The other day when I was meditating, the vision of a large, black beetle in my right hand came to me. I had accidentally squished in between my fingers and palm and I felt immensely sad about it. I don’t know if I had been saving the bug for something or if I wanted to show it to someone. I have no idea where it came from or what I wanted to do with it. Whatever it was, I was very disappointed and sad about crushing the bug in my hand. It wasn’t a disgusting thing. I wasn’t sickened by flattened insect in my hand. I was sad that it was dead with no concern for the mess. It was a huge disappointment to me.

Some days you’re a bug, some days you’re a windshield. Price Cobb

As soon as I realized that my mind was wandering, I went right back to concentrating on my breath. The vision was so disturbing that I forgot to send it a little loving kindness before I cleared it from my mind. As I talk about it right now, I am still very sad and disappointed. It’s like that feeling when you finally get that ice cream cone that you really wanted, but when you lick the lumpy ball of sweetness, it falls off the cone and into the gravel at your feet. All you are left with was the sugar cone, empty and lifeless. That’s how it felt and I’m still feeling it right now.

If you step on a beetle, It will rain. If you pick it up and bury it, The sun will shine again. Omens

What did it mean? Was I nearing that point in meditation where I was about to fall asleep? Was that the precursor to a dream that meant nothing more than my mind was trying to process the day’s activities? If that were the case, where did that overwhelming sense of loss and disappointment come from? It was a loss of my own doing, but it was a senseless and accidental loss.

The loss which is unknown is no loss at all. Publilius Syrus (~100 BC), Maxims

I believe our minds are stronger than we know. I believe that our senses are taking in so much information that we would go mad if we couldn’t filter it somehow. That filter, however, can block important information sometimes. That’s where our dreams come in. They help to remind us of everything that we saw and experienced lately. Some of it is important, but most of it is irrelevant. This sense of accidental loss that overcame me is one of the important things. I just need to think about it some more.