Tag: guided meditation

I’m getting back into meditation again.

For a long time, I couldn’t meditate — I would instead fall asleep, which is something that very quickly shuts off  your meditation session. Then suddenly, I knew how to do it again, and I could go on that long walk to my inner self who knows more than I do.

That’s the guided meditation a long-ago therapist taught me, and it works well, because it cuts off all the “what ifs” and (for someone who sometimes goes hypomanic) the mildly grandiose thoughts:

I am walking along the edges of a steam, where one side is woodland and the other side is clearing, with meadow on the other aide of a road. I can see the forest plants on one side, and on the other, the meadow plants (which this time of year are mostly yellow). I hear the stream burble and the occasional call of a bird in the trees.

Just as the forest subsides, the road starts going uphill. I step across rocks in the stream and take the road, it climbs upward on a moderate slope, and then winds around the side of the hill, I go partway up and see a cave entrance. I have to slide down the slope just inside the entrance of the cave, and then I am in this cozy vault. There is a fire burning, and I put a log on the fire.

My wiser self shows up, many years later, with my face much older. She gives me a hug and then we sit down.

“Tell me what you’ve come to ask about,” she says.

I ask her questions about things I’m unclear about, and she answers with things I know to be true.

Thank you — and a guided meditation story

Just a quick thank-you for listening. I know I’ve been writing pretty heavy stuff lately (except for Marcie segments), but I write from the heart, and that is where my heart is right now. It will not last forever, nor will it end in heartbreak. I have a purpose in life, even if I don’t know what it is right now.

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Last night, I decided to do a guided meditation. I suggested to my walking mind that I find a safe place, and I ended up in a forest, a fantasy forest as if illustrated by a gifted child. The forest was full of huge trees with plump purple trunks that grew so tall I couldn’t see their branches. Pillowy moss grew underneath.

I sat, huddling against the immense trunk of a tree.

What do you need? A voice, a mother’s voice but so much not my mother’s.

“I don’t need anything. I take care of myself.”  Even as a child, I saved myself. There were never any princes to rescue me. I shifted against the rough, black-grooved bark of the tree.

I love you.

“That’s what you say. Of course you love me. You’re me. I know how guided meditation works.”

Yes, but that’s where all things start.

“What can you do for me?” I snapped. I asked for little; I demanded even less. “Can you make this hurt go away?”

I can be there for you. I can remind you you’re never alone. 

“Of course you can. You’re me. That makes me feel worse rather than better.” There I sat, in an imaginary forest, having a conversation with myself.

But I’m always here. Who else can say that? When it’s three in the morning, or everyone else is busy, or they don’t understand what you need, I’m here for you.

“I guess that makes sense.”

I curled up and fell asleep under the trees.