ladychatterley
Posts: 132
Joined: 3/10/2006 Status: offline
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I'm weird, but for me (and I have never been pushed that far) it is very similar to meditation. When you meditate, and you know you are going to be there for 4 hours (the most I've ever done) with a 5 minute walking meditation break every half hour, for the first 10 minutes I'm fine "Oh look at me, I'm so enlightened, I'm really in the present moment." And then "Fuck, saying I'm in the present moment isn't being in the present moment" and that intellectual analysis lasts another 20 minutes and then the first break is all wasted about not 'doing' it right. The next half hour I mostly spend saying "I can't do this" "How much longer?" "This is interminable" "I'm leaving." But, for just a few moments I get little flashes where I am in the present moment. I don't realize it at that moment--they're just flashes. But I get there by focusing on my breath, not the intellectualized process of it, but the visceral feeling of it in my body. And it gets a little easier. Now, I've not been pushed to safeword (at least here, meditation is another story). I've stayed safely in the liminality of pain/pleasure without going too far from that nebulous place where you aren't sure, but I've been pushed to "I don't know if I can do this" and, for me, it is a much easier and quicker way to get to the same place than meditation--you have to be in the present moment because the endorphins and sensations just shut down the intellect quickly and completely, and you get those little glimpses of annihilation, which is really just another word for enlightenment. But, on a tangent, can I just say that I HATE being expected to count! I mean, if the whole point is to surrender to the experience (which is the whole point for me) why should I count, which is specifically about getting the whole thing over with!
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