Today began as a snowy one here in Boulder, Colorado. The breeze has scattered the fine white droplets before they find a resting place below, and I’ve awakened before my normal time. I’m usually awake by 5 or 5:30 am and finished my meditation and morning rituals by 6. Today, I was up before 4:30, and out of bed by 5:30.
The dreams. Those fucking fullish-moon dreams. They rattle me sometimes, even when I can’t remember them. My eyes open as if something bad has just happened yet I can’t remember for the life of me what it was. It’s like finding a bruise on your inner thigh and not being able to explain it. I just know there is a black and blue mark somewhere and it isn’t very comfortable.
That’s how I woke up this morning. Uncomfortable. Unsettled. Imagine waking up and finding your entire living space disheveled and having no idea why. You trip over fallen books and shards of broken things until you can find a light switch that may, or may not, work. I’m standing there, in the middle of this disarray, hoping that I don’t do myself any injury while hoping everyone else has survived. Now, where is that light switch?
For me, that switch is meditation. Today, I found some cool vibes on my phone and tried to settle into the frequency. Soon, the sound vanished and I’d become melted into everything. Whatever comes from there is not truly up to me. It just comes.
This morning I just felt the cold. I felt naked in the winter, my skin dampened by the snow as the air chilled me past discomfort. I had chosen to be outside in this condition, but the weather had changed and now I was cold. I looked for shelter and found none. I hoped for a fire, and saw none. I was at the mercy of the weather, and I don’t like being at the mercy of things I’m unable to change.
I called out only to get an echo in reply. I tried to find my footprints in the snow but the wind had erased them. I knew in my soul the only thing I could do was keep walking. Something would show up; either a fire or shelter or death itself. Whatever it was, the answer didn’t reside where I was standing, but where I was going.
So I walked. And walked. Then I walked some more. In the darkness the snow was getting deeper and it was becoming harder to walk. My body was aching from the cold, and I was getting tired. In my Being I heard a voice telling me that I could just give up and lay down or I could keep walking. One was to die, the other was to live.
I came out of my meditation just as I had come out of sleep. This meditation was disorienting, and seemed to be suggesting to me that I was soon to be tested. I know I am under some amounts of stress, but that didn’t seem to be it. It felt as if something was coming, the weather was shifting, and I was going to have a choice to make.
True to form, I will wait to see what unfolds while trying to remain an active participant.