One of Rudolf Steiner’s exercises for spiritual development involves journaling backwards, from the end of the day to the beginning. The purpose for this is not clear to me, but I thought it was an interesting creative constraint. Reader beware.
I sipped my tea and sat down to write my work log. I had just read about Notre Dame’s fire and a great sense of loss invaded me. Usually I’m oblivious to world events, so this feeling took me by surprise. It’s a tragic loss of one of humanity’s cultural jewels.
Moments ago I was cycling back from the study hall. I was pedaling along a cycling path at the edge of the city, and I could see sheep grazing the spring-time green dehesa of the outskirts, with the sun coming out some clouds to reach the horizon. It was exhilarating, it had been a good day combining focused work, chores, meditation, exercise and a sense of hope in the future.
The study hall was small and and somewhat vandalized, but I found a good isolated spot to work, and the students there were focused, which inevitably compounds on me. I dedicated the session to work on write.now, and since this is coding work I was able to forget about myself, and immersed into the task with great flow.
The study hall is a large building where I hadn’t been before. As I arrived late I didn’t have a chance to explore it all (which I usually do when I come into a new workplace: I want to know exactly what the facility offers), but just arriving I knew this is perhaps my perfect workplace: the building is a centro de interpretación de la naturaleza a small museum of sorts which doesn’t have a collection, but instead offers information on nature.
At the entrance there’s a garden with native species (chestnut, pinus pinea, lavender and other plants which shapes I recognize, but names I ignore). The garden might seem unkempt at first sight, but it has its natural charm which no human hand can give. There’s picnic benches under the larger trees, perfect for having lunch.
After the garden you enter a courtyard flanked by three buildings: one is the museum/study hall, another is a small chapel, and the third I’m not sure (door was closed). I entered the chapel and found a very quiet place perfect for meditation. By now I knew I didn’t care about the condition of the study hall, the amenities would make up for any bad conditions.
I had come to this place because the closest study hall closed early, because it’s easter week. I didn’t know about this, and just as I was getting into the zone I observed most of the people packing up and leaving at 6pm. I asked what was going on and I was told it was closing soon. So I grabbed my bike and pedaled an extra four kilometers to get to the next study hall, and I’m glad I did it.
Before leaving for the first study hall I sat down to meditate, but soon I was dozing off. I find the experience of dozing off in meditation quite interesting to observe: you are observing your awareness, say, your breath. When you get distracted in meditation your attention wanders and you begin thinking, but when you doze off attention doesn’t wander, it dissipates and you begin hallucinating. It’s like ethereal dreams which don’t quite have visuals or language, I can’t say what exactly are they, because there are no symbols involved, but things happen. I recall a proto-dream in which a character was trying to kill something, and this something integrated into him, and his desire to kill it disappeared and he was in peace. But I can’t explain how I experienced this, there may have been very vague images and words which I somehow strung together, but it mainly took place in a sensory realm which precedes symbolic language, like the feelings experienced with gut feelings which then you translate into verbal language. I will surely welcome ancient Morpheus when he arrives in meditation [what a great loss to override ancient archetypes with modern ones, but perhaps this is the only way to keep them alive].
Before the meditation I found my bank’s token for online banking. I had searched it everywhere, and I was very worried because losing it would put me in a tight spot. I am quite disorganized, but there’s an underlying order in my disorganization, so I had an “electronics, arts and gadgets” suitcase where it had to be, but it was nowhere to be found. I searched the rest of my suitcases, completely emptying everything, but I couldn’t find it. I had given up, and I picked up a document binder where I have my passports and important papers and thought: “there’s a chance I may have thought let’s put the really important stuff that I can’t lose in the same place” and there it was!
I was reminded of a time when I had to recover a very old Yahoo account, I could only get access by answering my secret questions. I was presented with a question I had no idea why I had chosen: what was your favorite food as a child. Either I had forgotten, or 17 year old me was being clever. After some deliberation I decided it was unlikely I had forgotten. So I had to think like my teenage-self. Closed my eyes, breathed in, breathed out, regression to my teenage years. I opened my eyes and wrote “pussy”. Access granted.