Finding Your Fulcrum

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I usually hate it when the right words are already taken, but this time it may have been helpful.  It started when I stopped listening to music while doing my evening Reike.  You see, for the last 30 years or so I have done the same ritual every night before I go to sleep. It is a truncated Reike session that helps me relax and ease into sleep.  Until a week or so ago I would perform the ritual - which involves placing my hands on my head and slowing my breath - while listening to music.  A form of meditation, if you will.

Interestingly, I had noticed that there were times when the music seemed to run counter to relaxation.  You see, you are supposed to shift your hand position every three minutes, and it seemed that knowing where I was in the music would make me impatient to get relaxed - and yes, I realize how oxymoronic that is.  Anyhow, we have one of those “nature sound” generator things by the bed.  It will do rain, surf, wind, summer night, etc., etc.  We often run it at night and so I started just doing my Reike/relaxation/meditation to “summer night.”  It seemed to work quite well, which, naturally, got me thinking.

Thunderstorms, real ones with rain and wind and all that are incredibly somniferous events for me.  Love that word, "somniferous," sleep-inducing; the word itself is somniferous, I’m yawning here typing it.  But again, I digress.  Thunderstorms put me to sleep.  But then I thought about it a bit more.  They don’t actually put me to sleep – they relax me so completely that sleep often follows, but not always.  Same with crickets at night, some music, and, when I was young, the murmur of my parents voices drifting in my window screen as they talked out on the porch.  Some sounds seem to transport me to specific and utterly tranquil places.  The whole storm thing whisks me away to a lake I do not recognize from my “real” life, but is as familiar to me as any place I have ever been:

It is a Northern lake, similar to, but not specifically from, places I have visited in Northern Michigan and Wisconsin.  There is a boathouse rocking between two flanking docks, fragile yet unquestionable in its security from the wind and rain.  I am in a hammock, gently rocked, but not chilled, by the cool breeze. I know it is not real because there are no mosquitoes.  Still, I am quite content to rest wrapped in serene “somniferousness.”

Certain smells – lilac for example, no, not lavender, lilac – does the same thing.  Comfort foods are comfort foods because they, too, bring comfort and that feeling of somniferous well-being.

There is obviously a chord theory/universal resonance issue going on here.  After all, if it is a theory of everything, it has to be a theory of everything.  So, Chordman, how do you explain these seemingly spontaneous onsets of somniferous well-being?  I’m glad you asked.

This is, however, where I began to run into the problem of the right words having already been hijacked.  The thought that originally came to me was that this phenomenon was a wormhole notion.  Wormholes are tunnels through spacetime that allow for nigh unto instantaneous movement across light years of distance.  Spontaneous onsets of somniferous well-being could be similar shortcuts to harmony.  One cuts through lengthy sessions of meditation, reflection, etc., and moves directly to a centered sense of well-being.  Hence, these paths transcend the normal spiritual pathways to enlightenment – they are transcendent.  So I originally thought to call them “transcendors.”  Unfortunately I run into a lot of semantic issues if I follow that path because this is precisely where most of the words have been claimed by other “theories of everything.”  Transcendent, transcendental, transformative, -- all are the “property” of some other worldview.  So even if I could lay claim to transcendors, it would probably seed more confusion than clarity.

I was also having problems with the word “wormhole,” I just don’t like it.  I know, I know – beyond trivial.  But universal harmony asserts that the “thing” is a complete totality – the painting is the wood, the canvas, the paint and the varnish, in addition to the thoughts, emotions and the brushstrokes of the artist.  The map is a real component of the territory, the word is an important aspect of the thing.  So the word “wormhole” had to fit the phenomenon being expressed, and it didn’t.  “Holy Dune, Batman!  Would you look at the size of that wormhole!”  I just couldn’t go there.  So potential confusion in the transcendent camp and a trivial sense of discord with the word wormhole sent me poking around for better discourse to explain the phenomenon in question.  Here’s what I came up with.

A wormhole asserts a movement from one point in space-time to another.  The different locales in the universe, particularly when observed from points removed from the wormhole, lie at great distance from one another.  However, universal harmony asserts that the universe is a single harmonic whole, so it follows that discord is resolved by shifting perspective, not location.  Harmony, if you will, is in the mind of the beholder and is not dependent upon the location of the observer in the cosmos.  Hence, moments of somniferous well-being are functions of perspective, not location.  I need not scour the ends of the earth to find the lake of harmony whose shores welcome me each night, it is always there in my head.

So the various triggers of somniferous well-being do not, wormhole-like, take me anywhere. Rather, they alter my perception of the space I currently occupy. They enable and affirm my recognition of the harmonic universe that surrounds me.  They provide balance.  And, ah ha, that calls forth another concept.  When we think about Archimedes and his lever to move the earth, we do tend to get overwhelmed by the lever.  That is understandable, the scale of the thing would be awesome.  We think less about the fulcrum.  Yet, obviously, without the fulcrum, a lever – no matter how long - is just a board.  It is the fulcrum that enables balance.  Shades of playgrounds past; the yelling softens as light mellows through recess dust. Then, carefully, there is neither teeter nor totter, set the table; there is balance, there is harmony.

So, I have come to this – the thunderstorm, the lilacs, the crickets, some music, and maybe grilled cheese sandwiches – these are my existential fulcra.  They balance my life, they shift my perspective in ways that allow me to simply “be” there in the midst of harmony; calm, balanced and relaxed.  How did Simon and Garfunkel put it?  “All dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep.”  Furthermore, to the extent that constructed representations of those fulcra are accurate; the sounds in the “sleep machine” or lilac candles or infusers, they too can become fulcra, balancing and relaxing, affirming harmony.
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