Escape Plans Unlimited

Greetings fellow travelers upon our fine Urth! Today I have concocted a little something different. The first exercise is something that just popped into my brain after a few months of strenuous work on deconstructing my brain patterns. The second one is inspired by Dr. Claude Needham and his beautiful book, The Just Because Club.

16. The Marshmallow Meditation: Sit or lie down in a comfortable position with your back straight. Apply a bit of White Flower oil to the center of your forehead if you so desire. Next, spend some time in your memories. Picture everything you have ever experienced in your life. Imagine all the people, places, and experiences you have ever had.

Include in this imagining everything which arises in your mind. Picture your lovers, your family, you possessions, and especially, now, consider and go through all of the ideas you and others have had about you.

As you drift through this heap of memory, toss each piece of it into a pile. Imagine yourself in a beautiful wild land, on the edge of a magnificent wood. Make the pile just outside the tree line. That’s right, keep stacking those memories higher and higher, include everyone and everything you have ever known or learned. Pile it higher and higher. Include all the emotions you have ever experienced, and every sound or sensation that has passed through your organs and brain.

Include every time you ever thought you were a victim of circumstances or something else, include every time you thought someone wronged you, and every time you thought you wronged someone else, or yourself.

After you have piled the memories high, imagine yourself pouring gasoline all over the pile. You might notice some hesitation at this point. If so, simply continue with the meditation. It may prove helpful to record yourself reading this or something similar, and then listen to it during your meditation. Or have a friend read it to you in exchange for reading it for him or her.

Now, imagine a book of matches. Take out one of the wooden matches and light it against the sandpaper strip on the outside of the book. Throw the match in the soaking pile of epitaphs. As you watch a beautiful and glorious fire engulf the pile of memories, warm yourself on it. You are naked, in the woods, next to a wonderful fire. Nourish yourself in its warm glow. Feel the warmth on your skin as you hear the crackling of the fire and taste and smell the smoke spiraling upward, ever upward.

Now, pick up the bag of marshmallows sitting there at your feet. As you hear the plastic crinkling in your hands, take out a marshmallow. Put it on a stick. Roast it on the flames of everything.

Eat the marshmallow.

Enjoy. Life tastes good!

This does not mean that you abandon everyone and everything in your life. No. It means something quite contrary to that. It means that you make a fresh approach to your life. You have now incinerated every false construct, belief, and meaning you have ever had about all and everything in your life. Those experiences were real, in-the-flesh experiences, never to be duplicated or even accurately replicated in memory. In fact, they make up a part of who and what you are.

Now, with a fresh eye and an open mind, the place you come back to after the meditation is not the same place it was before you left. Everything is different now. Take a look around. You might find that your limitations and restrictions have suddenly lifted. You might find it easier to enjoy every little tiny moment of your life.

You might find it easier now to love everything that was, that is, and that may ever come. From this basis, it might also be easier, now, for you to take action toward the life of your dreams, with support of all the forces in your life. In this, I wish you the best of luck, and I urge you the best of skill. In some ways, it can be said that you already have and are everything you could need or want; however, this can prove extremely tricky to navigate.

17. Ghost in the Machine: This exercise is my paraphrase of the exercise “Deaf, Dumb and Blind,” in Claude Needham’s excellent book, The Just Because Club. Thank you Claude for inspiration and all your great work.

Lie down or take a comfortable seated posture with your back straight. Sit there for a few moments and tune in to yourself and your surroundings. You may do this by using many of the methods covered earlier this month, including A Simple Twist of Face, Shrug it Off, slow neck turns, the Human Tuning Fork, and others. You may also wish to begin and end with a repeat of the Earthquake grounding exercise mentioned earlier this month.

Imagine yourself as a tiny star the size of a golf ball. Next, picture yourself floating around near the thing you now call your body. In this imagining, pretend that the body has a control room inside its skull. The eyes are cameras with live feeds projected on a screen in the control room.

The ears act as audio capture devices that feed into speakers in the control room. As a ball of light, you climb into the control room and don a tight suit that gives you a sensory feed from the external skin shell of the body. You have similar devices for taking in tastes and smells.

Imagine yourself operating as a ball of light in the control room. (It may prove useful to explore other control rooms in the body, in the regions of the throat, chest, above and below the navel, and in the area of the perineum, but these control rooms are for another time.)

Take in the full reality of the situation of life inside this control room. Get up and walk around while witnessing your life from inside the control room.

Spend some time each day experiencing this new perception of your reality. Enjoy your results.

Enjoy Everything!

-Garrett Daun