The mind will not see what it does not know to exist. The world around us may be in color but that does not mean that all are able to perceive it. If you were to hand three different pieces of colored paper to a member of the Candoshi village in Peru and ask them what the colors were, they would not have an answer because they have no conception of color in their language or culture. There are many villages like the Candoshi where there is little to no understanding of color. Some may only have a word for three colors and so that is all that can be understood.

So yes, smaller villages without much use for color may not have a concept for it, but what about larger civilizations? By reading Ancient Greek myths we learn that blue may not have existed for these ancient people. There was no word for it and it

would appear that those alive at the time would not have understood its existence. Even the very blue sky above their heads would have likely been thought of as white or even green. These people were not color blind, they simply had no conception for the color blue.

We can thank our ancestors for leaving us with records of human perception and how it has changed, and possibly even evolved, over the millennia. In the history of humanity, our minds have expanded. Our knowledge has taken us to places that

still seem like an impossibility. From the computer I am typing on now, to the rockets that jettison into space. We are not finished comprehending the world around us and how everything intertwines. It begs the question of how far the human senses

can, and will, evolve.

···

Chapter One

I finally found my ritual with mindfulness meditations. The hardest part of practicing has been coming up with my daily rhythm, but I’ve finally reached the point that it comes rather naturally. First, I fold a fuzzy cover blanket to the length and width of my body and lay it on the floor in my living room. I sit on it cross legged, light some incense, and lay down.

Meditation requires a disconnect from the conscious. It is a deep pause where an individual should be able to just be without thinking. To try and take a break from consciousness and thinking, people who meditate find something to center themselves when their minds wonder. For some it is breathing or music. For me, I have found that the incense is perfect.

With my eyes shut, I’m able to focus on the smell of the incense and truly calm my body and my mind. My mind wanders slightly, but the smell brings me back. The slits of my eyes open slightly and I’m able to see the smoke from the incense curl and twist into the air above me. My focus switches from the smell to the dight of the smoke and my body begins to melt into the ground. 

Suddenly I’m feeling something deeper than I’ve ever felt while meditating. It's as if I am floating inside of my body. I can feel a peace stronger than I’ve ever felt before. It's almost like experiencing a lucid dream but my eyes are open, and my body is locked into place. My anxiety rises and then, before I can snap myself out of it, a gentle wisp of blue appears in my line of vision. It’s like a fog that is emitting its own soft light. All I can do is observe the fog. I watch it undulate almost like it has a type of pulse. The more I try and study it, the sharper the light becomes. The fog hardens into thin streaks above me that cling together like a strand of hair. The light appears to flow like water cascading around rocks in a rapid creek. 

I begin to feel almost a pulling in my body and a tightness in my cranium when suddenly there is a loud THUD. Startled, I jumped up and looked around. It was my girlfriend, Lena. She had dropped a textbook on the ground on her way in through the door.

“Oh! Did I scare you, Eva?” she said to me as she knelt to pick up the book.

I stared at her with my mouth open and wide eyes. I look back to the ceiling. It’s the same eggshell white paint that its always been, no flowing lights. The incense by my side had gone out.

“It’s okay, I was just meditating”

“You look a little rattled, are you okay?” Lena set her books on the table and walked towards me.

“I’m fine. I think I may have dozed off while meditating is all.”

Lena offered her hand, and I took it, helping me up to my feet. She gave me a peck on my cheek which, even to this day, makes me blush. We went on with our evening. I took the dog out for a walk as Lena started dinner. When I came inside I poured a glass of wine and set the table for us. We ate and conversed about our days. Lena talked about the classes she had today and complained about one of her professors. I tried to listen as best I could but my eyes kept looking back at the incense burner that was still left out on the floor. 

“How’s the search going?” Lena said as she shoveled a large bite of chicken into her mouth.

“What?” I said, reeling myself back into our conversation.

“The job search? Please tell me you made some effort today to look.” Lena’s tone changed.

I have been unemployed for a couple of weeks. I quit my last job after about five months because the repetition of answering phones and saying ‘please hold’ time and time again became too much for me to bear. Suffice to say, Lena wasn’t happy about it. I had a good enough savings to keep us on our feet. Lena worked a part time job as an accountant while she went back to school to study ecology. The job market was tricky, especially for a college drop out that needed something more stimulating than she could find with her level of education. 

“Yeah, you know I’ve been looking. There are plenty of options if I want to go back to being a receptionist or a barista.” I sounded a little annoyed. To be fair, she mostly stayed out of my business. I know that I should be looking for a job not for me, but for her, but there’s almost nothing for me in our current job market. 

“I know you hated being a receptionist, but it isn’t a bad idea to have a job while you look for what’s right for you.” She sipped her wine, set it down, and looked at me softly. She put her hand on mine, “It’s not like I enjoy accounting, but it’s helping me through school.”

“Yeah… I just know that there’s something out there that I’m meant to do. It’s almost like, when I’m working, I don’t have time to find it.”

“Well, your savings is going to dry up soon. If you aren’t going to look for a job for yourself then you need to look for one for us.” Lena stood from the table and took her half-eaten food to the kitchen. She started putting away the leftover, pots and pans clanged around. 

I sipped my wine. I observed how my fingers contorted through the glass. I felt guilty, I wished that this wasn’t causing her stress, but I understood why it is. I had a habit of waiting till the last minute to get my shit together. I looked back at the incense holder for a moment, downed my glass, and began to clear off the table.

Later that night, Lena laid on her side away from me in bed, leaving a big gap between us. She was fast asleep while I stared at the ceiling recounting the day… Thinking about the light. I am a person of science. I may believe in meditation and ritual, so I knew that the lights I saw had to be a dream. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling of how real it seemed. Or the pull that I experienced before Lena dropped her book.
I was getting sleepier. I could feel my eyes getting heavier. Before I dozed off, there was a puff of light in the corner of my eye and I was asleep.

Chapter Two

I woke up around ten in the morning to an empty bed. Lena’s first class was in the morning, so she was long gone. We had a bit of a rough night but, even so, I got out of bed with a productive pep in my step. I turned on some music loudly as I got to work making the bed. I danced about the apartment in my pajamas and a pair of fuzzy socks as I tidied the place up. After about an hour, everything was almost done. Everything except the living room. 

I plopped down onto the couch and looked at the incense holder that I had left out. Yesterday’s experience came flooding back to me. The lights, the locked in feeling, the physical pull before Lena came home. I felt that I needed to give the meditation another shot. I decided that if it happened again and I could manage to pinch myself while it happened, then it couldn’t be a dream. 

I set everything back up the way it was before, softening out the wrinkles in the blankey and lighting a new incense stick. I laid back down and tried to focus on the scent of the smoke in the air. This meditation was too technical and I was having trouble separating from my consciousness. My mind kept on thinking about the lights and I kept fighting to recenter. Lena’s old dog, Oscar, grunted as he laid in his bed and stretched his legs. I looked over at him and sighed, getting up to give the old man a walk. 

We went the long way around the neighborhood today. There was a large park nearby and I loved the feelings of walking through beaten down trails away from the pavement, away from people and card. We took these beaten trails and made it to the lake, the center of the park. I twas a nice summer day. It was warm, but slightly overcast. Not too many people were at the lake today. An old man and his grandson. A few young faces walking on the path and chatting.

We walked the loop around the lake and just before we made it back to our trail to get home, I saw a rock on the ground., My whole life I’ve been the kind of person to college little things from outside, rockers were a number one for me. This one was small but had three distinct layers. The first was a milky quartz, above that was a deep green colored stone, and the final layer was a grey rock. I thought it was neat so I held it in my hand as we walked home.

When we got inside, Oscar trotted right up to his bed and laid back down. He was getting sleepier in his old age. I popped my shoes off and wandered back to the living room. I set the rock down on the coffee table and, once again, lit some incense and laid down.

This time I had the chance to clear my head. I was already feeling the calm that a long walk provides. My body began to feel heavy. I took in the scent of the incense and fully relaxed, mind and body. Time went by and I just stayed in my state of meditation. I took full, slow breaths and mentally became as far away from myself as I could be.

My eyes were shut but I began to see light through them. I allowed my eyes to open slightly and there it was above me. My light show. The lights were similar to how they were before, with streaks flowing through the air but there was something different about them… Light was coming from below too. From the coffee table… From the rock. Single strands of light stretched from the rock and joined the lights in the air as they began to flow together. I remembered what I was here to do. I was… I was conscious but the lights were still there. I began to feel the physical pull again, but I fought it. Finally, I was able to make my fingers move and I pinched my thigh. The lights were there! They were really there, and I was seeing them. I was slowly able to move my hands, and then my arms, and then to try and lean myself up.

I wasn’t just seeing these lights, I was beginning to feel them and the way they moved in my core. I lost the motivation in my arms and dropped back to the ground and suddenly it was all over. I sat up and looked around at the plainness of the room around me. Oscar picked his head up to look at me. I was breathing hard, my heart racing. I rushed towards my computer and immediately started searching for what could have caused this.

I searched all the key terms I could, trying to find an answer. Meditation lights, ads pop up for string lights and pink salt candles. Mindfulness seeing weird lights, I’m directed to lists of self-help books. Blue lights in air, the title of a web article says, ‘Top Eight Alaskan Auroras 2022’. Nothing is matching my search. I resist the urge to search what I saw as symptoms, though I’m sure WebMD would have a litany of answers for me. I hunch back into my chair and think for a moment. I spin myself a little and release my leg to let myself spin about freely before the chair stops and I’m pointed to face the living room again. 

Finally, I search seeing auroras in meditation. I scroll through the results and then find a scholarly article titled ‘Shamanic Practices of East Asia, the Americas, Australia, and More’.  I click the link and am brought to the article’s abstract. This grad student, Everett Hudson, had lived among nine different tribes around the globe and wrote this article specifically about the shamans of whom he met along his studies. He was noticing similarities among shamanic practices between tribes of people who have no interactions with one another and whose ancient migratory patterns didn’t provide answers to such similarities. He listed off a few; bloodletting, trepanation, herbal remedies, meditation. The very last one mentioned was the aurora, or as he called it, the shamanic aura.

I needed to know more. Luckily Lena saved her school login to the computer, and I was able to gain access to the full article. It was about thirty pages long, but I skipped to the end where he finally talked about the aura. In five of the nine tribes he lived with, there were shamans that described falling into something like a trance and seeing something in the air unlike anything seen in day-to-day life. Each person had a different description of it. Some called it energy, some called it spirits, and so on. But what was clear was that all were seeing something moving through the air. Something that was ethereal, not grounded.

I sent Everette Hudson an email and told him what I experienced. I told him about both meditations, about the lights and how they changed, and about how the control I had over my own body changed in a way I had never experienced.

Throughout the day I checked my email. Lena came home and we did the usual routine of making dinner and visiting with each other. At the table, Lena began to tell me about her day. It was the usual, some classes went well. She’s annoyed at some of her professors. 

“How was your day?” She said to me. She wasn’t going to bring up the job search for another day or two. She’s a believe in cooling off before getting back into touchy subjects.

“It was good. I took Oscar on a nice long walk in the park today.”

“No wonder he looks so tired.” We chuckled together.

I looked at my glass and spun the wine around inside it. I debated telling Lena about the lights, but I didn;t know how to tell her without it sounding crazy.

“I emailed an anthropologist today.”

“Oh? What for?” Lena furrowed her brow a little. She seemed a little suspicious which, I’ll admit, she had a reason to be. 

Since before I even met Lena, I’d devote myself to a new career choice without any experience or training and give up after a few months to a year. There have been a few school semesters wasted on degrees with an emphasis in a broad set of categories: from chemistry to oil painting and even to botany. All of them resulting in me dropping out. Since we moved in together, I’ve mostly avoided this by trying to devote myself to various jobs that I’m technically suited for, like my last job as a receptionist. So, naturally, Lena’s a little suspicious of my sudden interest in emailing anthropologists.

“I read an article he wrote on shamans in a bunch of tribes around the world,” I took a small bite of the salmon Lena baked and washed it down with water. She was silent so I kept talking. “He found a few shamans that don’t have any ties with another that all see some kind of aurora in the air when they meditated.”

“Oh, that’s interesting I guess.” She said looking at her plate and taking a bite of food.

“Yeah, I thought so. Anyway, I emailed him to see what it might take to see something like that in meditation.”

“What, like drugs?” Lena said, starting to sound agitated

I knew I should change the subject, but I really felt like I needed someone to talk about this with. “Well, no. Just-”

“You’re not a shaman, Eva.”

“I know that. That;s not what I’m trying to say-”

“Can we just have a pleasant evening without you thinking about becoming something that you can’t?”

I looked at her with my mouth open in a dumb expression.

“I’m sorry. It's just, either you want to be an anthropologist, or you want to be a healer. Hun, we both know you’re just going to rack up even more school debt.”

I bit my lower lip and held back my emotions. That was hurtful, even though it was a pattern we both knew. “Okay, let’s just talk about something else then.”

We finished dinner in relative silence and went to bed. The next morning, I woke up around eight, this time to the notification sound on my phone. I stretched my arm out and felt the empty side of the bed. Lena had left earlier than she ever did. I wished she was there so we could hold each other. We used to do that every morning but now our schedules just don’t align. If she  were here, we could work through these last couple days. Instead, I’m stuck laying here with a pit in my stomach about what she said last night.

I sat up and took a drink from the cup on my bedside table and looked at my phone. I had received an email from Everette Hudson.

Eva,

I’m delighted to receive your email. I’m currently in Australia living among the Palawa people of Tasmania. I’m currently in a small town for the next several days. Do you have time  to talk?

-Everette

I couldn’t help but to laugh in joy when I read the email. He wanted to talk. This alone meant that he took what I had said seriously. I sent him another email with a list of all the contact information I could think of. I gave him my phone number, my Skype account, and even my social media pages. I realize that may have been overboard, but I had no idea what method would have been best for him to reach me.

Everette managed to call me later that day in the afternoon. When I answered the phone, his voice sounded younger than I expected. He was a little tired on the phone and he explained that he called as soon as he woke up. He didn’t beat around the bush; he was very excited to know someone had read his paper and wanted to know more about what I experienced.

I told him in as much detail as I could, exactly what I had experienced from start to finish. I told him about how I had to take two tries the second time. I told him about the rock and the way the light emitted from it… or towards it. I told him exactly how I felt inside my own body and how I managed to gain some control without losing the lights. Everette sounded fascinated.

“Language is one of the largest barriers in our understanding of these auras. Áou have this ability to be descriptive in a way that I haven’t found in my own studies.” He said in a very matter-of-fact way. “Of course, that’s assuming you actually are experiencing the same thing.”

“I don’t really know what I’m experiencing, to be honest. All that I know is that it feels real, and you seem to be the only one with an answer.” I needed him to understand that I was skeptical too. That I wasn’t the kind of person to lie to myself or anyone else about something so profound. 

“Well, my studies are complete here in two weeks. I assume you didn’t just want to contact me to talk?” He said it so firmly that I almost believed it to be fact.

I was a little taken back. I emailed him because I thought he had an answer. So far, I’ve been given no answers and I’ve just been talking about myself.

“Well, really I was just hoping to find an explanation for what it is that’s happening.” 

“Yes, I understand that. I believe that we are both looking for an explanation.” He paused and I could hear him scratch what had to be his beard through the line. “I can buy you a ticket to Portland. My wife and I have a spare bed that you can use if you’d like.”

“Oh,” I didn’t expect this. “Oh, I don’t know.”
“This may seem unusual to you, but I assure you this is for the sake of my research.”

“Well, I’m not a shaman in Tasmania or anything-”

“No, but you read my paper. You say how little detail I included about the experiences told to me by the shamans. You described it in a way that I’ve heard only five other times… By five shamans. What you experienced is a perfect description of what these shamans experienced that I completely omitted from my article.”

I was silent on the line.

“Eva, I’m willing to take a chance on you.”

“I…I don’t know. I wasn;t expecting this.” I was so busy working out what he was offering to me that I could barely come up with the right response.

“Yes, well. I’m not looking for an answer today. I’ll be off the grid for the next two weeks. This will give you time to think about it.”
“I see.”

“In two weeks, you can expect an email from me. Please consider it.”

“I can do that.”
“Okay!” Everett sounded excited for a moment and then tried to bring his tone back down.

“Okay, I need to get off the phone now. It’s been nice to talk with you.”

“Yeah, you too.” I was about to hand up the phone when, “but Everette?”

“Yes?”

“It's just… you’re a man of science, right?”

“Yes, that’s right.”
“Do you believe in this aura? This…almost magical phenomenon?”

Everett paused. “Shamans, if nothing else, put on a very good show,” he paused again but just a little longer this time. “I’ve seen a lot of off, even unexplained things in my research. But I believe that everything has an answer.”

I opened my mouth to say something else when our lines were disconnected. I listened to the electronic buzz from the phone for a moment before hanging up. So, he didn’t have the answer I was looking for, But, maybe we can figure it out together.

                                                                  
JAMISON SCHROYER is a senior pursuing a degree in Ceramics with a minor in Psychology. Jamison expresses her creativity through pottery, her fantasy through writing, and her reverie through watercolor.