A Vision From Meditation
I wrote on one of his "Sound Poem Collaboration Posts," "All things are dreams, lovely collaboration 
13 x 21 inches, 300lb Hotpress Cotton Paper, and Watercolor. This is the first layer of color so the painting will look nothing like this when I finish. I like to layer colors on top of each other to make other colors.
Service Work At Meditation Retreat Back in 1995
I had this vision while taking a short rest after morning meal was served and I went to my room to take a short nap. As a server one gets to meditate 4 hours a day rather than 10 to 12 hours a day as a student, we all start our work at 4:30am and finishes at 9:30pm. We never sit longer than an hour unless one wants too. Two meals a day were served and I spent most of my time in the kitchen, cleaning, prepping, and cooking.
As I was laying on my bed I focused on my breath and let the body rest. I started seeing colors, which I always do when I am relaxed in or out of meditation. The color display is called Closed-eye hallucinations and closed-eye visualizations (CEV). Wiki . I also can see patterns and colors if I am very relaxed with my eyes open, it's easier to see the fractals type patterns when I am relaxed. I've been able to see these patterns since I was a kid and they are as normal to me as breathing. Later in life I found out most people don't see the little light patterns with their eyes open, however many people see colors and patterns with their eyes closed. I've thought that maybe the reason I have visions is because I can easily see phosphenes, many studies point to this phenomena as one of the causes of visions.
As I was laying on my bed with my eyes closed focused on my natural breath coming and going from around my nostrils and letting the body relax a little ball of bright blue color stood out among the swirling microscopic balls of color and stopped moving. I focused on this little light and it grew bigger until I was surrounded by bright white light and a vision opened up and I was sitting on the lip of a vast golden spiral surrounded by darkness that seem to have no end. I saw what looked like bodies of humans full of stars. I wanted to see what was at the bottom of that spiral, to follow the star people, but I had children to take care of and I had no clue what would happen if I jumped into the unknown. I sat for a few moments longer and watched the star bodies fly down the spiral and I was pulled into other visions. I hope someday I get another chance to visit the golden spiral and take that leap into the great unknown.
I tried to paint my visions before and my skill-set wasn't good enough for me to be satisfied, hopefully with all the practice I've done on Steemit since September of 2016, I can finally catch my visions I had at meditation retreat and some of my waking dreams I've had outside of retreat. I usually don't remember dreaming so when I do they usually happen when I am awake like meditating or resting during the day. When I go to sleep at night, it's as if I died, I don't remember anything!
