(Those who are coming to this serialized story for the first time, you can read the complete opus to date by clicking here.)
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| Me in 1994 |
The year: 1994. Location: bed. Propped up on pillows, eyes closed,
I was in a trance, and I was bored. Meditation seemed like flying coach from
New York to Guam with an hour’s layover in Tahiti: that is, a few minutes of
halcyon mindlessness hardly seemed worth all the effort of getting there.
Letting go of mind shouldn’t have been so hard for me. I blamed
my mantra. I’ll tell it to you right now. I figure this is no longer verboten, since
I’m not using it anymore. It was “hirim.” It was pronounced “ee-reem,” with the
‘h’ silent and a wet guttural ‘r’, on account of being purchased in France.
Now, a mantra is supposed to be a shred of nonsense that has no
associations whatever, to lure the mind away from its usual perch which is
lording it over consciousness. However, every time I’d begin inwardly reciting
my mantra, the frog accent sucked my mind into a whirl of associations:
remembering that one winter in Paris, 1990; the room where for six sessions I
met with my French TM instructor,
who was uninspiring, mechanical, and smug. The bastard made me give up smoking
grass before he would sell me my mantra; what's more, the mantra was wildly
overpriced, given the exchange rate…
…And so on. So much for quieting the mind. To get through the
snarled traffic caused by my French mantra, I wound up having to break up the
mayhem by head-butting my mind out of the way.
One cool thing happened while meditating in my instructor’s
presence. In trance, I was transported to a beautiful pavilion, where his guru
appeared and huffed on my third eye. Afterwards, I assumed that my 20-minute twice-a-day
meditation practice would feature more thrills of this kind.
Sadly, no. Twice a day I flew to Guam with no movies on board.
Still, I needed those layovers, however brief, in Tahiti. With my
thoughts finally quelled, I would suddenly be lifted up, as if by elevator, to a
plane where my head filled up with sunlight. But the moment was too brief. Too
soon, thoughts returned and blocked the light; I would feel the elevator descending.
My Self clamped back on and started whining that mindfulness is actually kind
of boring.
One day, just as I began my descent, I asked no one in
particular: is that all? Where’s the cool stuff? Where’s the guru?
To my surprise, I got an answer. Not a voice, but rather a
thought, instantly imbedded in my mind, and translated into words for my
benefit. Weirdly, it was in French.
Vous avez oublié de
composer le ‘un’.
You forgot to dial the
1.
I burst out laughing, breaking trance. Eyes open, I knew what the
guru meant. I’d been reminded to connect with the One. Not God. The ‘1’ was
Unity, the Flux to which all souls and spirits belong, the Everything, the
Great What-Have-You. That’s where the cool stuff is.
It’s not somewhere else. No elevator necessary. We’re already
there. It’s like waking up in your bedroom, which your sleep momentarily erased.
You’ve traveled in your dreams, and forgotten where you came from, but upon
waking you realize that all along you’ve been lying in your bed.
Henceforth I would begin my sessions by dialing the One, to wake
up in the Flux. The idea was to breathe, since breath itself is fluctuation. Different
from reflexive breathing, I breathed with purpose, putting my full consciousness
into it, as if to say Here I Am. Awareness dawned, and I’d wake in the true Here. Our real home, empty of furniture, blazing with blank light.
It also became my habit, on my way back from that place, to pause
for a lesson from my guru, to ask questions and receive answers. Clearly the teacher
was not some Indian guy. It was I, with my little third eye. I had held these
answers all along, was born with them, and was now learning how to access them,
as if a locked drawer had suddenly become unsprung. I suppose this source is
what’s called our Higher Self by some. In any case, it was inseparable from my
being.
For example, in one session I asked how to handle my persistent
digestive problems. In answer, I was shown a bar of soap on a shelf. I was told
to wash every part of my body with it – inside as well as outside. I reached it
down from the shelf. The wrapper said Appomattox Soap. This I took to mean: in order to end the Civil War in my
body, I would have to surrender to the Union (the ‘1’ again), and maintain
peace by faithful physical and spiritual cleansing.
But the lesson wasn’t
over. I felt suddenly invaded by a heavy paralysis. I couldn’t move a limb. And
then some presence took hold and lifted me free, to observe my body from above.
The splendor was dazzling. It shimmered like a palace, richly appointed, to be
lovingly maintained. I had never truly felt the beauty of our mortal housing,
and when I was gently placed back inside my body, I was able to revel in it for
the first time. I emerged from this meditation with tears flowing down my face.
Another time, the message I got was: “Food dies.” I wrote the interpretation in
my journal: “To fill up the stomach is to feed life that dies. To fill up with
Spirit is to feed the life that lives.”
The most memorable of all my lessons came when I was shown a park
scene. A light wash of green and blue suggested trees and sky. Vague calliope
music played in the distance; amusement rides, horses and ponies, chattering
people were sketched in pencil, like a rough draft for an animation sequence.
That’s what this life is, I was told, a beguiling sketch that will lead, in the
end, to a majestic finished creation – or Creation itself.
After I emerged from this meditation, I went for a walk in
Central Park. The carousel music was playing, passersby chattered, love was
everywhere, and my nostrils filled with the aroma of flowers that weren’t
there.
The last experience I’ll relate here was also on the subject of
creation. In one of my trances, it was depicted as a luminous shower, as if a
ladle of pure radiance had overturned. I was shown that to be a creator
oneself, a single step sufficed: simply step under the shower and be a part of
it. Stand still and receive. True creation is co-creation.
While I noted this lesson in my journal. I understood it, but not
how to apply it. That would come later, with the death of Harry Nilsson.
(To be continued.)
