It has been a little over a year since that morning when I had the startling experience of feeling so disconnected. Actually it was both simple and a bit frightening.
As I had done on many mornings before, I dropped backwards to sit at the foot of my bed. It was a movement of relaxing totally, falling backwards as I had done many times before. Only this time it was different. As I touched the bed, I felt as though I had abruptly dropped into a dark black hole.
My eyes had been closed as I relaxed backwards, but in that instant everything seemed to go intensely black. My body for an instant felt that it was both falling and floating in disconnected space.
I was startled and frightened as I jerked back instantly from that feeling. I immediately thought “stroke!” Had I just had a small stroke? Everything in me felt as though a switch had been flipped off, and then I instantly flipped it back on again. It was as though for a brief moment I had lost all contact, I had been disconnected from everything. My head felt strange.
Two days later I was sitting in the clinic in front of my doctor. I was asking him to help me sort it all out. Had I had a stroke? Was this a warning? Has my brain been damaged? I was worried because my head felt different ever since that morning of blackness.
Something had happened, and I had the physical sensation of an event that seemed to linger. I felt some kind of peripheral residue that seemed to come and go. I seemed to be able to revisit that experience tentatively in small but tangible ways.
I asked my doctor many times whether he thought I had damaged my brain. Was I damaging my brain, or perhaps changing it, by my attempts at deep concentration. I kept repeating that something had happened, my head now feels slightly different.
My doctor gave me repeated assurances that he did not think that I had experienced a stroke. He listened patiently as I described my experimentation with deep concentration. He did nothing to discourage me from doing what I was trying to learn by exploring my mind and perhaps reshaping my brain. I felt satisfied as I left the clinic that my body was not likely being harmed. However, ever since that experience, I have felt a little disconnected. Something has changed.
Actually, the feeling I had that morning of an uncontrolled plunge onto my bed and the related disconnection has both continued and expanded. I have nurtured and even welcomed that feeling of being disconnected. What was a frightening and disturbing feeling of falling into dark space is something I now blissfully encourage. It has become a frequent and routine occurrence.
What was, a little over a year ago, a feeling of surprise that startled and frightened me has become a companion that I often welcome into whatever I happen to be doing.
I easily and freely become disconnected as I drop into a sitting position on my bed each morning in preparation to recite my intentions for the day. I surrender all restrictions as I lay on the floor, grounding myself before beginning my routine stretches.
The sound of my bell is the signal to become disconnected. The words I mouth encourage the disconnection. The first breath I take as I sit on my pillow is an initial gesture of retreat into a place of deep disconnection. The unfettered darkness embraces me, sometimes lights flash, sensations become muted.
Later, I walk through the garden and sometimes I remember what has become a joy of disconnection. Suddenly I am walking through a sea of plants, feeling both intimately connected to them, and also strangely disconnected.
Being disconnected seems to take to me a place somewhere in-between. I am very curious where this is going to take me. It seems a friendly place for me to be and I probably won’t mention it to my doctor again.