In my continuing effort to not subject my family to my anxiety ridden antics I decided this past weekend to give meditation a go. Not that meditation is in any way a last ditch effort - but I figure if I've hit the point where I need guidance mastering the art of multitasking 'closing my eyes' and 'breathing' then I might be in pretty rough shape. So, I kicked my skeptical self to the curb and showed up for class ready to lie in a dark room and try not to make to do lists in my head. As it turns out - I was fairly off the mark when it came to both the practice and experience of meditation. Of course, I maintain that what I derived from the whole thing didn't even hit the right tree with regard to what it's supposed to be like. I didn't see God. I didn't inch any closer to enlightenment. I didn't see any trippy colors, get filled with light or a sense of peace. I wasn't even able to clear my mind long enough to experience any kind of inner silence. What I did experience was a whole host of six year olds in the studio one room over tap dancing their way through Destiny Child's "Survivor". It was so loud it was almost comical - I'm sitting there, cross-legged, eyes closed, palms to knees and index fingers to thumbs, doing my damndest to ingest all the peace and harmony and tranquil awesomeness of this dark room lit by one little tea light and all I can hear is Beyonce belting it out while thirty little girls busted a move next door. While at first funny, after the second go-round of the song I started to get overcome with aggitation. This was my hour. I was not going to waste it. I was going to get my meditate on and aint no softshoeing first grader gonna stop me. So I tried to go with it...amidst the soft tinkling of rainforest noises (heavily muffled by the dance studio speakers) I was all "I'M A SURVIVOR! BRING ON THE MEDITATE!" And then something happened. Despite my best efforts (as I'm pretty sure crazy concentration is a deterrent to meditation) the noises around me started to fall away. Not because I didn't realize they were there - they just somehow grew unimportant and I filed them away somewhere in my subconscious. I was able to recognize the increasing sensation that I was losing feeling from my toes to my hips from sitting there, that my back was achey and that my whole body was basically goading me to lie down and just...kept going. The feelings were there but they weren't. We were asked (and by "we" I mean me and the one other person there...who had been practicing meditating for months) to envision a place in nature where we felt safe, had good memories, and then his voice was gone...
I started to see snapshots of a canopy of trees and my mind said, "Nice going. You've parlayed the rainforest music into a rain forest. You suck at meditation." But the snapshots started to increase in speed, like a flip book of polaroids, until I was moving through this forest. And until I recognized it. I was running - and I was following a girl in a white t-shirt. She was hurdling fallen logs and zipping under tree limbs, looking back at me ever so often just long enough to ensure that I was still there. There was a lot knowing but not knowing things - being aware of things you couldn't possibly know unless you'd done them or seen them before. Like muscle memory. I knew that we were heading away from rather than towards something. I knew that I'd climbed those gnarled tree branches and crossed through that river in rubber rainboots. I knew, while I couldn't see it the denser the tree cover got, that the sun was setting. And I knew the girl was me. Even in the thick of it there was a strange part of me that was conscious of these happenings (like dreaming while awake) and the corn-ball nature of all of this (how will I explain this to G when he asks me how the whole meditation thing went?). Still, I went with it. Because I wasn't controlling the 'dream' - and I was curious to see where it went. I don't know how long I had been 'running' but at some point, both the 'kid' me and the 'now' me stopped. We were standing in the ravine behind the house I'd grown up in (or the house I had spent the most time in as a child - a whopping five years. A winner by far) in a spot I'd nicknamed "the clearing." The whole time I'd been chasing this kid she'd been smiling but now, as I stood in front of her, seemingly towering over her and dressed in my long, black winter work coat she was looking at me with a face full of trepidation. I heard the riff of three long chimes in the distance, growing louder in succession and realized I was supposed to open my eyes now. I stood there looking at her and kind of shrugged, like, "guess I better go"...when she reached out and forcibly took my hand.
"I don't want to go home."
I looked down. I had been running the miles of dirt paths of the ravine I'd known so well as a ten year old and following them further and further from my house. I knew why she'd been running. And the 'kid' me tugged on my wrist and looked at me so earnestly.
"Don't leave me alone."
And so I explained to her what a good home she had. About her husband, a man so devoted to her that he's held her hair while she wretched, held her baby through sleepless nights so she could close her eyes and held her up when she felt as though she couldn't take another step. And about her baby, a boy with such a good heart, and a big laugh, his father's blue eyes and a profound love for his mother. I knelt in the earth opposite myself and took both her hands.
"You are not alone." I paused and realized that the numbness in my legs was again starting to feel palpable. "I will be back for you."
I opened my eyes and immediately started to move my legs about to try to regain feeling and to stamp out the pins and needles. The man who had been leading the meditation was talking with the other girl in the class about her experience when I realized that my face was hot and wet. Unbenknownst to me I'd been crying and still had fat tears sliding down my cheeks. I pushed the wet from my eyes, thanked the Spiritual Leader for his time and left. I spent the entire car ride home trying to ascertain if I took this as a good or bad experience (so that I could relay something to my husband when he prodded me for a reaction once I stepped through the door). To some extent I've been thinking about it in the days since - the whole thing still seems in some way contrived and overly sentimental and I'm sure that it's nothing in the vein of what a true meditative experience is supposed to be like. But still - it was real to me. It happened and it meant something. And it's given me pause to go back. That and the fact that I am clearly not conditioned to sit still and cross legged for an hour. So there's really no telling if I'll go back. I could just chuck it all in favor of a pink tutu, a set of tap shoes and a hell of a lot of Beyonce.
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