I decide to meditate.
People like me, diagnosed with an incurable disease, are susceptible to anything that offers hope. On Tuesday, I flicked through a book and extracted the idea that meditation might be a good thing.
Obviously the prepared person would have actually read the book, or talked to an experienced practitioner before starting, but not me. I am in a rush. I want instant results.
I decided that the best thing to do was to lie on the floor and concentrate on breathing. I set the timer on my phone to ten minutes.
“In out, in out,” I sucked the air up though my nose and then pushed it back down my nostrils. “In out, in out,” and after a couple more breaths, I began to worry about over breathing: is it possible to over breathe; is it in any way detrimental to the health to over breathe? I resolved to google “over breathing” just as soon as the ten minutes was up.
“Just stop it,” I told myself. “How can you possibly meditate if you clutter your mind up with google. Just breathe, don’t think about anything else.”
I know what I hoped was going to happen. I hoped that all sorts of fascinating insights about my current predicament were going to bubble up from my subconscious, and that I was going to rise from my ten minutes on the floor with the knowledge necessary to fix my life.
“It’s a bit cold,” I thought. “It was a mistake to lie so close to the door. The draught is ruining the mediation experience.” I shifted down the room away from the door.
“Woof, woof. Woof, woof,” barked my phone, signalling the end of the ten minutes. Disappointed by the absence of my subconscious, I decided to try for another ten minutes: still nothing.
“Passive patients are not survivors,” I reminded myself as I got up from the floor. That quote had jumped out at me as I had flicked though the book on Tuesday. I picked up my purse and went to Boarders where I bought “Anatomy of the Spirit” by Caroline Myss. Now a couple of months ago, I would have scoffed at a book like this, and even now the cover design does nothing to endear it to me (gold embossed letters on white). But, since the relapse in May, which showed me that a healthy diet and lifestyle were not helping my condition, I decided to tackle my thoughts in my attempt to stop this disease from taking over my life. I think I suffer from an unhealthy mind, and as a result I am now open to books that talk about God and faith.
Caroline is a medical intuitive. She does “readings” and she can tell people what they are suffering from and why. (Let me just pick up that crystal ball that has marched into my mind and throw it to the ground.)
Oh, how I would have cringed a few months ago at the hippy visions of wind chimes and floral prints that I see when I read those words: “medical intuitive”. But now I take it deadly seriously...
However, in my typical arrogant fashion, as I sat reading the book in Gloria Jean’s coffee shop, sipping health giving green tea, I began to fantasise that I too was a medical intuitive, imagining what a great conversation piece it would be at dinner parties. I struggled to rid myself of this notion. A lot of work needs to be done on me, by me, before my thoughts will be desirable.
