Your Knowledge Will Not Save You

After a break of years, I've returned to the practice of meditation, and it's having some direct results on my sense of myself, my well being, and my dreams.

In the days, I am calmer. My body and mind feel definitely more aligned. Small aches and pains, both psychological and physical, are diminished, and I am able to address difficulties with greater application. However my dreams are full of holes, like a fucking cosmic colander, and I am suddenly cast in a series of short, scary films starring various aspects of myself, in scenarios including: murder, threat, hiding, being starved of oxygen, and sophisticated theft using explosives as part of a team.

Each dream presents me with conundrums which survive into waking life; it is as though my morals were being paraded before me, my self-knowledge ruthlessly exposed via convincing but trite narratives, each casting a subtly different light on the chaos within me, hidden under several layers of carefully organised intellect, which which the honest inventory I am wont to make is now revealing.

Sometimes, after meditation, as after wakening, I am left with a key phrase or vision which follows me into the day, and today's post-meditation phrase is the title of this post. My knowledge of myself will not save me from having to experience these dream scenarios; indeed I believe that there are reasons, probably related to my deeper health, which are causing this current spate of night dramas. Superficially, it's the move. Moving is third in stress terms, so they say, after berievement and divorce.

Beneath that, it's the fact that I have noticed unavoidable truths about myself, my life, my direction, my position, and the meditation process is a magnifying glass. Since I hate sleeping pills, and my gorgeous girlfriend doesn't mind me waking her up if I need to relate something in order to externalise it, then I'll bear with it for now, and presume that this, too, will pass.