Apperances

Yesterday I had an appearance while I was meditating. You can consider it a dream, if you like, but this is how it occurred to me.

I was meditating, in that state where my mind was just free-associating, drifting, following random threads, when my mind was snapped into focus by the slightest touch on the back of my neck, (I was lying on my back at the time) and this is what I saw.

I was standing in the Lyric Theater warehouse/shop, facing the back wall. There was somebody in front of me, on my left, facing me like we were talking. Then a women "appeared" on my right with her arm around my shoulder and neck from behind. That was the touch that focused me. Her face was turned away at about three-quarters profile, presumably facing the other person I was talking to, but I have an impression of the shape of her face and she's not anyone that I recognize. I get a feeling of possessiveness from her and some other emotions that make me think she is, or was, significant to me in some way.

I have no idea if this has any meaning. But the way the memory sticks with me makes me think that something will come of it, in time. I like things like this because they give me peeks outside the limits of my regular, day to day, perceptions. I don't think that dreams, or visions, are literally true, but they usually have some resonance with your life are significant to you on some level.

I have mentioned before that sometimes in my meditations I get, what I call, "movie clips" that are short scenes that are utterly realistic and detailed, and yet are boringly mundane and seem completely meaningless. Things like a suburban intersection with cars passing, or some people at an outdoor cafe, have no apparent significance to me, what so ever, yet there they are.

What's most interesting about them is that I am fully aware that I'm watching, and have evolved techniques to stretch the length of the clips from less than a second to several seconds. I study them while they are playing. If there is writing, I do my best to read it and remember what is said. It is fascinating to me that I can be a spectator of the events happening in my own mind.

"Being the observer" harks back to the eastern teachings that you are not your body, not your feelings, not your thoughts, nor your beliefs. You have feelings, you have thoughts, but you are not those feeling or thoughts. You are the thing that observes thoughts. You are the awareness of thought. You are the space where thought and feeling occurs. Thought is the anchor that holds you in a particular world view. To paraphrase a Zen saying, "From one thought is a world is created."

Thus, to uncreate the world, quiet the mind. Give what remains no more notice or significance than a leaf in the wind or a mote in a sunbeam, and you have a chance to experience the world without the structure and meaning you have laid upon it. Cervantes, in Man of La Mancha: "Who knows where madness lies? To seek treasure where there is only trash? Or to see the world as it is, and not as it ought to be?"