bloodteethandflame

Several months ago, I went to a pagan event to vend for my Etsy shop.

And though I hadn’t originally planned to participate in a guided meditation that day, one of my vendor ‘neighbors’ who had their store-front (in a large tent) beside mine, had just popped over to let my vending partner and I know that they were  offering to host an hour long guided meditation for anyone interested…in about 10 minutes.

It seemed a rather impromptu/spur of the moment situation, and likewise, my decision to participate was definitely rather spur of the moment as well. So I left my partner to watch over my shop, and I went ‘next door’ to see how it would go.

I didn’t have a lot of expectations for it for several reasons that I will explain below.

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First of all, to any of my newer readers out there, I may need to give y’all a few points of background, so you might understand the significance of certain aspects of my devotional practice in the last few years:

• As I may have pointed out in a previous post, I do not have daily interactions with my deities anymore. One could say that I haven’t been experiencing Them as readily or as easily in many of the ways that I’d experienced Them before, and definitely not as nearly as often as I’d had during the earlier years of my practice.
• Though I’ve never had difficulty in visualizing things (and I’ve always been a rather vivid/lucid dreamer), it may surprise you to know that I’ve always had a lot of difficulty with guided meditations. In short, while my own brain can easily come up with visuals whilst daydreaming or sleeping, I’ve always had difficulty in visualizing anything on cue from outside sources. It’s like my brain immediately refuses to comply with whatever visuals that the person guiding the meditation is setting up as scene for the participants (i.e ‘Please don’t tell me what I should be seeing in front of me! I don’t even see the path ahead that leads into the forest that you’re talking about…’)
• I’ve also realized that the older I get, the more easily distracted I can become by ambient noise, random sensation, or movement out of the corner of the eye, etc. Though I’ve never been diagnosed as having ADHD, suffice it to say, I meet a lot more of the supposed ADHD diagnostic criteria these days, in that regard.

So, I’d like to make it clear that what follows here was an unexpected result/instance of guided meditation from someone who has never been good at guided meditations.

~~~

The meditation, as it appears written in my notes:

Now, the person leading the meditation seemed really aware of the difficulty that some folks (like me!) may have with visualization on cue, so their descriptions of the scenes were not visually leading in any way.

(Rather than begin with the typical descriptions full of visual details like “You see a winding path of soft dirt before you that leads into a grove of lush, green trees in summer…” — the guide basically guided the participants to mentally fill in the details with some sensation concept language, such as “You’re outdoors. You feel safe and you feel calm. *pause* It is perfect weather, a perfect day for you to be outdoors. Maybe you feel the heat of the sun on your face, or maybe you notice a cool breeze in your hair. *pause* You see a shape up ahead of you, so you walk toward it. As you walk toward it, you are curious to see what it is…” )

As is usual, the only thing I saw at first was the darkness behind my eyelids. Then, as the guide led us to move forward toward whatever was up ahead, I heard the sound of water and the sound of the wind.

Then the guide continued, asking if it was a tree up ahead, and asked us to think about what that tree might look like, and if it was perhaps a tree we had seen before. I saw a tree in the distance for the briefest moment. It was a sizeable oak tree, with grey striated bark, like the trees that lined the borders of the woods outside the house where I grew up in New England. As soon as I saw the tree, I could almost feel how the bark would feel under my fingers, and I could smell the sun on it.

Then, as the guide went on, and mentioned that we might see a person. Did we know them?

And then I saw a man – slender, pale, wiry man. I could hear the sound of water splashing slightly, and I realized, as I got closer to him, that he appeared to be standing in this pool of water. (My brain immediately filled in with a vivid visual of a long-ago dream vision I’d had of Loki bathing in a pond.)

Now, while I swear that I’m not sure if the guide had even mentioned Loki, there He was, and He was washing His hair.

And, as I watched Him wring the water out of His hair, I could sense the water – heard the dripping/splashing, while also sensing the coolness/wetness of the water – and I could immediately smell His scent – that light, spicy almost floral scent that I’ve come to associate with Him.

Though He was not facing me, eventually, He did turn towards me, and I did see His face.

Eyes so green, impossibly bright auburn hair, the goatee, that aquiline nose, those freckles…

     …and then, the voice of the guide broke through, talking about seeing, saying, you may see more trees, feel the sun, see animals –

and I immediately looked down and smelled the musty scent of a fox, before I realized its eyes (briefly) appeared to be that same vivid green.

Then Loki picked up the fox – I heard the little grunt of its surprise at being picked up – and my vision of Loki shimmered like a hologram, and the edges of Him became clearer.

Then, I don’t know why — the fox FELL out of His hands and became bones (I could smell the scent of decay before I heard a sharp *clunk* followed by the clatter of bones clacking together as if they had fallen into a heap somewhere on the ground nearby, but not into the water).

Now, I don’t know what the guide had been saying to initiate the following, but I immediately sensed that the visual of the fox had somehow been *BOTH* of Them (Loki and…Odin?) at once, because the first thing to disappear was the green eyes of the fox, and I could see the hollows of its skull (briefly) and when I focused on the skull, I could see that only one eye was visible in one of the two eye sockets, and it gleamed with a strange whitish-blue light before it clattered to the ground elsewhere.

Then, I heard the rustling of the leaves of the tree in the wind, and the Loki/Odin Being encouraged me to look at the water — which had somehow suddenly become the Well of Wyrd.

And I could see the water glistening in His hands as He put His hands into it, scooping up some of it as if to show me – but as I was looking at the water cupped between His palms — crystal clear and icy cold – I nervously noticed that the depth of the Well appeared terrifyingly bottomless, spiraling into darkness several feet below/beyond my view of His hands.

But, then oddly, I wanted to put my hands into it too, simply because I sensed that it would be cold and refreshing. I don’t know how, but I could sense its temperature because it ‘smelled’ cold to me. I felt refreshed to even be near it (and well, it was a humid 3 o’clock in the afternoon in Florida at the time of this meditation) but no sooner was I entertaining the thought of how cool the water might actually feel…

… I felt the sensations of wetness/icy coldness from the bottom of my feet up to my knees as if I had been standing in the water myself — but I didn’t actually touch it. It was definitely strange to be feeling the brief, intense sensations of standing in this incredibly cold water, but to look down and see the visual of my feet – in sneakers! – still standing in the grass several feet from the edge of the Well .

Hmm.

But I didn’t spend long puzzling over the impossibility of those sensations before I was immediately distracted by another entirely different sensation

    and it felt like the Loki/Odin Being was touching my face.

I could feel the light sensation of what felt like a hand or fingertips (though it was probably one of the guide’s tapestries that had been hung around the outdoor meditation space, fluttering ever so gently against my face as it blew in the wind).

But nonetheless, I focused on the Loki/Odin Being as He stood in front of me.

I sensed that He was smiling, because He knew (because whenever I meditate, I will always ask Loki if I could be allowed to sense Him by touch). I saw the colors blooming behind my eyes which matches the color of the sound of His voice (this part is difficult to explain!) – and then, I received the download of what He was/They were saying/feeling:

Here you are (You are here.)

I am with you.

I see you.

Hello!

immediately coupled with this immense rush of tingling sensations and warm feeling of Presence – along with this burst of happiness, joy, and welcome, so much like the mutual joy that you feel when you and an old friend/loved one finally see each other after a long absence.

And then, I heard the guide say something along the lines of It’s time to go back now. Make an offering.

So I checked myself – nervously patting down my pockets – and realized suddenly that I had nothing to give!

(I guess, I’d even blurted aloud – I brought nothing but myself! for everyone in the meditation circle to hear…)

But when I looked back at Him/Them, They simply leaned forward, smiling gently, and said:

Give Me your mouth.

So when I did

(and perhaps, again, I’d felt those hung tapestries fluttering against my face and head, but, it is no matter…)

I felt the energy of Them, close and warm and bright and mixed

And it was wonderful.

And when the guide repeated the request of giving an offering before leaving…

I saw the flash-vision of a chocolate chip cookie on a wooden plate…

followed by another brief visual of Loki – squatting on the ground, casually eating a powdered doughnut – with the powdered sugar dusted around His mouth and in His goatee, and He was grinning, satisfied 🙂

And then, upon leaving, I saw the shape of a massive black bird – a vulture? a raven? – against a maroon, sunset sky –

    and They encouraged me to follow it out until the maroon sky became increasingly lighter and brighter until I realized I was back in the tent.

~~~

I love that They worked with the distracting elements of the situation to keep me there, since, as I said, I can’t always completely sink into the meditation experience as much as I would like. (Case in point, I could – at one point — hear the faraway drums of a practicing drum circle outside the meditation, the scattered conversation of folks outside the tent, and once, a little girl’s voice, suddenly exclaim, giggling, Oh, what happened?!)

But, thankfully, I did not let these distractions take me out of the experience this time.

And best of all —  though I didn’t know it – this impromptu guided meditation turned out to be an intensely uplifting experience that I didn’t know that I could have, let alone, the kind of meaningful experience that I needed.

❤