I learned about guided relaxation early. I took a class in the fifth grade with a girl I considered my best friend in the way that fifth graders are wont to do. It may have been a class in meditation, but we were kicked out not long after it started, still in the guided relaxation module. We were to lie down and close our eyes and (for example) imagine a golden light moving slowly over our bodies, turning the muscles to melted butter. Well, this girl and I would not close our eyes, but would peek at one another, at intervals until the giggling would start. And then Barb, who led the class, would ask to leave and we would leave.
Much later and far away from the place where my eccentricities first flourished (and were subsequently crushed by my peers in every way)–I used that exact guided relaxation to blow the minds of several cheerleaders and girls basketball jocks at a sleepaway camp one night. The exact reason for my being there, with them, is not really pertinent. But suffice it to say that I was as outsider as could be. I felt conspicuous and fat in my skin. And so, in the dark, as we were all not-sleeping and after someone had lamented the fact that she couldn’t sleep and someone else agreed, I said to the room, “Do you want me to do a guided relaxation on you?… because it will help you go to sleep?”
I like being the center of attention, and I like getting accolades. It is one of my biggest weaknesses, because it means I am often running to kick the proverbial football, only to fall flat on my ass. But on this day(night) I did not. The cheerleaders and girl jocks were awed. They said they felt amazing, with the golden light and all. And then they all went to sleep.
Real meditation came to me much more slant. Scenes like this one from Goodbye Girl left indelible marks:
As did trippy animations like this one from Fantastic Planet:
They made meditation seem exotic and (literally) otherworldly. There’s another scene I can only vaguely remember, but the guy (in the 70s it was always guys meditating) is sitting cross-legged and so blissed out that nothing bothers him until he’s done. Then he pops up and knows nothing about the racket that has been happening. It was a joke or a trope. Later, in art school, I began to meet people who had a regular practice. Zen was fairly common when I left Portland, and then uncommon in most of the places I lived until Santa Fe. Between the two I picked up a zafu cushion and read some books and had no idea what I was doing for years.
Today, I tried to have compassion for the part of me that is sick and tired of my biological father wanting to connect after 40 years. Then I tried to have compassion for him. I didn’t really succeed at either, but it feels important to try. What I need guidance to understand is how to have compassion and let go of resentment, while maintaining a boundary–because all my bile starts stirring at just the thought of reconciliation–there’s no war, just decades of disengagement. But all that’s for unknotting some other day.