Meditation some months in

Been doing ‘standing meditation’ for some time now, probably a couple of years off and on. I was introduced to it by Donald, up at Anam Cara above Inverness. I was the one who said before we got going on the introduction that I pretty much doubted I’d get into a meditation rhythm, that walking and hiking were my ways of meditating, shaking myself loose of the clutter, feeling the ground. Not sitting or standing still and focusing.

And here I am, still doing it!

Lasqueti, out on the paddock late, shooting stars, odd flashes of light, no moon, silent. Focus on the raven’s eye. Black. Blue. Open. Vast. Spiral. Deep. Aged. Stone. Echo. Reflection. Sink. Fall.

Fly – as in the vastness of the ocean as I swim here, way out, cavern of space about me. It sets me free and terrifies, so small and insignificant am I. Lost in the rock and churn of the never-ending whole. So small and alone within it. Consumed. And so outwith myself. I am the sea and the sky, held between, all my atoms have spilled, they are too small, the sea too big to hold them like a wrapped-up chocolate bar.

So, in meditation, last couple of nights, within the raven’s eye, begin to feel the air about me holding me like water, no need to fight it (as I say to Freya as she reaches out to swim …. ‘it’s there to be your friend, it will hold you, help you, if you let it. Welcome it, don’t fight, open to it, spread within it, and it will hold you high’). I feel its buoyancy, feel how solid the air about me is, a substance. I won’t slip through for it’s crammed with substance. The breath within me meshes with it. Within the raven’s eye I begin to fly.

Haphazard at first, not certain enough, like the bat caught within the barn. I fling the high doors wide open, part the curtains like a welcoming, and after a few more lost flutters it feels that opening and is free.