and content.

How many travel with us that can really see our truth or walk beside us on the way? How many people help us along the journey, even those that bring an uncomfortable counterplay? Earth angels or guides, I don’t know the right name?

Let the mystery in, whether fleeting or lasting matters not, it only takes a moment in time to go beyond the current paradigm and let hearts collide. Soul-notes might come from your dog or a passage that pops up in your memory at just the right time, a neighbor who looks out for you and waves at distance from the driveway everyday at nine. Once you recognize the message, things can begin to shift, are you open to the magic or stuck in an intellectual drift? Can you hear the whisper of your ancestors, can you feel the goosebumps chime, are you aware of what’s trying to speak to you, do you know whose got you on their mind? Have you danced inside lucidity, have you met in astral realms, can you play in pellucidity, can you give way to be propelled?

You know what these instances mean for you. I’m grateful for the soul tribe that has been in my life and those that still are, for they are distinct and poignant connections that are very rare, very few. It’s as if these circumstances are reminescent (and deserving) of a playbill announcing a new theatrical performance, cue scene: enter tower moment, person or situation comes out of nowhere awakening the next act, mutually beneficial, but not always easy, or logical….mostly rather abstract.

Sometimes it’s a momentary interaction amongst strangers, sometimes an instant friend, sometimes a long lost love….unrequited karma or requited darhma after finally doing the work. A moment or a lifetime matters not when this comes our way, just something greater than ourselves, a sense of belonging beyond the fray. Is it a past life or something else at play…I don’t know, but there’s a resonance of something I just can’t shake.

Instant Recognition
Meeting once again
a familiar embrace
numinous nod
spirit interlaced
how many times
our paths crossed
can't forget your face
eyes I've looked into
a million times before
paths diverged
but always return
opening the same door
took me too long
got lost on the way
this trip, fraught with
diversions of turbulence
had to plot my escape
someone always waits
for fate to catch a wave
and return to the future
maybe only in a dream
or some magical place
a lit corridor invites me
to turn around and see
that recognizable gaze
us, familiar strangers
in magnetic pathways
are we soul travelers of
undisclosed, yet planned
locations, where everything
shifts the earthly haze
bridge of kinetic zinging
inside a point called forth
warm covenants coincide
no force, nothing to hide
helping hands jolting
telepathic connections
no words are needed
impressions unheeded
no thing to mention, just
see you later, even if only
via time and space
in another dimension…