Each morning, for the space of an hour, I am immersed in water. For an hour, I meditate to the Holosync sounds of rain, water, waves, a liquid drumming that rolls beyond the pulse to a deeper source. Somehow during that hour, my breathing becomes more formed, more regulated, more entrained, like a pair of dancing legs that has found the rhythm at last and could well afford to be caught by a larger, deeper power. Each morning as I settle into water, I wait to be caught and I am seldom disappointed. The interesting thing is that after almost 6 months of daily meditation to the sounds of water (I've only missed 2 sessions), my whole body has been groomed for the taking even before I put on my ear phones.
And the taking is like a grand plunge into the different layers of the self, only this self (for the lack of a better image) is like a huge octopus dancing in the depths of the ocean water. All my tentacles are veering wildly away from the center and yet I can feel their rhythm perfectly in the center, all the incongruities making sense ultimately in this center. Hard put to say what this image means, but it's the most viable description of how I feel at the end of the hour- a dancer reconciled to new beginnings, un-choreographed steps, a dancer thinking on the tips of her dancing slippers. It is a very subtle process--this growing sense of interconnectedness, a profound sense that even the most perverse has its roots in the most plausible. I am an octopus wanting to go in 20 different directions, feeling the outward pull-- inward-a sense of peace in the turbulence, softness in the cacophony. After the tapes, I get up and the morning somehow falls miraculously into place-each email, each phone call falling into place like a scripted dance.
I am focused at work, in my writing. Opportunities unfold before me. Words that I had struggled before to make right-sound perfect in their resistance. Not everything is melodic, but all that emerges is poetry-raw, cacophonous, not totally understood nor totally cohesive-but perfectly in step. When I come across something that previously would have torn me apart, I watch unmoved. I am beginning more and more to see that impasse as part of the puzzle whose beauty is that the final piece comes not at the end, but at the beginning.
I am less and less interested in searching for the final truth that justifies all, but more and more contented with the million truths that fill each space and fragment of time. And the irony is that somehow this cacophony makes me whole: I am more than one. I am infinite-infinite pieces, infinite reflections from a single piece or perhaps infinite pieces shattered from a single image. It does not matter anymore, you see. "The readiness is all," says Hamlet. And the immersion into these tapes seems to be grooming me for that readiness.
Readiness for what? For nothing and for everything. More and more I sense that the whole process of survival--living, working, writing, mating, loving-all these are part of a water dance, wherein the play's the thing, not to catch the conscience of the king, but to be enjoyed and cherished as the last waltz.before the next.
A fitness and weight consultant, Mary is helping people reclaim their bodies through nutrition, exercise, positive vision and creative engagement. Visit her atGreatBodyat50 or at ProteinPower
