Transcendental Sunday

Yesterday morning, I woke up at an unholy hour, convinced that no one loves me. The reason for the first part was that Rob and I had signed up for a day-long meditation workshop that began at eight o’clock in the morning. The reason for the second part was that, at that point, only four of the hundred ten people who had visited this journal on Friday had seen fit to leave a one-word comment as requested (scroll down if you don’t know what I’m talking about).

So I guess four people love me, or perhaps only three, as one of the comments referred to me as “bilious.”

But it doesn’t matter, because I went to the workshop, and now I love the whole universe, and I suppose that’s enough love for anybody, reciprocated or not. The workshop was White Tantric Yoga, and it was extraordinary. Somewhere over a hundred people attended, and we all had to wear white clothes and white head coverings, so I finally got to wear a turban! Well, it was more of a bandanna than a turban, but I looked quite smashing in it, as did Rob in his. All of the partners faced each other, so Rob and I each got to spend a great deal of time noting the other’s smashing appearance in a turban . . . although that thought admittedly drifted further from the center of my consciousness in light of subsequent events. Namely, hours of meditative chanting accompanied by intertwined bodies in rhythmic motion. Each meditation was sixty-two minutes long, except for one short one that was thirty-one minutes long. I have never been able to meditate for even a half hour before, much less four times in a row for over an hour each, but it helped to be in a room full of chanting, white-clad people doing the same thing, let me tell you.

The day is largely a blur, and I suspect I spent much of it in an altered state, although I felt normal enough most of the time. I actually went into deeper trances at least twice, and it’s quite interesting to find that one can lose awareness of one’s body and surroundings. Of course, that’s how I got through high school and countless boring workdays since then, but it’s always eerie to be jolted back into consciousness while your body is moving and saying things of its own volition.

Of course, leave it to me to get muddled. At one point, while everyone was chanting “wahe guru” (which means something like “the ecstasy of consciousness”), I fell into a daze and emerged to find myself saying, “What kangaroo?” At another point, I managed to transform “humee hum brahm hum” (“we are we, and we are God”) into “How now, brown cow?”

But on the whole, it was a very powerful experience. Although, really, I might have been exaggerating to suggest that it was powerful enough to get me to love the whole universe, but there are certainly parts of it that I dislike less than I did.

What kangaroo?