My name is Uma Berlin and these are my musings of a Yogi.
There is pain here,
But it's light.
Electricity like electric shocks that jolt.
Underneath the machine of this mind,
The mechanism of it is a pulsating human experience that doesn't like it one bit.
That feels oppressed by it,
Overshadowed,
A prisoner.
A prisoner inside this mind experience.
Trying to lift up the shackles,
The chains that are binding me to something I know in my heart is not true.
It's so heavy.
The very experience of resistance itself is hurting me more.
I'm bleeding.
I look up at the sky,
A dull pinkish sort of color,
Unreal.
I know it is unreal.
I know that behind this mirage there is the most glorious,
Incredible beauty and love that I feel the soft tendrils of in my heart.
That my heart is connected to long,
Glimmering red strands that are so delicate and wispy.
And yet because there are so many,
They are growing more and more every day together.
They are strong,
Like a rope.
A beautiful rope of a multitude of strands of love and tenderness and beauty,
Softness and dignity that tie me to a world beyond this world.
Instead of resisting the chains,
I am to focus my energy on this cold and glimmering rope.
I put my shackled,
Handcuffed,
Bleeding hands around the rope and for a moment,
The shackles disappear.
I can see the sky vanishing,
The machine vanishing and the most beautiful blue sky is shining through.
I close my eyes,
For somehow I can see all the better with my eyes closed.
Sunlight dancing on the face of a child who's laughing as she eats her cereal.
The kiggle of a brick winding through a forest I once ran through long ago.
A squirrel,
Somehow.
These are all connected images to this feeling of warmth,
Of joy,
Of playfulness,
Of freedom.
The machine does a very good job of producing these images for me.
Vaccimilies of the real thing.
It tries to convince me to stay a while longer.
To believe that if I just hold onto and believe in the movie screen that is flashing day and night,
Day and night,
I will get,
I will attain,
I will.
Wait,
What exactly is the promise I'm being given?
It's unclear once we get to that part.
The voice is muffled,
It's murky.
I'm letting myself be chained and bound and gagged as I watch these movies on loop,
On repeat again and again.
And I'm not even entirely clear what I'm to get out of it.
The promise of.
I sigh.
The more I pay attention to the machine,
The more I give it credit,
Power,
Authority.
Even in this moment,
In these words,
I have shifted away from that blue sky.
The rope that links me to it,
The child laughing,
The birds and brooks and dancing leaves that delight me away from the torture of being trapped in my own mind.
Frozen.
I am frozen.
Not like cold frozen.
Like I'm afraid that if I move even a millimeter,
I'll be electrocuted by the stresses of my own mind.
Stillness.
That's the only way out of this.
Total stillness.
I find that center point,
That center line and that other world opens up to me like a gateway,
A portal that I'm carrying around with me always a key.
I'm wearing a key around my neck like a locket inside this key.
I see the face of my mother,
My father,
My guru and my husband all somehow in one love.
I feel love when I look at this key.
And as that love opens up my heart like a flower,
I am transported.
Instantaneously I am free.
I am flying like a bird,
Soaring,
My wings expanded,
Above the clouds,
Above the spires of this machine,
So high that it all disappears below me.
What is real anyway?
I know that I am not bound.
I never have been.
I know that projection of that movie isn't actually going on and that it never even happened.
There are no chains.
There never even was a golden glorious rope because I've never really needed it.
It's all inside of me,
Of me,
With me.
Steady,
Steady.
I can fall off on either side of this tightrope at any moment and I'll be back again.
Oh the fear of that.
And yet,
I am getting steadier.
I'm getting better at catching myself as I walk this fine,
Fine line.
I'm walking on that golden rope,
Buried by who knows what or whom,
Balancing somehow as I walk faster and faster.
The more I dance,
The more balanced I am.
Not thinking too much,
Just dancing across this rope towards that infinity,
Unafraid of falling.
Because there actually is nothing to fall into.
There is no pit of despair.
There is no darkness.
None of that was real anyway.
The sun explodes and I explode into a billion shards of light and I am undone.
