Mindfulness While Rollerblading… Mind Shift
While rollerblading with Fern I noticed that when I looked down at the pavement there was a point where the pavement started to turn blurry (about 5 feet in front of us as we rode). Different colors were seen in the pavement in streaks. Not only did the pavement appear grey, but it was other colors as well. I saw white, green, and red too. These combined to make the grey. Continuing to look down, the eyes saw that if the blurryness was focused upon the most amazing thing happened… The pattern of blurriness appeared to change from only a linear pattern like
l l l l
l l l l
l l l l l l l l
l l l l l l l l l l l l
l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l l
Left foot Right foot
and coming at this body in this pattern, to a pattern that can only be described as fluid-like (water-like) and a pattern like fish scales that moved horizontally, diagonally, and vertically. The entire effect on the mind was like a fantasy state where one felt as if a waterfall was being skated upon. An instant sense of calmness, mindfulness, and non-thinking were prevalent upon the mind. There was no time, no skates, no “me”, no “Fern”. So entrancing was this state that the eyes didn’t notice cars or bikers coming towards it!
The other experience was that when one looked at the pavement far in front (say 6+ feet) it appeared as the mind has known concrete all along–as solid, unchanging, immovable, inflexible, etc. But, when the eyes focused on that point in space where the solid line started to blur because of the speed the body moved over it a remarkable thing was observed. Reality turned to fantasy at about the 5 foot away mark. The solid turned to liquid and impermanent, changing, flexible, moving, etc. The mind registered this and then when the eyes looked away at the trees and surroundings a certain impermanence and transitoriness was observed in all that the eyes examined. Nothing seemed as one has known (experienced) it to be all along.
While meditating tonight a curious thing was experienced. I saw the shadows or shapes of two heads, the one on the right was turned towards the one on the left who was facing me (as if I were observing it). The shape on the right said, why don’t you tell him that I’m inside you, to the other head shape. The one on the left said nothing, but was trying to figure out what the R. Head meant. Then “I” realized that the L head shape was myself as I meditated trying to figure out what the R head meant. Then I realized that the R head was me also! But, it was the essence of me (soul?) that was telling the “outward me” (the body the essence is using) that it needed to tell the entire organism that the essence exists inside of this body (host).
I was quiet for much of the meditation tonight. Some thoughts came and went. Some were lingered upon. Sometimes all was quiet and no thought (or awareness of breathing) was known. Other times the mind showed visual scattergories of subjects. One that sticks in mind was a key that was stuck inside something that had a (carved?) out section to fit the key exactly (like an inlaid pearl), but not that the key would fit exactly (like a lock). It was as if two wooden blocks or coconut halves were separated and the key lay inside one of the halves and fit just perfectly as if it was there, hidden, waiting to be used. I remember thinking that this is a key for some aspect of mindfulness/meditation.
