I just meditated for 30 minutes for the first time in my life. I wish I could say that I meditated for a solid thirty minutes with none of the aforementioned distractions, but that's not entirely the case. The first time I looked, it had been one minute. The next, six minutes. The next, four. And then I made an executive decision that no matter what, I would not look again. And I didn't.
My iPod brought a meditation track of rain falling on a porch into my ears. The track is twenty-nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds long. Which means that for somewhere around nineteen minutes I did not open my eyes. And after making my shut-eye decision, I also managed to keep the fidgeting to a minimum, regardless of the pretzel position my lower limbs had been forced into.
The purpose of this meditation was to release. Release. Release what? That's what the mediation was to find out. I've been making so many changes in my life so quickly this year that I need to make room for all this new energy in my body. Which means I need to release the old energy. The stale energy. The toxic energy—the energy that has long since served its purpose and is now ready to move on (and probably has been ready for quite some time).
Behind my eyelids flowed dark shades of yellow and purple and blue and red. Lines and shapes formed and faded, swayed and bowed, ebbed and flowed. It's rare that I visualize a familiar face or place, but I did recognize this as a dreamlike state. What I saw before me was energy. Pure and simple, energy flowing right before my eyes.
With the rain falling in my ears, I breathed in and out, in and out, in and out. I tried to focus on breathing into my diaphragm and not just my lungs, but I admit I'm a novice and caught myself with tense shoulders and a pregnant chest of air I would not allow full access to. And just as I inhaled, I exhaled as well, trying to time the in equal to the out, also mildly successful. The whole process seemed to mirror my life in the way I take things on and sometimes refuse to let go, even when I know that it's best—even when I've set out to simply let go. And so I regrouped (again and again) and practiced breathing in and out, in and out.
As I began my meditation, I inhaled to "Re-" and exhaled to "lease". Re-lease. Re-lease. And at some point the words changed to "Let. Go" Let go. Breath in, Let. Breath out, Go. In, Let. Out, Go. And after I committed to myself that my eyes would not open and I would give my full attention to this exercise, something amazing happened; I began to let go.
Tears found a crack in the bottom my closed eyelids, and slowly seeped through. I first began to think about my mom, which passed quickly and made space for my dad. I've made peace with my father's death, and still with every new step forward I make in my life, I forge a path that somehow leads both away from and right to him. Buying a house is a big deal and the one person I could count on to fix anything I brought to him had graduated me to a life without him. Graduated: I've learned what I needed to, and now it's time to move forward. The tears for this part were short and sweet, and I started to think letting go would be easy. And then I thought about Alison.
The tears no longer seeped. In the quietest way possible, they exploded from me and rolled one after another down my cheeks. Some touched the corner of my lips as they passed by, some rolled just to one side or the other as they found a way to cling to the bottom of my chin before dripping into my lap. And others still, skipped all that and jumped straight from my flared cheeks onto my thighs.
I sobbed as I thought about the way things ended and how I'd behaved. And while I've come to terms with the fact that the end was completely necessary, I've allowed the guilt to linger unwanted in the walls of my heart, my lungs, my everything that keeps me sane and alive. This guilt I hold dear and nurture it daily, quietly, methodically. Somehow I've allowed myself to believe that I do not deserve to be forgiven for my actions, now so far away. And a voice rings loud and true: Let. Go.
In the middle of the apartment with the dog sleeping quietly in front of the door and the cats sleeping religiously on their king bed (which I seem to have purchased for them), I cried out loud for what seemed like an eternity. And then all at once, I was done. Calm swept over and through me. It seemed to actually come from within. I concentrated again on my breathing, in and out, in and out. Let and Go, Let and Go, Let and Go.
I sat and breathed for the rest of the twenty-nine minutes and fifty-eight seconds in silence. I thought about what it all meant. It wasn't a matter of mourning the loss; I made my peace with the absence of her in my life long ago. It wasn't about wanting her to forgive me or my actions; I've resolved to be indifferent to her view of me and who I am. As I followed the energy across my eyelids and the calmness throughout my being, I realized it didn't have anything to do with her, per se. It had to do with forgiveness.
To accept ourselves is not necessarily to like what we did or to approve of it, but rather to forgive ourselves. To forgive, in Sanskrit, is to untie—when we forgive we untie an emotional knot and unclog the emotional system.
What I experienced was an emotional unclogging of my soul. I had been holding on to resentment of myself for actions that had long since been acted out. I have moved on in my life, my relationship, my love—of others, but not of myself! Forgiveness is not about saying it's okay, it's about learning and moving forward. I had learned. I had moved on. But I failed to acknowledge those things and truly believe about myself that I deserved the happiness that came so soon after the turmoil I'd created. And now it all made sense.
The rain slowed in my ears. The breathing slowed in my belly. And the calm cemented itself deep in my body, in every part. The calm had replaced the fear, the disdain, the anger, the guilt that had been residing, hiding in the dark comfort of my shadowed self. And at some point the words that flowed in and out with every breath changed from Let Go to Feel Whole. I had released my toxic energy and in its place was the whole of myself.
It's nice to see her again.
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