This month Susan attends a Mary Buckham writer’s workshop/cruise and continues various projects.

God has a great sense of humour. I have plenty of proof. For example, last month I sustained a meditation injury.

My chiropractor told me it was a first. Somehow, I managed to injure myself as I sat perfectly still for forty minutes. I caused myself serious injury as I did nothing more than breathe in the good and breathe out the bad.

You see, when I arrived in Whistler I contacted a few people about getting a little mediation group together. One Lovely Woman invited me to her home and the two of us did what is known as a heart mediation, a metaphoric breathing into and out of our hearts. She suggested we ask our higher selves a question before we began. We put pen and paper beside us in order to catch the answer that would float through our minds as we came out of our meditative state.

I asked my higher self to answer the following: What are the words of wisdom I need to hear right now?

As we settled in to meditate, Lovely Woman offered me three ways to get comfortable. I could:

a) sit cross-legged using a meditation pillow,
b) sit in a large comfy chair or,
c) sit in a cool and cute little low meditation chair. It was adorable. Picture a sweet miniature beach chair.

You can see where this is going, right?

A quick digression: the chair reminded me of a man I had once seen at a nude sunbathing dock. For no particular reason, the dock – at Whistler’s Lost Lake – has an unwritten rule that at any given time anyone may strip to the bare essence and take in some rays. I took part in this ritual only once. I waited until the last possible second to do it and, in truth, it may have been well after my public-nudity expiry date. Everyone else was sprawled out on beach towels but then this lean and tanned man showed up with his newspaper, coffee, Gauloise cigarettes and yes, his cool little low beach chair. He made the rest of us feel we were doing something important.

And so, last month, when Lovely Woman presented me with the option of meditating in the cool beach chair, there was no debate. Forty minutes later, at meditation’s end, my lower back ached in a peculiar way. As I unwound my crossed legs my body suddenly felt like it was constructed entirely of Lego. And the pieces did not fit particularly well.

Within twenty-four hours I was in agony.

Now I will admit that during the meditation I had felt uncomfortable. But monks could do this for hours at a time. I would not let myself be revealed as a meditation wuss.

Not me.

And so it was that I ignored by body’s warning signals and meditated through the discomfort and injured my sacro-iliac. Oh yes I did. I was in agony for two full weeks. But here’s the cool part: I received a clear two word answer to my meditation question. The words of wisdom that floated into my mind were: Be. And Feel. I also thought Love, love should be in there too but my higher mind said, Shut up, that’s just the thinking part of your brain trying to barge in where it doesn’t belong.

In other words I need to get back to basics. Be: stop trying to make things happen, just let them happen. And feel: don’t gloss over any feelings that bubble up in your everyday life. (And yes, that is my thinking mind, hard at work, analyzing those two perfectly adequate words. But this is how a blog words; if this entry were just Be and Feel I’d have to turn in my writer’s card.)

Through the chiropractic and massage therapy visits and through every lightening jolt of pain I was not-so-gently reminded of those words. With each twinge as a tried to sit, or stand or do practically anything that required movement, there they were: Be. Feel.

You could say I would have forgotten the words but for the pain.

That’s God. He’s hilarious.