AWAKENING ON A TWO-WAY STREET

"Holy crap!" I exclaimed to the void when thunder, practically in my bedroom, roused me out of my early morning dream. I'd been resting well, having cleared all work-related duties from my conscience and having the weekend to pack before leaving Monday morning on my Korean Air flight to Beijing via Seoul.

An odd office moment on Thursday enhanced my anticipation. Our health insurance carrier (AKA, health care provider) had scheduled a health education presentation. I usually attend these sessions about nutrition or exercise or proper self-treatment --things all promoted in the interest of "containing" health care costs, something I understand because 25 years ago I used to work for this particular carrier. The idea is that the more the health care provider/insurance company does to "educate" the policy holder, the lower costs will be. I am not sure this is a proven concept.

I was a little leery this time because the session wasn't by the usual charming, fit, and handsome young man (who usually tells us things we already know but in an engaging guilt-inducing manner). But the topic was intriguing: "Meditation: A Modern Approach to Ancient Wisdom." Modern, of course, means western and scientific, but still, it seemed like a good excuse to get away from my desk for an hour. Meditation was being promoted, with the sanction of the American Medical Association, the American Heart Association, and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (an arm of the National Institutes of Health) as a stress-relieving (and thus heart-healthy) technique. Not too many of the staff took the time for the brown bag -- desk slaves slammed by deadlines. "I would have liked to come, but...". If I was the CEO I would have made it mandatory that the entire staff participate. But the CEO didn't attend either. (But his administrative assistant did.)

It was a nice overview of something my China trips have been about, although the insurance company educator, who seemed to have some background in neuroscience, was quick to point out that this was not being presented as any spiritual exercise. (That was part of the "ancient" concept.) No slouch, the charming, fit, and energetic older man reviewed some classic techniques (breath counting, visualization, affirmations, mindfulness), citing The Relaxation Response from 1975 and the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn. (No neidan or Wang Liping here.)

The health educator led the desperate little group (mostly from the accounting department) in some basic breath counting ("1 to 10 is good, if you can do 11 to 20 you have reached the meditative state," he claimed); some affirmations (I am confident, beautiful, etc., appealing to the HR staff), and some mindfulness ("Unwrap the Hershey's miniature--unless you are allergic to nuts or chocolate--and slowly savor it."). Actually, I'd never noticed how well-polished and shiny a Mr. Goodbar could be. And you can make it last a lot longer when you're not simultaneously slaving at your desk.

I had already become one of the interactive talkative persons in the group, being the same age as the presenter and the only one familiar with some of his antiquated allusions (W.C. Fields, patent medicine, Proust) when I made an observation based on something my Chinese neidan teacher had asked me last year.

"Are you meditating always?" Or maybe lao shi said "always meditating." Whatever. Though I suspect he might have meant "regularly," I have been thinking always since then of the notion of "always" meditating.

"You know," I said to the health instructor,"if you practice deep meditation it makes the mindfulness stuff come more easily. And mindfulness makes the deep meditation easier. It's like you're meditating always, these techniques become a two-way street."

"Ah," he said, "that's enlightenment! Everybody, talk to her." I don't think this decreases any of the deductibles on my health care plan, but later, the person who is revising business cards to reflect the new office address asked me to verify my title.

"Just put 'Enlightened One'," I joked. She had also attended the session.

"Like a certification," she said. "Certified Enlightened One. CEO!"

In the meantime, wandering about this two-way street, my attention was called to something I said just previously in "Miswiring," that I'd come to rely on my car radio when I was "tired of thinking my own thoughts." (Ah, the two-way street of blog comments, something not everyone likes, but I appreciate the dialogue, the observations. I suppose I might enjoy chat rooms and IMs, but that seems too fleeting and noisy, too much like the office.)

My blog commenter quite rightly pointed out that I might myself be a little "miswired" at the moment, and this made me more convinced that it is time to make this trip back to Wudang for a little adjustment. Hardly a CEO (that's just a title, a position of control and arrogance all too often), I'm just trying to meditate always, trying NOT to be thinking my own thoughts all the time.

But I do have a couple of trivial puzzling thoughts about enlightenment on this early stormy morning, awakened before dawn by thunder and, yes, lightning:

1. How do I get my health insurer to subsidize my trip in the interest of health maintenance and stress relief?
2. How do I clean under the keys of the keyboard of this MacBook Pro, across which I splashed a glass of red wine, and now the "q,w,e,a,s,d,z,x,c" section of the qwerty chiclets is dimmed. I can touch-type well enough, but the lit keyboard enhances writing in the dark. (They say red wine is good for your heart health, right?)

Time to brew the coffee, smell it (slowly, slowly), get a haircut, shop for travel necessities, prior to tomorrow's packing exercise, to be followed by the opportunity for 13 hours of meditation at 30,000 feet.