MARCH 2007

[Daykeeper founder Maya del Mar loved any kind of travel, flying in particular. Several years ago, a friend sent her up for a flight in a little yellow single-engine biplane. She flew out of Oakland airport (the same airport Amelia Earhardt landed at after her record-breaking trans-Pacific flight of 1935). Here is Maya's inspiring account of her experience, previously unpublished in Daykeeper.—Ed.]

Milo zipped me up in the worn leather flight jacket. I put on the helmet and goggles, and they felt familiar and comfortable—although I had never worn them before. I climbed up the black track on the yellow wing as Milo warned me, "Don't step on the wing. It's delicate," and hoisted myself into the cockpit just like the bush pilots in the movies. I was ready to let Milo and the little yellow strut plane fly me towards heaven's blue skies.

Milo started the engine, a lovely sound, and we moved slowly down the runway. Then we stopped in the middle of this flat brown field, it seemed forever, with the engine pinging expectantly. I knew it was warm-up time, but this close to heaven it was hard to wait!

Finally we moved again, and it was only a few seconds before we lifted off. That thrill of leaving the ground is one of my most joyful moments, even in a commercial plane. Here in the little biplane, it was extraordinary.

Suddenly I felt whole, really whole, all of a piece. I felt my grounding cord deep in the diamond crystal in the center of the earth, and the energy moving up and through me to galactic central. It took only an instant for this incredible feeling of completion to sweep through me.

I was home. I was grounded. I was secure. Nothing could hurt me in the sky. Whatever happened, it was just fine. No matter what, the universe was beautiful, and good.

The engine pinged loudly in my ears. Every ping felt like the needle of god/goddess' sewing machine stitching up my fragments, my wounds, my conflicting inner parts, literally making me whole again. It was music to my ears and to my body.

The rush of air in my face the moment we took off mirrored the rush of pleasure in my body. It was not an adrenaline rush. It was not excitement. Rather, a deep calm settled in me and I felt connected to the universe in a new way, and at the same time more in control of myself than I had ever felt.

As we continued to rise, and the peace settled into every cell in my body, I offered a salute to Beryl Markham, veteran African bush pilot. And then she whispered to me, "Risk. Risk. Take risks in life. It's the only way to be alive." [Learn more about Markham's gem of a book, West with the Night, in this issue.]

There, in the air, nothing felt risky. I could believe in the rightness of risks. I could take them. I could dare. I told myself to remember Beryl's advice and this feeling when I return to the earth—where so much seems risky, and I create all these little patterns in my life to stave off danger and to keep life predictable.

Fly, Maya. Just launch yourself!

Lift off into this space where you can see life laid out, and not be bound by it, and yet can move in a direct line from one place to another.

The scenes below me were familiar—I've lived in the Bay Area for 50 years and traveled over the Bay Bridge thousands of times, even in the now-forgotten great trains of years ago. But all the traveling has been in little fragments, like fingering the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Now the jigsaw puzzle was solved.

The Bay, the bridges, the estuary, the islands, the little bays, the peninsulas, the cities, were connected in a seamless way. They truly were all one. Living and moving in it I had been like a blind man trying to describe an elephant. And we do live this way, going from one moment to another without recognizing their seamless continuity as our moments make up a life. Nor do we see the richness and glory of the tapestry we are weaving as we live.

I'm flying high and seeing connections and awed by how quickly we can touch in on one thing and then another. My beloved little ferry, far below, looks like it's moving very slowly in a small bay. When I ride it, I feel it zips through the big bay. The majestic Golden Gate Bridge is so small I have to look quickly to catch its glory. Milo does a roll over it to honor it. I, in the front seat, give him a thumbs up.

I'm on the earth too quickly, and I want to remember this perspective. As usual, the Pleiadians help me: I read in Barbara Marciniak's Pleiadian Times, "We want you to bend your times so that you create a different point of view, so that you stop this linear interpretation and you begin to feel a part of the whole."

Further, "Stop whining and complaining, take responsibility, and above all do not be afraid to make the most majestic changes, the most outrageous changes, the most sudden changes that will come before you because it is only through change that you will come into the next season of yourself."

This is indeed the season of change for all of us. Let us take a deep breath and relax into it.

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