From my Art & Spirituality journal. The meditation in question had us imagine ourselves with a tail which dug deep into the center of the earth, where we released our "negative energy." Then we howled like wolves. Yeah.

I think I got the point of the meditation, but my ingrained sense of parody prevents me from seriously contemplating my imaginary tail drilling into Mother Earth to release my "negative energy."

I, personally, have always wanted a tail, if for no other reason than to have an extra hand to do things like open and close doors and hit light switches when my actual hands are full. (I've also always wanted to be telekinetic so I can turn off the lights when I'm in bed rather than having to get up to do so. Also, if I had wings, I wouldn't have to wait for the crosswalk. Sometimes I'm too practical for my own good.) When asked to imagine that I have a tail, I can think of many, many more interesting things to do with a tail-- ooh, is it pointy so I can use it as a weapon? Can I write or draw with it? Can I use it to tap people on the shoulder and then pretend I didn't do it so they keep looking around for who tapped them and meanwhile I look perfectly innocent because both of my hands are in my pockets and I'm too far away?-- than dig a hole in the ground with it. As well, being an imperturbably visual thinker, I have to first imagine what this tail looks like-- fuzzy and swishy like a husky's tail? long and stripey like a lemur tail? can it have spikes like a dinosaur?-- and by the time I'm done working out the particulars of My Psychic Tail, I'm already distracted from the point of the meditation.

This is why I couldn't ever be Buddhist. I need no outside distractions because I'm so perfectly capable of being one for myself.

I also have to admit that I relexively scorn ideas having to do with spiritual "vibrations" or "energies" or other psychic emanations. Perhaps as a result of having depression for so long, I don't really think ideas like "negative energy" are very useful, at least for me, inasmuch as they tend to give concrete existence to something that's not really real in the strictest metaphysical sense. Spirituality, for my purposes, needs to be rooted in the practical and the lived for it to be relevant. I've never felt any negative energy that I could treat as something apart from my own human energy, such as it is, and I don't think treating my own energy as something to be dumped into the lap of the cosmos for God/Nature/[insert deity and/or force of universe here as desired] to deal with is very useful, no more than offloading my own feelings and problems onto other people was helpful to anyone, least of all myself.

Also, wolf howling? Less freeing, more embarrassing for the introverts among us. I also feel sorry for the poor confused dogs who thought they were going to get to go to a party.

That said, I did like being outside for once. I wish I could have smelled the frankincense better, but apparently the smell genes I got were the defective ones. I blame my father.

Labels: religion, school