BECOMING SUPRA

Chapter 10.1

ÆSH

I open the first door, then the second, my body floats up like an apparition. I blink twice, a red line snakes forward, it reads: Beta. The brain waves look saw-like and serrated. I have to smoothen them out to just a couple rotations per second.

I shut my eyes and fill my lungs with air, attempting to calm myself.

I inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale.

My thoughts quieten, my shoulders loosen, my muscles begin to relax. I wade through mundane thoughts, things I've experienced throughout the day. Then I see flickers, like little memory triggers of past disagreements and fights. I recall the snags and hitches I've encountered in life. I recall the emotional hurdles I've had to face. They rise up in my stream of consciousness like little vibrating strings. I deflect the emotionally loaded vibrations trying my best not to get sucked in by their stories. I withdraw my energy from my extraneous senses into the centre of my mind. Slowly, I slip into a blank state of nothingness. I see a point of light, it is white, it is changing and morphing with each sustained second. It becomes a channel from which I am tunnelling.

Then suddenly: an image rips through the blank canvas of my mind and I see blood pudding on a sandbank. Is it a clubbed seal? No, it is Mother's body.

My eyes flash-open wide. I focus on the blue of the sky, trying to hasten the dissipation of the vision.

Inhale.

Exhale.

Inhale.

I steady and blink twice. A red line snakes forward: high Beta. My brain waves are fluctuating in jagged jolts.

Someone enters the premises. I angle my head to catch a glimpse. It is Raë. She walks to the chamber adjacent to mine, opens the first door, enters the second and floats up effortlessly. She can tell I am watching, but without the slightest glance in my direction she presses a button and disappears under a cloak of opaque film.

I can feel my heart thrumming inside my chest, I inhale and close my eyes once again. I catch a tract of blank emptiness, a tunnel of white light, bright space, then suddenly: a gargantuan timber truck striking my mother from above and crumpling her to the ground like a pleated paper doll.

My eyes snap open. My hand reaches up to touch Raë's blackened cubicle but she can't see or hear me; she's sealed herself away. I can't bear another moment in this glass coffin. I can't bear to stay alone with my thoughts, they will eat me up inside out. I wiggle out of the chamber and leave the centre.

"What's the matter, Æsh?" A voice comes at me. I turn and find Bose standing in the clearing. I was not expecting to see him.

"I can't focus today ... too many unnecessary thoughts ..."

"Tell me exactly what's happening," he said, walking up to me.

"I am getting flashes of past memories. I am getting stuck in visual loops I thought had already left me. I am trying to void my mind of thoughts, sustain a blank state of mind but violent images are tearing into me. I feel like something ..." I said pressing down on my crown, "I feel something is short-circuiting in my head."

"During the initial stages of this practice, emotionally charged memories will flare up, you will experience a replay of thought loops that have been ingrained in your neural-network. Thoughts of similar frequencies will attract to itself more of the same, attract vibrations to match its' current state. Like attracts like. You have to disrupt the neuro-pattern, you have to undo what has been reinforced, thought by thought. Vibration by vibration." He paused and asked, "What kind of visions are you getting?"