Source: flickr.com via Jennifer on Pinterest

I have a confession to make: my inability quest to conquer my loneliness has turned me into a catfisher. Pathetic, right?

See, there’s this guy; extremely handsome, artistically inclined with a fascinating Facebook persona who I’ve become infatuated with. Sometimes, when my day hits that Omg, is it time to go home? hour I visit his page, flip through his pictures, posts and wonder what he’s like in real life.

I’m not proud of this. It all feels very juvenile.

But you have to understand before I came across his Facebook avatar, he manifested in a meditation. Let me explain: dating while single-mothering is a difficult feat. I haven’t had a significant other in a long, long time.

Maybe the universe is leading me through a crash course in self-love, maybe I need to get out more…

Whatever the case, one night instead of logging on to another god awful dating site, I put my desire for passion in Deepak Chopra’s hands and allowed him to lead me through a meditation on love from his 2009 release Stress Free with Deepak Chopra.

“Imagine your beloved,” Chopra’s voice suggests over a soothing track of bells and soft violins. But I don’t have one, I lament to myself. Maybe this isn’t for me. “If you don’t have anyone in your life right now, imagine someone,” he says as if he’s in the room, reading my busy mind.

At first I tried visualizing lost loves, ex-boyfriends and middle school crushes. But then, when I finally let go, an unfamiliar face landed on the screen of my consciousness. He was tall, had a quirky gap-toothed smile and, although he was inaudible over Chopra’s soothing voice, I could tell that he was talking about something that he was really excited about.

I watched his mouth move intently and spent the next two minutes in meditation floating in complete bliss…I surfaced in the dark room feeling light, but alone. Who was this cutie? Did I just make all that shit up?

Then one day, while consumed with my online life, I come across a picture of a friend of a friend of a distant associate standing next to him—the same face, smile and standing in the same setting that I’d imagined in my meditation!

Could this be real?

I shared this revelation with a friend recently who responded by giving me the screw face before telling me how she really felt about the situation. “Jazmyn,” she said with all frankness, “This level of delusion is very unhealthy.”

Delusion. Ouch. Such a strong word for a woman whose family has a history of mental illness.

Did my broken heart create a feeling that doesn’t really exist? It wouldn’t be the first time. Do I need to seek help, get on some meds? Am I caught up in a serious bout with Taṇhā, the Sanskrit term that literally means “thirst,” or have I accomplished the Siddhi tri-kāla-jñatvam: knowing the past, present and future?

For my own sanity I chose to believe the latter and wait for our paths to cross.

 

For nearly a decade Jazmyn Burton, a mother, writer and Philadelphia based yogini, has immersed herself in the physical and spiritual practice of yoga. Along her journey, she found that she was often the only woman of color in her studio classes. In an effort to bring more women of color to the practice she founded Yeye yOga, a weekly community class open to yogini of all shapes, sizes and colors, that stresses the importance of black women regaining control of their mental and physical health. In an attempt to start the process of saving the world one enlightened soul at a time, she recently enrolled in a 200 hour teacher training with Beyond Asana. Read about her yoga journey at yeyeyoga.wordpress.com.

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Assistant Editor: Jennifer Townsend/Ed: Kate Bartolotta