Hello,
And thank you for listening.
This is something a little bit different than I normally do.
Running a podcast more than just the meditations,
I usually put on something of a face and act,
And with the nature of the Blue Path meditations,
I wanted to do something a little more personal.
So this is a bit of a talk and a discussion just about why I did them and why they are a bit darker than everything else you will find,
Or most stuff else,
I don't claim to have listened to everything on Insight Timer.
But this was a thread immediately picked up on,
And a number of people have reviewed them as not their thing,
And I definitely appreciate that because that's specifically why they're on here.
I thought it would be fun to do sort of a.
.
.
Just a simple guided meditation,
And that was the initial one.
And a few nights later,
I woke up in a cold sweat having panic nightmares,
Not really tying to anything,
Just utterly terrified of death.
And the only thing I can really compare it to is I've been skydiving exactly once,
And wasn't really scared during the skydive,
But I remember falling out and sort of feeling this lurch in my stomach and just sort of this general uncomfortableness,
And I remember thinking,
Oh,
I don't really like this,
Can I get back in the plane now?
And that thought has just been so amusingly ridiculous of you just flung yourself out into open void,
And the first thing is like,
Eh,
I'm done,
Can I get back in the plane?
And I kind of oddly felt that about life.
There was something in the sort of looming emptiness of death that made me kind of just not want to die,
And not scared of death,
But almost more this panicked pointlessness where I just wanted to step out of the whole thing,
Negate the entire existence of it.
And there wasn't anything that really led me to that.
There was no life change,
No depression,
No loss.
It just sort of hit one day.
After that,
There've been sort of a few other reflections,
Recollections,
Some family deaths.
Also a dear friend and teacher of mine has had a stroke.
He hasn't passed away yet,
But he's not in a good place and quickly headed towards that road and has survived longer than I expected.
But he followed a very shamanistic bent and has taught me a lot of things.
And there was something in wanting to honor him that started the sequence of what the Blue Path is.
And as you may guess,
The character in it is deceased.
That is sort of the whole point of the location.
But where he or she,
It doesn't have a gender,
It's just a sort of ephemeral being that is you to some degree,
That being wanders through other allegories.
Each story I tried to label something of a hint,
But also keep it hidden and quiet.
There is a meaning in just about every place there.
I'm not going to tell them all today,
But the first one is probably the most immediately personal.
There was a book I remember reading,
I don't know what it was called or what it was even about,
Who knows which sort of group or practice it followed from,
But it describes sort of making a meditation space.
And mentally,
Not a physical place,
But something mental where you would go each time.
And that first episode of the Blue Path is mine.
And so I share it with you,
I hope you enjoy it.
Feel free to use it.
Beyond that,
Each discussion is something I personally have struggled with or have watched a struggle.
And all of them tie to that theme because in this sort of panicked state,
This scared,
Confused,
Just wanting to be done with everything situation I found myself in,
The most frustrating piece of it was getting,
Oh it'll be okay,
Oh it's all okay,
Everything's fine,
Oh things will work out for the best,
Oh it'll be alright,
Was such an empty promise and throughout my entire life I've never really clung to that idea of everything will just get better,
Everything will be fine,
Just trust in it and things will get better.
I've always found that very,
Very,
Not just empty,
But kind of half-assed.
It's not acknowledging how hard the world can be and how much pain there is.
And so even as a teenager that didn't mean anything to me,
It just felt empty.
I always wanted something that acknowledged that pain and here I found myself in a place to discuss that and present an observer,
But also an interpreter,
Understanding those challenges,
That suffering in a way that still acknowledges you don't have to be affected by it.
You don't have to take in that pain to move beyond it and to understand and appreciate that it is there.
And so my goal with the Blue Path is hopefully to help you work through whatever struggles you're facing and find a place of peace even in those hard times.
Thank you for listening.
This is Easton,
And I'm not entirely a work of fiction.
