"The Power of Meditation" and "safe" places.

So I am doing the parenting Journey thing every week. And one of the activities we did this week was "the power of meditation." It was a new age version that I had actually done with Grace before in preparation for her giving birth. There was the whole, "return to a place where you feel safe thing," and there was reading about going imagining a lemon and cutting it and tasting it and all that. Of course when I did this with Grace it was in English, and there was me Grace and the Doula at the doula's house.

This time it was in Chinese and there was a bunch of us. I sat on the floor in my usual meditation pose even though people probably thought that was weird, because they all stayed in their seats. I'm not really supposed to talk about other people's stuff, but everyone gave typical answers for their safe place. Mine was home. Other people had nature.

But when we started the meditation I was in two places.

The most prominent place was a mountain in Hong Kong going up to Mahn Faht Jee. For those who know about Hong Kong, you will find this odd. Because it is kind of Jungly. Even Mahn Faht Jee )10,000 Buddha temple) is kind of gaudy. The idols, I guess there are 10,000 of them look cheaply made. It's not like a movie. When I was physically in that place it was overbearingly hot and in my mind I was right at a spot where I saw the ruins of a home. Not ancient ruins, but it belonged to someone poor because it was about the size of a bathroom and had a porcelain toilet (or what remained of it.) I know it wasn't a public toilet because there was also a propane gas kitchen. But the walls were completely knocked down. Like I said it was ruins, but from the modern world.

At this spot I remember looking down and seeing a fat I mean snake slide out of a hole in the mountain and across the concrete path I had walked below and flop into the jungle. At the actual time I had recalled how if it had done that when I was there I would have jumped and probably rolled down the side of the mountain in jungle. I call it jungle because it was sold to me as a tourist spot, and it is. But it's not like a well groomed tourist location in other parts of Hong Kong or in Boston. At the top you can by Tofu deserts and all that sort of thing. But I was expecting at least guard rails and even steps for the path going up. I mean old people do up there all the time right? Just saying it didn't look like no Jade Palace on top of a mountain like in Kung Fu Panda.

But for some reason, that was my safe place, or at least my meditation place. And in my mind it was peaceful. The other place I was, simultaneously, because it would open up from inside the mountain, was this fictional place I had been the last time I did this New Age meditation. It was a world with a sun (unmoving and like a flat earth, as in it wasn't really a place in space-time) and a river, and on either river there were statues of Buddhas. Huge and small. But they were plain stone. Not living. And I had been flying through it. As I write this I realize this idea is perhaps what Mahn Faht Jee was trying to achieve. But they had been two separate places in my consciousness until I just wrote this.

But I could not go into that place, like I did when I heard the stuff about the "lemon" and the "thermometer" in English. Not that I was listening to the words that time. But I knew what the Doula was saying and when she would end. That was about 10 minutes.
This time the Chinese version was only a few minutes and I had to sort of pay attention to know when she was actually finished because my Chinese is not as fluent.

I also "came back" early, as soon as she said to open your eyes, because I was sitting on the floor and nobody else was, so I got up and sat in my seat.

After the time with the Doula I was glowing.

I glowed this time too but not as much. It was a more muted experience. Shorter and I couldn't go as deep. I didn't want to be that guy who was still meditating when everyone else had started talking already.


I didn't share my experience because it had nothing really to do with parenting, and was weird to me. Basically, my safe place, is semi-dangerous. Which sort of makes sense when I think about the times I have really been calm. I couldn't really choose my childhood home as my safe place, or the parks where I work out. Or outdoors or even the Kung Fu School locations. Especially the old one. But  a lot of times when I have Moh Goon dreams I am in that old school. which was only "safe" because I was like a guard dog.

In fact last night I had a sort of Chinatown dream that involved past tense fights (they didn't occur in my dream) and it all happened n a street that no longer exists. And the fights were like 1950's brawls in books like The Outsiders or something like that. But the dream wasn't really a nightmare. I was never in any fight, and Chinese people weren't involved either, there were ABC teens in my dream who had seen the fight and said stuff like, "yeah he used the figure four on him" and laughing. I was upset that the fight had happened, but others were just amused and entertained. But there was no serious danger to me.

I guess this isn't weird though because Narnia for instance is an example of a "safe fantasy place" even though medieval fighting with arrows and swords is extremely dangerous and horrible and bloody. But for some reason such a place in your imagination and in your mind can be "safe" because it tales on another function when it is not real.