Sometimes meditation can happen without our bidding it. For the last couple of days, a fever has been in me. It started as the full moon approached and reached a peak that night. Thoughts could not form themselves properly. The solid bed on which I was resting was felt to be gently swaying. The walls seemed to be gently undulating. My awareness came to rest on the sensations in the body: hot and cold at the same time, with dramatic energy flows. When my attention was completely with this energy, it felt pleasant, very pleasant.
All this was a reminder that the way we perceive the world is not determined purely by what is out there, it also depends on the temperature and chemistry of the brain. Perception is a dance, an interplay. Where in this do we find reality?
On another subject, today I am celebrating having survived 50 laps of the sun. By my, albeit dubious calculation, that means that I have travelled about 35,000,000,000 kilometres, without making much effort, and I find myself pretty much back where I started. That sounds just like the spiritual journey!
[Correction: I looked up the distance between the Earth and the Sun, which is about 150 million km. On that basis, the 35 billion km in the text above should be 47,000,000,000 km.]
