First Journey

A woman tries to break out of her body. (First of my 52 short stories in 2015 challenge)

First Journey

I squeezed my eyes tightly and listened to the instructor as he tried to bring me down into trance. I loosened my limbs, rolled my head around on my neck, and focused on my breathing. I inhaled the gentle incense that was burning, and tried to align my heartbeat with the slow drum beat playing on the instructor’s .mp3 player.

“Down, down, down.” He droned, and I did feel myself sinking inside. I felt my energy body coalesce into a ball about the size of a volleyball, centered somewhere between my heart chakra and my solar plexus chakra. I felt a momentary thrill of pride. I was doing it! I was going to journey better than any student he had ever known.

After all, I was already a seasoned witch. I had been doing this for a very, very long time. And though my practice involved more earthy matters like herbs and stones and putting together mojo bags, I had spent long hours meditating. Never mind the fact that it had been years since I had meditated, I knew that I could get right back into it.

Shamanic trance and journeying were something I had always been curious about, and I was going to finally open that world up for myself. I was very pleased with myself. I could feel myself hovering on the verge of something great. A new spiritual adventure- how fun!

Wait, it was time to focus again. This wasn’t going to happen unless I could focus. So I focused on my breathing again. I focused hard. And squeezed my eyes tightly shut. Before long, I started to panic a little. It wasn’t happening like it should. I should be gently detaching from my body. I focused on my breathing, and tried again.

I rolled my shoulders, noticing the tension there. That must be the problem. In fact, my entire body was tense. So I loosened my limbs, trying to brush off any residual tension in my body, and I immediately felt better. I chuckled at myself. I knew better than to focus TOO hard. That was missing the point of meditation entirely. If I was ever going to experience shamanic trance, I would need to remember the basics. I was just a bit out of practice.

I focused on the ball of energy there between my heart and solar plexus chakras again. It was a bit looser, more dispersed, but I was able to pull it back together into a more or less spherical shape of my energy. What color was it supposed to be again? Golden? Mine felt more brown. Kind of a glittering, rich brown, with amber and garnet highlights. I was an Earth baby, after all, and of course my energy would be the color of deep rich soil. I focused on that rich brown energy, and wondered how I would appear on the Astral plane. Would I look like me, or would I look like a ball of brown energy? And would the others understand that that was part of my intrinsic nature? I might be the only brown blob in a group of gold blobs. Huh. That could be embarassing.

No matter. I was missing the point again. It was time to focus. Really focus.

But I was squeezing my eyes shut again. My shoulders and chest were tight and achy. In fact, the area where the energy ball was hovering was starting to hurt. It was actually burning a little. That was where my fibromyalgia pain usually was and I supposed that focusing on that specific part of my body was making me focus on the pain as well. How could I brush aside the pain, while still keeping my focus there?

I breathed deeply a few more times, refocusing on my breath. I heard the instructor moving around the room, and noticed that he was doing something, his shadow in front of the light creating patterns on the back of my eyelids. Was he trying to help me pull the energy out of my body? Or was he making faces at me? I wouldn’t flinch, no matter what happened. I could be still, and I could focus. I decided to ignore his presence, and go back within.

Where was the ball of energy? I had left it here just a few seconds ago! It was all over the place now, and I would need to go gather it from all the parts of my body again. Frustrated, I sighed, and the instructor moved away.

I felt like I should apologize to him. I opened my eyes slightly meaning to give an apologetic smile and a shrug, but he was now sitting quietly with his eyes closed. I snuck a sidelong glance at the other student with me, and he was completely calm, spine completely straight, grinning. He was obviously in the middle of an experience, and it wasn’t the same experience as mine.

I tried to push aside jealousy, knowing that it was all just monkey mind playing around in the midst of my calm. I would claim this if it was the last thing I did.

I squeezed my eyes shut, and began the process of relaxing again. I focused on my breathing, squeezed my fingers and toes, trying to work out all the physical tension by pure force and will, and tried to loosen my chest and shoulders. My hips and lower back were hurting, but I pushed that aside. As soon as I pushed that aside, my chest began burning again. I built a wall between the pain and my mind, not allowing myself to feel it. And it worked. Suddenly, I felt like there was nothing keeping me from my goal.

So I breathed deeply, and began gathering my energy again. I pulled it from each limb, from my head, my torso, even the parts of my energy that resided just outside my physical body, and I created a ball of beautiful brown energy, glittering with gold and amber and garnet colors. I held it there, between my solar plexus and heart chakras, and entered into that ball. I was no longer fully present in my body, but was encased in this sphere of energy instead. I enjoyed the sensation, the disembodied peace of not feeling all the pain I usually felt from day to day.

And as soon as I had that thought, I was back in my body, and my lower back was screaming at me.

One more time. I could do this one more time. I could break this pattern of pain, all I had to do was to focus and then let go. I wanted this so badly, and I could make it happen for myself.

So I breathed, gathered my energy again (it was easier to do this time), let my consciousness enter the ball of rich Earth energy, and I floated.

At any point, I would drift outside of myself, and I would be able to experience the world of the Astral first, the Spirit world later, and all of the other places that I wanted to visit. And so I waited. I didn’t get excited about my progress, I just simply let it be. I was centered inside myself, and I was at peace.

But nothing was happening. Gently, without allowing myself to escape the moment, I began to attempt to move outside of myself. I could feel the long, golden tether that attached me to my physical body, and it wasn’t at all tight. So with just the tiniest bit of urging, I should be able to make this happen. I tried to slowly, gently pull my consciousness out of my body, through the barriers of the physical, and nothing happened. I maintained my focus on myself inside my energy, and pulled again.

And suddenly, I was fully back in my body, the energy ball was no longer perceptible, and I realized how tightly my eyes were squeezing shut. My chest felt like it was being held in a vice, my lower back was cramped, my hips were cramped and at some point, my knee had jammed. I had been holding my body so tense that there was no happy homecoming. I was back to all the pain and the uncertainty.

I realized then that my body had become a hard, crunchy shell, and that maybe escape wasn’t possible. I was tied to my body through the sensations of pain. Though I spent time in my mind, spent time delving into the spiritual, I was, and always would be, grounded in my body.

Was this my karmic lesson for this incarnation? I had always felt that there was some reason for the chronic pains I had felt throughout my childhood and adult life. I had some vague notion that my lesson was to learn to live and love others despite ongoing physical pain and limitations. I would never run, though I longed for it, and loved nothing more than dreaming that I was sprinting over rocks, through creeks, long distances that I could never travel in my body. This body. This broken, ruined body.

I had hoped to be able to escape it for some short time through trancework and journeying. In other realms, maybe I would be able to run. Maybe I would feel light and unencumbered by the presence of pain, stiffness, and fatigue. But today was not my day.

I opened my eyes, and the instructor was muttering gently at the other student, who had gotten lost somewhere inside, and needed to be coaxed back to the physical. I took a sip of water and wiped the tears away.

Today was not my day.

Author's Note

The formatting is a bit strange. It went from scrivener to .odt to my phone to here. :0)