Ponderance

At the moment, the three residents of the farm are all dealing with the same thing.
The integration of our free spirits into working life.
How we can survive in a world where most of the population takes for granted the need to work every day in order to buy houses and have children.

Basically, we all want to stay away from offices forever.
They kill our souls and we'd rather be dead than ever have to pretend we care again.

We've spent so long drifting, not making any money, existing without obligation, in a world of exchange.  Now we're readjusting to a commitment of sorts through living and working at the farm.  Trying to fit expanding, wispy selves back into some kind of structure.

Always a part of us remains aware of the other world. Somewhere out there exist constraints.
I realise this as my dad writes to me to tell me my bank is calling him, wanting a payment.
It signals the end of my savings.
Reality crashes in.

I am not scared, but I know this means change, and decisions.
I try not to feel frustration and trust that this is merely a tool to take me to new things.

Life is nothing without perception. At least I have my hands.

It is hard to believe they are mine.
I see them covered in marks and I cannot remember where they came from.
What is 'mine' other than just a word to describe something that is in my life for a while?
And what is life other than simply a challenge to understand what is actually mine, really mine, for a bit longer than a while?

I feel like I've spent quite a while already trying to understand that thing I call 'mine'.
I could say I have a better picture, now.  I could probably continue though.

But fact is, I'm pondering and wandering in a world that requires little pieces of paper in exchange for things I need.
So now, on the list of things I need, I've added 'little pieces of paper' in the hope that some will blow over to me soon.

Much as I'm contemplating how to fit my drifting self into the 'real' world in order to make money, I really don't want to go back.
I don't need much money, really, if it's just me.

A child is strange and faraway. But I know how much I change.
I wouldn't be surprised if the Julia I become in a few years is really quite keen on the things.
And where would a child fit in this world?

Sometimes when I write down a ponderance of mine I come out with an answer.
And sometimes I don't.

But why do I meditate?

For once, I am not daydreaming. I exist here, now. I am in the matrix, that dimension where everything is one and nothing, everything is real and yet nothing exists. Some would say that in this moment I am meditating. Others might say tripping. I lose all form and direction and become simply a voice, watching my mind, whirring and spilling like smoke.

Everything stops. Sound pervades.

This stillness hangs, for a moment. And then, something shifts. It happens in an instant. Somehow, in some way, I connect back with my swirling mind. There rises a niche in the flow that snags me.

I slickly slide back into the river of thought, the splurging ocean of hallucination and memory eternally whisking me through time and space. I am unaware once again.

Here winds my perpetual mental routine.

Wherever we are, we exist in the mind. One of the most frequent topics of conversation between myself and my good friend Nico, the farm director, is that of the mind and the effect its seduction has on our sense of peace.  We share our frustrations at the incessant analysis and never-ending fantasy that keeps us locked somewhere other than the moment, which at the end of the day is all we have.

Bless us little humans with our littlebig brains. We grasp the deepest subtlety and yet we so easily become tangled in daily drama. I marvel at our artistic capabilities, our boundless imagination, and yet watch how we are swung helpless through storms of emotion every day.

From wake until sleep is a journey in itself, a story played out over aeons labelled as hours, and even on the most eventless of days we fall to the pillow exhausted, released at last from the perpetual journeying within.

It is often only during meditation that I am able to step outside. The edges of my perception become blurry. I am sucked upward and away from what I call myself. My form disappears and I become part of the formless, the everything.  That which pierces every other thing.

For a short while, I exist somewhere other than in the mind. For this short while I am gutted, ploughed, smacked with the unswervable knowledge that I am something other than this Julia I feel and touch. Just like the instantaneous confusion I feel in that moment of waking, every morning, when I realise my fantastical dream world is fading into shadows, likewise whilst I am in this omnipresent state the world in which my body exists seems temporary.

This, in a sense, is my raison d'etre right now. Or should I say, mi razon de ser, al momento. For if you spend your entire life stuck in your own mind, shouldn't it make sense to spend some time making yourself comfortable in there? Creating a little bit of space within that relentless festival of imagination? A little pause, once in a while, in which to survey that broiling mess, in the midst of which we are destined to exist?

The great teachers, the legendary yogis, the Buddhas and Christs of this world, were masters of disassociation from the temptations of the mind. History is studded and shaped by figures that tried to teach us this virtue. Yoga itself was originally conceived as a path to this peace, through the attunement of the body, the taming of the mind and the use of the breath to root oneself to the moment.

Although I try not to brand my ego a yoga teacher, I do share yoga and I do maintain awareness of yogic principles. But no matter how frequent and intense my clumsy attempts to impersonate Buddha, sitting cross-legged out on my dock with my belly round and my body wholesome, the peace remains largely external… for my mind is still so young and I am still so enraptured by reality.

The chatter in there is not negative -- in fact it is usually moderately entertaining -- but it is more the sheer speed of this mental train that presents the issue.  For the more I seem to seek respite, the more my brain is enthralled by life. In the midst of that resounding silence, deep in meditation, my mind simply seeks even more beauty in the world in an attempt to keep myself there.

All things considered, being pulled into a lifelong search for beauty is not exactly something to worry about.  As a result of my mind's creations I feel I move more deeply in each space.  Whether physical, mental or spiritual, I am increasing the intensity of my exploration.  If I choose to sit and be with the sea for a while, I am completely with the sea.  I mentally swim with it, energetically move with it and I breathe in time with the waves. 

And the moment I enter into meditation and feel that dissolution of reality, I exist in just that. It becomes everything. I give myself completely to it.  My mind, my surroundings, my breathing. They all fade. Like the silence between the inhale and the exhale, I am neither moving forward or backwards, neither thinking nor not thinking. My world pauses.

And then. My conscious mind catches sight of a polka-dot scarf, a scrap of unbearably interesting mental flotsam waving at me from behind a rainbow-coloured waterfall.

Panting with anticipation, it leaps excitedly from thought to thought, sending wobbling disturbances out over the astral plane with every crashing connection of its roots. I make a half-arsed attempt to call it back.

My mind, that monkey of wildest imagination, looks at me, pausing for mere seconds, before leaping wildly off in another direction. For there is always another view, another colour, another contemplation.