Meditation Brings Back a Flood of Memories

 

My fiancee, Howie Baskin and I were on a flight from our home in Tampa, Florida to Los Angeles, California and I was taking advantage of the rare opportunity to indulge in the pleasure of reading a book.  This one was called “Corporate Nirvana” by Judith Anderson.  We were somewhere over the desert and I was getting tired.  The author was detailing her intuitive encounter with a group of business people in which she suggested that they close their eyes and imagine that they were all alone, on a deserted island.  There was no work to do.  No deadlines.  No responsibilities.  No demand on their time.  There was only the island, the sand crunching between their toes and the birds over head.  Their attention was diverted to a beautifully ornate, bejeweled treasure chest in the sand.  As they approach they can see that it is unlocked and they know that inside is their gift.  This gift will be the answer to the question that is plaguing them now.  They will know when they see this gift exactly what it means to them and therein is their answer.

 

I haven’t meditated in the deep relaxed manner that I had been practicing in over a year.  I have been too busy.  Things have been going too well for me to value the need for it.  This seemed like a perfect opportunity to shut the book and try her visualization.  I asked myself, “Why am I always taking on tougher and tougher problems?  Why can’t I just say, “enough is enough” and be happy with what I’ve done?”  Holding that thought, in my sleepy half conscious state, I began the walk down the beach in the deserted island in my head.

 

Seagulls overhead, palm trees swaying in the tropic breeze, the warmth of the sun on my face and the sand crunching between my toes.  So far, so good.  Ah, there is the treasure chest…going over to admire it…it really is beautiful…I wonder what is inside, but I hesitate.  Do I want to know?  What if I don’t find an answer?  What if I do and don’t like it?  I stall and ponder the gravity of the moment.  In this box that I made up, in a place that I made up, lays the answer to the one problem that has driven me since childhood.  Here at 30,000 feet, while I look to all the world that I am asleep, I am about to discover the meaning of life…the meaning of my life anyway.

 

I begin to slowly lift the lid.  There is an aura of purple light escaping from the treasure chest.  “Nice special effects” I compliment to my imaginative self. “I wasn’t expecting that.”  I am opening the lid so slowly as if I am expecting some dragon to consume me with its fire breathing anger.  Come on Carole…open the box…its just a box…go on now open it!

 

Leaping backward from the box as the top swings open I can only see what looks like a purple, fuzzy blanket in the bottom of the box.  Tentatively, I lean forward thinking there must be something under the cloth.  It isn’t moving and there doesn’t appear to be any real shape to it.  I am disappointed with myself.

 

“That’s it!  That’s the best you could do?  You have the opportunity to solve all of your life’s struggles in one vision and all you can think of is a blanket!  I must be cold.  That must be what is behind this first thought and my REAL revelation must still be in the box.”  I try hard to see something else in the chest and after a while I resign myself to just being totally unimaginative.

 

OK then, let’s have a look at the fuzzy purple blanket and what ever that could possibly mean to me.  As I am muttering, “purple blanket” to myself I lift it up out of the dark box and hold it full length.  “Well, how about that?” I say to myself as the living material, with a light that gave it the fuzzy appearance, unfolds to the sand.  “It’s not a blanket at all.  It’s a cloak, shimmering with a life all its own.  It is breathtakingly beautiful!  It is too precious to wear.  No king ever wore a cape as magnificent as this!  I wonder briefly if I am worthy to wear this aura of lavende