I woke up early this morning, and lay in bed feeling this sensation of a star, lighting and exploding inside me. I could see it with my eyes closed. It was golden and kept breaking apart like fireworks, and tiny little gold flecks went everywhere. I was alert in this state of half slumber.
When I do sleep, I am "out." You can blast a TV, throw a party, or shout in my ear, and I will tune you out and continue sleeping. But when I am awake, that's that.
Being awake is the moment I "come to" from drowsing and life is standing naked in front of me wondering how I will clothe it. I often feel like a kid on Christmas morning when my body gets “up.” You would think I would have gotten used to it by now, but I am easily entertained.
There is something delicious to me about the contrast between waking and sleeping. Sleeping means you are out of the world of physical bruises, and in it, life becomes whatever your dreams make it. But your waking life brings the material to the stage. To prove that I can be what I am and that what can be, is possible. This is what makes me so full of excitement upon waking.
But there is a debt to pay in recognition. Waking in this manner entails more than just putting on something to wear and staggering to the bathroom. When I am alert inside in this way, awareness hangs over me, like my eyelids over my eyes. It is immoveable even if I just want to spend my first few minutes picking clumps of old eye makeup out of my eyes and be left alone. It harps on me to see and feel. It nags at me, to live truthfully. I cannot shut it off for long before it blinks at me again. So we are stuck with each other, like two passengers sitting next to each other on a full plane. Me and that pain in the butt, awareness.
I don’t find this to be easy, because I often feel the urge to sidle from what challenges me. I would like to avoid but I see it in front of me, reminding me that I can do better. My friend Carolina, who reminds me of this laziness, as only a true friend does, will call me on it. “STOP BEING LAZY!” she writes in all capital letters. It is so true, that I always laugh when she says it. Usually, she chastises me via email chatting, because we live far away. But it makes me smile because she calls it like it is – I am a sucker for the shortcut.
I love doing it wrong, backwards, opposite to the directions. This is how I ruined my last batch of pemmican, which I am stubbornly eating anyway. I didn’t feel like measuring out equal amounts of fat and meat, so it has two times the amount of fat. I didn’t feel like taking so long to grind it, so I left it in huge chunks. Great if you have wolf teeth—not so good if you don’t. Laziness always has the last laugh because it brings awareness, like your mother noticing the new pimple on your face. Look at what you wrought, it says with a smirk.
I can look for other explanations for my doing things cockeyed. I remember learning something about it relating to my brain being “creative,” or maybe due to the fact that I am left-handed having something to do with it. Whatever the case, there is often the urge for me to make a mix of what might not mix.
I think it is partly the fault of my ADD brain. It is always looking for a reason to stay awake. I do not take medication, so I use all the little ins and outs I can get. Contrary to popular belief, the ADD/HD brain is sleepy. It looks for diversions to wake it up. I may look like a person who drinks Red Bull, but my being is always trying to figure out how to be here, without passing out. Hence it is very compelling to be engaged in life.
Who knows how much of this is personality and how much is funky genes. Regardless, I have a fascination with novelty and emerging occurrences. This is why I am a lover of watching and teaching how to observe sensations. They are always changing. Whenever I observe a reaction or sensation in myself or others—of emotion, or of some new movement in the body, an electric thrill runs through me. I am ALIVE, it shouts. HELLOOOO IN THERE. I feel it pumping inside me like the fireworks I felt this morning.
Awareness reminds me: YOU ARE HERE, with the arrow poking at me, jolting me to alertness. Even my latest issue, a sore heel has me busy observing and tying in the emotional link to the pain and devising new ways to move. I am more interested in exploring it than hurriedly “fixing” it. Everything is a science project.
My life revolves around sensations, because previously, most of it was spent trying solution after solution to stay awake. Now I can sit on my butt for hours and stay awake, thanks to my improved diet. But back when I studied Feldenkrais, a form of movement awareness that often required hours of laying around on the floor and moving slowly, I brought a giant exercise ball to sit on and bounce on to stay awake. Do NOT fall asleep, I heard my voice say. Stay awake.
When I went to conferences for my work with special needs children, I had food and things to drink with me at all times and brought my exercise ball to sit on, as well. DO NOT fall asleep, the voice said, again.
I ate non-stop, and the chewing worked to keep my frontal lobe engaged when I studied for various certifications. Stay awake. I bought funny pens and made humorous notes when at conferences that I went to for work. Anything to stay awake. I stayed up late or exercised madly, just minutes before I had to sit for hours. Or ate pounds of chocolate for the lift.
Back then, there was always a scheme to stay "awake." So it is not a big surprise that I was drawn to meditation. For me, meditation is not about seeming holy and ascetic. It is true, that I don’t fall asleep in these ways anymore, but I also prefer not to walk through life in a waking trance. Meditation is like swimming in cold water. It opens my eyes.
Life is changing faster than you can snap your finger, and when you get this, (and this comes and goes) you know you are swimming in the world of the unknown. This is exciting. So even checking to see what my breathing is doing at the moment is thrilling to me and makes me feel that I am on that proverbial edge of life’s seat. And it makes me awake.
People have elaborate ideas about all the wonderful things meditation will do for them. Suddenly, they will be neat or nice or won’t fart. Well, I am not perfected and do not plan on becoming anything of the sort. This is not the point of my meditation. I am not going for “holy” any time soon, unless it is on a good cashmere sweater that is on sale for this very reason.
Being awake now, means feeling what I am doing. And it means feeling the love and blood coursing through my body. I don’t have a separate container for emotions and body. It is all congealed into one lovely glob for me to watch.
Waking is stumbling into the bathroom, and venturing into the unknown of today. Nothing is more enlivening to me than being awake while awake. The Zen master smacks my awareness with his stick. Whack, whack, it says to me. Come back!
Wake up! YOU ARE HERE.
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