Guided Meditation

The stream is crisp and clean, rolling over stones and flowing down the mountain, nothing blocks its way. Bent forward, watching my step so that I don't fall, I am going up the mountain. The light glances off of each moment and if I do not stay present I may miss it.

I come to a door. It is heavy, thick and rounded at the top. Knocking first, I open it and go in. There are shelves filled with bottles and jars lining the entire room. All the bottles are filled with spirit, but they must be matched correctly or they are only water in a bottle. The old woman knows how to match them and I look for her.

She stands with her back to me, looking into a mirror. I cannot see my face there because hers is blocking it from view. All I see is her, a wise old woman with laughing eyes and a warm smile. I start to speak and she closes her eyes, so I am silent.

She reaches out, hands me a broom and motions for me to sweep. I begin to sweep, under the shelves, behind the doors. I sweep out every dark corner, remove all traces of extraneous material from this place. And then I turn and go through an open doorway into the mountain. Here it is dark and cool and I float silently in a cocoon of nothingness. It is womb-like and wonderful and I think that I will never leave.

I am slowly moving upwards. Like a seed carrying a newborn me I feel myself expanding into the light. It grows warmer and brighter until there is only the brightness and I am the light glancing off of each moment.

It occurs to me that within each seed is programmed both its birth and its death and with that thought, my bubble bursts, I contract into myself and plummet out of the light and into the darkness.

Over and over again I practice this new way of being. Like a child learning to float, I am determined to reach that high point again. Over and over I feel myself letting go, becoming the light, becoming nothing, immersed in the brilliance of the nonbeing, the emptiness, totally free until some thought I am attached to jerks me back down.

I think I see the old woman down there looking up at me. She is laughing each time I fall. She holds out her arms as if she will catch me, but I always manage to get back up before that happens. Like a giant merry-go-round, I go up and down, always reaching for that golden ring, that light that waits just beyond my reach and I find myself laughing too.

What a grand experience this is!