Thoughts about Hovering

The other day, a friend and I chatted about calming ourselves in trying circumstances. She talked about "going to her happy place." I mentioned that I meditate. 

I did that earlier this week when I endured a fairly lengthy dentist appointment. The sound of the drill (which sets my teeth on edge, no pun intended) virtually disappears if I repeat my mantra.

I remember my first successful meditation session about halfway through my Transcendental Meditation training. I was at home, sitting on my couch on a hot fall afternoon, and felt myself separate from my body, hovering as it were. Not in the creepy sense of seeing my body down below or a bright light above, but in the sense of feeling lifted out of consciousness into a limbo state, something like what I have felt when coming out of surgical sedation. At the end of the required 30-minute period, I felt joyous and rejuvenated as though I had slept like a proverbial child, deeply and refreshingly.

At the market, seeing a hover fly, balanced on a bud, a sea of red and orange and yellow below, I remembered our conversation and vowed to make time for regular meditation again. Perhaps then, my exhaustion from an out-of-balance set of demands, will be relieved and I, like the tiny hover fly, can perch above duties and see only a blur of beauty.