Up Up Up

Propped against the sturdy Glastonbury Tor, I slowly unwrap myself from a cocoon of a brief meditation on the top of this mystical hill in South West England. I just about come out and drop back again. It’s gooey like hot caramel. My body is trembling a little. A very earthy feeling comes, tinged with wind and sounds all around.

A man giving a lecture about the Holy Grail, birds, bum is cold against the stone, the foot gone to sleep, a choir of birds, a child chirping in Russian, wind against my face, so happy I wore my hood, breath in and out... It’s similar to the state when sleep is no more, but awakening has not fully come yet. Similar, but enriched with hearing, feeling and being here and now. I open my eyes, vibrant blue and green around. Something comes up from inside, around solar plexus, up up up and hahahaha becomes a rolling laughter! Out loud! Giggling and laughing, loud and not so loud! It just bursts out, I am simply helping along by letting my body laugh. It feels so normal and natural to laugh like that, with no apparent reason. Thanks to Osho, I can now allow this joy to become a free laughter even though people around might be freaked out by it.

Talking about freaked out – I’ve got audience! A thin man in his sixties, piercing blue eyes, binoculars around his neck, is tucked against the wind in the corner of the Tor next to me.

“May I ask what’s been happening to you?” he inquires as soon as I look at him.

“Are you ok? You seemed a bit distressed,” he continues.

A big grin appears on my face: “All is fine,” I giggle.

“I’ve been coming here for a while now, but haven’t seen such a peculiar reaction. Crying, then laughing... what has been happening to you? Is it only here you feel this way or in other places too?”

“Other places too, sometimes. It just happens sometimes in meditation,” I try to share. He is set to figure out the mystery of meditation.

“How can you order your mind to stop?” he continues intensely. We reach a peak in our chat, and he inquires, “Do you believe in God?”

Most of his questions are unanswered and unanswerable. I continue laughing from the heart, there is nothing to say. This encounter of ours will be captured in his diary that he’s been writing for years, he says. As we say good bye he apologizes in the most English way and says he didn’t want to pry. His gaze has softened, smiling and relaxed. Who knows, whom we can meet on top of Glastonbury Tor.