What Chills May Come

I once stood in a room humming with electricity. It was a simple room, like any other electrical closet on any other floor, found on any other job. But in this room, I was aware of different octaves singing their songs. It was the humming that rang through me. I felt the vibrations penetrating my body and I stood passively through the attenuations and amplifications that were occurring all around me. And then I heard it. The sound of my heart. It wasn't simply a beat, like a snare drum with a string of half-notes. My heart was moving, reverberating, oscillating. The skin of my heart muscle, the ligaments and vessels were swelling and abating to a rhythm I have never heard before. It was energized. My heart was singing to the myriad songs that were humming outside of me. There was electricity flowing everywhere -- through the wires, through the pipes, and deep within me. My muscles were warm, and for the few moments that I made these connections, the hair on my skin stood upright. As I made my way back to reality, I brushed my arm hairs flat, and figured there was a whole lot of ionized air in the room. I talked myself into many logical explanations about the state of electrical beingness I experienced, and continued about my day.

That was four years ago. These days I embrace the chills that take over me. Some of the time these "chills" are the evolutionary fluffing of the fur to keep me warm. However, more and more often they are a result of my meditative practices. There is a redistribution of subtle energies, a shifting that occurs beyond these ordinary senses, and so I appreciate the warmth that radiates across my skin. It comes like the rising tides, waning and waxing with every breath, absolutely cyclic, wheels spinning gently, and the pulses glow bright and fall faint again and again.