02: I am sitting in a room

I am sitting in a room. Air goes in and out. I feel the touch of myself on the mattress. Cross-legged, my hands are dwelling on my lap. It is calm. My eyes are shut.

The first minutes when I start to meditate I experience blurry sensations. I am not really aware of what I am thinking or that I am thinking. It takes me some time to get accustomed to what I do. Because I surely do something. At least meditation is not about not doing anything. Something honorable is happening: Gradually, I am creating this moment in which the setting of sensual awareness can deepen.

I am getting there. Already, my body feels more relaxed. I start to become aware of how relevant it is to keep it a hundred percent still, without any movement. It is exactly that which connects me to the present. Starting to feel centered, I occasionally double-check which muscles could be even more relaxed. Often it is somewhere in my face, either between my eyes or my jaw. It is simple to acknowledge it. It is the acknowledgement itself that almost immediately softens my muscles. And after a while my face goes back to its originally tense state. And after a while, I will notice something.

I might become sleepy, and sometimes I fall asleep, sometimes for just a short moment, sometimes I can feel my head nodding away before I manage to pull it back up again. Sometimes I am so sleepy that it must look like I’m constantly nodding in agreement, saying silently yes to something that must be invisible in front of me, and that can’t be so bad, can it? Sometimes though, it is possible to look at my sleepiness, like looking into its eye. I am then observing sleepiness and this completely changes everything.

I become fully present and awake.

Becoming aware of a thing transforms the very thing. This is the superpower that many meditation experts are talking about. The ability to transform things only exists in the moment. It can be unleashed when you become aware of the thing that is unaware.

I am leaving the room now! The world out there wants to connect my gum feet with a kind of grey concrete love.