Open the closed door

10:55 AM.  I was not the person I am at this moment just 6 hours back.  Not that the changes that have occurred in me will be lasting; that does not matter as much to me so far as exploring the person I am right now.

I think it’s a mixture of things: events, emotions, feelings of community and warmth – that clicked together to forge an environment that fosters growth and clarity here at the Environmental Science Institute and during the Niswarth program as a whole.

Before yesterday, I had never seriously meditated (any previous experience was on my Wii board with my eyes wide open and my little brother cheering me on as I rocked the Wii Fit meditation game).  But during that short amount of time meditating last evening, I felt naturally urged to confront my self.

I am a generally happy person.  I thank my father for my inherited optimistic thinking – by far it is my greatest strength.  But I am broken inside.  If my heart were layers, the outside layers would be of genuine happiness and love, but the inside that I never let myself explore is fragmented and scattered.  My inability to trust and share with others, and wholeheartedly confront my true insecurities and feelings, has led to my conscious disregard for what is actually going inside.  What is going inside because of who I am, and also what is going inside as a result of events within and beyond my control.

Since I don’t know when, I’ve suppressed these thoughts and emotions and compressed them into that small, deep section of my heart that I thought was unreachable by both myself and anyone else.  That, actually, is the reason why I’ve been writing “open the closed door” on my inner left foot – other than the fact that I think it looks cool.  I don’t think anyone has truly opened my closed doors.  And I’m not the only one: just like my friend told me, everyone has closed doors, unreachable by others.  I think that’s beautiful, and it makes me look at everyone as individuals, not as people that I conceive them to be.

I’ve always longed to explore that broken side of me.  Ignoring those thoughts and feelings can only last so long, and my time has come.  Those broken bits have been showing up here and there, but at school, I stuff them back inside.  One of the most compelling things about Niswarth was that it would offer the space and time for great reflection, and I wanted to do just that – have time to think in the broad and specific picture, but also bring it back to the self, the self that I hate discussing but the self I must know and embrace as a human being.  I tried to reflect at school but it wasn’t working.  If I got close to any sort of reflection, I felt sadness and discovered a vast emptiness instead, and so I would go back to distracting myself with whatever I could: work, friends, food, Facebook.

What has changed now is that I have begun to take a long, quiet, slow stroll into my heart.  Meditating today and yesterday has helped me do that.  Positive thinking and mind control, Mukesh-Bhai told us.  I will try to practice both, but I don’t want to be inhibited in any way, and I look forward to practicing the healthy habit of self-reflection through meditation.

I am at complete ease right now, and I feel a deep, wallowing peace that I have never felt before.  The windows peering into my soul have been perched open, and a soft, bright light shines through.

--Rhaime