Step 8 in the Beginner’s Guide To Meditation series.
We’re going to continue the journey meditating with your eyes closed, going inward. Now, you’re going to journey behind you.
Here’s a question: how did you get here?
Here, where you are now.
What were you doing right before you sat down for this meditation?
What were you doing before that?
And what were you doing before that? And before that?
This meditation is a journey into your past. It’s a journey into the things that are behind who, where, and what you are now. It’s also an invitation to contend with the thread of your conscious experience — how you go from one place to another and from one experience to another. It’s a practice of tracing that thread backwards as far as you can.
What was the last meal that you had?
What were the last ten meals that you had?
These are hard things to remember.
What is behind you.
This is a meditation I have a lot of fun with sometimes. I sit down and I think, “okay…where have I been? What have I done?” In my mind’s eye, using the faculty of imagination, I see myself in reverse-flow going all the way back into my car wherever it was I drove from to get back to my home. I see all the rooms I’ve walked around in, all the way back to my bed where I was asleep. Sometimes I’m even able to maintain that continuity of consciousness through sleep and into my dreams. I remember the dreams I had the night beforehand and then I remember how I fell asleep and how I got to bed. Then I go backwards through that day and further, further, further back.
This is an excellent muscle to strengthen: your recall, your ability to trace ‘what is behind you’.
You’ve got eight minutes to sit with this. This is a challenging one. It’s really going to engage your active imagination. See how far it can take you. If you find that you can’t go very far, that’s okay. Everybody has a veil that they end up facing eventually when they travel backwards. It is the veil of forgetting. A veil where you just don’t…really…know…how you got here.
Past that veil, is the story that you tell yourself about you are. That shadow holds the memories that inform you identity: your character and the myth that your character lives in.
Step into it. See if you can reengage these stories — these myths — that shape you. See if you can ‘remember’ them in higher detail than you ever have before. See what consciously beholding these unconscious stories does for you.
Remember gratitude as you journey into this shadow behind you. The gratitude you carry is the most powerful tool of all. Anything that you encounter back there beyond the veil of forgetting, you can transmute with gratitude. With enough gratitude, any experience of darkness can become one that brings light and gives you energy.
Gratitude will keep you safe on this journey into all that lies behind you.
Enjoy this. This is for you.
