A Matter of Altitude

“May your spirit soar throughout the vast cathedral of your being.” – Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The last month or so, I have down in the dumps a bit. Not really down in a depressed way, but just not at my normal foundation of “up-ness.” For the most part, meditating provides me with a lift, but lately not quite enough to what my level of ‘normal’ is. I haven’t really let it concern me too much but after almost a month of it, which is usually a long funk for me, I have been wondering what was up. Most of the time I try to go through a checklist of any issue or problem that comes up.

I first try to decipher if it’s something that’s going on inside of me. If I don’t get any clues there, I start searching outside myself. If not much comes up there, I have to ponder deeper. I did all those things, but nothing significant presented itself. Only minor, seemingly insignificant things came up. So now, I was at a bit of a loss. I just decided to keep up with my normal day to day routine and hoped I would pull myself out of it somehow. Nothing gave, so I gave up on my normal routine for a few days and wound up doing very little for awhile. That just made me tired and drained, and then I felt worse. Something needed to happen. Ask and ye shall receive, as they say. Or someone did, I think in the Bible.

Lately I have been working up near the Mt. Shasta area, which has provided me with some amazingly scenic and relaxing panoramas. Something always good for the soul. So, just recently I went up on the mountain with my wife to one of the spots we like to go to.  A little bit of background is probably in order here first.

Many of you may already be aware of this, but there are a number of powerful energy spots on Mt. Shasta. Now, I’m speaking of spiritual energy spots. Some are naturally occurring, and some are man-made (yes, really). I can’t go into the details about all that, but trust me for a bit here. I have personally experienced them, as have many others over the years. And they are really great places to meditate!

Anyway, we got up to one of these spots that we particularly like. As we got near I could feel the energy humming. After we arrived we both got ourselves together and started our meditation routine. It did take me a while get clear of the things I needed to. But once I accomplished that, I was really flying. And all those issues and problems of the day, the week, the month … all magically melted away. Yes, no longer there. Where? Who knows? And who cares?

I know, the logical part of me would want to know that, but not the high-flying free spirit of me. Why worry of facts and figures when I can experience fun and magic! I think that was part of the issue of my funk. I was letting my logical mind dictate the agenda of my daily life too much. I needed my ‘child’ to come out and play! Altitude and attitude affect each other, and are tied to each other, and can balance each other.

There is an old saying that problems always look smaller when you can get some altitude on them. I’m not sure where that saying came from, but I recently saw a clip from a 1931 movie where one of the characters actually says that to another. They were at the top of a high rise building looking down at all the ant-like people. But I don’t think that is completely it. I think that the problems were always small, it’s just that we make them larger than they really are. Having more distance or altitude, or actually separation from them, puts them in their proper perspective. So actually, it’s just our perception that’s different.

If we were to put our eyeball right on a housefly on the wall, it could look a little scary. But from across the room, it’s barely a black dot, and of no concern. I think we eyeball our problems, and our lives, way too much.

And then add in the dimension of lift, or levity, or altitude, and its easier to feel much better than we did. If we’re looking down from 100,000 feet up, those problems just don’t appear on the radar screen. They may still be there, but our perception has cleared them. And we are free of it. Free to fly!

It seems quite apparent that this is why people use lots of different types of substances to escape from their problems. I know, I’ve done it. And I can tell after decades of meditating, that this is a much better, much cleaner way of doing that. Because you never really escape from them. But after getting altitude on them, you can come back to them much fresher and in a much better place to take them on. The problems have been put in their proper place, and are usually much easier to solve because now they are a whole lot smaller.

So in the end, it seems altitude can give you leverage to solve what seems unsolvable to the naked eye. Happy flying!