Tonight's float started off like many before it; after settling in to the surrounds, my mind goes round for a while. Starting with the mundane, I then move into a stronger frame of mind, where I gain perspective on some earlier ideas about the float spa, about my family and my wholistic health.. about central components of my life.
After entertaining these ideas a while, I notice a feeling in my head, or sometimes in my chest: each time I actively think I can feel it! It feels like tension. And it is a multi-faceted dis-effort to relax that tension. Almost as if thinking were my natural state. Almost. But it's not, it's more of a tendency. A deep tendency of tension.
Through my meditation practice, and more recently my float practice (which is the same thing to me, only different) I have come to believe in the value of letting go. No matter what the thought is, it is is not as important as I think it is. What is important is the health of the ground fabric of thought. And that ground fabric revels in deep relaxation.
So tonight, as usual in my practice, I found myself at that doorway of letting go. To which tonight I said yes. And continued saying yes until eventually I found myself in the state of being that I got wet and salty for.
I summoned the tension there to write a short something to share with you, because this is my work. The following words came from that effort. And while they can't get you there on their own, they're what I have to share. To borrow a quote I've loved so long I can't remember who said it: "Doors are but an entrance, doors carved deep in cold clay."
As my sense of the outer world diminishes, my sense of Self grows; the sense that originates ambiently in-side, and emanates towards the outer.
My own physicality seems an intermediary between the two worlds; a sample of both, and a reminder of the sacred strength and fragility of my physical existence.
In this state, I see the balance of two worlds as liquid streams meeting midair. Where before the outer was penetrating past, infringing on the inner, there is now a mid-way meeting. The streams of dark and light, inner and outer, yin and yang meet, and their splatter sprays and coalesces toroidally, creating me.
A short while before I took that sample I heard, through the water, my son talking somewhere upstairs. I had been in for about two hours I gathered, and I wanted to go love him up. So I sat up, stepped out, and went to witness this creative flux "out there."