Beginnings

I awoke today in an unfamiliar place; It took me a moment to realize I see this place clearly and accurately, my parents home. I know where I am, strange I might consider it alien. It seems so normal and as I would expect. It was only a few seconds but the feeling stayed with me as I drank some water and cleaned my mouth. Within a short time I was back in the bed sitting upright half lotus, choosing my morning meditation.

I began quickly, wasting no time turning my lower half into a rock and squeezing each breath with a force only a morning meditation can really bring. I felt a dripping of energy and my thoughts did wander a little. I had a sense of loss and could imagine my children at my father's funeral, my wife still inconvenienced somehow at the death of my father and needing to bring them at all. I pushed past these musings and tried to realign myself to a more positive outcome, pushing harder and deeper than I normally do. The pressure was immense and the release was almost enough to make me pass out.

I continued and finished powerfully, only once more needing to recorrect my errant thoughts. I imagined a movie I had seen with heart surgeons who were pioneering transplant surgery and managed to put it aside also. I rejoined myself to find my self harm scars on my left forearm had bled and covered my left arm and leg with coagulated blood. It had even dripped down my leg and onto the sheets of the bed.

I cleaned it, but the feeling remains. I keep checking my arm for more bleeding, but there is nothing there; no more leaking energy. The experience does make me pause. I can't help but consider the foreboding of my father and his medical issues and the unknown of what is yet to be. Imagining the worst is an easy task, but I certainly would rather the outcome be different than his death. So often we struggle against what we know is possible, only to be again dismayed when it comes to pass… Nobody wants to experience loss, but it seems an inevitable thing for everyone on a long enough timeline.

The question of time has always been a tricky one for us all, it can be a lifetime or a moment. It can be long or short. I question so much within my heart and I sense that these times of massive pressure can ultimately form us into something greater, yet the same or it can break us apart and leave dust. Like a bit of carbon pressed and squeezed into a diamond by the heat and pressure of the earth, we are those same dirty pieces of black, crystalized by heat and pressure to become clear and hard and transparent.

Do we sail our ships through treacherous waters, sails torn by buffeting winds of change and hopelessness? Do we choose the safe route of our father's, long winding rivers, fat and slow and shallow; known. Where is the adventure and the discovery of self when we are sailing in the known waters of popular rivers?  What of the deep lakes and tumultuous seas? Are there no lessons to be learned from failure and death? Is the lesson we impart purely vicarious? I wonder if our entire lives is to simply serve as a warning to others to avoid the challenges we fail at overcoming.

Is there a personal lesson there too? Could there be something deeply resonant within us that even in the more deepest of failures, the failure to live, is there a nugget of wisdom there for us personally? Are we privy to that awakened state of existence and the knowledge it should have for us? I can't say. If our lives are viewed in totality then a conclusion can be drawn, but we don't live like that. While we are alive we are still not completed. We still have a ending to create. This is the personal bit.

Getting lost in our own thoughts is a troublesome aspect of moving past them. Viewing them as things to be overcome can be a hard way to move past them. Especially the bad ones. Do your best today and don't give up.