Day 10 – Cease to Exist

Despite phone interruptions and a busy day ahead of me I was able to slip into the abyss and experience a profound moment of stillness.  Again with Deepak’s help I meditated on the idea that “I am peace” with the mantra Shanti Hum.  I repeated the mantra over and over in my mind until the words lost their meaning and my brain became numb to thoughts.  That floating feeling resurfaced and surrounded me in calm.

I felt as though we are born to be calm and free but we build a cloak of worry and stress around us that we think is who and what we are.  I’m a huge fan of Wayne Dyer and he famously spoke of the orange.  He said that when you squeeze an orange you can only get orange juice from it – meaning that you can only get out what you have inside.  If we can tap into our inner sense of peace and know that it is our true nature then we’ll be able to emit peace when life gives us the squeeze.  To BE peace sounds like a dream come true to me.

Meditation is such a gift to me now.  Spending time without my cloak feels so liberating and joyful.  Ahhh…Shanti Hum.

Day 9 – Cease to Exist

I had a really busy day and didn’t think I’d manage to meditate at all.  Just as I was about to flick on the television I decided instead to light a candle, burn some incense and slap on some headphones for a twenty minute romp with Deepak and Oprah.  It was incredible how quickly I was able to tap into my breathing and let the buttery tone of Chopra’s deep east indian voice wash over me.  Shreem…he said…shreem….shreem….shreem….

The blackness of the void surrounded me and I though no thoughts.  There were no words, no shapes, no colours, no feelings….just floating in the nothingness.  It hung there for awhile until I though “oh I feel like I’m floating” and it was gone.  Identifying with words had brought my mind into the picture.  Breathing in and out, feeling my lungs fill and drain, my chest rise and fall….and again I was floating in the abyss.  Longer this time, I avoided naming the experience and just let it happen.  I rose and fell on the surface of an invisible pool of water in the deep darkness without end.  It was beautiful.

Day 8 -Cease to Exist

Why Cease to Exist?  It is a play on Kyle Cease’s 100 day journey into 2 hours of daily meditation.  I have been so inspired by his revelations that I decided to take the leap myself.  In Ceasing, or stopping, for a while each day I am hoping to tap into my existence…to dig deep and uncover the hidden truth about my life and shed my limiting beliefs.  I don’t know if it is divine timing or bad luck but the start of my 100 day journey coincided perfectly with my decline back into post concussion syndrome hell.  The sages of the world, Cease included, say there are no coincidences so I am trying to see the hidden beauty in the wobbliness of my broken brain and silently allow it to be there.

I’ve had to cancel my medical appointments today as I feel rather strongly that I should not be driving.  My eyes are ‘off’ and even walking around the house is too much for me to bear.  I had a beautiful offer from a friend to come over and be my ‘personal assistant’ and was surprised by my resistance to that offer.  Why is it so hard to accept help when it is offered?  I’m not only in deep resistance to the medical condition that prevents me from doing things I need to do, but I’m also against getting help.  Where does that put me?  In misery.  Why would I want to be there?  Do I subconsciously believe that there has to be a level of misery in my life?

As I sat in meditation this morning I thought about this blog.  Why am I writing it?  Who is it for?  What does it mean?  Does it mean anything?  As I floated these ideas around in stillness I realized that I write because I am a writer.  Just as a hockey player needs a puck to play hockey, I need words to be a writer.  Writers write…they use words like a golfer uses golf balls…. I want to play.  That’s all.  Doing this makes me a writer and that’s what I want.  Thank you for playing with me.

Day 7 – Cease to Exist

It was meant to be a powerful way to connect to myself.  In the spirit of Kyle Cease’s brave sharing of his 100 days of deep 2 hour meditation I would schedule a daily meditation practice of my own.  I am at a point in my life where I am searching for meaning beyond accumulation and gratification.  As much as those things can be pleasurable it is doubtful that they account for the purpose of the human life.  Not begin able to work and having a limited capacity to be wife, mother and friend to those I love, I find myself swirling into a routine just to keep going.  I feel like I can almost touch something just a hair away and when I’m in meditation, free from thoughts and to do lists, I can feel peace and know calm.

These past few days have seen the return of my debilitating neurological condition that I call the ‘wobbles’.  Over the past year I have tried in vain to describe this conditions to every type of health care practitioner imaginable.  I’ve seen one neurologist,  two osteopaths, four chiropractors, two Chinese doctors, three massage therapists, one physiologist and countless medical doctors and after more than five thousand dollars worth of treatment I am not sure I’m any further ahead in healing.   Today, during a 20 minute meditation I got away from it for just a while.

Before going in to meditation I pulled two cards from my Liza Hindmarch card set.  They read “trust the process of life” and “I aim not to be perfect – but to be perfectly myself”.  What can any of that mean?  As I entered the stillness I tried to imagine what it would feel like to totally surrender to the process of life and be perfectly myself.  This idea seemed counter to the pushing I’ve been doing – the relentless search for a miracle cure – the trying so hard to be someone who doesn’t feel awful half of the time.  To surrender feels like defeat.  I don’t know how to be ok with this.  I want so badly to get out from under it so that I can be a mom to my boys and a parter to my husband.