Imagine that you’re on a beam of light

“You’re on a beam of light, stretching from your forehead,” I said, reading from another self-help book. “You travel from the building where you are…”

Because Chris chuckled when he read the same passage hours before when I was lying down on my childhood bed at my parents’ house, I started cracking up. I pushed him, urging him to be serious. “But it’s a beam!” he said. “Like lasers are coming from your head!”

That imagery of what we were imagining began to broke my intended serious facade again and again. Although I had done these exercises before in counseling sessions on sofa where I calmly imagined a flowing waterfall, light from my head, a glow emanating from my feet, all of it…really did sound ridiculous. I doubled in laughter as I read the passage of traveling along the beam of light up through space and beyond the globe and then traveling down another beam.

“You’re supposed to be serious!” Chris said, opening your eyes.

I took a breath and dug out my serious self to read again. I got through the passages about beams of light, then got to the part of imagining the future self—our mentor.

“He brings you to a part of the home,” I continue. “Note the area of the home. Ask your questions. Like how to get to where you want to be. Ask anything else.”

Then I finished the passage with more beams of light, finishing the meditative exercise and now encouraging a journaling of the experience.

“You don’t have to show me what you wrote,” I said, trying not to be curious.

I had been comfortable with sharing what I saw in my mind, but I knew that he was protective of his inner life. He stayed silent as he continued scribbling on the notepad. I imagined his handwriting—he always described it as somewhat girly and neat, better than the scrawl that I formed from a life where I never sought to be neat and organized. After a few moments, he tossed the notepad to me, revealing everything he thought.

The questions I had asked in my mind simply where: how do I get to where I want to go in life? how do I get the ideas? how do i know if I am doing the right thing. He had the similar questions, but also an equivalent one I didn’t even mentioned because I took it for granted: “Is Jenn doing okay? How is she doing?”

When I read the question, I teared up and placed my hand on his hands.