Maybe you felt some or all of these things when you picked out this recording in the bookstore or clicked to purchase it online. I don’t know what made you so desperate for the calm and insight meditation brings that you decided to make that purchase. I would never claim to know that. I’m not you.
But, whatever it was, this is really, really not the time to be thinking about those things. How do you expect to be able to enter into a state of mind to gain perspective on your life when you are so wrapped up in thinking about how bad you feel? You really have to let it go, at least temporarily, if you want to move forward on this spiritual journey. Do you really think that your problems are going to go anywhere if you stop paying attention to them for a while? I can tell you from experience: they will not. They will still be waiting for you when you open your eyes. So, for god’s sake, let it go for just a little while.
I mean, think about me for a second. I have put a lot of effort into making this recording, developing this whole experience for you and you can’t even be bothered to pay attention to it for the time it takes to complete it. In all seriousness, show me the respect of trying to follow my instructions. Or if you can’t do that, at least pretend, so that I don’t have to feel any worse than I already do. That shouldn’t be so much to ask.
Okay. Now you are relaxed. All your tension has melted away. You feel like you are floating, your body light and soft, your mind relaxed but sharp and alert.
I want you to imagine that you are walking along a corridor. Any corridor in any kind of building will do, although it’s probably better if it isn’t one of those institutional corridors, the kind you find in high schools or underfunded public colleges, with linoleum tiles on the floor that alternate between cheese-color and pigeon-color and no windows and the cinderblock walls that look like someone chose their shade because the paint company had it on sale back in 1973 last time they decorated. I have spent quite a lot of time in corridors like that, and I’m telling you that some other kind of corridor will work better for this exercise. Like a corridor in an expensive hotel or a grand, old, Ivy League library or an exclusive Asian-style spa — someplace more reminiscent of wealth, comfort and attention to interior design.
Hospital corridors are not great for this either, for obvious reasons. Although of course, as always, it is up to you.
Walk down the corridor. At the end of the corridor is a set of elevator doors. Press the button to call the elevator. Naturally, the elevator doors will be part of your imaginary corridor, so if you failed to take my previous advice and you pictured a corridor in a DSS office or a halfway house, the door might have a dent or a curved black scuff mark where someone kicked it in frustration some time ago and no one has yet come to repair the damage. There might be graffiti on the door written in marker pen or scratched into the paint at just about eye level so that you more or less have to look at it while you wait. Maybe this graffiti is telling you the names of two people who plan to be 2gether 4ever. Or maybe it is someone’s name scrawled in some stylish but unintelligible way. Or maybe it is obscene: pictures of human body parts or indictments of someone’s virtue or fidelity or sexual prowess.
If you haven’t pressed the button to call the elevator, you should hurry up and do so. The rest of us don’t want to wait while you hang around looking at the drawing of breasts on the door of your imaginary elevator.
The elevator arrives and the doors open. You step inside. The elevator should be empty. I hope, for your sake, it is. If there is someone in the elevator, you might want to think seriously about not getting inside because that is not part of this meditation. I can’t tell you who this person in the elevator is or what they are doing there. This is not my imaginary elevator, it is yours.
Perhaps the person in the elevator is someone you knew a long time ago and are pleased to see. Like a childhood friend or an older relative whom you’ve missed very badly since her death. Or it could be someone you don’t really care whether you see or not, your fifth grade math teacher or your mother’s hairdresser. If it is one of those people, you can probably go ahead and get inside the elevator without fear.
But then again, perhaps it is a complete stranger, someone who doesn’t seem quite right when you look at him. Maybe he’s shaped strangely, as if his limbs had been stapled to one another after they were manufactured separately rather than growing altogether the way normal people do. When he moves, it might be in a disjointed, marionette way, one muscle at a time, so when he turns to look at you, he moves only his head, not his neck or body. You see his face in the dim, watery light of the single bulb stuck in the low ceiling and it looks like a cloth bag full of flour, white and ponderous; his eyes are nearly swallowed up by it. He is tall and broad and he is wearing an old leather jacket that is too small for him and that looks like he found it in the trash. His white T-shirt and jeans are covered with the dark blotches of grease stains the size of fingerprints. His hair is like the stubble after a field has burned.
Have the elevator doors slid closed yet? If they have not, you could wait for the next car, although who knows how long that will take, or you could just get in and ignore the person standing in the corner. It could be that he won’t do anything, that he is just an unfortunately unattractive man with dirty clothes, someone who’s had a hard time for reasons that you can’t know. Your forebodings could very well be just your own shallow judgment based on his appearance. You’ll have to make up your mind and get in the elevator to find out. Whatever you decide, could you consider doing it soon? It is time to go on to the next part of the exercise.
Have you stepped inside? Press the button to go down to the lowest floor. Watch the doors slide closed. Is there a man beside you in the car? Is the man watching you? Look over. Don’t be too obvious about it, because if he does turn out to be a threat of some kind, you don’t want to provoke him. The doors have just slid shut and now you are inside the elevator, trapped there until it gets to the bottom of the shaft and that could be a long time, depending on whether the elevator is fast or slow. If you imagined a corridor in a municipal government building or something like it, this is probably a slow elevator that takes whole minutes to go through each floor. I wish you had followed my advice and that you were in a Ritz-Carlton somewhere, but we’ll just have to make the best of what you’ve created here.
It’s descending now, you can feel that wobbly, lifted feeling you always feel when you ride in elevators. There are numbers on a panel by the door and you watch the lights blink as you pass each floor. The man beside you, if there is one, makes a noise that is somewhere between a grumble and a snort. It’s possible he smells. Only you can know what the ingredients of that odor are and whether it is mild or strong, a faint whiff or a stench so powerful it starts to make your eyes water.
Don’t blame me if that is happening. I didn’t put the man into the elevator with you, you did. In fact, I told you to imagine the elevator was empty and then warned you not to get in the elevator if it was occupied. So this is not my fault. However, although it is not my fault, I will nevertheless try to help you deal with this problem you’ve created. Don’t thank me; it’s my job.
So, if you can, try to visualize him disappearing, winking out, the way the picture on the television used to become a white dot in the middle of the screen before it vanished. Close the eyes inside your head, the ones you are using to see the corridor and the elevator and the man, and concentrate hard. Be warned that it is easier to imagine something into being than it is to make it go away, particularly if it is something unpleasant that you don’t want to think about. Unwanted, looming things have a tendency to hang around more insistently the more you try to get rid of them. So don’t be disappointed if you open your eyes again (inside your head) and find that he’s still there.