A Guest Post by Missdharma
I love when people share their experiences and I think it’s kinda neat that so many people that I’ve met who practice Buddhism; found it familiar when they started.
I also recall this familiarity, from back when I was a child, reading my first book on Buddhism.
Enjoy the article!! - Ambud

I didn’t know that I was meditating when I would spend an hour sitting on top of my slide when I was 8 years old, but I think I was. And all those hours just feeling the wind blow around me; just feeling the power that it held; I didn’t know that I was meditating then either, but I think I was.

When I look back on my childhood many things seem different now than they did then. At the age of 5 I would sit on the pump house in my parent’s back yard and just feel the energy of the sun. I would listen intently to the sound of wind blowing through trees and birds singing and whip-poor-wills in the distance. I could feel energy in the sun, the trees, the ground, and the wind; other people didn’t seem to notice. It was both reassuring and safe, but also awe inspiring and overwhelming. I had always felt a connection to nature and I could feel the peace that came from the Earth’s energy.

No one else, my age or any other age, seemed to feel this way.

At the time, I related these experiences to being a witch, for that was the only thing my young mind could relate it to. I imagined that I could control the wind if I tried hard enough. By the time I was 10 I outgrew these thoughts; chalked them up to fantasy. Looking back, I think I was meditating even though I had never heard the word “Buddhism”.
I was raised in the middle of the Bible Belt, but my family didn’t go to church. Somehow, I grew up feeling that I was supposed to be Christian. I don’t know how to explain that - it was just sort of unspoken, but expected.

In my child hood I saw some of the most wonderful things, and I also experienced some of the worse things that a person can imagine. Somehow, I made it to my thirties intact. I had a set of rules, never written, that I lived by.

1) Treat other people with the respect and dignity that you would want.

2) Don’t sweat the small stuff - if it really isn’t important, then let it go.

3) If you have no control over something, then don’t get too wrapped up in trying to control it.

3) You can’t change people, you must accept them for what they are.

4) Anger is a complete waist of energy and time.

5) True wisdom is in knowing what you can affect and what you can not.

6) One of the most important things that you can do in any given day is make someone else smile.

I had taken the sobriety prayer and made it my own. These rules could go on and on, but I will stop here.

I take complete and utter joy in making people happy. I have always felt that I am somehow meant to serve people, and quite literally for years, I worked as a waitress serving people, and making them smile. I have had a few jobs that people would consider “good”, but I have never gotten as much joy from them as I did simply by seeing the happiness on a customer’s face when I remembered their favorite meal. I simply love to make other people feel special. Right now, I am working as a cashier and I get this enjoyment every day simply by having a bright honest smile for everyone who approaches my counter.

Sorry, I got a little side-tracked there.

The point that I have been trying to get to is that one day this life that I was leading lead me to a very special man who happened to be a Buddhist. The first thing that I noticed was how gentle and caring he was toward every one that he encountered. As we became friends, I learned of his philosophy and it sparked my curiosity. I started to ask him questions, and of course, I had to question every answer that he gave me.

Soon I began to have a very strange feeling…. That I already knew the things that he was telling me, but somehow, I had forgotten them. I felt that I was brushing-up on a subject that I had not studied in long time. At first, I was a bit afraid of the familiarity that I found, knowing that I had not been exposed to it on any level in this lifetime.

The philosophy that I was learning about seemed to be the one that I had already been living, although on a grander scale.

I don’t know quite what to make of this, and I question it often. I don’t have a grand revelation to share with you here, but instead, I wonder if anyone else has felt this way. What is your insight into this mysterious inner knowledge? If you have ever felt this way, or have any input, please, I invite you to share.

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