Meditation

I try to meditate often, but the imagery provided by the recording in the in-class meditation was incredibly illuminating and really enhanced the meditative experience past the bounds of my usual meditations. The imagery, it seemed, functioned as a stream of analogies for the state of being. The ebb and flow through the opening and closing of the pores and the blooming and wilting of the lotus flower described the perpetual fluctuation that we are permanently engulfed in. However, fluctuation and flow require the future and past, and I think that the two inhibit the examination of the state of being, also referred to as the human condition or, more simply, experience. We only are, we only exist, in a stream of instances, of heres and nows. If things are as fluctuating as they seem, how would each here and now account for the constant interchanging of lows and highs, ins and outs, lightness and darkness?

Well, after a few days of reflection, I think that each here and now is potentiality, or rather, is everything at once, as opposed to a particular thing at a particular time. This way, there can be no constancy in our successions of here's and now's (time), as the fundamental component of these successions is a single, uncertain, infinite instance. Across the expanse of time, things that are high become low, things that are good become bad (Nietzsche- Genealogy of Morals); everything becomes its opposite because each instance exists as everything, making it pure possibility.

This meditation allowed me to consider each here and now (not that there is a calculable, tangible quantity of heres and nows) and whenever I embrace the experience of the present I find myself steeped in paradox and duality. Even as I sit typing these words, my heart is expanding and contracting. I'm letting in breath, and letting it out. My muscle cells die in order to regrow. Human beings, and all things experienced are beautifully contradicting; everything gives way to it's opposite because, at its most basic, each thing is its opposite. Life seems very cyclical, and I love cyclicality.