{"id":1989,"date":"2010-01-04T15:42:46","date_gmt":"2010-01-04T15:42:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/2010\/01\/meditation-how-low-can-you-go\/"},"modified":"2010-01-04T15:42:46","modified_gmt":"2010-01-04T15:42:46","slug":"meditation-how-low-can-you-go","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/2010\/01\/meditation-how-low-can-you-go\/","title":{"rendered":"Meditation: How Low Can You Go?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
In the final phase of my meditation today, I had a sudden vision of myself.<\/div>\n

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It was not quite a decade ago. I was low, negative, depressed, self-destructive, trapped. I was in what we’d call in south London where I grew up, a right state<\/b>.<\/div>\n

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It was such a surprise to see such personal detail in my mind’s eye, that it stopped me there and then. I saw and felt not only my rather precarious, neglected physical state, but the hollow loneliness of my then existence, which was brought right to me, here and now. I gazed at myself through a lens of clarity.<\/div>\n

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That was all very fascinating, but it wasn’t what I was here to do. After a few attempts to resume, I opened my eyes, let them roam around the sunny room; I realised that I had stopped, and so without completing the meditation as per usual, I smiled, voiced my usual "thank you" to my God for putting me here to meditate, learn, live and love, and went to breakfast.<\/div>\n

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<\/a><\/div>\n

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You may be surprised to know that far from this being a bad thing, I knew that it was a wonderful sign of my current health. You can only return to face yourself at your worst moments when you’re ready, when you’re good and strong. For some reason, I was being told \/ telling myself, Dean, look, that’s what you used to be, and my friend, look where you are now, by contrast.<\/div>\n

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It was just a shadow, cast from a time long gone. There are no shadows without light.<\/div>\n

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I ate and washed. Later, I went back, and finished, without further interruption.<\/div>\n

Posted via email<\/a> from Dean Whitbread<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the final phase of my meditation today, I had a sudden vision of myself. It was not quite a decade ago. I was low, negative, depressed, self-destructive, trapped. I was in what we’d call in south London where I grew up, a right state. It was such a surprise to see such personal detail […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":126,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[780],"class_list":["post-1989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-funky-original","tag-funky-original"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/126"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1989\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theothersideofeverything.com\/flip\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}