White Lady

Painting by Marina Petro 

I was eating dinner by my lone self in a huge hall (imagine a portion of Hogwarts dining hall, uhmm...more or less a quarter of it).  I only switched on the bulb directly above me and kept the corridor lights dim.

Adjacent the area is the foyer enclosed by a glass window which allowed me to view the garden outside.  I caught a glimpse of someone in white moving in the garden.  "That's weird", I thought.  I knew that everybody's meditating upstairs.  I squirmed on my seat to directly face the window 5 feet away.  The lady in white stared at me.  I quickly shifted my position and turned away.  In my peripheral view, I saw the lady move as well.  I faced the window again.  She did the same.  At this point, I was amazed that I'm not shrieking my lungs out.  (Has meditating made me this calm?)  Slowly, I moved closer and looked intently to gaze at my own face reflected on the glass window.

I realized that in life, the scariest thing of all is facing my own shadow.  Before, I would do all sorts of things to escape it- play, party, work, sleep, watch tv, work some more.  When I'm alone, the thoughts of what happened, what could have been, what if, and what will happen just kept on coming.  I would drown the voice in my head with incessant busyness or sleep to escape.

It's easier to just move away from it.  Or so I thought.

The issues just kept on piling up and and sooner or later it hounded me.  End result, my life got stuck then it spiralled down.  I felt lost and empty.  When I hit rock bottom, I turned to spirituality.

There, I learned how to face my own demons, hold it by its horns, and purl it around before throwing it into oblivion.  End result:  a significant decrease of baggage thus I now tread through life lightly and happily as I focus on what really matters.