Getting aligned.

I'm taking a Spirituality and Literature class this semester, and it's much more spirituality than literature. And I mean, a lot more. We start every class period with a 5 -10 minute meditation phase and talk about various religions and their routes to awakening and ego death. The literature is by various Naropa professors and Eckhart Tolle, and etc.

For a girl who's kind of blocked off the spiritual side of me, it's very interesting and actually enlightening. I'm a worrier, and the meditation gives me a chance to shut that part of my brain off, and I've actually started visualizing my aura as a really intense lilac color - someone more awakened please fill me in on what that means.

Anyway, for a cynical mysticist, I'm actually taking this stuff seriously. I've started to wonder what enlightenment is, and if I can reach it. But first, I have to move chairs.

Does anyone else pick a spot deliberately in the beginning of the year, and stay there? I hate to move - when I change my vantage point, I listen differently and I feel uncomfortable. Other people seem to stay at least in regions, but me, I like my seat.

Unfortunately at the beginning of this semester, I sat next to someone snarky and uninterested. As far as I can tell, he's had training in meditation and is very knowledgeable about the Jewish faith. That could be really great for this class, but -- it's not. He thinks he knows more than our (very cute, very old, and very hippie) teacher and takes every opportunity to butt into her (very vague) teachings and tell her what she - and the rest of us - are doing wrong. More often than not, he directs his under-his-breath comments at me, and I'm left politely shrugging or nodding as noncommitally as I can. He mumbles and shifts and taps his fingers while we're silently meditating, breaking my concentration, and chuckles when someone says something that he obviously thinks is stupid.

There are also people in the class that are milking this meditation thing for all the class time it's worth. "Maybe we should try for longer this time?" "Could we talk about lying down before we meditate?" "Does anyone have a drum?" until we are nearly out of time for the day, which isn't exactly productive but doesn't bother me.

There are two people, though, who seem generally open to the experience of just learning. Our professor is obviously a little addled, but they seem to appreciate that and find the wisdom in what she says. One is a guy who speaks about his experiences in lucid dreaming (to the general disbelief of the class) and the other is a girl who actually did bring a drum - and played steady beats in helping us with our meditation. She's read Tolle and she's traveled the world, and she absolutely eats up everything our professor says with a smile.

My gut instinct keeps telling me to ask this girl out for coffee.

But I'm stubborn, and I can't bring myself to move away from Mr. Grumpy and over to someone open and, who I think is willing to make new friends and talk about life in a positive way.


And I've realized that's how my life is, too. I know I was just talking about talking to new people and really feeling smarter and better about my life than when I was that rowdy college experience that constitutes the cultural norms. I need to get out of my routine, get out of my house and off my computer and go out into the world! It's not that I'm scared, exactly. It's that I always forget about the tiny of sliver of light that each new person brings into my world. I focus, instead, on the safe - but very dark - darkness that is routine and monotony.

A friend of mine, recently acquired, told me today that he really started spending time with me only because, "You didn't know me, and I didn't know you."

Instead of being mock offended (my usual reaction to most anything that's not a compliment) that he wasn't immediately drawn to me for my wit or charm, I accepted it.

Really, why does anyone go out of their way to make new friends if not for that fact? I love the people in my life. My friends and family are the absolute best people I can imagine. I don't really need more people in my life. But each new person and each new experience opens me up in a way that those amazing people haven't so far.

I've felt myself change so much more in the last month than I had for the first two and a half years of college, because instead of aligning myself with people that are, if not completely negative, at least living in what's "supposed to be" right for them, rather than what's really good. And who knows, maybe that cultural norm is what is really what's good for them, but it's not for me. I'm beginning to figure out that my life may not be so normal. Maybe Europe, maybe a commune, maybe a European commune? I don't know.

But I'm not going to let my routine keep me from finding out.