A Call to Arms Meditation

A Call to Arms Meditation

Preparing to meditate, I lie down, focusing on my breathing and releasing thoughts to clear my mind. I wait for the silence to wash over my brain, but the opposite action attacks me. Conflicting ideas collide, pushing each other, school children on a playground. I listen to their voices forming run-on sentences:

“My foot hurts - I have the beginning and the end of a story, but not the middle - I can't  upload an image - I don't have any movies to distract me - I can't concentrate enough to read - I saw someone today who reminded me of my last boyfriend -”

My fist punching the air, I command, “Stop!” My shouting stunned the thoughts and they crumpled, landing in a heap. Before I inhaled fresh clean air, the voices rallied, forming a line of cheer leaders jumping around at half time, hoping to catch the attention of the star football player, or in this case, me.

Recognizing an imminent breakdown, I squirreled a few calm ideas together and devised a battle plan to marshal and corral the onslaught of traitorous thoughts. I mustered ten soldiers from their barracks in Compartment D, sequestered in the frontal lobes of my brain.

“Front and center, now. I have thoughts attacking me and blocking my meditation. I will delegate a thought to each of you to shoulder the confusion. I expect you to carry it out of my brain, allowing me to achieve a theta state of mind.

Tucker, you assume command of the 'Windy' story.”

“Oh, not the Windy story”, Tucker wailed. “I can't handle such a complicated task alone. The incomplete story is missing the body of text.”

“Fine. Franklin, you and Tucker team up on the Windy story. Now get out, both of you.”

“Sullivan, front and center. I'm assigning you the painful post-op foot. Pick up the swelling  and get it out of here.”

“The foot pain?” Sullivan is a veteran and never whines.

I soften my commander's voice in deference to Sullivan's years of service. “Sullivan, handling the foot swelling concerns you? You earned veteran status -

Sullivan, how long have you lived in my brain?”

“I can't rightly say, Miss. It's not my way to complain, not that I am complaining.”

“Sullivan, hurry up. What are you saying? The thoughts behind the swelling foot pain are shouting and pushing like Christmas Eve shoppers.

“Okay, after all these years, well, I developed a few maladies of my own, while resolving  the daily distresses you ask me to alleviate.

Sullivan, hand off the post-op pain to Johnson. I'm offering you a position in a neural pathway of your choosing.

Rather than fixing my distress, you can be a serotonin transmitter, boosting the reuptake of the serotonin. The increased levels will lift my mood, decreasing my self-sabotage habit of creating monsters from stress.”

“I'd take that as a kindness Miss.” Sullivan shuffled off, pushing the foot pain onto Johnson.

Johnson juggled the foot swelling, vying for a grip on the bulging, shifting surges of pain. He resorted to pushing and pulling the obese swelling out of my conscious brain.

“Andrews, front and center. You handle the image issues. They're in a pile over there, several thoughts are entangled. Grab the whole lot of them and haul them out of here. Any complaints?”

Andrews picked up his assigned burden, trembling and cowed by the renewed passion of my commander's voice.

“Edwina, get over here. Gather up all the boyfriend issues. You're a woman and I trust you to bleach out these remaining feelings of love. I know the problem appears as a broken heart, but it's not bleeding anymore, so don't be squeamish. That heart's spent more time bothering me than I spent loving him.”

Edwina nudged the broken heart, ascertaining it no longer lived.

“Edwina, what are you, nuts? Do you not understand that nudging hurts me? If you kick it hard enough, it might start bleeding again. That's why I need it out of here, now.”

Edwina cradled the heart, tip-toeing out, intent on keeping it dead.

“Rebbecca, I'm handing you my lack of concentration concerns and the boredom created because my movie supply dwindled.”

A petulant Rebbecca sulked in a corner, reminding me of something unpleasant.

“Resolve concentration and boredom at one time?”, Rebbecca whined. “I can't carry the two burdens. Besides, I have female issues.”

Now, I remember Rebbecca.

“Listen up, Rebbecca. There are no female changes affecting you. Soldiers in the brain army do not have human ailments. I remember you worked in my woman's unit before this assignment and complained of the same discomforts I suffered. I don't have female complaints anymore, and you never did. So get with the program - book and movies both, now.”

“I'm too small to carry books and movie concerns. I think my back hurts.”

“Rebbecca, the more I hear from you, the more I remember you. I think it's time for you to move on.”

“What, an early retirement, or light duty, like Sullivan?

I squashed Rebbecca's enthusiasm.

“No, an expulsion - next time I blow my nose, out you go.”

Rebbecca's sobbing will lead her to an early demise.

Drifting back toward meditation, I presented my mind as open and clear, capable of accepting new thoughts and inspirations. A light, flashing red, blinded me, forcing me to acknowledge more stress-related issues.

“You forgot you slipped below the required writing level of participation on three differing web sites.”

The red light, flashed the notes of my scribbled ideas, stringing them together, composing a
tuneless, morbid, off-key and dismal song of self-doubt.

Shielding the intensity of the flashing red light, I searched among the soldiers, looking for a combination of a creative and musical background to help decipher the notes and produce a harmonious writing style. 

As I eased my way to intuitive thinking, looking for a qualified soldier, a huge letter H blocked my renewed descent.

“H, what is it?”

“Your heart. You forgot to suffer the stress of waiting for the echo-cardiogram on Wednesday.”

“Then, why the letter H for heart? I needed a W for Wednesday. Never mind.

Adrienne, on your feet. Grab the H and the W and remove them at this moment.”

“But Miss, they're brawling, arguing over who represents the worrying heart, the H or the W.”

“Away to detention then. Haul them off, depositing them at one of the frontal lobes, where they can pound out their disagreements. This is bizarre! I have worries fighting against worries!

Flashing red light, I got the message. Tone down to a blinking, yellow light of caution, while I summon a musical soldier.”

I recalled that Foster had a musical background. “Foster, get-”

A whistling Foster stood at ready alert before my full battle call. In military cadence,  he carried off my mangled writing skills and 'web site worries' - his precision reminding me of my son.

“Foster, I admire your attitude. Next time promotion comes up, I'm awarding you First General.

You two remaining soldiers, take a knee, but remain on close quarters stand-by. I want you 'boots down' the moment you receive my command.”

I focused on meditation again. Last week I discovered that relaxing my facial muscles aided the silent drifting of emptiness, crucial to meditation. I asked the facial muscles to release their tension in hopes of peace, but they pinched the wrinkles of an old spinster on my skin. I tried forcing them to relax before I registered the irony of the moment.

I called out one of my stand-by soldiers. ”Scooter.”

Exhausted, my commander's voice had diminished to a one word statement. Scooter jumped to attention anyway, probably because he was motivated by Foster's promotion.

“Scooter, smooth out the irony and drag it away.”

Scooter smoothed the rumpled irony, folding it together like a soft blanket, and skated across ice, beyond my mental horizon.

The recent memory of a phone call, involving my mom and dad, rang, clattering and disturbing my quieting mind. I pictured inflating a balloon of worries and watching it disappear, carried on wind currents. The over inflated balloon popped, a shotgun blasting in my head.

“Spencer, on your feet, now, face front, eyes locked.”

Spencer, aggravating me with his lack of attention, strolled over, a cloak of stink encompassing him.

“Spencer, how many times have I told you, 'No smoking in my head'? Assume responsibility of my father's worries and my mother's irritating voice.”

“Oh, Miss, please, I promise not to smoke again. Placating both your parents might kill me.”

“Good. Maybe the combination of my parent's bickering will kill you, before you die of cancer.”

I never liked Spencer. I hoped the cumbersome boulder of worries dragged him to an early death.

I ticked off all the problems released, ensuring a supplicant brain. Foot pain -  writing - web site worries - broken heart, lost concentration - health issues- parents -serotonin- irony- listing them depresses me, so I congratulate myself for delegating all problems and emptying my brain. I feel comforted, knowing the answers will come to me in meditation.

Positive my mind is cleared of all distractions, I sub-vocalized again.

Here I am, please rescue me and show me a calm path to a sane life, doomed to living inside an insane brain.

I slide down the invisible blue tube in my mind, not caring where the path leads me, confident I will return with a renewed mind.