Chapter 9: Training

Julian touches my forehead. His fingers are long, and cold, drawing me into the coldness. I can feel my body on the table. My bones. Like I have become a skeleton, suspended by gravity. The air around me has a smell. Incense, maybe. Mara, probably. Mara seems like the type to burn incense. Julian seems like the type to not notice, or say anything about incense. Something about the smell makes the air seem like soil. Like decay. But not necessarily in a bad way. Maybe in a bad way. I don’t know what it is, this feeling that we’re in a cemetery. Cold, fleshless skeletons in a cemetery. It’s not entirely unpleasant. There’s power in it. The power to wander outside the body, for my bones to leave and wander around. The knowledge that we’re already dead, already decaying bodies, not made to last. There’s freedom in it. Peace. Julian touches my forehead and the energy in my forehead densifies, becomes a sharp solid with edges, just outside my body. I take a deep breath. And a deep breath out.

This is my third session with Julian since I asked him to train us. Both Nate and I have been having weekly sessions. They never involve much talking. Julian, to my chagrin, doesn’t believe in talking. Something about the words overshadowing the experiences. Words feeling intrinsically like an extraction, like an attempt to make the sacred mundane. Like maybe nothing that can be put into words is worth having. Instead we lie on the table, feeling. Interacting wordlessly, in dimensions previously unknown. Being pulled along by a thread that’s hard to explain, hard to put into words. Experiences follow each other and patterns shift in a way that isn’t linear or consequentialist but somehow feels intrinsically satisfying. Like we’re on a path, walking towards something. Walking into the mystery. Into the depth.

Nate and I talk about our experiences often. We share a language now, one we’re cocreating bit by bit to make up for Julian’s lack of talking. The dissolving that feels like it’s halfway between a mode of being and an entity in its own right. Like something that’s both part of us and something we’re moving into. Not quite an energy, not quite a feeling, not quite a psychological part. Something new. The golden thread that starts at the belly button and tugs gently on us, pulling us deeper into the unknown. The sense of surfing our own experience, like an ocean of black waves. Something we’ve been calling the water of life, after one of my favorite kids’ novels, the Neverending Story. The empathy that comes and turns everything into tears of compassion. We’re naming things left and right, then changing the names, then changing them again. Sometimes Julian humors us. Sometimes he doesn’t.

In between sessions with Julian Nate and I practice with each other. Practice talking to the void, like Julian has instructed us to do. He hasn’t instructed us to do it together, but somehow it’s easier that way. Let’s us point things out to each other. Interpret each other’s experiences. “What do you think it means?” we ask, each time we encounter something new, something that’s yet different from our list of previously encountered phenomena. Nate literally keeps a list. Science training, I suppose. “What is this?” we ask, each time states ocurr after a session with Julian. “Can you feel it too?” I’m vaguely thinking about naming this state, this state of being a wandering skeleton in a cemetery. Wondering what Nate will think, when I tell him after the session.

Julian touches my forehead again, prompting me to pay attention. The density at my forehead hurts now, almost like a headache. Like something that’s too hard, too dense, is trying to embed itself into the softness of my being. The softness of my forehead. Somehow the rest of my forehead feels soft, like jelly. Like fatty flesh, buttery and squishy. I feel disgust. Or maybe whatever the black dense matter is feels disgust. I’m wondering vaguely if the black density belong to Julian, or to me. Whether that question even makes sense. Can energies belong to a person? Or are they simply there, like a big ecosystem of energies with unclear boundaries, entangled and intertwined beyond recognizable individuality? I think vaguely about asking Julian what he thinks. And about whether the question is aligned with what we’re doing, or not.

When I return my attention to my forehead the black solid is still there, still trying to embed itself into my squishy, fleshy forehead. It’s difficult to pay attention to. Somehow the two different densities can’t co-exist and end up feeling like two incompatible ways of being. Like two dimensions, two parallel lines that can never touch. Not in Euclidean geometry, at least. I wonder densely whether experience has Euclidean geometry. Or geometry at all. Whether that’s just a lens. How much potential consciousness has, to be whatever we ask it to be. Whether we even have the right to ask. Or whether that’s simply another ego attempt at control, insubstantial and doomed to ultimate failure. Julian talks about the ego sometimes. I don’t think he likes it much. The painful density pulses at my forehead, pulling my attention back into my process. The room still feels like a cemetary. Or a coffin. Like something is dying and unhappy about it. I vaguely wonder if it’s me. Maybe I’m just noticing what it’s like to be a person in a body that’s aging and has nowhere to go but towards decay. I look at Julian and wrap my silence around me, like a cloak, or a peaceful blanket. It’s velvety and black, like the night sky. Comforting. Peaceful.

“Leia”, Julian interrupts my process of cocooning in the velvety darkness. “What are you feeling?” I stare at him, suspicious of the timing of his question. Why now? I think. “Velvety darkness”, I say out loud. He nods, as if he already knew that. Maybe he did. Probably he did. “What does it feel like?” he asks. Two questions in a row, I think. Uncharacteristic. “It’s soft”, I say. “Peaceful. Like I’m floating in the night sky. Like I’m wrapped in the night sky, like a blanket.” I think about telling him more. Wonder if that’s something I should do, or if it’s just my ego, wanting attention. Then I decide to risk it. “There’s something under the blanket”, I say. “Something I don’t like. Like a sense of decay. A smell of decay. And fear.” Julian looks taken aback. Like he didn’t expect that. “Hmmm”, he murmurs, and withdraws his hand from my forehead. The black density vanishes. My head still hurts, though. I feel a mixture of relief and sorrow, as if part of me already misses the black solid. I seem to hate it, but also want it to continue. Want to continue hating it. The smell of decay has lifted. I’m still not quite used to how vividly experiential these things are, these experiences that aren’t physically induced, but are mind. How odd, for mind to be transmitted from one person to another somehow. How odd, for mind to have a smell.

Our session ends, and Julian and I leave the little office. Standing upright is odd sometimes, after lying on the massage table for two hours. It’s odd today. Standing in front of the door, in the little waiting area, Julian hands out advice on how to process after the session. “Stay with the velvety darkness”, he advises. “See where it takes you. I’ll see you next week.” I nod my goodbyes, then leave the space, walking outside. The fresh air is nice and makes my head feel a bit better. The trees around me have finally dropped their leaves and look bare. Naked. It smells like winter. Overhead the sun still shines, the beautiful Bay Area sun that never quite leaves us, even in winter. November weather. Slowly I walk to my car and drive home.