A simple meditation
I was pressed for time, but felt an overwhelming need to sit. I just wanted to be still. Just for a second. I needed to recalibrate before I went out into my day. I’d been busy and was “carrying something” – like a sadness or something. I didn’t really know. I just felt like I needed to sit and look inwards. I needed to make a quick journey somewhere else.
I have come to trust such sensations these days and so I honored it. I sat down. I set my timer for 5 minutes and plugged in to my music for assistance. My go-to meditation music right now is this mix from a yoga class taught at the Robot Heart camp at Burning Man.
I plugged in and breathed (my new headphones really help!), feeling instantly like I was in an elevator, descending floor by floor with every breath. Within seconds I saw my wife, Jamie, kneeling before our wood stove in our living room in Canada. I’m currently in Bali. I continued to focus on my breath and the vision and settled beside her.
I felt an incredible uprising of love. Tears filled my eyes and I just sat there, breathing, and being on another continent beside her. My vision was so powerful. I had the biggest smile and tears streaming down my face – just a brief moment in time, but one in which I was absolutely transported through time and space to the fireside of a small house in British Columbia. I was completely enveloped in love – looking straight into Jamie’s eyes and just smiling serenely. I had found my soul mate and I realized I was carrying loneliness and missing her.
Infinity
I chose the weird photo above because when I came out of my meditation and opened my eyes I looked straight at this handle on the chest of drawers. Somehow it was as if everything else in the room was slightly out of focus apart from this one object. It leapt out at me and the message was clear: everything is infinite – including love. I guess I thought that because I interpreted the design on the handle as a symbol of infinity. I wonder, then, whether enlightenment is simply the experience of infinite love?
Who’d have thunk it?
I have known some dark places in my life. I have occupied states of mind profoundly different to this moment described. So I know that when they come we must celebrate them. These moments of clarity and love that arrive so suddenly and with such intensity are often fleeting. But in this moment I know they are real and tangible and here to be cultivated. This is love in action and I am inspired by the practice I have developed and the relationships that I have discovered that have allowed such experiences to be part of my story.
