Did you have an Aladdin’s closet that you played in. Think back or watch one of your grandchildren free spirited and at play. Often as a kid I played in a tent made out of blankets and chairs and with a corner of the blanket tucked between the mattress and the bed frame. My favorite was the closet and entire room my dad built when I was a kid. And I got to help bang in lots of nails. I played and imagined many mysterious adventures in that closet. I named it Aladdin’s closet and I searched for the elusive flying carpet. Although in my playing I did really fly.
At times now during the day I have started to become aware that I am thinking about Aladdin’s closet and I feel lighter and a bit more at ease for a moment. As I explore this lighter feeling I wonder what else it may lead to. If you recall this started out as a writing assignment focusing on a black jacket. Proceeding with this assignment opened an exploration into a new world of imagination and possibly an uncovering of my true self. I now know that spiritual gravity has been pulling me all along.
The exploration
I thought it might me interesting to explore this renewed sense of being in Aladdin’s closet and started to focus on the lighter feeling of being more at ease. The sense of lightness and ease was like the echo of a recent vacation. You know the feeling. When you come back from a really wonderful vacation or journey your mind/body has flash backs of memory in the days following your return. You can see, feel, almost taste some of the highlights. In the same way I started to carry the lightness and ease of the closet with me and I would step into it from time to time when bits of routine stress would pop into my life. At first the echo would be just the feeling sense of lightness and ease from recalling just sitting in the quiet protected space of the closet.
The closet had a few strange and interesting physical characteristics and morphed its shape but was limited in scope. The sense of ease of being in the closet’s limited activities expanded into more varied activities performed within my entire house. With this my imagination grew and expanded becoming the entire house with much more space and activity to play with. My thoughts became similar to building and rebuilding sand castles at the beach. It was just play with no set goal or agenda to accomplish. With that more routine everyday actions started to feel more at ease. I was fully able to do everything as I usually would have done with the addition that it felt like a dream. I could sit back and watch myself doing whatever I was doing without the running commentary of my mind’s evaluation of everything as it was happening.
The next shift was going beyond the house and into the entire world. I was doing and observing what I was doing at the same time. I was starting to be able to shift from my routine worries of not being right, or good enough, or accomplishing something to go about my day with the sense of play as if I were still in the closet playing as a kid. It seemed I was in a “reality dream” of me being my true self, authentic and free to be me. It was exhilarating. The next shift was that while I was going about my day already imagining that I was playing in the world of the closet/house/world I imagined spending time back in the actual closet I played in as a kid. This dream within a dream grew dizzying as it repeated watching itself watching itself and went around a few more times.
Short version
Imagine that you are in a closet you played in as a kid.
Step in to the sense of play that you experienced in your closet.
Take that sense of play, of being in your closet into your life in this moment, Right Now; imagine that you are in your closet playing with this moment in you life.
Go in and out of the “closet” in your mind a few times during the day. Do this until it becomes easy to shift your imagination between playing in the closet and your everyday reality of activities.
Expand the closet to become your entire house
Expand again until your closet becomes your entire world
Your world closet becomes living in your “reality dream”
Then as part of your playing with this moment you imagine going into the closet you played in as a kid etc
Go around and around again — humming
Row row row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily merrily merrily merrily
Life is but a dream
Spiritual Gravity 