Meditations on Meditating

This is a very bitchy post. I will preface it by noting that during the events described below I was pursuing my then-new interest in energy healing. Starting out as a lark, my foray into exploration of human energy fields challenged my identity as a Person Of Science (yes, I apprehend the acronym formed), but my pursuit of these studies was as close to magic as I could have then imagined in this world. I obtained 70+ hours of training (and subsequent practice on willing friends) in Therapeutic Touch, a healing modality which requires a developed sensitivity to the energy fields that surround every living thing and through which a healer can facilitate degrees of healing. Meditation deepens this connection and enhances one’s sensitivity to perceiving energies. I still believe in this modality – I’ve experienced and seen too many weird things, corroborated in training and practices, to explain it away as mere coincidence. The fellow in the post below, Brad (not his real name), was an adherent of similar energy studies, not for healing but for just the ability to perceive energy. As far as I could ascertain, that was the only purpose of his studies – that, and as a source of nookie.

Let’s Meditate!

We finished our family supper and off I went to my first Meditation Class. The instructor was a parent of one of my daughter’s kindergarten classmates and one day, waiting in the hallway for our children to finish class, he mentioned that he was offering a meditation class for beginners. 

Meditation has always been a challenge for me. I’d previously tried several times to meditate but instead of focusing on what was in my head, I would focus on the potential of the phone to ring, the dinner I had to pull out of my ass for that evening, the hundreds of little things that await me to accomplish them, the large Toblerone under my side of the bed. I decided to take the class; in a dedicated space, there would be focus and no distractions.

VS.

OR EVEN A USUAL OUTCOME OF MANY MEDITATION ATTEMPTS:

For an added bonus, a friend – another parent from the same kindergarten class – signed up for the class, too. For this, the first class session, I showed up on time, greeted my friend and met the other several participants, about eight of us altogether. I’ll call our instructor Brad. Over time my friend and I learned, through observing Brad in the “meditation classroom” and in the exciting environment that was Kindergarten, that Brad was a self-styled guru who was much taken with his “powers” to perceive energy and had at least a couple of hot, sycophantic mums at the school in his thrall.

Brad welcomed us to the class and mentioned that, if we had to miss a session, to let him know so that he could record it for you. We went around the circle, introduced ourselves and talked about what we expected from learning meditation. Although I spotted many furtive glances at my head, not a single person commented on the faux leopard-skin hat that I was wearing to conceal all of my hair. More to the point, not a word was spoken of the rivulets of some gelatinous material that were oozing out from under the hat. This was not my usual style, but it was to become my style for the next couple of weeks as I had just begun a desperate attempt to rid myself of head lice… 

I Was In A Weird Headspace…

…Yes, while showering the previous week I had made the unpleasant discovery while washing my hair. Since giving birth 8 years previously, Shower Time had acquired entertaining aspects such as seeing how much hair I was losing. On this particular morning, as I ran the conditioner through my hair and rinsed (I don’t repeat), I took stock of the clumps of hair that I’d collected in my hand. While staring at the hank of hair in my palm, I spied a perfect, textbook example of an adult louse.

Now, it’s a safe bet that any parent of a school-aged child has at some point received a notice of head lice in their child’s classroom: perhaps some of you have not and to both of you I say, consider yourselves very lucky and very, very unusual. At this point in time my children had not yet had the pleasure of hosting these little critters on their heads, and it seemed that I was to be the first in my little family. I called my husband into the bathroom to confirm and share the shock of my discovery. He glanced at the louse in my hand, announced that he had to pack immediately for his flight that afternoon, at which time he would wing off to some far-away meeting that would last the week. Lucky, cowardly fellow.

While he packed, I finished my ablutions, dressed and called my posse. When I found my louse, I had been part of a head lice posse that would perform almost daily checks on a friend who had a jumpin’ case of entrenched head lice, the perfect nightmare for a woman who 1) makes her living as a hair stylist and 2) possesses twin phobias against chemicals and insects. My friends came over, bless them, and they painfully combed out my a) very thick b) long c) curls, a triple threat when it comes to attempts at ridding a head of lice.

It became evident very quickly that the task was hopeless, and the home remedies began. A solution of vodka and oil was first, but proved to be a tragic waste of good vodka. Chemical washes from the pharmacy were useless, so I “Nixed” them; because of their ubiquity in classrooms and the overuse of chemical washes, head lice have become resistant to such measures. Combing through every single strand of hair with a fine-toothed nit comb was tedious and, with my luxuriant head of hair, a Herculean task that paralleled his (Hercules) cleaning out the Augean stables, except in miniature and on my head. After almost a week of this futile assault on my scalp – during which time my obsessiveness found me awake at night, visualizing the hordes of lice enjoying a blood bacchanal on my scalp – I was desperate. I finally understood the term “nit-picking”, the only true remedy for head lice.

Desperation was and is a powerful motivator when it comes to my creativity. And so it happened that, a week Monday after I met my first louse (you never forget your first!), I went upstairs to our medicine cabinet, pulled out an industrial sized jar of Vaseline and with sheer abandon started scooping out generous handfuls of petroleum jelly and massaging the stuff into my scalp. I worked the goo into the bases of my follicles, coating every single hair on my head with greasy, stiff, oily jelly, not a bit of skin or hair left uncoated. I tried to ensure that any louse on my scalp would have no access to oxygen, effectively suffocating the lice. I then added a couple more handfuls of goo for good measure and squished them around, then covered the gooey hairy mess with a plastic shower cap.

Because I was going out that evening and wanted to make an extra special effort, I added my Mobutu Sese Seko hat (my nickname for it – it was just a leopard-skin fun fur hat that I’d had for years), tucking the unsightly plastic shower cap and its contents out of sight. I no doubt enchanted my family with my New Look but there was no time to collect accolades from my young children – Time for Meditation Class!

In this first meditation class we practiced visualization techniques, opening chakras in our feet and calming our minds.  I had opened my requisite chakras and had fountains of gold light flowing up and down my legs, spine and through the crown of my head, the golden light no doubt illuminating the hordes of seriously pissed-off and desperate lice that were now furiously biting my scalp as they were suffocating under the weight of Vaseline petroleum jelly™. In that moment, I had some idea of the actual number of lice that I had squatting on my scalp, and it was a lot. The itching was intense and all over my head, but I told myself that it would ease soon and the lice would then be gone. Of course, meditating helped tolerate the itch and I was able to not fidget too badly. While present in this first class, people’s eyes would dart to my greasy hairline and the leopard skin cap, but not a word was spoken of it. Canadians are so polite!

By the third week of class, my luxuriant tresses were once again liberated and tumbled, curly and lice-free, over my shoulders. My classmates were assembled as usual except for one man, Ron, who was apparently not joining us that evening. I spotted the small tape recorder next to Brad’s hip, presumably to tape the session for Ron. 

We started the weekly round of the class, speaking in turn about our attempts that week to meditate. Always up for a good joke, when my turn came I began describing my week’s meditation experiences but immediately segued into my great difficulty that week with distractions. You see, I told the class, every time I tried to clear my head, visions of Ron would fill my thoughts. The golden light that highlighted a path through my body would inexplicably coalesce into Ron’s face, and thoughts of Ron would follow… “I think,” I concluded unnecessarily, “I have feelings for Ron.” 

The class was silent. Then Brad ventured to comment, “Er, you know that I’m taping this session and Ron will be hearing it…” He was embarrassed for me.

“I KNOW, BRAD!,” I replied, “that’s why I’m SAYING this!”  The class started laughing, although Brad, singularly unamused, did not crack a smile. (I was not afraid of his powers, otherwise I would not have dared joke as I did.) The class then continued as usual.

Several days later, I ran into Ron in the neighborhood and he told me that he had loved the tape. He described the scene: how he had been listening to the tape, some small measure of alarm building in him as he listened to me describe my infatuation with him, then how he had burst out laughing as I revealed the joke. I remarked to him that Brad had been less than pleased, and Ron shrugged… I guess Ron didn’t fear Brad’s powers any more than I did. 

Shortly after the series of classes finished, I was invited, along with many of Brad’s other students/minions/followers, to a celebration of personal energy or some such thing. We were instructed to bring along an item or a piece of poetry that held significance for us and be prepared to share it with the group. I showed up at the appointed hour and place (one of Brad’s friends had a condominium large enough for such a sizable gathering) with a food offering as well as a personal item to talk about with the group: a small carved Garuda from Indonesia (a bird-like critter who serves as Hindu Vishnu’s sweet ride, or similar purposes for other mythologies). I’ve had this Garuda since my university days and it has been a sort of totem for all my homes. I deposited my food platter and joined the large circle formed by several dozen people sitting cross-legged on the living room floor. Everyone was silent, watching Brad with adoring eyes as he meditated at the circle’s midnight position, eyes closed, unmoving. This went on for some time, and on and on for longer than that. 

I ventured to whisper to my neighbor, “What is going on?” “Brad is setting the energy of the room,” she responded reverently. After 45 minutes of intense energy-setting, Brad finally deigned to open his eyes. Everyone sat up a bit straighter and the gathering, um, began? Brad started talking and then we began to go around the circle, introducing ourselves and how we came to know Brad, whether we’d slept with him (no, not really) and then describing our special object and its meaning to us. It was sort of an interesting process, but there was nothing personal that could come out of it for me: except for Brad and a couple of people who looked familiar from the neighborhood, I knew no one else there.

Now, this is fine, this is why I like parties. You get to meet new people!  You get to hear people’s stories, expand your own capacities through other’s experiences! However, this entire gathering was attuned to Brad and his Brad-ly orchestration, and there was no opportunity to talk with anyone else, not even to ask questions about their objects. 

It was a long, long time before the attention of the circle swung around to me. By this time, it had been at least a couple of hours since I’d arrived (and I am not exaggerating). I was pretty disgusted with the self-indulgence of our host and feeling a little peckish, not to mention just a bit bitchy since I was only several feet away from a table laden with food that I had not had a chance to explore satisfactorily since depositing my own dish there a couple hours before. So when Brad nodded to me to introduce myself, I did, stating my name and my connection to Brad and his teachings. I thanked the group and waited for the spotlight to move a few degrees to my left. But no: when I did not proceed to describe my Garuda, which sat perched in front of my crossed-legs in plain sight of the group, Brad prompted me, “Julie, did you bring something that you wanted to share with the group?”

“No,” I replied, meeting Brad’s eyes. 

“Are you sure? You didn’t bring something that’s special to you, something you’d like to talk about?”

“No, I didn’t,” I reiterated, still looking at him, my Garuda holding his peace at my feet, everyone’s eyes looking at the Garuda and then at me. After a long minute, he moved on to the next person. After another 20 minutes, the arc of the spotlight far enough away, I felt like it wouldn’t be too too rude to finally leave, even though doing so would be still very visible and obvious, but I’d put in my time: almost 3 hours was long enough, I figured, especially as there were still a bunch of people and their object descriptions to get through. 

I don’t know why I stuck around for as long as I did. Besides still harboring, in my 30s, an aversion to appearing rude regardless of the circumstances (I’m over that now), I wanted to find some value in the evening, rescue the time already committed. As the mother of two young children I didn’t get out much in the evenings, even more rarely on my own, and it was too much to accept that I had wasted an entire evening. However, I did have precious memories, coloured by the bitchy perspective that I have now shared with you. 

I have not detailed the many little moments that I shared with Brad throughout our brief but memorable acquaintance – the absurdities, his self-aggrandizement, his disrespect for personal boundaries. I won’t describe here how, when Brad and our respective daughters had a playdate at my home one day, Brad said something so ridiculous and offensive that I told him he had to leave my home, immediately. I won’t write about the chats I had with one or another of the women he was involved with on a rotating basis throughout my daughter’s kindergarten year, about how upset and hurt they’d be over his behaviour towards them. I could and will, with permission (thank you!), briefly relate how my particular friend who was in the meditation class with me experienced Brad as a dating partner.

Could It Be Magic?

She told me that they had gone out once or twice, kissed a bit but had not slept together. She said that she had just started taking a new medication at the time which made her rather voluble, this side effect presenting when she started talking rather frankly about her sexual desires and predilections one night while on the phone with Brad. Nowadays, this would be called graphic “phone sex” but at the time it was just a drug-enhanced conversation, the details of which, at one point, caused Brad to actually drop the phone. From then on, she says, he seemed to become laser-focused on his campaign to get her into bed. He brought his verbal powers to the fore and made the pitch that he could teach her how to enjoy a transcendent sexual relationship with him, the presumed pleasures of which could be enjoyed on an astral plane even if they were in physically separate locations. What woman could resist?!

My friend, frank, direct and honest (and always, ALWAYS kind) finally told Brad that she wasn’t really interested in any further physical relationship with him, especially since there was someone else whom she’d met recently: a hunky ski-patroller who was coming into town that weekend and with whom she was interested in pursuing something. Brad redoubled his efforts to entice and tempt her, dangling the possible joys that would be hers should she enter into physical congress with him. After hearing him praise his own prowess for a few minutes my friend answered, “No, I think I’d rather have sex with the ski-patrol guy”.

She is my hero and I love her.

At the conclusion of the meditation class described below, I and my classmates had our auras read. This entailed a private session where the colors of our individual auras were described. I asked the person describing my aura (a lot of white with a deep blue edge, for the curious), “But how can I use this information – I mean, what good is knowing what my aura looks like?”. The answer: A blank stare. Bitch Out.