Where Angels Tread

There’s a Sufi exercise where you walk behind your practice partner, imitating their gait so as to fully experience their state of mind – the soul is in the stroll, so to speak.  Today, there seems no distinction between my body and the trees, the rocks, even the lizards – it’s the closest I’ve ever come to a feeling of no separation.   I would be invisible to my practice partner, and even if discernible amidst my environs, my walk would be a motionless glide.  The only being who could imitate me right now would be an angel.

Angels travel upward, but I’ve already climbed every peak within walking distance.  I follow a track downhill, through thicket, past Painted Cave, off the map.  No vistas, no visions, no visitors here.  As I turn a corner in the bottom of the valley, I am delivered into a secret expanse, an oval of grasses and wildflowers.  One solitary sun-bleached wooden bench.  I know this hidden place instantly, and it’s not outside at all.   I have the shocked sensation of my psychic landscape being turned inside out, translated by topography.   Amanpuri, place of peace.  I take my seat.

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Swallowing the Walking Stick

Several  psycho-souls (yes, I’m still reacting in habitual critical mode) actually choose to meditate in the breaks between meditations.  I would rather encounter mountain lion in the natural wilderness than further investigate the hinterland of my own mind.

And there’s a kind of hypnotic serenity to hiking now, almost as though I am static and creation is just flowing around and through me, like being on a moving walkway in a nature documentary.  I am surprised by my own confidence – I’m walking alone at dawn, at noon, and at dusk in a National Forest (armed with a hell of a big walking stick), but feeling self-reliant and secure. I’m totally assured that my being is equipped with resources to contend with whatever materializes – it’s as though I’ve swallowed the walking stick.

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Live by Example

Pillows, cushions, bolsters, blankets, blocks – at each session I construct an original artistic ensemble for my supreme sitting comfort.  I mentally exhaust all the synonyms for ‘excruciating’.  Everybody else is seated with poise, unmoving, spines straight with the requisite gentle curve, totally committed in their posture.  Their intention supports my practice, and I remain still only because of this collective power.  And our teacher tells us this  secret –“You are not alone, “ her supremely reassuring lullaby croons.  We are never alone in our feelings or thoughts, we can be sure that the experience of some reflects our own.    Since the persistence of others depends on my example, as mine does on theirs, I try for the neutral face, if not for the insanely ambitious gentle smile.

But tomorrow, everything will change. Tomorrow, I’ll stop worrying about how it looks, and build a boat for my body to float on.  I’ll anchor myself to my breath.  I’ll appear eccentric, but feel divine.  Physical sensations subside, and I can start observing and labeling thoughts without insistent prompts from the vocabulary of pain.  There is some wisdom to manipulating external conditions, instead of merely accepting with equanimity.

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Someone Else’s Story cannot be Your Answer

A rooster is crowing incessantly.  Shut up, we’re meditating.  Our teacher jokes that he is having flashbacks to dawn.  Maybe he’s exulting because he knows The Answer.  Obviously, we’re all assembled here because we’re asking ourselves The Question.  And we’re still stupidly listening for the solution to be provided by our omniscient teacher.  After all, we paid cash up front.

There is a library in the lodge: rocking chairs, stained glass windows, a kaleidoscope , wind chimes.  Except no reading is permitted, not even the cereal box label.   Unless we are absolutely desperate for one tiny paragraph of inspirational material.

Consequently, one student is studying a medical textbook, specifically the chapter on tinnitus (ringing ears). She recognizes every listed symptom. At the bottom of the page in bold type is the headline “How to Cure this Condition:-”.  At last!  Of course, when she turns the page, the critical information has been ripped out.

So, it’s back to the meditation cushion again.

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My Emotional Baggage manifests in a Bright Red Suitcase

After lunch, realigned with a disciplined sense of purpose, I again attempt to exit the gates.  I stand still and look patiently for long minutes.  Then I nonchalantly stroll up to the little gate on the right, lightly lift the latch , lightly swing the gate open, and lightly close it behind me.  I am released.  (Stage direction: Loud inaudible applause)

I pass through the green tipped posts, and walk for hours.

And when I return to My Cabin, on the bed adjoining Mine, an oversize red suitcase emphatically announces the arrival of my roommate.

I name my emotion – relief!  I trust that the space will uphold us both.

There is no sign of the spider.

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A Serious Look at Levity

Morning meditation – a cocoon of silence within silence, a time out of time.  On retreat, extracted from distraction, released from reacting to the demands and expectations of others, one’s essential identity emerges intact.   Our everyday selves are ordinarily shredded apart like parmesan cheese by the abrasive grind of daily interactions.

Retreat life offers a pool of peace with a slo-mo underwater type tempo, filtered input, less murkiness, clarity to deeper levels. The same kaleidoscopic patterns keep flickering on the surface of the mind, but with less frequency.  Fluidity and solidity marry – one can choose to respond from a lucid, solid center now, but with a fluid ease born of certainty.  The trivial ceases to trouble, serious stuff is bathed in poignancy, not pain.  As our teacher explains to me (explanation for conducting a life), “Take it all lightly”.

Today I adopt the mantra, “Be Light”

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Locked in or Locked Out?

The trail map reads, “Pass between the green-tipped posts, just across the road from the main ranch entrance.  Fallen Horse Trail has narrow switchbacks and steep ascents”.  The electronic gates at the ranch entrance remain obdurately bolted on my approach. There seems to be no manual mechanism to activate the apparatus (but I am renowned for being mechanically impaired, even incapable of switching on the light in My Cabin).  There is a little side gate to the left of the main gates, for decorative purposes only, no hinge, no key, no lock and, for symmetry, a seemingly identical matching gate on the right.  The fence is wire mesh, impossible to crawl through.  I stand mute and helpless, ineffectually mouthing, “Open Sesame” before an impassable barrier.  No escape – I am trapped within these bordered confines, unable to cross the threshold.

And even as I start constructing the inevitable analogy, I recall our teacher warning, “Don’t try to extract meaning from the moment, because that way you lose the moment.”   Instead, imprisoned, I admire what is right here before me – the fabulous artistry of stained glass inset on the gate’s cast iron fretwork