Floating, as free as a bird

See the lights of a neighbor’s house
Now she’s starting to rise
Take a minute to concentrate
And she opens up her eyes

The world was moving she was right there with it and she was
–Talking Heads/And She Was

When I was a very young teenager, I was convinced that we were all held to the Earth by invisible silver threads, and that if we tried both hard enough and not at all (simultaneously), we could break loose from the invisible threads and our souls would be free to leave our bodies and go wherever we wanted.

Sort of a self hypnosis trip into space.

Yes, I was a weird kid. I don’t remember where I got the idea. I’m sure I read it somewhere, or it’s possible that I extrapolated it from something I read. Or I suppose I could even have made it up. There’s no telling.

The end result is that for several months I spent a lot of time trying to leave my body. In the Summer I would spend hours laying in the grass in our front yard trying to leave my body by not trying to leave my body. It involved a lot of breathing deeply and not thinking. Concentrating but not. In retrospect, I was probably meditating.

RAJ would ride up the hill on his bike sometimes, sprawl out next to me and ask me what I was doing.

“Trying to leave my body.”

“Is it working?”
A hand would slide up my shirt and try to unhook my bra.

“I can feel that. I must still be here.” And I’d laugh and do something vaguely indecent. I was just as easily distracted then as I am now.

He never questioned the rationality of me trying to leave my body, but sometimes he’s ask why I wanted to. He is still like that. Curious and un- judgemental. Or maybe he was just more interested on getting in my blouse or pants than he was in my psychic experiments. He seemed genuinely interested in both. Granted, not equally interested.

I’ll have to ask him if he remembers.

These days I still occasionally wish I could leave my body, but I don’t spend any time working on it. Pity how a little thing like disbelief can ruin a fun activity. I wonder if it would still work even if I don’t actually believe it?

What’s the worst that could happen? I’d get to be still and relax.
If I’m lucky, some invisible silver threads that I don’t even believe in would snap and my soul (which I also don’t believe in) would get to go walkabout.

Win win.
I think I’ll give it another try.