A Brief Exchange with my Lesser Self

While exercising today

I wondered to my lesser self

Who is it that keeps

On lifting these hand weights?

And who then replied like

A latter-day Madame Blavatsky

Having detached almost completely

Rolling on in auto-mnemonic fashion

As if speaking not just lifting by rote

One of the great discoveries and pleasures in meditation is the experience of detaching and looking at oneself, as if from a great height or remove.   No doubt this experience falls short of the Zen ideal of realizing no-self, since it still entails a new, albeit smaller "I" that looks down on at the old larger self, feeling completely detached.  However short of the Zen ideal it may be, it nonetheless represents an important landmark on the road to meditative discovery - a process which involves a gradual self-diminishment.  From a Buddhist perspective (if not quite in the same way in the Christian world view) life may be summarized thus: as self's journey towards the vanishing point.  It is a distinctly spiritual quest.