Confession

I woke this morning a little before 5am from a dream of an unruly meditation group.  In the dream, two of the students from my past life as an adjunct community college professor have found their way into the new age bookstore where the meditation group is meeting.  I attempt to corral their energy in a constructive manner but fail, utterly, and soon find myself asking them to leave the gathering.  As they get up to go, I’m struck by a wave of guilt – is one allowed to expel another under these circumstances if it’s for the good of the whole? Or, is it a sign of failure on the part of the teacher, a mix of impatience, incompetence and frustration?

Whatever it is, I find myself running after them in the dream, stopping them in the parking lot, and telling them they can come back inside if they contribute rather than distract from the teachings. Neither of them respond, and I return to the room.  Something has shifted, however, and the momentum that I had been building has been replaced by doubt.
This may or may not be the point.

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I woke again at 6:30, meditated, showered, and made a cup of chai.  At some point I began to journal (a measly, anemic entry that has sadly become par for the course over the past year) and eventually turned on my phone. There was a message from Saylor:

"Drowned Sorrows Dried Up"

We haven’t spoken in months, and other than a couple of unreturned calls in either direction over the winter, we’ve had virtually no contact since last summer when my yin and I spent a couple of nights with him in San Francisco. The call, both in its timing and content, was poignant. Among other things, Saylor mentioned that he has been watching this blog, wondering what had happened.

(here comes the confession)

I don’t know.

I have at least a half dozen reasons, some real, others fictive, but all are ultimately unsatisfying. I’ve thought maybe it’s a result of being too happy, of being unhappy, of working too much, of not working enough, of working too much of the wrong type of job, of being uncomfortable, of being too uncomfortable, blah blah bah…

Do you see what I did there?

The words seem to disappear as effortlessly as they arrive, and over the past year this has been a curious source of disappointment for me. But, with Saylor’s call this morning, and the resultant  realizations I had on the drive into work, I can’t help but think I may have turned a corner, found some pinprick of light through the dark haze that has been obscuring the words for far too long…

Time will tell…