I lost my Wedding Ring

Lost? Gone?… Reclaimed

I lost my wedding ring yesterday while swimming in a waterfall with my wife. A sand filled flooded canyon. Chances of recovering the ring slim to none. I was gutted. The ring had not fallen off of my hand a single time in the four and a half years since our ceremony.

Luckily I was sitting in one of my favorite places in the world. I had time to reflect as a few strangers made sympathetic attempts to find it. My hand felt different. Not like when I take it off, but like my body had been stripped of some armor.

The ring itself was made of titanium, inlaid with both sugilite and ruby crystals. Regardless of the relational symbolism, it’s a really powerful and cool piece. I sat and used the sadness to deepen my awareness of myself as I heard the same water that ripped it from my finger glide and crash over ancient rocks.
I had a relationship to this ring. Seemingly inanimate, yet provocatively energized. I knew that my connection to it had ended.

Inscribed inside the band ‘Thank you Thank you Thank you’.

That etched in precious mineral mantra is now embedded into the earth, in a place where Krista and I go to commune with friends, nature, and each other.

Nothing was lost yesterday. Quite the contrary, I gained a new level of understanding. The minerals and metals simply returned to the earth, from whence they came. The supportive ring was buttressing my own power, and now, upon its absence, I feel the void. So I fill the void. The ring, in all it’s magic and symbolism, was training me to hold that same space without assistance.

I can get a new ring. I can try to replicate the previous one. I can get something new that is even more intentional to my current vibe. That, however, is beside the point. I am completing my relationship with the ring and its power.In my meditation, I could literally see the orb around my finger where the ring used to be. My energy body had a container that held it. Now that orb is closing up in a salute and goodbye to the ring.

Crystals are powerful. Intention is powerful. Ceremony is powerful. Relationships and contracts and bonds are immensely powerful.I’ve lost stones before, some that I have worn for nearly a decade that just find a way to say goodbye. This is different. It matters why you do things. It matters when you commit to something. Little things hold power, so just think about what the big decisions can do!

I spent some years of my life burying and hiding crystals around NYC. One evening in 2013 I was creating a grid in Prospect Park that was about a mile wide when a houseless man offered me oral sex by saying ‘tryna get ya dick sucked’ as I feverishly was digging into the ground with a piece of obsidian procured on a recent trip to Belize. I replied quickly ‘no thanks, man, I’m busy’ to which he replied ‘aight, have a good night’ and kept moving. There was also a time when flooding caused the power to go out in lower manhattan. I took this opportunity to put crystals into all of the planters that are used as roadblocks in lower manhattan. Had I done this during other times, security cameras would have certainly caught me and not been too fond of my terror potential.

I share these stories because that’s pretty much what happens when I lose a stone or a ring. I am just leaving it somewhere that it is supposed to be. Just like when I spend money on something. Just like when a little piece of fruit falls on the floor and my cat gobbles it up.Everything, in its right place!

Physical items can be magical, but that’s mostly because we work with them. Just like a relationship, you work with someone, that’s where the magic happens. The absence of a person or an item will never preclude you from that magic, that love. You may just have to wander a little bit further, love yourself a little bit deeper, set some clear intentions to regain that state of union and bliss within yourself.