Mindness

Posted on Jan 15, 2017 @ 7:15am by Lieutenant JG Stavik
Edited on on Jan 15, 2017 @ 7:16am

Mission: Holodeck Havoc

"Mindness" (Contd - "Patient-Dragon Confidentiality Is Totally A Thing Right?")


Location: USS Phoenix
Scene: Holodeck 7
Stardate: [2.17] 0114.2323

To many Vulcan meditation is a mystery, something specific to Vulcans, a strict regime with a purpose solely of purging any remnants of emotion.

That was an extremely warped and limited view of course. Vulcan meditation was no so different to the meditation practises of many other cultures, Stavik had noticed himself similarities with a number of meditation techniques practiced on Earth. Anyone could if they wish learn the principles of Vulcan meditation, indeed a few of his own pilots had taken some basic instruction. Its true and ultimate potential was generally only realised by a Vulcan mind, and then only through a great many years of practice and adherence but the possibility that others could make as near full use of the meditation techniques as most Vulcans was not something new.

Practised as Stavik was with meditation the breathing exercises with which he began took only moments and he soon fell in to mindness exercises, meditations to bring his mind under conscious control, a way of enhancing his focus.

Two approaches existed, one could attempt to focus the mind on a single facet of the environment to the exclusion of all else or, as Stavik himself did, one could attempt to ignore a particular part of your surroundings.

This was generally the harder, one of his pilots had once described it as having a pink elephant in the room, an analogy that Stavik had later looked up and found to be a crude but apt approximation.

In this particular holodeck scenario Stavik was focusing his mind by avoiding the ocean, the sight, the sound, the smell, even the thrum of the waves against the rock, instead he switched his focus from the sun in the sky to the ground below him, the idols about and even the gulls. Each time his mind slipped to catch some detail about the ocean he pulled it back away from the immense blue and focused on something else, his mind soon stopped wandering his control over his thoughts processes brought back under firmer control.

Like any physical exercise the meditation needed to be repeated, to be consistent. The mind, like the body, would slip, would lose its edge and this meditation along with the teaching Vulcans underwent as they grew, and the general very mentally active lifestyles they all led were designed to hone their great minds, and through it greater control over their own bodies also.

As to purging emotion, that was something few Vulcans ever actually achieved and then through far more rigorous mental exercise than the basic meditation although that would play a part. Instead what created the exterior so many other races saw as stoney was, through meditation, the ability to maintain a level of control that allowed them to dissociate their emotions from the here and now, to be able to critically and analytically look at the motions, understand why they arose and never let them have any control over them.

The idea behind the technique was again not one foreign to other meditative techniques but the powerful Vulcan mind and their refined techniques go beyond what other races teach or achieve.

As Stavik pictured events since had joined the Phoenix he could recall the emotions that his mind had acknowledged and dismissed as his time had progressed.

The apprehension at a new assignment.

The nervousness of meeting his new CO

The frustration the encounter with Miss Bonviva

The self-doubt arising from speaking to Commander Malin-Argo

The emotions has existed, there was no denying it, indeed to deny that they did exist at all would give them more power than they held by acknowledging them but allowing them no grip over the mind or body.

Here now in the deep meditation Stavik recalled the circumstances, recalled the emotions, mentally listed the reasons that he knew the emotions had arisen and satisfying himself that they were to have been expected they were once again dismissed, no external sign of emotion clouding his face; not even a rise in his heart beat, just one more body function Vulcans could control to a greater degree than many.

Above him the gulls screeched to the air again.


NRPG: This is quite a stream of consciousness post and I am not really sure how well it works, oh well.


Peter Aspinall the voice of...

Lt J.G. Stavik
FCO
USS Phoenix