Limitless Mind, Limitless Possibilities

It's been a long time since I just wrote a regular journal-like blog post, shared a piece of life with you. But here I am, doing it again, a return to a glass of iced cucumber water, sipping and swooshing- ahhh. I had an experience today, something almost mind-blowing in the way that your ethereal self tramps fearless through a mind-field riddled with mines, setting each one off but only catching a grazing of shrapnel. I went to a lunchtime meditation class today.  It's been almost a year since I've been to a guided meditation lesson hosted by the Saraha Buddhist Center in the Mission.  I'm not Buddhist, but I like the mojito it serves up-- a refreshing, mind-lightening, soul-coating mint, muddled with moderation to be swallowed and infused into the bloodstream, into brain, into the heart. When I found out (yesterday!) that they have lunchtime sessions in Chinatown, a stones throw from my office in the FD, I knew there'd be no excuse not to go. I've needed to do this lately, ground my toes into the earth, lift my chin to the sky and send my energy out into the universe in infinite vertical impulses, no, shockwaves-- boom, there goes one, boom, there goes another, boom, a sonic blast cracking out with each contraction of my heart, another wave of energy rebounded out to the world-- a bright white energy beam that generates around my heart chakra, and opposes out the length of my spine, fierce and determined like two ends of a polarized magnet- down my spine, over my tailbone, running with my femoral artery through my legs, bursting from my heels and into the earth, through it layers, piercing its core, all the way out through China (because, regardless of where you are, if your dig down far enough into the Earth, you'll always come out on the other side, in China), out through the clouds, the stratospheres and into the arms of the stars. And of course, the other end, shooting up a big boom firecracker ignited along the trajectory of my vertebrae, up my neck, funneled through my medulla oblongata and exploding its beam through my crown to the heavens, to the embrace of the stars and fed through the mouths of galaxies we've not yet discovered.  Well, in my head, that's how I imagine it looks anyway.

But I digress, sort of.  The lesson today was "Limitless Mind, Limitless Possibilities". Which, conceptually, in and of itself is already inspiring, no need to pull my leg or twist my arm to get me there. And, selfishly, I thought this may somehow help my words, push my writing to expand upon itself, out and infinite and maybe even more universal. But, strangely enough, it wasn't the focus of that specific lesson theme that was the most profound. The Buddhi (because those who practice yoga are yogis therefore in my logic, those who practice Buddhism are Buddhis, rather than Buddhists) Anise, yes like the spice, opened the class with a 20- minute meditation.  Sitting in chairs, feet rooted into the carpeted concrete, as much surface area as possible snug against the carpet fibres, my back as rigid and as straight as my shoulders could manage against the gravitational pull of my now near DDD breasts, and trust me, it was not a painless experience, though it opened me up on many more levels than imagined, I closed my eyes and steadied and readied myself. The blood alone tingled in streams through my biceps, elbows and down to my outer knuckles, the first stage of awakening I was bound for today. Anise asked us to come to the moment, to leave behind all that was previous, and shut out all that was yet to come. To imagine we were encircled with light, a light that absorbed all noise, heard and unheard, all the yesterdays all the tomorrows, all the energy outside of us was eaten by this glorious beautiful light that we were conjuring up, this light that radiated around us, this light with its beaming energy, and each of us the individual center of it.  And I couldn't see it.  I couldn't see it. Maybe a fractional millisecond flickered in my head, yes, but I could not pause the slideshow, to attach onto, to hold that vivid image of myself engulfed and floating in this white lighted energy. I'd done meditation before, and no, it's never *easy*, but my imagination, my mind had never failed me in such heartbreaking clarity, and I didn't understand why I couldn't keep it, why every time I'd catch a glimpse of myself bathed in this light,  it'd slip away again, right through my fingers, a blurred dot floating across the film of my sclera, over my iris and pupil and away again. What the hell was wrong with me. And the more I struggled the more frustrated, the quicker the image, when it did come, would flee.  Fifteen minutes of mind-blazing agony. Then Anise piped back in... I was to see myself, my body, the shell of my skin fill to almost bursting with this magnesium burning light.  And I could see something, a body, black eyes, translucent, glowing, but it was more like a Halloween prop than myself, more like a distorted Casper standing (yes, standing, with feet and everything) in a black cube. This wasn't me. Where was I? Why wasn't I in my own head? This skin-shelled candle was supposed to be ME! 

I was failing in my own head. How the hell do you fail to do something in your own head? 

Then Anise asked us to focus our light. To bring it to the core of who we are, to the Subtle Mind, to the heart chakra. And to hold that energy, that essence, that brilliant light and convert it into clarity. Convert the bright all-loving light, into a tranquil, crystal clear body of water, a pond, a lake, a silent ocean, deep and reaching. And settle there, seeing through to everything, past everything, in this fathomless, layered pool of our still selves. But, my water was muddy, muddling, a swamp with sticky mosquitoes. Not dark, but churning and the more I tried to subdue it, the more I reached out my mind's hands and tried to pull a reverse-Moses, the more it swirled and whirled and ate at its banks and stirred up its silt. And that's when I got it, when I understood what my body, what my mind, my true essence was trying to tell me.  I couldn't still the water, because I am not still.  At this moment, this snapshot of time, I am in transition, my body, my mind, my heart, it's all moving, not in a literal sense, necessarily, but on the ethereal level, that other level that we cannot always see, but we DO feel, somehow, in some way.  I could not see myself floating in that light, because I cannot see myself, period. It has been a long time since I've closed my eyes and turned my gaze inward, to really know who I am in that moment.  I've been dependent on the mirror, the reflection, the physical representation of who I thought I was, but that did not really define me at all.  So, when I tried today, tried to see with my eyes closed, of course there was no still frame, no portrait I could lock onto, no physical shape, not even of my head or my eyes or my smile, because, at the moment, they exist elsewhere, outside of my knowing, outside of my recognizing. And that is my transition, that is my discovery, my path.  And more importantly, that is not a bad thing, it's not throwing myself into a pitfall of depression, it is simply, and cyclically, a movement through life. A new beginning, a reforming, a mixing and reconstructing of atoms not actually physical.

And in knowing this, in this realization, I found my clarity, saw the threads of growth, my breath filled my body down to my toes, and my subtle mind touched peace.

Content Copyright 2011. Ami Lovelace. All Rights Reserved.