Herding cats

That's what meditation feels like. My thoughts. Feline and persistent, paws and claws, purring and yowling, demanding attention and distraction, reassurance and pursuit. You can't confine cats. Hold tight and they scrabble to escape, all febrile action and determination. Push them away and they return, backs arched in kittenish seduction. Eyes on mine so I can't look away, grasping hold and then in flight. Unmanageable creatures with their independent indomitable wills.

The idea is to watch them, not attach. But before I've noticed, they have me in their thrall, leading me up garden paths of fancy or fear. And then, I know I should focus attention upon them and see them dissolve into darkness, evanescent and transient ephemera as they are.

My will is nothing to theirs. They are cunning and committed, alluring and attractive, yet essentially free. I am bound by determinism; while they are quantum creatures of chance.

There was a spell when I meditated lying on the floor in my bedroom. It would start with the cats in real attack. One jumping over my prone form, from left to right, right to left; the other playing at my ankles with his scrunchy toy; and the dog panting in my face, licking at my nose or fingers with a peculiar, fond delicacy. After five minutes, ten, they'd settle. The cats on my chest and stomach, the dog at my side and we'd reside, and like the animals, my mind would quieten too. The shimmer behind my closed eyelids and the sounds of traffic and occasional voices outside my window. The house is still. The world is stilled in its turning.

Briefly, a few times, I experienced a zooming away from self. A sense of just the raw awareness. The acceptance and a kind of joyful freedom of experiencing just what that moment offered. No feeling of taking a stand for or against the moment. No sense of being in judgment. No sense, really, of being there. Just of being.

Yet I experienced it. If I wasn't there, how did I experience it? An illusion? Or the peeling back of illusion? The long time meditators have their theories about this. And they seem to think it's a 'good thing'. If one spent long enough practicing, one could experience it more. Perhaps much of the time. Perhaps on tap. And for why? Because it feels good? Does it do any good? They'll tel you it's worth it. Well, of course they would: they've invested hours and months and years in sitting around chasing cats to get there. They'd feel pretty darn stupid if they claimed all that effort was wasted. This conforms to a well-known cognitive bias - something like the investment bias - that we're all prone to. The more we've invested in something - effort, money time - the more we'll claim it's important.

Still, you can by-pass the whole tedious system of sitting by taking psychedelics, apparently. Those who've experienced it by taking drugs claim the changed consciousness is worth it too. And no investment bias there. But maybe there's something like a transgression bias.

I sound like a cynic. Well, yes. I guess I am. I've had a few strange experiences in the course of my life, and I guess I'm glad I've had them. they have added something. I mean, I guess I am aware that consciousness comes in different shades and textures. It doesn't always wear these everyday clothes. That's enriching and interesting, subjectively. And I suppose that I feel encouraged to explore to the extent that there are places to go in consciousness that are somewhat altered.

For all my scepticism though, there is one experience that I do think was useful. I remember being in some kind of passionate argument with a loved one, the sort of emotional turmoil I used to go in for as a young woman. I recall hearing a voice or experiencing the manifestation of a thought. It said, 'You know, you don't have to be furious and hysterical now. You don't have to. You certainly don't have to say that thing that you're going to say which is going to escalate this whole argument exponentially. It's in your power, you know. You can just walk away. You can choose not to make things worse.' I listened with wonder and awe. I say listened, but it was like an immediate awareness of the content. Genuinely, I felt awe. And I knew it was true. I had that choice. Or I felt I had. But I didn't take it. I carried on, putting the knife in and escalating the argument.

So. An option was offered. By another part of me, a part of me that didn't have much purchase. A part of me like a spider web diamonded with dew but that I could just swipe away. How free was my will then? Was there any chink of freedom? Not as such... not on the level of physics and biochemistry. And yet, the freedom that matters, at the level of the person, was starting to mature into being. That voice, I hear it more. That observer self or witness state, that meta-awareness, gives me the opportunity to get off the tramlines of habit and reactivity.

It's like the string you can dangle to lead the kitten in the direction of your own choosing.