Smile in your liver...

After a meeting at work today I decided to take a little drive up the canyon. I have recently fallen in love with the mountains. It all started when I started really noticing them on my way to work everyday. Everytime it would snow, I would look up from the office and see these amazing white giants with blue skies behind them. It was something that fasinated me.

On with my drive...It was about dusk so the mountains were big, beautiful, and glowing. I put on my tunes and started heading up the canyon. I had the uncontrollable urge to drive fast, sing at the top of my lungs with my sun roof down, and take in the awesome views of my new favorite thing to look at and be in the middle of.

I started on my jaunt but immediatly I got stuck behind an old fart in his Lexus with his 20 somthing year old "lady friend" on a leisurly joy ride. I got a little impatient...dont they know this toe-up from the flo-up mom driving my *mini-mini van needed to get my ride on? FINALLY i passed them and I was FREE.

I began zipping up the canyon and just loving the view. The snow up there was still so awesome. You would think that I would have enough of snow by now, but for some reason it really hit the spot today. I found a trail to a peak that I want to hike when it gets warmer. It is "storm mountain" and is right next to my favorite peak...Twin peak (not the one in a.f.).

I kept driving...not thinking about anything but just enjoying. I started to relax and tried to be present to experience every sense that was happening. The view, the air, my music. I felt like I could just keep driving forever and would be so content.

That is when I felt the most amazing thing I haven't felt in a long time...happiness! True and pure and clear happiness. It was unbelievable. I actually started laughing to myself, not because anything was funny but because it felt so amazing. It was in my liver all the way into my heart and then up to my mind.

There is a part in Eat Pray Love when this old cute medicine man tells Elizabeth, "To meditate, only you must smile. Smile with face, smile with mind, and good energy will come to you and clear away dirty energy. Even smile in your liver." He goes on to say that when you smile from your liver then you really believe your happiness because it is all the way through you. Anyone can put on a happy face, but to smile from your liver, that is when you know you're truely at peace and happy. I was totally smiling in my liver.

At the time all this happy happy joy love feeling was happening, the thing I kept thinking is "why are you so happy? Where did this come from?" I can take a few stabs in the dark on that one, which is for me to know and to hold on to. It was just simply amazing.

I think I'll be taking lunch breaks like that more often :)

*The reference about the mini-mini van needs to be clarified. I call it that, but it actually is NOT a mini van. Just wanted to make that clear :)