August 8, 2015

deprivation (n.) My first floating experience

After rolling out my thoughts in my last post about my meditative practice of "wallowing by walking" (i.e. indulging in thoughts about my personal drama with scenic backdrop so as to stay a sane citizen), I realize much of this thinking came not only from one of my walks, but from the effects of my first "float" in a sensory deprivation chamber. Sounds scary. And it was - at least, until I floated.

My First Floating Experience

I climbed into the tank and shut the door with quite a bit of enthusiasm and excitement given a chance to lie in quiet for 90 minutes. I didn't realize though how claustrophobic I would feel - and not necessarily as a result of being shut inside a tank of saline water in complete darkness.
deprive (v.) mid-14c., from Old French depriver, from Medieval Latin deprivare, from Latin de- "entirely" (see de-) + privare "release from".
Deprived of my senses, I became much more aware of not only my thoughts, but also where they resided - inside an equally dark and claustrophobic place: My mind. The real claustrophobia arose from the trapped sense I felt from being inside my head with nowhere to go.

Losing sight and sound meant losing sense of space and time, two things that give us evidence of our existence. "I am here and I am now." Except without outside markers and stimuli to orient me, I became the compass; the "here" and the "now" became much more... conceptually tangible in a sense. In floating physically, my body melted into its surroundings and I became numb to it (a bit of an oxymoron maybe). I instead became, simply, a floating series of thoughts. Completely released of my body and the physical world and its stories, I was left with myself, with memory as my only guide back to my identity.
private (adj.) late 14c., "not shared, individual; not open to the public;" from Latin privatus "set apart, belonging to oneself (not to the state), peculiar, personal;" past participle of privare "to separate, deprive," from privus "one's own, individual," fro *prai-, *prei-, from root *per- "forward, through."
Once the memories gave way to streams of consciousness and dissociative thoughts, I was in a trance. What's odd is that while never having ever felt more inside myself and aware of "me," I also never felt more incognizant of myself. The instant that I lost a sense of my body, in retrospect, I think was the instant I fell into a trance and forgot about myself. Or perhaps I was just paralyzed from fear...
trance (n.) late 14c., "state of extreme dread or suspense," also "a half-conscious or insensible condition, state of insensibility to mundane things," from Old French transe "fear of coming evil," originally "coma, passage from life to death" (12c.), from transir "be numb with fear," originally "die, pass on," from Latin transire "cross over" (see transient).
Perhaps it was the most privacy I've ever felt - because for a time, I couldn't even access myself. Time just moved without me for some time (ha!), until my internal clock woke me in the darkness, just moments before the sounding of the music that marked the end of my 90-minute session.

It's a fleeting condition this utter privacy and separateness from a world that does its best to help us take root. Perhaps we cross over to some place beyond the curtain in these kind of mindfull moments, but we can't stay there. Something inside wakes us up.
transient (adj.)c. 1600, "transitory, not durable," from Latin transientem "passing over or away," from trans- "across" + ire "to go" (see ion (n.) - 1834, coined by chemist Michael Faraday, from Greek neuter present participle of ienai "go, walk." So called because ions move toward the electrode of opposite charge.)
I've written about my tension between the observed life and the performed life. I now wonder if this tension is a function of our movement along a continuum: between sensory deprivation and sensory overload. Always moving between the outside and our inside, thoughts never stopping blood always pumping, we perpetually move between two opposites in a helpless effort to reconcile what I am tempted to just call magic.
magic (n.) late 14c., "art of influencing events and producing marvels using hidden natural forces;" from Old Persian magush, "to be able, to have power" (see machine (n.)- Middle French c. 1540s, "structure of any kind")
We're part of some kind of machine, that's for sure, and one that isn't necessarily physical; it's floating out there somewhere, too, just like us. Maybe if we release ourselves from always wanting to control everything, we'd better tap into the flow and let it take care of us, guide us in our walks and better navigate this general conundrum as we continue floating around...
float (v.) from *flot-, extended form of root *pleu- "to flow" from pluvial, from Greek plein "to navigate."
Posted by vishmili at 2:33 AM
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shorthand (n.)