A Moment of En.Light.enment

I'm a true believer that we have to process our emotional baggage in a healthy way, and let it go, or it remains with us as stored, pent-up energy -- on our hearts, racing through our minds, packed onto our butt.

Wish I were this thin.

Some people act out in unhealthy ways, taking actions that don't help to release the energy, but lead to further acts of self-loathing in the form of outward destruction.

Others, like me, get fat and cry sometimes. I've never really learned how to vent my frustrations in any kind of positive way. They tend to stay with me everywhere I go.


Such baggage wearing me down all the time makes it hard to meditate --> to find a place of peace and calm, where the outside world can't find me. For years, I relied on basic meditation imagery such as seaside scenes, garden walks. I remember a story from my Mom about how my Dad could go to sleep almost immediately just by imagining himself on a calm, empty beach. I spent many an adolescent night trying to come up with my own instant-sleep image, adding a forest glen nearby, admiring an imaginary sunset. But no dice.

My Probs on the tallest
tree I could find

I never stopped searching for a meditative device that could work for me. Years ago I heard a nice story in which a father, burdened with work, would hang his problems on the tree in front of the house every evening before walking in, setting his heart free to be with his family. In the morning, he picks his responsibilities up on his way out. When I do this, I find that I end up dragging the tree in the door behind me, all my hanging "ornaments" still firmly within my grasp. Or something like that.

About 26 months ago, I discovered a great new private location to send my soul. During a time of meditation on Sunday morning, Reverend Edna directed us to a fountain in a garden. Normally, this would have felt forced -- I've visited many a guided-meditation-garden. But I took her suggestion and made it mine.

I removed all the physical barriers to comfort - gave myself magical seat-cushions that can't get wet, moulded the seating to my butt, made all kinds of magical alterations to suit my imagined physical comfort as well as my aesthetic. For a time, it was a fabulous place to visit. But eventually, it too felt forced.

Desperately clinging to the idea of ultimate spiritual solitude -- if only for seconds at at time -- I locked myself into imaginary rooms without doors. Gorgeous rooms based on my experiences in solitude at the National Cathedral. Rooms with no ceilings except the sky, little silos of light glittering off the mosaics and gold leaf, with fabulous velvet cushions and a another small fountain which sent the light that reached the bottom back up again with sparkles. It was my private space.

...And yet, I still wasn't alone with Spirit. There remained a wall to be knocked on, a chimney to climb.

Can you blame me?

A few weeks later, in another of Rev. Edna's guided meditations, I had a new thought. I would create a visual image that is impenetrable by outside forces, even in my imaginings! I would create... a spaceship!

A cube without doors, transparent walls seeing out but completely opaque looking in, equipped with a very comfortable seat cushion and absolutely no communications capability of any kind --> except to block any and all such signals. My spaceship cube, far far away from our world and all my responsibilities within it.

Bliss!

I reveled in the newfound solitude in my mind. I now had a place to escape to. I could leave the ornaments of responsibility back on Earth and shoot off into infinite space and just hang, just me and God, and whatever EM waves happened by.

...Eventually, this too, wore off.

Just can't escape my huge butt.

Fast-forward to a couple weeks ago, once again in church, during a time of meditation. I run sound, so I was completely zoned out to what was happening in the silence around me, too busy fiddling with nobs and attempting to "focus". But the space-cube just wasn't there for me. Suddenly, it occurred to me that my intergalactic imagery has one major downside: I am in the cube. With me. Bringing all my baggage along for the ride, all my self-loathing fat and fear.

I also realized that this doesn't have to be the case. That I don't have to bring all my junk along with me.

Hence, I shot myself out of the universe, body and all.

Finally, a place where I am free to be Me!