I sat down on a very comfortable hanging couch. It was suspended by a rope rather than a chain, so it could move freely in every direction—silently, smoothly, without a sound or a ripple.
I closed my eyes and decided to notice the movement.
The movement was very subtle. As I became aware of the couch shifting, I also became aware of what was noticing the movement. With my eyes closed, I could feel the changing position of my body, perhaps through the semicircular canals of the inner ear.
Then I became aware of sound.
It was early morning, and the waterfall across the lake was there in the background. I noticed the faint, high-pitched ringing of tinnitus. It wasn’t annoying or disturbing. It was simply there, another sound in the field of awareness.
A second sound arose from the neighboring property. I couldn’t quite identify it. Perhaps a fan. It was a little louder than the waterfall.
It didn’t matter what it was.
It simply became part of the orchestra.
Then an airplane flew overhead.
The airplane was different from the waterfall. The waterfall was always there, a continuous sound. The airplane arrived, grew louder, passed overhead, and disappeared.
As it passed, something unexpected happened.
I was suddenly in the backyard of my childhood home in Bellrose, Queens.
It was a small backyard, perhaps forty feet wide and thirty feet deep. We grew strawberries, potatoes, and carrots. There was a pussy willow tree and a clothesline in the middle of the yard.
I spent hours there with my dog, Brownie.
I built small airplanes with .049 engines and flew them around the backyard. We had a small rubber swimming pool. In the fall, we raked the leaves into a giant pile, put a blanket over it, and jumped on it.
I remember lying in a lounge chair in that backyard, watching airplanes fly overhead. LaGuardia Airport wasn’t far away.
The sound of the airplane had carried me back there.
And then to Rockaway Beach, watching airplanes pass over the shoreline.
But the important thing was not simply that I remembered my childhood.
Something had changed.
Before the airplane, I had been perfectly fine. I was settled. I was okay.
But I wasn’t in a particularly happy state.
The airplane sound and the memories it triggered changed the entire tone of my experience.
My body felt different.
My mind felt different.
The emotional atmosphere had changed.
I had been bumped from simply being okay into happiness.
And I became aware of how fortunate I was.
A sound had carried me into happy memories.
But people are constantly being bumped by sounds, smells, sights, and sensations into other memories. Sometimes they are bumped into fear, sadness, anger, regret, or old pain. And sometimes they remain there, caught in the emotional state that the memory has produced.
Why had I been bumped into happiness?
Was it karma?
Was it the result of practice?
Was it simply the particular history of my life?
I don’t know.
But I felt grateful.
Grateful that, on this morning, the airplane had carried me into those memories.
I returned to the meditation.
I became aware of my body against the couch. My back. My legs. The pressure where my body met the cushions. An itch here and there.
I thought about something Rupert Spira had said about contact between the body and a chair.
The mind says:
My back is against the chair.
But what is actually experienced?
There is pressure.
There is contact.
There are sensations.
The mind organizes these sensations into a recognizable picture and gives it a name: my back against the chair.
It is somewhat like the dots of a newspaper photograph. The dots themselves are not a recognizable picture. The mind organizes them into an image.
Perhaps the body is experienced in a similar way.
Pressure here.
Contact there.
Sensation somewhere else.
And the mind organizes it all into:
I am sitting on a couch.
Then a thought arose.
I wanted to get up and make French toast with melted cheese for my grandchild.
I had made it for my children when they were young, and they loved it. Now, suddenly, in the happiness of those memories, I wanted to make it again.
I returned to the breath.
I would do that soon.
The breath was the thread running through the entire meditation.
It was the conductor of the orchestra.
The sounds could come and go.
The waterfall could remain.
The tinnitus could be present.
The airplane could enter and disappear.
A memory could arise.
A thought about French toast could appear.
The body could be felt as pressure and contact.
But the breath was always there to return to.
The breath gave the meditation its rhythm.
It was not necessarily the loudest instrument. It did not need to be.
It simply kept the orchestra together.
The waterfall.
The tinnitus.
The airplane.
The memories.
The body.
The thoughts.
The breath.
All of them were appearing in awareness.
And then I wondered about the lake.
The lake was still there.
Was it outside me?
Or was it inside me now?
I had begun by thinking that I was sitting beside the lake, observing it.
But the longer I sat, the less certain that seemed.
The lake had entered through the sound of the waterfall.
The airplane had entered through the ears and opened the door to memory.
The memory had changed the tone of my body.
The change in the body had changed my emotional state.
The breath had gathered my attention and brought it back.
The lake was not simply something I was observing.
It was participating in the experience of being me.
I thought I was playing the lake.
But the lake was playing me.
The sounds were the orchestra.
The breath was the conductor.
And I was not outside the music, listening to it.
I was part of the music being played
Spiritual Gravity 