Seeing Through The Veil - A Very Indian Samhain

Almost Asleep - Indefinitely - The Enigmatic Threshold 

Sleeping at odd times leads to major disorientation. On the other hand for me, most times a night’s sleep has been very hard won. I have started to believe that in truth I need and seek, both as passport to a good night’s sleep, and for its ability to open me to the creative forces that I need as a writer, a yoga nidra poised on the threshold between zones, where I have a comfortable degree of control coupled with the right level of excitement. Most times, the seemingly irresistible night’s sleep-call as I earlier mentioned, claims me only to betray me once I am in bed. Sometimes even the journey towards bed wakes me up. And I realize I have been on the verge of reversing it all, not to return to work or play some more, but to take another try for the bliss of the threshold that was all too brief. A zone way more delicious than sleep itself! 

Poised in The Almost Asleep State

I realized that these could be my struggles to discover a new form of meditation in which I can feel poised in a trance-like state and continue to write (you can see how obsessive writing, and now writing really well, has become) with eyes half closed. I have experienced unexpectedly meaningful flashes of writing during those brief brushes with the limina, that could never have happened while wide awake. I have caught myself doing this for short stretches. What if I could prolong those stretches? If I could hold myself in that zone over a period of time I would probably come out one fine moment and realize I’ve written half a book if not the whole. 

The Veil

As Samhain-Halloween approaches, I start to think of this zone as a veil! A veil between realms at its thinnest through which I touch the energies of the muse and draw them in.

Welcome to the veil! The veil cuts out the harsher energies of the mundane. It envelops you in an embrace that is sweeter and more life giving than sleep itself, but it brings you face to face with the energies you seek or which may seek you. These intriguing energies reside in a zone that opens itself to creative people. I believe there is a technique to navigate the hurdles that take you to that shore where you make smooth connections. Taking all the risks you want, safely! 

While the veil withholds the energies that could distract you (welcome to self distraction, these energies are often within oneself) it also behaves like a lens that empowers you with a different vision. Welcome to the third eye! I have often wondered if the scent and the smoke of dhuno (resins allied to frankincense ) help to hold you comfortably in that zone. For anyone who knows the experience of being enveloped in dhuno, it is indeed a veil. The silken smoke cuts out the negatives, the elusive half-pungent sweetness of the tingling aroma awakens those other senses that are numbered beyond five. I imagine one of those senses is the poise needed that ensures a complete cycle of communication. I will come back to that someday somewhere. I think of arati and what its esoteric purpose could be?

I recall sharing stories of basket dried hair when we were children. There was dhuno (dammar/loban/sambrani/frankincense not sure which precise one) smoking away in a holder and covered by a deep round wicker basket. You lay down and spread your locks over it. In the absence of significant locks to spread I suppose you rested your head on it. Methinks it was a tonic that awakened your brain’s ability to find its way to that threshold. And later in life when your desires spoke to you and invited you there, you found your way with ease. If not by any other way, by lighting the dhuno around you and observing how long you could remain poised in the threshold and thinking those thoughts in slow motion that were asking to be streamed out as your creative output.

Dhuno invited me to explore it as I wrote this. It wasn’t really in my mind while starting this post early in the morning, abruptly halting for the mundane. Twilight is the time for dhuno. It sends away nasty insects, disables germs and guess what? It asks you to worship. For those of us who write or play or sing or paint or act or just be true to our inner higher self, that defines worship. 

It is dusk. the hour when conches blow to communicate with the world beyond as well as with the children who need to be summoned home, the lamps are lighted to chase away threatening shadows and we sit sniffing the air around us. As I conclude writing, I smell it wafting in from the neighbors’. If there’s one thing I need to buy for Dhanteras* it is the genie’s lamp in which you prepare and light it. That is the paatra containing the essences of the magical world I seek. Awaken the genie and you have the key.

*Don't miss the broom purchase for Dhanteras - the Halloween Witch's Broom*