A city, a jungle and a cave with fresh waters
By: Abraxas Monk
Tags: Self-awareness, Tales, Self, Awareness, Stories

A city, a jungle and a cave with fresh waters

There and back in a short urban tale

Photo by Boston Public Library on Unsplash

The other day I was in Tokyo, city centre. Or maybe Singapore – I don’t remember.

What I do remember was a feeling of ok-ish sickness of the mind. And of the stomach. I was OK, but somewhere in my depths there was the faintest feeling that I was not.

Let me explain.

I was walking around the city, in mind I had a deal that I was making with a potential new client. I was hungry and out of the office, through the streets, I was wading through people to find a place of restoration. To satisfy my hunger and to relieve my mind.

The deal I had in mind was exciting, as was the thought of biting some all-star sandwich so big that it could temporarily cease starvation in some less fortunate parts of the world. I was firing at all cylinders – tired but energised, focused but also a bit overwhelmed by it all.

Shut.

They’re on holiday?? They’re my best grub in town! What the hell?!

The sandwich deli that my body had been craving for at least 15 minutes was shut. What a punch in the guts. Okay, where next?

As I was mindlessly going through the motions of jumping from take-out to take-out like a bee on several garden flowers my mind started to think.

Not sure you’ve got the gravitas to swing this deal that you want.

Wait, what? Why not? What’s the problem?

Am I suddenly not interested enough to will this deal into the world? I don’ feel the energy, there’s no wave to ride! Gosh, I have no gravitas – that’s true!

Ah-ha! Here’s a burger place, I never get burgers at work – they normally devour me after I devour them. They make me snooze all afternoon as I try to digest them. But what the hell – I’m having a tough day, let’s dive in.

You know, I just need to regain some composure. The deal is there, I can structure it the right way, I can create a win-win for both. He’ll understand that he’s about to make the best purchase available to him. I’ve done it before a number of times, and I can do it again.

In other words, I felt OK. But I was not. From my depths, signals were going all over the place. Up here, superficially, I was experiencing all this as an unfortunate, mild wobble, caused by the world not going the way I wanted.

There she is

Psssst. Hey, you!

My attention is gently, but firmly grabbed. A woman, standing by the side, among the chaos and mayhem of lunch-time city centre, looks at me.

Like a cork in a whirlpool, I was bobbing up and down pretending to be fine. She’d just created a new space and I stepped into it, entirely, unknowingly.

It felt kind of like a waiting room. A small protective space, just by the side of the chaotic, roaring vortex I was in.

Who are you? She asked.

That’s a loaded question, I thought. And quite an important one too actually. It’s so important – why don’t I think of it more often?

Who are you? She asked again.

I need to think. I need to stop and think.

And so I did.

Firmly focused on this thought, the noise of the street started to blur into the background. The images of the street absorbed away. It’s like I took a step forward, and the daily madness became a muffled, retreating entity.

Who are you? She asked once more.

I am what I feel. Or I feel what I am? Confusion! Distraction! Fragmentation!

I need to cling onto this small heaven. I need to find the tethering. Where’s the tethering?

Focus! That’s it. I can’t allow to be distracted, or pulled away. I need focus!

I quickly grabbed the only thing that I felt possible: my breath, and its pattern.

Who are you? Again.

The more she asked, the more I tethered to my breath. Gradually, it was revealed to me that the waiting room was not a waiting room. It slowly became apparent that it was a departure lounge.

I was gradually being ushered to a departure. Guided by this ever so pragmatic form of tethering: my breath – a calm, powerful thing, once you observe it.

Off you go

Photo by Yoal Desurmont on Unsplash

She showed me the way ahead.

In the distance, I saw a glass wall. Beyond that there was a lot of green stuff. Leafy things, trees…it was a jungle.

I was being led to a jungle?!

Strangely, it felt like I knew this jungle. The map of it was in my knowledge. And awareness was my compass.

I was led into a place I wasn’t familiar with, except that I strangely felt I was. It’s like the jungle was, in fact, the map of me.

I don’t know how long I’d been in that place for. But by then, with quite a bit of perseverance and focus, those pre-existing thoughts and wants and preoccupations felt like they were in a far away place – buoying at the top.

Not me.

As I was stepping into the jungle, I also felt a sense of descent: slow, gradual, meaningful. Every step, led me down a notch, and it was something to savour slowly & attentively.

The jungle has its fiends, too

Quietness started to really pervade the space. I could only hear something far away in the jungle – it was splashing water. It was a solemn sound, whole, and I felt a strange attraction to it.

More immediately, I was dealing with the surroundings of the jungle.

In front of me some sort of windy path figured, blending in the dark through the green leaves and the resonating noises of the wilderness. It was clear that it was the way to go, it was also not possible for me to go anywhere else. The only other path was backwards, into the chaos and instability.

Thank you, but no thank you.

Tethered to this strange quality that is observant focus, and I kept descending through the jungle.

It was strange, the more I was trying to get acquainted with the place and its motions, the more I felt nagged by something. It was annoying and childish-like. Almost like a whiney presence that pulls your jacket, to get your attention and to persuade you into other plans.

Here is the spiel: you feel uncomfortable, you’ve been here for too long. You really don’t want to do this. You’re forcing it, it’s clearly not you and not a spontaneous act.

You must check your phone, by the way. You’ve been waiting for that email for so long. You know you need to action it as soon as you get it. Also, you can do the jungle another time – you got all the time you want. But you really want to check your phone now. And scratch that itch on the leg. And get up and get a piece of chocolate – you know you love the taste and the way it makes you feel.

Its force was so strong and it nearly got me. It nearly pulled me back up in no time – back into that endless flow of symbols and representations, of constructs, of precepts made of plastic. Of stimuli to live by as they get you, one by one.

I don’t know what was in me that day, but I did manage to overcome those temptations – letting go, sinking in, packaging those thoughts and seeing them flow away like mailboxes.

They became external concepts that I wasn’t allowing to infiltrate me.

Gradually, the focus turned onto the quietness of the jungle, its mysterious features and reflections of me that I didn’t quite understand.

Gradually, there was the calling of those fresh waters again. Those solemn sounds of truth. A wholesome attraction, innate, bearer of vitality.

Prepare for landing

In awareness, more or less, I landed precariously on the other side: a deep, low, slow cave of oneness. Where I could bathe in peace and in tranquillity. I had found the waters.

Photo by Michael Behrens on Unsplash

These waters had a quality that I immediately sensed. They were quietly strong – they didn’t bother anybody but also they could not be denied. I guess that’s the power of truth. They simply were.

Familiarising with these waters was like becoming them. A sense of vitality and quiet strength was unfurling in me. Slowly, gradually. The more I gave up control the more they found ways to resonate in me.

You’ve landed, sir. Now it’s time to go back up.

Unsustainable. What it is that makes this unsustainable I don’t know. Maybe lack of practice, but at some point you have to get back.

My only hope was to take this awareness with me and carry it – even if just for a little bit – in the day-to-day of my chaotic life.

If anything, sometimes, I was hoping for memories of this experience to bubble to the surface to provide some guidance, some relief, some caring voice letting me know that another way is possible. That another way is there.

As I snapped out of the cave. I could see the car crash of the world that was before me.

It was exactly the same place, at the same time (more or less) as before. It was the same scenes, the same needs and wants. The same tortuous path to achieving something that maybe I didn’t really want or understand. There was the chaos that I thought was my friend, my natural habitat.

This time though, I waved at it from a distance.

I see you, chaos, life of plastic. I see you and I salute you. I salute you and respect your presence. I respect you but I am not you.

I am me, I have my strength and wisdom. And I use these tools to navigate you, chaos. To blend with you and to understand you, but never to be you.

You and I are not one and the same.