I woke up 9 hours into my Trans-Atlantic flight to the sound of mid-flight snacks being served. The Flight Tracker indicated we were flying over Georgetown, a dot in the Southern Atlantic Ocean. Time at origin was 0330 and time at destination was 1030am. I drank a cup of coffee and set my meditation timer to 45 minutes.
I became aware of the sensations of the body and focused on how electric these sensations are when we ignore concepts. There are no hands. Just a sea of tingling and prickling. The feet are alive with vibration and pulsation. Gradually, the whole body becomes an electric field, an amorphous wave of sensations. The boundaries between my skin and the surface of the plane seat dissolved. Where did my skin end and the seat begin? Where did my scalp end and the air around my head begin? I felt suspended in mid air without forward motion. I was in transit. In this Bardot of ‘in-betweenness’, I had left my departure city but had not yet arrived at the destination. My brain conceptually understood that I was sitting on a plane that was moving south east in the middle of the Ocean but my direct experience told me I was an energy field suspended above the earth.
The flight attendant came rustling by collecting ‘trash’ and offering water. My neighbor across the isle chatted and shifted in her seat. The man behind me coughed. The background aircraft sounds came into consciousness. A combination of high pitched tones and low pitched engine rumblings. A child cried. Someone opened the window shutter and bright light streamed into the darkness on the plane.
There were two co-existing realities. I was traveling towards sunny Africa in a jet plane with 100 other people AND I was an intricate bundle of energy, seamlessly connected to everything in the Universe.