>It’s a frigid, but sunny Sunday Chicagoland afternoon. I am in a stranger’s home and we have had a couple of hours of loveliness and mediations and hippie things of this nature. I’m blissed up and blessed out and on cloud 14 when our super sweet hostess leads us into a Sufi meditation where we hold each other’s hearts, sing the chant and walk in circles, gazing into each other’s eyes, connecting. Oh no, oh gosh… it’s been so amazing up until now. This is where she loses me.
It’s not that I have anything against the Sufis (love ‘em) or singing (terrif) or even strangers (yay, oneness and all that.) But singing, going around in a circle and gazing into someone’s eyes is not something I would want to do with the love of my life, much less someone I just met. There is no elegant way to escape, I am stuck in participating, and although it is nicer than I expected, I am still relieved when she calls out we are on the last go around.
Recounting the story to my bestie afterwards, he is bowled over in laughter in New York. “Hilarious that you made that happen for yourself… that’s like your worst nightmare!”
I don’t like God. Or rather, more specifically, I don’t like the word God. The only time I intend to use it is, legs wrapped around someone, in that moment of Ultimate Bliss that comes when our body and mind are absolutely, without a doubt, right where we are. There, let God twinkle in every cell of my being, let Him lift me to miraculous heights, let sweat pour down each of my chakras to the tips of my painted purple toes, drenching me in ecstasy and then, just before that other someone pulls me into a sweet kiss of closure, there I will loudly, gratefully, almost exasperatedly proclaim: OH MY GOD.
That’s about the only time I use the word.
I like the word divine, but even that is being thrown around so much as a substitute for “God” that I am growing weary of it. (So fickle.) Especially when it’s tossed around with a holy reverence. Sacred, I can handle. Holy? I look for the nearest emergency exit.
In all my travel I seek out and find little pockets of community to strengthen my practices. People so generously and graciously open their homes and hearts to me, and I don’t mean to sound ungrateful or closed off in any respect, but I kinda feel like my mission, should I choose to accept it, is not to preach to the choir. Anyone that can breathe in a room full of strangers to willingly “connect with their own personal divine and feel that love coursing through them” is not someone who needs my help. If you can feel that love coursing through you—awesome, go be one with Brahmin.
As you all know, I’m interested in the sophisticates, the skeptics, the rational. And/or those who are already on this rabbithole of a journey but want more reality, more practical, and less “hosanna.” I want to be at the end of a barstool in heated debate about philosophy with someone who is pushing back. It’s not that I want to convert them, I just enjoy the friction. It’s not necessary to win an argument, but if someone can at least open their eyes to maybe looking at something a different way, or if they can enlighten or sell me on their own theories, that is a successful debate. Even just the ping ping match of popping the ideas around stirs up further questioning. Perhaps it’s because I love a challenge, but juicy bits are there for everyone.
My teachers tell me that the most important thing you can do to deepen your practice is to cultivate a personal relationship with your divine. This is step #1 in my workshops. Since “divine” is already growing tired in my vocab, let me offer: stillness, excitement, sparkliness, love, insert your guru here if you have one, pick from any of the major religions for a guy or gal to focus on, pray to the superhero version of yourself, be zen and be nothing; whatevs.
The top tier of (for lack of a better word) enlightenment is (for lack of a better word) God realization. Until then, I choose to roll with a whole holy posse. My numinious crew. My entourage of bliss.
I’ve met sadhus in caves in India, but these peeps are not part of my posse.
You know those obnoxious Richard Meier buildings in the far West Village that line the Hudson like two disco mirror rectangles? Yeah, that’s where my main man resides. In the penthouse. He’s got a roof deck. And bling. I’m very fond of Indian tradition in that respect, I like to bling my divine, flower them up, incense the s**t out of ‘em.
There’s a little pink tinkerbell cartoonish aspect of myself that has shown up when I am taking myself too seriously in yoga. She reminds me this is playtime, not work, and I relax.
Endlessly long stretches of beach, dramatic canyons, my bike zooming uptown in traffic with Jason Mraz on my iPod, these work too.
Mostly it’s a twinkling that I find within myself—a place in my body, in my third eye or my heart, the place I calmly take a breath into to rise above the incessant fluctuations of the mind. I go to these places, and the vast landscapes remind me there is so very much more that little ol’ me, and also that I am a part of that greater thing. I give over worries, problems, constantly, consistently and will do until that moment it is no longer necessary, whenever that may be.
This may sound like I am living in lala land, but I assure you I am not. You can think I’m insane; I’ve been dubbed much worse. Both scientists and philosophers say that there is no difference in our mind in what reality is and what we dream reality is. Our brains perceive the informational input as fact, even if it is the fiction of mindstuff; we literally have a physiological reaction to thoughts the same way we do as events. So ok, maybe I call upon fantasyland; if my mind perceives it as real, what’s the harm? When I find I am holding on to tightly to the reigns of what I want any moment to look like, I call in a member of the crew and hand it over. It can be as simple as going with the flow, releasing it from your hands. Saying “you know what? I’m doing a pretty shitty job of this right now, why don’t you take over?” That can be in a yoga pose where I am stretching with aggressive ambition or too many thoughts over a cute boy. It can be frustration in stalled traffic or writer’s block. It’s fun. It’s a game. And it works.
Alcoholic’s Anonymous has long used the phrase “Let go and let God.” That seems so amorphous. Talk to the big daddy. Put him in a flashy penthouse apartment. Take a breath in your chest cavity at a time when you’re not holding a cigarette. Have a chat that is casual yet revered, whether it’s with a lover or friend, connect to that place, that person that knows best—that thing that can see the bigger picture when you’ve lost the faculty to do so. It doesn’t have to be so holy, it doesn’t have to be silent, and it doesn’t have to be “God.” By making that which is bigger than us something that is up close, real and personal, by being able to have a conversation with our higher self that isn’t all holy holy night, we access the resources of the infinite wisdom that threads throughout ourselves and all of existence. Even that sounds too grand. If nothing else, I’ve had many accounts that calling on the divine works great for finding parking.
