See Me Later

My big ‘ole secret?

I tried to leave my body for a little stroll around the cosmos once.

Just temporarily, of course.

The hippy dippies call it an OBE (out-of-body-experience), but I call it a virtual smoke break for the stay-at-home-mommy set.

A book about this intriguing phenomenon caught my eye at Half Price Books, where I was browsing the New Age section for info on mental telepathy after becoming convinced I had psychic powers (I don’t).

Astral Projection and Psychic Empowerment outlined a simple 24-step process by which one could exit one’s shell, so to speak, and wander about on the astral plane.

Holy sweet bejesus! Sign me up!

What could be better? I would simply pop in a Wiggles DVD, hand each child a cookie, lie down on the couch, and disappear.

And as long as my essence hung around the house, I could keep a cosmic eye on the kids while floating around the atmosphere in a state of peaceful bliss.

Kids were napping, phone was off the hook, and Yanni was playing quietly in the background.

I was ready to depart.

I began the deep breathing exercises and started relaxing my muscle groups, one-by-one.

After three or four interruptions which required that I run upstairs screaming What in God’s name are you DOING? If I have to come up here again, you can forget about Clifford the Big Red Dog this afternoon and that’s a promise! I was able to get down to bidness.

The next step was visualization. I chose the elevator metaphor. It goes like this: as you ascend the Elevator of the Mind, you gradually release yourself from the albatross that is your body so that, by the time you get up to the top floor, you are ready to perform the remaining twenty-two steps that will buy you a ticket to the astral plane.

The mind is a powerful muscle, but still.

I kept having to reference the post-it where I had scribbled the formula. Try as I might, unfettered astral roaming and psychic empowerment was just out of my grasp. I was concentrating so hard that I was getting cross-eyed, but still the blasted elevator always stopped short of the top floor.

I kept at it, though, until I was struck dumb by the following thought:

What if it’s a one-way ticket?

Sneaking a peek at the post-it, there was nary a word about how to get back in.

Well, shit.

Would I be destined to hover three feet above floor level forever, occasionally running the dishwasher just to let my loved ones know I’m there? Flicking the TV on and off to signal dinnertime? Or, God forbid, hurling small objects around the room at whim? (Because I'm proficient at that already.)

I was back in the here and now faster than you can say “doppelganger.”

Astral projection is not for me, but if any of you has done it, by all means let me know! I’m dying to find out what it’s like out there.



(This post was a response to Miss’s writing challenge on the Secret Awesome Group of Awesome Blogging Power.)

You can go there right now, body and soul!