Episode Details

Dark Meditation
by Byron Tsimentas
This is too much for me to write. Maybe I’m writing it for myself. Maybe if I write it down, I might actually believe everything that happened. Part of me still thinks none of it was real. I had to question everything I know. Me, an extremely logical person, having to doubt the very reality we know and experience everyday. Maybe after reading this, whoever you are, you will too.
Most people can’t wait to go off to college. Everyone pretty much thinks it will be like a massive compilation of drinking and sex, at least most high-school kids who can’t wait to get out there and live life to the fullest tend to think so. For me it wasn’t like that. It was just an experience, something I would have to go through in order for my life to be where I wanted it to be in five years or so. It didn’t really matter to me if I would be partying all the time or not at all.
The first year was kind of boring. I was very diligent with my studies, so I didn’t really have time to be cruising the bars picking up girls or whatever. I had met a few nice people, but no one out of the ordinary.
The second year, I got a roommate and life got pretty interesting. His name was Zack, and he was nothing like the people I used to hang out with. Overall he gave the impression of a hippy, but not in the snobby repulsive way. He was a very warm person, and he was an enthusiast of life. Since I can remember he had been lecturing me about how mistaken I am for staying home often and studying most of the time.
"The world is waiting for you, dude!" he kept saying. "It won’t wait forever!"
I’ll admit, he did convince me to try a lot of things I had never tried before, but just watching him live his life had a very positive impact on mine. He would come home with a smile everyday, telling me all about the new genre of music he discovered, or a new martial art he was learning, or all the customs and traditions of the amazing ancient race he was obsessed with that week. It gave me strength to think that it is possible for a person to be happy all the time, to see life in a positive perspective, no matter how bad it got. I think the reason he was so at peace was because of his meditation.
I always thought meditation was straight up nonsense, and every good effect that it had on your life was purely a placebo effect. But Zack was very passionate about meditating. He would meditate at least two hours a day, and he would always tell me about all the amazing things he experienced during his visualizations. He would tell me he was flying with giant seagulls in the night sky, or that he was climbing palm trees with green monkeys on a tropical island. Really any crazy scenario that would look really cool in a movie. I never really took that part of Zack’s life seriously, but every day he grew more excited about his meditation. He would tell me that the experience got better and better, that he was able to see all those places he went to a lot clearer than he used to. He claimed he was able to visualize himself under a waterfall, and actually feel the water running down his body. He even said that after a point he didn’t even create the places he was going to. He would just “open the door to the other world” and the places would create themselves. As if they were already there.
I knew he was fooling himself, but if it helped him there was nothing wrong with that. That’s what I used to think. Although it did bum me out sometimes when he went on and on about it. One day he was bragging about how good he was getting, and he said he wanted to try and visit an unhappy place for a change. A darker world, just to see what it was like, or if it was possible. It sounded so silly. Isn’t the whole point of meditation to feel at peace? Why take your mind willingly to a dark and unsafe place? Maybe he thought it would be some sort of adventure. He was always arrogant like that, willing to try the most insane stunt