I Am Loving the Wind

This week I’ve been reflecting on something that showed up last week.

My first mantra.

I’ve never really been drawn to mantras. They always felt like something you pick, or inherit, or try to make work.

This one didn’t feel like that.

It just… appeared.

I was driving on Lakeshore Drive, listening to a track by East Forest. There’s a voice over the music, calm, steady, almost distant.

And I kept hearing:

“I am loving the wind.”

Over and over.

I was moving through traffic, one of those drives where everything just flows, and somewhere in the middle of it, something opened.

I started laughing. Then crying. Then both at the same time.

Sunglasses on, tears coming out of nowhere, laughing like something had just clicked into place.

It didn’t feel like I had figured anything out. It felt like I had remembered something.

“I am loving the wind.”

There was something so simple about it.

The wind comes in.

The wind goes out.

It brings things with it.

It takes things with it.

And none of it stays.

Later, I looked it up. It’s actually Ram Dass’ mantra. “I am loving awareness.”

I had just heard it wrong. And that made me laugh again.

Because somehow, hearing it wrong made it land exactly right.

“I am loving the wind” is still the one that stayed with me.

I’ve been sitting with that all week. How something slightly off can open something up. A phrase you mishear. A moment you don’t fully understand. And still, something in it lands. Not because it’s precise, but because it’s alive in the moment you receive it.

There’s a quiet shift when I say it. Nothing dramatic. Just a little less effort. Less trying to hold on. Less trying to push anything away. Things move, and I don’t have to organize them as quickly.

It reminds me, in a small way, of what Jiddu Krishnamurti pointed to. That seeing doesn’t require interference. That something can be fully there without needing to be corrected.

And I came across something this week that made this even more interesting.

There’s new research showing that the same parts of the brain involved in seeing are also active when we imagine. In other words, the line between what we perceive and what we create isn’t as clear as we think.

Which makes me wonder…

Maybe “hearing it wrong” isn’t always wrong. Maybe sometimes it’s the mind shaping something into a form you can actually receive.

I want to explore that more, because it opens up a bigger question about how we experience reality in the first place. I’ll share more on that next week.

“I am loving the wind.”

It doesn’t feel like something I use to get somewhere. It feels more like stepping slightly to the side. Letting things pass without needing to decide what they mean.

I wouldn’t have chosen it. But it showed up. And I’ve started to notice that the things that matter most usually do. Not because we decide on them. But because, for a moment, we’re open enough to hear them.

Even if we hear them wrong.