Meditation 103

It happened again.  I am at a loss to explain it and I'm beginning to think that might be the whole point.  In any event, I'm confused and at peace at the same time.

Mindful Meditation is quite odd,  indeed.

I scarfed lunch and met the fourth grade girls on the playground, just as I'd promised last Friday.  As requested, I brought girly-er stickers than these robot ones; my attempts to dissuade them from the notion that such things existed fell on deaf ears.  They are pink and bows and sparkles and there's just nothing I can do about it.  Being ten-ish comes with its own set of challenges; the least I can do is take the pink stickers from my GRIN box with me in the morning.

We talked about how mean girls get in the fourth grade, and of their hope that it would be better in the fifth grade.  I told them that was up to them, since girls were notorious for being awful to one another and I for one did not know why it happened.  I thought that, like Christina-Taylor, girls could be friends with all kinds of people, that girls could say kind things instead of mean things, that helping one another was one way to make the world a happier place and I was rewarded with You mean like we help you with walking and it wasn't a question it was a statement of fact.

With that in my heart, I drove down the block to meditation.  

I'm a big girl now - I don't need the valet to park my car. I can walk from the parking lot across the entryway and up the ramp and across the veranda to the Kiewitt Auditorium ... without stopping.... without too much discomfort.... without too much of a limp.  The girls are right, they are helping me heal.... although, I was very glad to see the chairs inside.

I remembered my sweater.  I left my shoes on, planting my feet firmly on the ground.  Our usual leader was absent, and I felt my irritation swelling.  Before it got too much traction, the substitute was giving instructions for the walking meditation.  I thought it was an odd choice - there was a man in a wheelchair, a new participant, in our circle.  Still, she explained and the group divided into two and I and he and two other women remained seated, having our own little experience without moving a muscle.

I couldn't tell you if they walked for thirty minutes or for three.  I was not asleep but I was not present, either. Occasionally, my feet would shift or my pelvis would remind me of its existence.  I readjusted and returned to wherever I was.... saying In and Out to myself ... following my breath.... feeling the gentle intrusion of the walkers as they returned to the circle.

Before long, we began the seated meditation and, since I'd never really left it in the first place I took my attention to lengthening my spine and feeling lifted and floating and not burdened and then I was jolted back to reality by the clanging of a bell.

It was a tiny little yoga bell.  She barely tapped it with the thin wand. To me, it felt like a fire bell against my ear.

I was physically and psychically disturbed, but strangely unable to be angry.  I wasn't peeved at the big red truck who decided that I wasn't going fast enough in the slow lane and thought that pushing me would help his cause.  I neither slowed down nor sped up and when next I checked my mirror he was gone.... taken by the meditation gods?

It's not spiritual in an organized religion sense, but the inclusion of the reiki notion of sending healing energies out into the world brings some of that home to me.

I can feel it.

I had to ponder for a while. I went in annoyed and I came out calm.  I was connected to something previously unavailable to me.  I'm not sure what it is, exactly.  I just know that it feels good.