A clapping of awareness away
My bed served as a cushion. I closed my eyes and quickly entered a blank space. I felt an enormous amount of concentration between my eyes, a release of tension throughout my body, some very slight shaking of my upper body, very slow breathing and a total reset of my overall body’s energy balance.
A couple of minutes before I started the meditation, I decided to sit once more quietly next to my daughter’s bed and softly tickle her. Deep sighs and an expressive yawn affirmed her body’s need to slow down. When I accompanied her to bed and read to her that evening, I was a bit in a rush. Tiredness of ongoing concentration that day, unspoken irritations with respect to a friend and a lack of silent moments throughout the day led to impatience towards my daughters after-preschool emotional regulation. She clearly enjoys it there, and at the end of the day, returning home, when requested to brush her teeth, she lets go of the latter itsy-bitsy force of adaptation. The word ‘no’ echoes through our second floor – besides practicing autonomy, I know it is also her way of responding to my communication of agitation. How I understand the situation, we are resonating and before we know it, enmeshed.
After putting her to bed, hearing her call me, trying to communicate from across the room and sitting down for a minute or so in the hallway, I realized I was rushing her also and felt that her ongoing call for attention was just that: a call for attunement.
I got up and as mentioned sat myself next to her bed, whispered some sweets words into her ears, stroke her cheeks and went on talking with my fingers along her back, arms and through her tender blond hair. She could hardly keep her eyes open; I encouraged her to hold on to her cuddle toys, she curled up into the fetal position and within a minute, she fell asleep.
The meditative state I entered into a couple of minutes later, might have been just as deep. Somehow, thoughtlessness is a snap away these days, even though that does not undermine the need for emotional awareness (like the interaction with my daughter exemplified) and the intend to practice relaxation throughout the day. While I had my eyes closed (something I don’t usually do while meditating), an intense blue light appeared in front of me, more or less a shining blue dot. I could have been intrigued by its beautiful cobalt color, but I wasn’t. It seemed to fit perfectly with the intensity of pointed concentration that I felt, and any story about it felt far away from the openness beginning to rush through my vessels. The concentration transformed into an expansion beyond the bedroom’s walls, and my body did not feel very substantial anymore. Some anxiety popped up, I observed the mind’s tendency to want to hold on, felt a bit amused, also relaxed that qualification by again becoming one with my breathing. The meditation really felt like an energetic rebalancing, and like an entrance to some different dimension beyond solid form. It seemed, as I look back at it, every-thing became awareness – my ego was not enjoying this transition and tried to resist the expansion several times, with my mind trying to tame this experience conceptually by naming it ‘death anxiety’. Observer-me guided me in union with the breath of life.
After opening my eyes, I felt compassion towards those parts of me trying to resist the expansion. I listened to my partner’s words about his meditation experience and noticed my body and mind seemed receptive, not reactive. Again, a shot of that death anxiety swiftly passed through my existence. Hmm, awareness sighed inside. Spontaneously I offered my partner gentle caresses after he told me he was tired. Meanwhile, feeling the presence of my fingers through his hair, all I felt doing was looking out of the window and feel one with the world of all senses, beyond the usual focus on visual perception.
Still feeling slightly touched and gently grateful for this experience, I woke up this morning and noticed that the emotional undercurrent of my dreams affected my thinking processes. Just this observation created spaciousness and facilitated the simple act of getting up and writing this diary entry. Writing offers me the opportunity to connect feelings with my verbal fluency and it filters the internalized voices in my head that aren’t in tune anymore with my unfolding existential melodies. Words become music, an act of respect when it comes to their actual emotional meaning, their ‘embodiedness’. I feel the muscles in my jaw relaxing. No more to say than precisely that which I am sharing. Maybe stilness is always a clapping of awareness away.