ORIGIN OF UNIVERSE: EILEEN

 Meigra and I were sitting outside at a breakfast cafe in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It was an early Sunday morning when the restaurant was busy outside and inside on this warm sunny day.   As we sat quietly, a woman, the owner, came over to our table, stopped and paused, simply staring at us.  Her eyes were riveting, a light yellow coloring around the pupils.

 "I recognize who you both are," she said, then sat down, even though a line of customers waited.  My linear logical mind was suspended automatically. I had no questions.  "I am going to sell my restaurant," she said quietly, "and go to Mexico this summer for three months to discover the origin of the universe.  I want you both to come with me."

Without thought or question, we both said, "yes."  "My name is Eileen," she said, then got up and went back to waiting tables with the morning breakfast crowd, all people she seemed to know.   

 The following week, I drove down to Santa Fe from Taos, and walked along the river with Eileen as she told me of her young daughter, and repeated her intention to find the origin of the universe.  She said she had been the owner of the restaurant for nine years, and it would "sell it next week."

 One week later, I returned to the restaurant to visit with Eileen, and talk of Mexico.  It had been sold and no one knew where Eileen was. They had not seen her in a week, and they too, wondered  where she might be.  I found her apartment, yet no one had seen her. 

Although expecting to, we did not go to Mexico to find the origin of the universe.  The mystery trip did not happen.  Several years later, I awoke one morning knowing what that was all about. I realized that whomever Eileen was, where she had come from, or where she had gone, I did not need to know.  Instead, I found myself unexpectedly noticing and discovering the origin of my daily thoughts, my judgments of others, and seamlessly opening to an awareness of an endless universe that, if it had an origin, I didn't need to know it.  I even wondered about how there could be an origin to anything?  What would be before the orgin?