Recently I started going to a meditation meeting once a week on Saturday mornings. I’ve never been good at “Meditation”. The formal thing where you sit and try to empty your mind or focus on just one thing. Turns out I have been meditating in several different ways for many years, just not the formal one. But I’m going to this group. Time to broaden and deepen my spiritual life.
One of my main ways of meditating was active, creative meditation. Just letting things float through my brain as I created whatever. But since Jim died I’ve had a big huge creative block. I’m missing my right arm, my creative soulmate and I don’t know how to work around it. Yet. Eventually I will. Just not right now.
So I was sitting in this group. We do a 7 minute silent meditation. And I got a vision.
Deep within me was a giant, empty cavern. The walls were black and craggy. I had been mined. There had been drilling, explosives inserted and detonated. The ore had been extracted. This had happened over and over until all that was left was an abandoned quarry. There were still metals and gems to be found, but the chamber would collapse if anything more were removed. So I sat in this empty cavern deep within myself. I sat and contemplated the hollow, barren emptiness of the innermost recesses of my psyche. As I sat, I noticed a small pool forming. Water dripping quietly, silently down the walls, pooling at my feet. My eyes adjusting to the darkness, searched for any beacon of light, any sign of life. As I sat, all I could see were shades of black. Then off to the side, I thought I detected something. I looked, but still nothing. And then another faint change, again out of the corner of my eyes. I closed my eyes for several moments and then opened them again. And in my peripheral vision, there was a slight glow on all sides. But wherever I looked directly, I was unable to see anything other than blackness. It was like when I try to look at the Pleiades, the seven sisters, in the heavens. I can never see them directly, I have to look to the side of them and there they are bright and shining adjacent to where I focus. So I sat and focused in front of me, letting my eyes absorb what was around. And I realized that the cave was teeming with small, dim glow worms.
Then a soft gong sounded. The meditation was over. As we discussed meditation, I was quiet, somewhere between the cavern and reality. I listened, but mostly I just let myself absorb the vision. After the group ended, I walked home, still lost somewhere between there and here. I continued my meditation, in the way I usually meditate. Just letting the thoughts swirl and dance. Arranging and rearranging themselves until they mesh into a cohesive thought.
As I walked home, I realized that vast amounts of me had been scooped out of me and that there had been, still was, an almost unbearable darkness, an immense, echoing emptiness within. But in the vision, were the seeds of light, the seeds of life. The water of my tears was cleansing me, but also going within to provide sustenance for the new.
A week ago, I watched the Lunar Eclipse. It started opening the door to me realizing the gifts Jim left in me. This past week, I’ve realized that yes, he is dead, but much of him lives on in me. It’s been one of the most difficult things about the loss of him here. We were together 24/7 for 16 years. Everything in me had become connected to and entangled with everything in him (btw - it went both ways). We talked and shared. We didn’t always view everything the same way - that would have been boring. We got to exchange our views and learn to see things together, incorporating both of our views. Until now, I kept tripping over our connections. There’s no one on the other end any more. Millions of nerve ending ripped from their mate, each one screaming in pain. But enough time has passed for them to not be so sensitive, they still hurt enough for me to cry, but it’s manageable now. So I’m gathering up the connections and bringing them inside of myself. Sitting with them, recognizing them, naming them. Discovering consciously what gifts Jim left me with.
I laugh ironically to myself. I would not have had that vision if not for Jim. Or if I had, I would have had a whole different interpretation, a completely different metaphor. Today I know about mining. Quite a bit actually. I know that many gemstones come from metal deposits. I know the process of mining and extracting the metals. But then again, Jim learned more about fashion than a mountain man logger ever thought he would.
So I’m delving into the memories. Embracing each one, hugging it close to me. I’m doing an inventory of the raw materials within me: there are the ones I already had, the ones I developed with Jim and the ones Jim left behind inside me. Before I go onto the next stage of building a new life, I have to know what I’m starting with. There’s a lot to sort through. I grew so much, became the woman I am today because of him. And although there are so many days where I feel like an empty shell without him, he made me strong enough to survive without him.
No comments:
Post a Comment