A Sunlit Tent

In this morning's meditation, I was suddenly filled with an awareness of love, more accurately, of the immediate presence of love. It was as if I were inside a white, sunlit canvas tent. I had a sense of the thin layer between myself and the outside world of light, and I had the simultaneous realisation that this was love.

The improving sense of self-regard I am gaining from resuming regular meditation can be quite definite and unmistakable. It's all well and good embarking upon the wholesale integration of the self, but this is a path which leads to unexpected results. I have been concerned that the consequences of losing my inner resistance to change will be almost too much for me to cope with in the context of the life I am leading, and I have been wondering how to enact the changes I now know are necessary for me to progress meaningfully.

At the end of the meditation, which I allowed to continue beyond time until it was quite finished, I looked up at the ceiling and saw a small casement moth, one which I had chased last night before going to bed. It had eluded my attempts to kill it, and ended up in the room I am using for meditation. I felt rather wistful at the thought that I would now have to remove it so immediately after my finding peace and a sense of well-being. It is in this state that I am best at employing "live and let live" as an active philosophy. Although I generally chase out spiders, bees and wasps, flies, cloth-destroying moths and mosquitos are insects I normally kill quickly and without compunction, but now I found the thought of killing difficult.

I stood up on the raised platform, disengaging from the cushions and the covering which had kept me physically stable and warm while I meditated. Getting closer to the ceiling, I saw that it was not a moth, but a tiny cobweb. I smiled; this was easily removed, and harming nothing, I gave thanks for being spared the role of executioner.

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.