Distractions

This morning, sitting in the half light, old cloak around my shoulders, just me and the divine presence, I was suddenly hit with an earth shattering, epoch making, universe changing piece of insight. I cannot for the life of me remember now quite what it was, but it was pretty darned good. It was so important and so compelling that  it took me quite some time to settle back down to just being in the half light, old cloak etc etc.

When it comes to distractions, some are more difficult to handle than others. Daydreams and fantasies and reveries and remembrances are easy enough; as soon as I realise I have wandered away I'm back. The really hard ones are the ones that bamboozle me into thinking that they are important somehow: you know, the fresh breakthroughs into the mind of God, the glimpses of the train filling the temple, the moment of clarity where some problem whose solution has eluded humankind for millennia suddenly becomes ridiculously clear - all that balderdash. These great visions and insights are no different from the other fripperies: they are also just my mind having a mild and temporary case of gas. But because they seem at the time to be so attractive and so important to me and to others, it does take a while to surrender them.

It's significant that now, only 5 hours later I cannot remember even vaguely what my great insight was all about. Perhaps it was important; perhaps the daily doses of silence have softened up the crust of my ossified mind enough that something of significance did bubble up from the deep places. Perhaps the Holy Spirit was speaking. But if that is so, the insight will return at a more convenient time, and either way, the world continues to turn whether I remember or not.