“With meditation I found a ledge above the waterfall of my thoughts.”
“We only came close to dying six or seven times, which I thought was pretty good. Once, I lost my grip and found myself dangling by one hand from a ledge fifty feet above the rocky surf. But I found another handhold and kept climbing. A minute later Annabeth hit a slippery patch of moss and her foot slipped. Fortunately, she found something else to put it against. Unfortunately, that something was mt face."Sorry," she murmured."S'okay," I grunted, though I'd never really wanted to know what Annabeth's sneaker tasted like.”
“My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.”
“Theoretically, I wanted to meditate, but I found actually doing it extraordinarily difficult. As a therapist, I knew that we all want progress, but we resist change. I was a vivid example of this maxim. Figuring out my taxes and going to the dentist were easier than meditating. Even as I told myself meditation was a top priority, I worked to avoid that forty-five minutes alone with my mind.”
“Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogota. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good?”
“Don't be afraid."And then we were gone.Weightless.The ground at my feet suddenly disappeared along with everything else.A scream lodged in my throat, coming out broken and pathetic.And then we were sitting on a wide ledge. High above Jackson Square. Christ, he'd blinked me to - I gazed above me.Not just a ledge. Oh God, oh God, oh God."It helps if you breathe.""I think I might kill you," I said in a near whisper.Sebastian's shoulder bumped mine as he tried to hide a smile. "Well, you've got time, because we'll be up here for an hour or so before I have enough power again to get us down. I didn't think you'd be afraid of heights."I glared at him. "I'm not afraid of heights. I am, apparently, afraid of disappearing from solid ground and then reappearing on a ledge.”