Meditation

Imagine coming back to your house, apartment, or studio. You’re tired from the daily monotony of getting up early in the morning, eating your go-to cereal and milk, driving to work through the same shades of gray buildings, green trees, and red fire extinguishers. You arrive at your office building, at the same time every weekday, making sure you clock in before heading to the break room to make some dark, bitter coffee. Some of your coworkers talk about the ball game, which at this point sounds all too familiar.

You’re looking for something new, a new feeling. Not what you felt back in your college days; you’re too old for that. Not hanging out with your parents, going on the field to play golf; you’re too young for that. Not going to the bar with your coworkers; you’re too weird for that. Not going out to the gym after work; you’re too tired for that. As you drive back home, you realize you forgot the brown bag your grandma gave you, just so that you would try meditation. You open the front door, slam it shut with your back, and look in the brown bag she gave you: inside you find some candles and some homemade cookies. You grab the cookies and sit on the couch to watch the same old sports channel that you don’t really care about. You then remember grandma telling you about meditation, that thing that you think you’re not spiritual enough to delve into. You think to yourself, “Why the hell not”, as you grab a pillow to put down on the floor, sit on the pillow, and put your back to the wall. You close your eyes and try to take some long, deep breaths. You attempt to clear your thoughts out of your mind, but all those worries of the work you have to do tomorrow, how you haven’t called your mother in a while, how you messed up some of the clients’ names in the report you submitted, all start rushing in waves across your mind, and as you try to push away those thoughts, your body starts to feel itchy and prickly. You open your eyes, as you feel how the sweat from your back was sticking to the pillow, making it uncomfortable to even sit on. However, you decide you want to try one more time, as you switch your wet pillow on its other side, press your sweaty back onto the pillow, and begin to focus on deep breaths. 

At first, the train of thoughts starts to come again full speed, prickling your skin all around, just because the body isn’t used to it. You feel like pincers are traveling from your arm, to your legs, to your head, as it slowly starts to fade away. The train of thoughts starts to slow down, fading in and out like a lightbulb, until it finally goes away, and all you’re left with is that empty slate. You’re no longer thinking, you’re no longer worrying about the time, you’re no longer worrying about your sweaty back, all that matters now is how your mind expands and floats around, like an ever-expanding universe filled with all its little planets and stars. You can no longer imagine yourself as a human, but rather an entity that just exists; a being that has no organs, skin, or matter. A collection of the cosmos that exists within itself among the particles of the universe. You can feel everything all at the same time, without it overloading your mind; all emotions swirl around you in a way where one can observe every single one, without needing to stop and process each one. All in all, you feel one with yourself; a part of the whole that is ever-powerful. However, over time, you start to wonder if you’re able to still go back, you try to move your arms, but it feels like you were wrapped in stone, needing to break out of that meditative shell little by little. As you wake up, you feel like you see everything in a new light; you can see the tissues all over the floor, the lamp with a broken lightbulb, the leftover spaghetti left in the pot from last night. You start to clean everything around the room, to make it akin to your newfound state of mind. As you finish by the kitchen, you start to light some vanilla-scented candles your grandmother gave you to start to meditate again, as you believe you found that new experience you were desiring so much.