Library catalog card, oil pastels. Click to purchase.
Meditation advice often focuses on observing your thoughts as things separate from yourself. The idea is to cease identifying with your thoughts, and eventually to stop identifying with your mind and body.
The essential, fundamental You, is an eternal presence behind your mind.
I don’t claim much success in this realm, just for the record. But last week I had a completely new experience.
I was stress-eating lentil soup while getting ready for a work-related conference call. I was eating quickly, not paying much attention to the action or my body. And … I kind of missed my mouth with the spoon.
I don’t really know what happened: I didn’t spill the soup, but there was some kind of hitch. And instead of bringing the spoon to my mouth, my mouth went after the spoon. And in that moment—which lasted just a second, no longer—I dissociated from my body.
For that brief, brief moment, I observed my body eat the soup. I saw it jerk towards the soup like a wild animal. I saw that it was totally unconscious, and I now believe that it ate from a fear of scarcity.
There’s not much more to describe. And as I’ve thought and pondered and told people this story, the memory has become a bit muddled. A part of me now wonders … did that really happen? What was that?
In that brief of moment I observed my body as something entirely separate from Me, and I saw it eat like a wild animal.
If wild animals ate lentil soup.
