Wednesday, February 23, 2011

A fleeting moment of "zen" ...



I had a moment of zen recently. Maybe it wasn't zen. I'm not sure how I would characterize it, if I would characterize it. So I'll describe it:

I was taking class, sadly for the first time in a while. After hanging upside down for a while, and lying on the floor for a while, both with my eyes closed, we came together to begin. As I was trying to focus on what the teacher was saying, I couldn't help noticing everything. Sounds inside the room, outside the room, colors, the feeling of my skin against my shirt, how high the ceilings were, the difference in temperature between the bottom of my feet on the floor and the top of my feet in the air, peripheral vision, images in front of me, space behind me ...

It actually was scary. I thought I could go crazy. It was so much information, so much sensory input! And I felt completely unmoored. In this moment of everything, I felt the value of singular focus. And as I groped for a landmark in my experience to hold onto, to ground myself, I realized something else: my "normal" point of reference, the anchoring point of my experience, is my subjectivity. And when I became no more important than anything else - when my feet were no more important than the difference in temperature between top and bottom - I felt completely lost.

The thing is, after a moment it felt INCREDIBLE! But as soon as I began to luxuriate in the experience, to enjoy losing myself in time and space, I lost it. It's been a week. I can't seem to get it back. I haven't actually tried traditional meditation. I'm not sure why I hesitate to, but I will say that I've tried to meditate in the past and it's never gone particularly well. It did surprise me that my moment was in a large group. But it was still a private moment.

I feel like I'm trying too hard to get that feeling back. And I'm not sure what strategies to use. It affected my whole day in a positive way. A week later, and it's still the most exciting and important experience I've had since.

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