My wife and I are both very active physically, and all that activity takes a toll. Our bodies get beat up and one of our favorite rehab tools is the hot tub. We use lots of others; in fact I wrote a whole post on managing aches and pains from working out here. But today’s post is not about hydrotherapy, but about a little game we played in the hot tub tonight.

For whatever reason, I tend to jabber on like a monkey in a tree whenever I get in the hot tub. I have a captive audience and I will recap my day’s activities, or blog ideas, or just do some story telling. At some point, my wife will ask for silence to meditate in the hot, bubbling water (a nice way of telling me to stop yapping).

Tonight, she told me to try to block out all thought, don’t let anything in. It turned out to be a fascinating experiment for me, and remarkably difficult. You see, I have a hyperactive mind.

The first thought that popped into my mind was the image of a red funnel. I was about to block it out, and decided instead to enlarge it until the edges were right against the inside of my skull. I would use it to force any other intruding thoughts down through the funnel and into my throat. For a short time, there was nothing but the funnel.

A racecar, red & white, pulled up alongside the funnel but could not get in, and instead pointed straight down and drove away. I told my wife about this and she shushed me. A blank piece of paper and a pen floated by over the top of the funnel and got sucked in and forced down.  A little squirrel sat just outside the funnel nibbling on something. He was floating in the air, so some grass appeared under him and I could see the roots of a tree. I looked away and I saw my MacBook glowing off to the right. The funnel was keeping things out, but the periphery was very busy.

Just then, my wife said it was over. I opened my eyes and my actual surroundings came flooding back into focus. The funnel was gone, and my mind was free again to wander. I sit here now trying to get that feeling back, that emptying of the mind, but I cannot. I’ve mentioned previously that I’m a student of Taoism, and emptiness is a key Taoist concept.

The still mind of the sage is the mirror of heaven and earth, the glass of all things. Vacancy, stillness, placidity, tastelessness, quietude, silence, and non-action – this is the Level of heaven and earth, and the perfection of the Tao and its characteristics.

Perhaps with practice, I will become better at it. Perhaps.

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