Going back.
Just got out of a long bath. Did a little meditating.
My heart won't stop pounding underneath the water. My mind races along with it, and with every breath in and out I have to remind myself to let all of those thoughts and feelings come into me and go out of me as they will. The key is not holding on to any of them, but letting them find their way out of the aperture of my mind like swarming insects.
I remember so much of this, in flashes here and there, tiny motes of awareness for the tiniest, divided split of a second where I can feel time, or experience, out from the point of my present in all directions as opposed to simply backward along that fractionally narrow avenue that I have already traversed and the uncertain thread that I will follow into my own future. Drifting around in there, there are memories, too, of other times and places. Whether they are other lives or other symbols doesn't matter very much... they are things and at any given time I trust that I will perceive them precisely as my mind needs to in order to understand. Out there, in that other place, I may have lay in the shallows of a river or the break of a receeding tide. Or, perhaps, dependant on the time and place, just in another bathtub.
Breathe white light into the deep red heart of my consciousness, breathe black smoke and obscuring grey haze out of my mind and body. I let the bad things start to soak out of my skin into the water.
I stayed in as long as I could. It didn't feel like the water cooled down at all... I was very hot, and very uncomfortable; increasingly so as I concentrated and didn't let myself stray back into the more escapist, distracting thoughts about work, or the novel, or anything. I told myself that there is nothing I need, and nothing I need to hear, from either of them. Either, or any.
After I couldn't be in any longer, I kicked the drain with my foot and let the receeding water pull down my thoughts. I focused on breathing, reminded myself that all of these things take time and that I needed to respect that, too. Also, that while respecting that time, I can also consider it to exist all at once, and start to let go of all of those moments, as opposed to passing them one by one. If I imagine them like a chain, that's exactly what they'll be.
I feel a little better. There is no panacea, but I'm not irreparable, either.
My heart won't stop pounding underneath the water. My mind races along with it, and with every breath in and out I have to remind myself to let all of those thoughts and feelings come into me and go out of me as they will. The key is not holding on to any of them, but letting them find their way out of the aperture of my mind like swarming insects.
I remember so much of this, in flashes here and there, tiny motes of awareness for the tiniest, divided split of a second where I can feel time, or experience, out from the point of my present in all directions as opposed to simply backward along that fractionally narrow avenue that I have already traversed and the uncertain thread that I will follow into my own future. Drifting around in there, there are memories, too, of other times and places. Whether they are other lives or other symbols doesn't matter very much... they are things and at any given time I trust that I will perceive them precisely as my mind needs to in order to understand. Out there, in that other place, I may have lay in the shallows of a river or the break of a receeding tide. Or, perhaps, dependant on the time and place, just in another bathtub.
Breathe white light into the deep red heart of my consciousness, breathe black smoke and obscuring grey haze out of my mind and body. I let the bad things start to soak out of my skin into the water.
I stayed in as long as I could. It didn't feel like the water cooled down at all... I was very hot, and very uncomfortable; increasingly so as I concentrated and didn't let myself stray back into the more escapist, distracting thoughts about work, or the novel, or anything. I told myself that there is nothing I need, and nothing I need to hear, from either of them. Either, or any.
After I couldn't be in any longer, I kicked the drain with my foot and let the receeding water pull down my thoughts. I focused on breathing, reminded myself that all of these things take time and that I needed to respect that, too. Also, that while respecting that time, I can also consider it to exist all at once, and start to let go of all of those moments, as opposed to passing them one by one. If I imagine them like a chain, that's exactly what they'll be.
I feel a little better. There is no panacea, but I'm not irreparable, either.