Recently, I was away on vacation with my sweetheart and we were staying at an old inn in Vermont. On our first day there, we settled in, went out for dinner, then came back and decided to start watching the latest season of Stranger Things.
Now this inn was quite old. The floors were tilted and our room’s ceiling was a dormer with old wooden rafters. The room was very small you could feel the age in the building.
And, as circumstances would have it, nobody had been there to greet us at the inn. There was simply a note and key for us on the counter. We had not seen a soul in the building since we arrived.
Also, the inn was next to the town cemetery.
You getting the picture?
As we began watching Stranger Things, midway through the first episode we paused and I turned to my sweetheart and said “is this really a good idea … to be watching this right here, right now?”
Did I mention that there was a cemetery right next to us?
And we’re seemingly the only people in this really old inn?
We proceeded to watch two episodes. If you haven’t seen Stranger Things, while I don’t normally go in for horror shows, this one is quite wonderful and intriguing and not the gore and terror of usual horror flicks. I like it.
Nonetheless, as we finished and settled in for sleep, I found myself replaying scenes of monsters and beasts and all the scary bits of the show.
Did I mention that we were right next to a really old cemetery?
So I had to use my Jedi mind tricks (otherwise known as meditation techniques). I had to pause and recognize that this was my mind still busily engaged with the show. I focused on feeling my breath and counting breath cycles. When my mind wandered back into the scenes of haunted houses and demented beings, I would simply label all that as “thinking” and bring my attention back to my breath and the counting.
Instead of thinking about the cemetery I thought about the trees outside my window. I thought about the crescent moon in the clear night sky and listened to the sound of crickets. These are very normal sounds and signs of the earth.
The peaceful earth.
Sensing nature and connecting to my breath cycles helped lull me to sleep and I slept just fine through the night.
I am really grateful for my Jedi mind tricks. I’d be happy to teach them to you in my Beginning Meditation course.
Michelle Stortz 