Hi.
It’s been a while. I don’t know if you’re even here anymore because I’ve been gone so long.
I’ve been meditating. Have you ever meditated?
<crickets>
Right. I’ve forgotten that I’ve been staring into space and you might have floated away.
At night, I listen to the Guide to Meditation on Netflix. Oh, there are pictures evolving on the screen, but instead, I slide under the covers and close my eyes. There’s a beauty to having a CPAP. I can tuck all the way under and still breathe fresh air. I like when I can open and close my eyes without seeing any change. I listen to this series over and over under the covers. It’s simple. A disembodied voice tells me I can’t control my mind, but I can watch that thought flow by and refocus on my breath. Instead, I focus on colors. See, when I’ve been in the dark for long enough, I see swirling colors. Do you?
<crickets again>
Well, I like this feature of my brain. I’ve read that it’s not uncommon for the brain to be active in the occipital lobe when it doesn’t get visual signals.
When I meditate, it goes to a dark purple swirl. When I have a migraine, it crackles with a black and white herringbone pattern. Sometimes, when I’m trying to settle my breathing, I see red and orange.
So, imagine me there, under the covers, breathing fresh air through my CPAP tube, trying to fall asleep or at least meditate into some rest.
I think about the people that I love that need prayers. There’s a big list these days from all over my circle. I won’t go into detail. These are not my stories to tell. So, imagine me lying there, the cat sitting on my feet, and thinking about the people that I love. Somehow, I imagine these colors of mine swirling around them, blanketing them in pale blue comfort, healing them in a leaf-dappled green, drawing gold and silver threads to connect them with their families and friends. Oh, there are words flowing through my mind, always words, but I hear them and let them flow past in that unending river and I try to focus on the colors instead.
How do you pray? Do you even call it praying? Do you send healing thoughts, healing light?
<crickets even still>
I do all three along with this meditative swirl of color and imagination. It doesn’t matter what I call it. I could even call it quantum physics.
I’ve heard people say they don’t know how to pray. I always listen to people praying out loud and think I could never do that. I even bought a book once to learn how to say a blessing. I didn’t read it. Once, my grandma asked me to say the blessing and I choked completely and couldn’t think of a single word before I asked someone else to please do it.
And yet, I can easily imagine a comforting light wrapping around someone I love. Or I can swirl some colors around my own pain. I can express all the emotions I have in that process without naming it or judging the feeling. It’s just a color, green, blue, red, yellow, brown, orange, or purple.
Praying can be that simple.
Thank you for listening, jules