The Bench of Regret
Photo of a wet bench at a view point in front of a valley. There are branches of a conifer tree above it. The valley is full of a thick mist, and you can just about see some tree tops through the cloud.
This here sombre photo, is of the Bench of Regret which can be found on Black Down Common. It is said that, should a person seek to try it, they can use the Bench to work through their past and emerge into a brighter future. The legends say that when a person—amply fortified by courage, patience, and determination—sits down on the Bench, then the Ghosts of Black Down Common spring into a slow and steady action investigating the difficulties of the Seeker’s past.
Accordingly, once seated on the Bench, the Seeker will do best to adopt an upright pose with their back straight and their hands neatly folded on their lap. Their eyes should be half-closed, and softly focussed. Once positioned so, the Seeker should concentrate on their breathing—especially on the space in between each breath—and simply await what the Ghosts have to show them.
Seeker be aware that the Ghosts are incredibly slow to action. This is not because they are lazy or busy doing other things, but because they are making sure that you are serious. A great many Seekers find, after a few in and out breaths, that their anxiety and worries overtake them, and they are unable to stay the course. Given that it’s not a small amount of work for the Ghosts to dredge up your past, you will give them some latitude in taking their time to observe you.
Eventually, once the Ghosts are certain of your intentions, the patient and courageous Seeker will find scenes from their most difficult of pasts arising up from the valley before them. Effectively, the Bench is a cross between an iMax and an Odourifics machine, and the Seeker must learn how to find their present self in amongst the sights and sounds of their past. The successful Seeker must ground themselves and hold onto the now, even as their history seems to overwhelm them. For this reason, and if necessary, the Seeker is permitted to place one hand on their heart and one hand on their tummy once the odourific movie starts.
Seeker know that when the regrets come, they come hard and fast. Whilst they arise from the valley like will-o’-the-wisps, they carry with them a sharp and quick weight which twists in your heart like a knife. A weight which at once pierces as it crushes as it blankets as it refuses your grip. The kind of weight which non-Seekers spend their lives evading. But here you are, Seeker, before the valley, upon the Bench, allowing the small, dark demons of your past to rise up so that you may consume them. Here you are, Seeker, before the valley, upon the Bench, and if you keep your courage with you, I promise that you will emerge reborn and untethered on the other side.
I warn you, Seeker: this Bench is not for everyone. Some people claim they have walked the Serpent Trail to Black Down Common only to fail to find it. Others have found the Bench and then spent two years and three days regretting it. They push the experience down to be a part of the other regrets they could not, in the end, bear to confront. Others start the experience only to abort it mid-procedure and then spend the rest of their lives with an eternally open wound: histories of regret spill out of them daily making a mockery of time. This is the kind of regret which exists permanently in the present tense, no matter how far in the temporal past it gets.
For the true Seeker though, the Bench symbolises a new life. It is a doorway to the much coveted Eternal Lightness of Being. For, once the true Seeker has engaged with their past, wrangled with it, lived though the fear of suffocation and drowning, they will emerge with a new skill of noticing. And with that superpower of observance, they will find a quiet stillness which sprouts anew from each and every moment. From then on, the Seeker will be light like a feather, float as if on the wings of a dove, and even on those days when they crash and fall, they will find themselves agile enough to roll into a ball, rebound, unfurl, and recover.