Stop the bus

Sunday 7am

Well actually just lately it has not been good. It is midwinter, cold, wet, rainy and very dark. Life is a struggle at the moment, things keep breaking down, the bills keep coming in, you know what it is like - one step forwards, three steps back never quite getting on top of things. And all these things are pushing through into my mind. When I wake at the moment my head is a maelstrom of whirling thoughts. It is like being on a crowded bus where everybody is talking at once. I don't think I am completely mad yet, I haven't "come home from the war with a party in my head" as Tom Waits said but I do want to stop the bus and get off. And I have discovered that I can. I don't know how I do it I just seem to breath out softly, relax a bit and the thoughts all fade away. I can still hear them but faintly as if behind a wall - they are all still on the bus and haven't noticed I have gone. Everything suddenly comes into focus and there is just me and now, the present. No past, no future, just me and now. This must be what meditation or being in the " the zone" is all about, suddenly the whole of my mind is available to me without all those distractions getting in the way. Of course the moment does not last long. A couple of minutes and one thought squeezes its way back in, quickly followed by the rest tumbling in. But I have seen the way out now, glimpsed through a small crack maybe, but I know it is there, and I am changed by knowing it.