Meditation and the Brain
Meditation and the Brain
Caitlin Scofield
BACK-STORY
"It is the face of our shadow that stares at us from across the iron curtain." - Jung
I have never known nor feigned to know what it is I step into when I step forward. Last night I happened upon a question that shook me and left an unsettling feeling in my bones, like a call to look in, to traverse through darkness unarmed. I was beckoned to seek the meaning of my life. I have a way of intellectualizing things, of making them more complex and globalized then they need to be, but this call came very clearly, most distinctly; it was only my life and my existence that had come into question. I had been walking towards the deeper woods, as the pale green tassels of the evening descended through dark trees, bringing the whole long day along and down with that ethereal light. The redwoods bristled with an aching glory; their silver strung branches hung deep green needles that rustled and whispered together like beautiful women, and I felt myself a guest to the forest, a willing companion to this quiet splendor. The mouths of night opened, as Dusk, a vanishing song, slipped beneath the obscure horizon into the white scarves of the clouds and the tendrils of mist. Time drips away. From the silent and sightlessness sprung my delicious and dark joy; as I tumbled over the slippery skins of the earth and made my way blindly through the trees. I reached forward, I reach up. My fingertips, wet with dew from the knee-high ferns, met the bodies of each redwood as I clambered in the direction of what seemed to be streetlights. I swam outward. The blackness of the woods and the lightness of my body met, dancing, sweating and stinking of dirt and bark and hot skin. I stopped to rest, and as I did, I noticed I was afraid. Not of the dark, but of the blackness. I had heard once that life is a sliver of light between two black poles; the first was that which preceded birth and the second, that which
Caitlin Scofield
BACK-STORY
"It is the face of our shadow that stares at us from across the iron curtain." - Jung
I have never known nor feigned to know what it is I step into when I step forward. Last night I happened upon a question that shook me and left an unsettling feeling in my bones, like a call to look in, to traverse through darkness unarmed. I was beckoned to seek the meaning of my life. I have a way of intellectualizing things, of making them more complex and globalized then they need to be, but this call came very clearly, most distinctly; it was only my life and my existence that had come into question. I had been walking towards the deeper woods, as the pale green tassels of the evening descended through dark trees, bringing the whole long day along and down with that ethereal light. The redwoods bristled with an aching glory; their silver strung branches hung deep green needles that rustled and whispered together like beautiful women, and I felt myself a guest to the forest, a willing companion to this quiet splendor. The mouths of night opened, as Dusk, a vanishing song, slipped beneath the obscure horizon into the white scarves of the clouds and the tendrils of mist. Time drips away. From the silent and sightlessness sprung my delicious and dark joy; as I tumbled over the slippery skins of the earth and made my way blindly through the trees. I reached forward, I reach up. My fingertips, wet with dew from the knee-high ferns, met the bodies of each redwood as I clambered in the direction of what seemed to be streetlights. I swam outward. The blackness of the woods and the lightness of my body met, dancing, sweating and stinking of dirt and bark and hot skin. I stopped to rest, and as I did, I noticed I was afraid. Not of the dark, but of the blackness. I had heard once that life is a sliver of light between two black poles; the first was that which preceded birth and the second, that which