Rollercoaster
The moment before you drop
You know that moment on a rollercoaster ride when, just as your car reaches the top before a drop, your heart grabs? Even though the ride has been designed and tested to be safe, you never know. And once you’re into the drop, you scream bloody murder.
Some people love the thrill.
I do not.
Well, this morning in meditation, I suddenly had the sense of being at the top of the rollercoaster hill and then dropping in pure energy. It wasn’t just energy though. It was Intelligent energy with agency—the means to do something. On one hand it was thrilling to feel the power of that. On one hand it put me in a state of pure awe that this is ME, this Energy drives me whether I’m realizing it or not. And on the other hand, it was really hard to stay in the awareness of something so huge and, if I lost it, trust it was still there.
And it is so easy, when I lose the trust and faith, to go into fear that doesn’t even feel like fear. In fact, sometimes it feels like certainty or hubris—dry and loveless. When I drop into that, I’m fully in my ego, refusing to recognize that this illusion of drop control is my way of trying to feel in charge of what is really driving my car—electricity, a good design, some kind of journey that is beyond my comprehension.
But miraculously, in contemplation, I suddenly realized my own hubris, my childlike notion that I am driving this car, and consequently, my fear at the fact that I am not arose big-time.
Feeling the fear brought me back to a child state. Better to be in that, holding faith and trust and fear all at the same time than giving in to the adult sublimation of it through hubris, superiority, and illusion.
Betsy Robinson is a longtime student of the Siddha Yoga Correspondence Course, a daily meditator, graduate of a four-year healing school, studying trauma healing, and former managing editor of Spirituality & Health magazine. She is an editor, fiction writer, journalist, and playwright. She has written about books for Publishers Weekly, Lithub, Oh Reader, and many other publications. Her novels Cats on a Pole and The Spectators were published by Kano Press in 2024, and earlier novels won prizes from Mid-List Press and Black Lawrence Press. She writes funny stories about flawed people and examines our herd culture. www.BetsyRobinson-writer.com.
I, too, reread it. Your awareness is awesome.
Excellent .... I read it three times ... and I looked up the word, 'hubris' .... I sort of knew what it meant ... but I learned so much more!! hummmmm