7
Open to its epiphanies
How incredible, how beautiful.
I do not even know how to describe it.
It is simply… the universe coming together in this moment, this place, for me. And I’m no longer a person, I’m just something that’s here with it. Part of the great swirl around me.
Again, words come. But this time I do not need to find a flashlight and pen. The wide open sky and earth are the notepad, my thoughts the ink.
You have arrived, you have found this perfect moment.
But does a perfect moment matter?
Inside, you are still barren, alone, feeling abandoned by all that you want. Still your dreams of finding your happiness, your purpose, lie lifeless as this sand.
Even here, at peace and surrounded by perfection, you feel empty inside!
What is missing in you?!
It is not missing in anything else!
These simple ocean waves roll in endlessly, forever knowing what to do, never doubting.
But you, a complex creature full of wants and plans, you have no idea where to move next, what to do next.
Above you is the empty unlimited, perfectly at ease with its foreverness.
But you, even with your unlimited mind, still you feel imprisoned!
Listen:
Your eyes and ears and mind and heart have become so closed, somewhere along your life.
But it is time for you to be born.
Take your deepest breath, and hold on to yourself.
Because though you have taken thousands of steps, you cannot truly take your first step… until you know which direction you are facing.
There comes a moment when you realize where you are journeying. For the first time, you feel a hand grasping you, inviting you to your distant destination. Actually wanting to lift you, carry you there.
That moment of realization is your true birthdate.
It’s the moment YOU, as a being aware of your own journey, open into the world.
You are coming home.
You are coming home.
Home to the YOU that has always been inside you, but which you have not yet met.
And that’s all you need to know, in the beginning.
Did you think, upon beginning this journey, it would take you anywhere else? The answer to your every question lies in the footsteps ahead of you that bring you to YOU.
So take your small steps, take your large steps.
Whichever direction you choose will not alter your destination. Whichever way your feet face, each step will still bring you closer to home.
Once you know this, your journey becomes more than the most important journey of your lifetime;
It becomes the ONLY journey.
So keep walking.
Just walk.
8
Coming home.
The epiphany arrives.
But something is still missing. Some… cohesiveness to clarify these last few months, these ‘lessons’. I’m wired with energy, I’m clear-headed, but something’s still missing. More little epiphanies, beautiful but untamed and disordered, waterfall through me in a discombobulated flood. But it has been months of disjointed happenings;
I need unity! Wholeness. A feeling of nothing being missing.
So I jump up and walk toward the water. I’ve been seeing it, hearing it, smelling it… but I have not yet met my ocean.
What was the next phrase?
Rejoice in every detail
I step into the merging place of ocean and sand. Warm water swirls around my feet and ebbs away, swirls and ebbs again. I squat down and dip my fingers, then touch the wet, salty ocean to my tongue.
This is how truths visit; not as ideas, rather they soak into us. We are permeated, bathed in them. Thoughts can confuse us, be debated, changed and argued. Truths bathe you, soak in and become part of you.
I stand up, tall into the sky, and turn in a slow circle to see around me.
As I move my foot, I glance down… my dark footprint in the wet sand is sparkling! Dozens of tiny green pinpoints of light glitter for a second or two and blink out again. Green stars in my footprints!
I step again, and the sparkles appear again, then fade out.
Some kind of phosphorescent algae or microorganism. It doesn’t glow when I wade into deeper water, and doesn’t glow in the drier sand above the water line, and doesn’t glow when I keep still. It needs the earth, and the water, and my motion, and exposure to the air. And it needs my eyes, to see it.
Whatever is sparkling needs all these separate elements, converging together into one happening, before it will show itself and be seen. Take out just one of those elements, and the glow does not exist to me!
Put all in order
I begin walking backwards, along the water’s edge. Now my heels point to the direction I’m walking, to my future, while my toes point where I’ve just come from, my history. As I watch my fresh footsteps recede in front of me—I mean, behind me—each new footstep twinkles with the bright green stars, fading as I move away from them.
My steps create a long, ordered path along the water line, the intersection of earth and water and air and me. And a fleeting path of the sparkling lights we create together.
Small waves patiently wash along the almost-smooth beach, swirling over and around my footprints, flattening them again, cleansing my past steps out of existence, losing all curiosity that I’d even passed through.
Like these prints in the sand, I have been given each step along this beginning of my journey. They were given to me in a precise order.
First, there was nothing. How could a bunch of ‘things’ come first? Where would all their matter just appear from? Emptiness, stillness, darkness everywhere.
What can come next, other than the opposite of that? Movement, to fill in the stillness. Whether it began moving at one spot, or some shimmer began in the stillness everywhere at once… motion filled the emptiness.
How can movement, at its very beginning, be in different forms? Motion, everywhere, began as the same motion, everywhere. Just motion itself, nothing solid, nothing different.
And where can that same motion go… other than to evolve into differentness? Motion gathered together here, thinned apart there, goes straight here, is pressed into circling around itself there, builds into solid things, falls apart again.
And all this happening at once, this oneness, is necessary for every existent thing, from the thinnest motion of gravity to the thickest, densest rock, to… life.
All things come into being through these exact steps, in this exact order. This is the order of creation of our universe… and not one step can be absent, in anything that is to exist.
Nothingness, stillness.
Then somethingness, motion.
Then sameness, equal motion.
Then differentness, unequal motion.
Separately, in that order.
Yet also entirely at once, whole and not separate.
Oneness.
I am tired. I lie down as the night passes.
9
Dawn.
A soft and healing wind coaxes grey-white air and waves into activity, shivering me with a chill feather. I sit up, reclining, looking around me, oddly calm and quiet inside in the aftermath of a long, transformative day and night.
Voices breeze my way from beyond the next mound of sand, coming nearer. Argumentative, exasperated, even confrontational, the voices suddenly hush as two men’s heads appear over the berm and espy me sitting on my towel. Studying them as they approach, I discern blue-collar types; life-matured men and hard workers… but looking out-of-sorts in edgy new hairstyles above trendy but classily-cut shorts and tees.
“Morning,” the tall rangy one called out as they neared. He glanced at his watch as they stopped a few feet from me. “How’s it going? Hey, you must’ve come out before dawn? Barely six right now and I thought we left early.”
“Yes, beautiful morning,” I answered. “I came out last night. Spent the night here.”
“Spent the whole night?” He looked at me in slight disbelief, then glanced around us as if the thought of doing such a novel thing might actually appeal.
“Yeah, pretty out here. Why’d you stay the whole night, though?”
“Just felt like it. I came to see the ocean, and it was so nice to be here I didn’t feel like going back to a room.” I held up my hands, throwing further explanation to the breeze.
His shorter heavyset friend seemed antsy, too politic to be abrupt but obviously impatient to resume with their business. I could have waved them on their way—they had, after all, only stopped out of vague politeness and curiosity upon seeing me—but instead I honored something deeper.
The final phrase on my notepad:
Then teach
“You two look like you’re here on business. And out here this early, my guess is you’re doing some last-minute prep for something happening later today?”
The heavyset one, using this as an opportunity to escape, broke into walking and said, “Yeah, that’s about it.” Then over-shoulder to his friend, “Let’s go, we really gotta hash this out, time’s tight.”
But his rangy friend looked at me more seriously for a moment, decided something, then half-laughed, “We’re freaking out. We made a new product, a gadget-type thing, and in about three hours we have to do our big presentation to a room full of money people at the hotel. We really need the backing.”
He looked at his partner, who had stopped again a few steps away, fidgeting and looking around.
“We’re really shitting bricks because we’re just not seeing eye-to-eye on some key things in our presentation. It’s all in how you present, and if we go in like we are now, against each other instead of a unified front…”
“Come on, man,” the heavyset one said. “We gotta get crunching on this. Let him enjoy the beach, he doesn’t give a shit about our thing.”
The friendlier one smiled at me, but as he turned to continue walking I said, “Can you stay for a few minutes, let me ask you two some questions? Maybe I can help a little.”
“We can’t really talk about it,” the shorter man tried shutting it down again. Then with a smirk, “Not without you signing a non-disclosure agreement like they all do. And we didn’t bring one to the beach.”
The friendly man grinned at his partner and somersaulted his brain with, “How do you know he isn’t going to be at the meeting?”
Shorty stopped fidgeting, with an expression of hesitation and suspicion as he peered at me.
I laughed.
“Nope, not a money-guy. And I don’t need to hear any details about your project. But I’ll still bet I can help clear up whatever you were arguing about, even if I don’t know what it is.”
The friendly one squatted down onto his heels, obviously the open-minded and creative partner.
“Fire away,” he said. “I’m willing to listen to something out of left field, at this stage. Because he and I are at total opposite ends about a couple things, and we don’t know how to solve it yet. Maybe you’ll throw something into the mix.” Friendly face, but doubtful and with a challenge.
His partner puffed out some scoffing noise and fidgeted around our outskirts, not wanting any of this but giving in, impatiently, to its happening. Obviously the technical partner; too academic for his own good, and suspicious of spontaneous creativity.
I had no idea where I was heading with this.
But ‘it’ said teach. And if ‘it’ works, then it works for everything. So let’s see.
I ventured, “You only mentioned the presentation, so I’m assuming your disagreement was not about your product. You’re both in solid in agreement about its value in existing and in being profitable, yes?”
“Rock solid,” the friendly one answered. “We’re both on exactly the same page about that. It’s the presentation…”
The short one jumped in this time, clipped words drilling out at top speed, probably annoyed all his life that his mouth can’t spit out words at the same speed his brain thinks them:
“Yeah-yeah-yeah, but it’s not just us, a lot of guys are pitching their ideas to this money group today, it’s like an inventors and investors fair, we only get twenty minutes each to interest them, which isn’t a lotta time, he wants to—”
“Stop,” I spoke over him, but kindly, and held up a hand.
Where did that come from?
He trailed off, a little startled and annoyed after my interruption. I was a little startled myself at my own sudden action. Would have thought it rude, before, as I’m sure he does now.
“There’s no point in picking up the argument where you left off,” I said. “It didn’t seem to be getting you anywhere. Let’s angle in from a new direction. Can I ask a few more questions?”
The friendly one beside me was remaining quiet this time, while the impatient one threw his hands up in exasperation and mock-acquiescence.
“Sure, whatever.” He stood with hands on hips, looking down at me with a let’s-get-this-over-with, ask-your-questions-already stare.
I asked them, “What is each of you actually afraid of, in your partner’s part of your presentation?”
The impatient one was almost grateful for this opening to dive into a rant.
“He’s all wishy-washy, he doesn’t know the numbers like he should, you gotta get the stats all out there fast, the business plan, the projections, numbers is all these money guys care about so you gotta give them as many details as you can in only twenty minutes, get ‘em out there bang-bang-bang, but he just doesn’t want to talk about the numbers, and how can we look like we’re unified if he keeps—”
“Stop again, please,” I interjected. To the friendly one I asked, “And what are you worried about, with his part of the presentation?”
He considered that for a moment.
“He won’t inspire them. They’re investors, but I think they need to feel inspired, too. They want to see what kind of people we are, to have confidence in us, and feel some inspiration about the product. I think they need to see a whole balance of things, not just the stats.”
His partner broke in again with, “They don’t need fucking inspiration, these are money guys, they need to see the numbers! We can’t waste time trying to—yeah, yeah.”
This, as I raised my hand again. Somehow I’ve fallen into the role of, and been accepted as, a mediator. As well as whatever else I’m offering. But it’s all clear to me now.
I said to them both, “It looks to me like each of you has your weaknesses, areas where you come up short in your partnership.” Nothingness, being lacking.
“And you each also have your strengths, where you can fill in the gap wherever your partner needs it.”
Somethingness, contributing your skills.
“Obviously, you both brought skills to the party and you’ve made it this far by strengthening each other.”
The impatient one still fidgeted, but was now following our question-and-answer without having consciously switched to doing so. An analytical mind, easily hooked by any process of clarifying details.
I continued, “And you have a common ground, things you’re both sure of and solid about on this project. That’s why you’re in this together.” Sameness, partnership, agreement.
“So that’s all in sync. But in the areas you’re different, it seems like right now you’re allowing your differences to split you apart. To create your product and get your business started, it looks like you put your differences to good use, complementing each other. But now you’re allowing your differences to cause this rift in you.”
They look at me.
“Yeah, but it is what it is,” said the impatient one. “He thinks the presentation’s about one thing, I know it’s about the other. We really need this cash to get started, we can’t mess this up, we just don’t agree which way to present it all. We don’t have the time to say all whatever he wants, and all whatever I need to say.”
“Yes, you do,” I said.
They stared at me.
“You already know everything you want to say; the only problem you’re having is in how to unify your differences into one smooth twenty-minute presentation.
“You have three hours to work it out. That’s plenty of time. You can figure out how one of you makes the more inspirational comments, and the other of you punctuates that with the more meat-and-bones statistics you need to get across also.”
I leaned back. “You can figure out how to nudge each other, if one of you talks a little too long about ‘wishy-washy’ things, or the other gets excited or nervous and talks too fast and long about the numbers. You can even give a hand signal or say something.”
“That’ll make us look amateurish,” the short one scoffed.
I said, “I’m assuming these are big-time investors, which means they’ve seen it all. Probably seen thousands of pitches in their day. You won’t be fooling them about who you are. Even if they see you do little signals, or correct each other… they’ll appreciate it. I’ll bet they’ll even laugh at it and enjoy it. Because they will see one of the most important things I would imagine an investor wants to see:
“They’ll see that you two are really working well together, playing to each other’s strengths, filling in each other’s weaknesses. They’ll see how much effort you put into not just your product, but into making each other stronger.”
I paused, letting my statements have air to breathe. I’ve been learning my own things along the way, from my teachers-who-are-not-teachers.
“Many a deal has been lost simply because investors knew they didn’t want to work with the product’s inventors. Especially if those inventors show they don’t know how to integrate their differences with each other.
“Just be yourselves in front of these people, don’t pretend you’re anything you’re not, and use the next few hours to balance your separate strengths into your presentation together as a unified front. Try to keep an eye out to giving your partner equal time. If one of you is filling in too much, find a way to ease off, allow an open space for the other to come in. If one of you is faltering, notice and ease yourself in to strengthen that space. Why not make your presentation about giving to each other, instead of trying to run away separately with what each of you wants to say?
“Be generous, and relax. Then your presentation will include your separate skills, and it will also come across as a unified whole. Then you will succeed, together.”
I ended with a self-effacing smile and, “Sorry to sound corny.”
The shorter one stared hard and then glanced away, looking out over the ocean, thinking into that empty space. Despite his rough edges, I could see what his friend liked in him. I liked him, too. The friendly one kept looking at me.
“Are you a business coach or something? You here for this convention?” he asked.
“No, I don’t know anything about those things,” I said, smiling.
10
Strolling back to town, I explored in the daylight what I couldn’t see the last two nights. The town has the overall feel of a humble seaside community still caught up in old ways, but also partly startled by the daydream that with enough trendy modernization it might bump up in status to become an oceanfront destination. The still-sleepy feel of the town was relaxing, and I appreciated their effort at trying to trendify the older buildings, rather than leveling them to make room for hotels and malls and condos. I liked that the huge tourist hotels were well beyond town-proper, across a bridge and out of sight from here.
My motel’s restaurant was not yet open for breakfast. But I felt like moving my body around a little more, so I freshened up in my room and then meandered the winding path down the hill to the motel’s swimming pool.
The pool area abutted the inlet and offered a pretty view of the marinas along it. A long spit of boulders rose high to create a breakwater on the far side, and this was a cozy, comfortable setting, even missing that expanse of ocean view.
On the pool deck, I began moving. Mostly my motions were freedom. Just being in motion, allowing fresh new shapes and patterns of movement to form as they will. Gratitude for my working limbs and inner life, and for a beautiful world to move around in.
“Is that karate or something?”
I’d noticed the four twenty-somethings, two men and two women, as they walked down the path toward the pool deck. Three of them had held back and were sitting on the concrete curb where the path meets the deck, a few steps higher than where I am, talking with each other and enjoying the morning. The fourth, a pleasant-looking and clean-cut young man, strolled around to my side of the pool.
“There are martial arts movements somewhere in there,” I said, “But only loosely. More like a dance or expression, rather than training. Just having fun.”
I don’t hide from people, but I usually seek out private areas to train martial arts or do my ‘movements’ so I don’t have an audience. And I don’t like bothering others, gyrating near them if they just want to sit and enjoy the view.
I offered, “If you guys were coming down here to be on your own, I can do this anywhere. I don’t mind finding another spot, there are lots of areas.”
“No, we were up there waiting for the restaurant and I saw you, thought I’d come down. Can you show me some stuff, like some moves? I always thought about learning karate or something like that.”
“Sure, let’s have some fun,” I smiled.
So we practiced back and forth across the pool deck. I showed him how to back up, slip sideways, duck, move a body part, anything to remove yourself from where an opponent is trying to hit or grab you—to become nothingness. And I showed him how to strike and block first, beating your opponent to any movement—become somethingness before your opponent does. And how to move together and keep conscious of your proximity and balance with your opponent at each step—sameness. And how to try change and alter your opponent into being off-balance, unprepared—differentness.
He enjoyed himself and did well; a quick-learner, though still clumsy—it takes months and years for muscles to become comfortable with the moves. Then I showed him a few basic self defense moves. We didn’t work up a sweat, I wanted to keep things very light for both of us, simple and fun so he wouldn’t be intimidated away from taking up training in the future.
Finally we stopped and sat down. “Wow, that’s a lot of stuff to remember. How do you remember all these moves and principles if you’re in a fight?” he asked.
“You don’t,” I said. “When you train each move thousands of times, you eventually just do it without even thinking about how. I think it’s the same with anything you learn;
“You go beyond thinking about the individual moves, even beyond thinking about strategy. You become this kind of… open awareness about all potentials of the encounter, all the things at once, even the things you can’t see. When you’re aware like that—if you’re skilled at it—there might not even be a fight,” I said. “It might turn into something much better for both of you, instead.”
“Hey, the doors are opening, let’s go eat!” one of the girls called out. They stood and prepared to leave.
“Coming,” my young man called back.
He stood, then said in a low voice, “Hey, can we talk later, if I see you? Maybe do some more of this… and maybe talk about my girl and stuff?”
“Sure, I’ll be around,” I said.
After all, it must work for everything.
11
The restaurant is open for breakfast, and I am hungry. But first I breathe, and look around me.
I feel stronger now, but also weaker, in a way. I probably seem fine to others, but inside… I’m a mess. My head is flinging in all directions. My first two forays into ‘teaching’ were sincere, but clumsy. Explainy. Messy. I probably came across as a smarmy, egotistical, do-gooder, well-meaning, um, dick. Like I was trying to teach something, rather than ‘making it all about them‘. I am a long, long ways from any kind of mastery of myself.
And I will not try to teach anymore. Until, perhaps, I no longer feel like an imposter. There is such a long path ahead of me still, if this journey is to lift me from this mire and elevate me into…?
I don’t feel awful, but I don’t feel good, either. I feel I’ve traveled, but I also feel lost within the travel. I want a small taste of ‘home’. Of human home. Warmth, comfort.
So I sit down on the grass beneath a sheltering bush, and dial my cell phone to speak with one of those ‘things I had no choice but to leave behind, if I am to pursue my journey’.
I live and die a little through her voice, for a few minutes. And we laugh, me through blurred eyes. And then we disconnect, and I stare at the water and the sky for a long time.
12
A gull balances perfectly on one leg atop a nearby dock’s piling, wise eye attentive to the near and far. The morning marina is silent.
This pretty inlet is part of the great ocean I cannot see beyond the breakwater, but which I know is there.
There is a path. These are no longer random and separate steps, but have become unified into a journey. I do not feel particularly changed, healed, or better, the problems of my life and mind have not been cleared.
But I do feel… something beginning.
Maybe some veil lifting.
I have barely passed my first baby-steps, yet I can tell there is something vast yet to come, something so much deeper awaiting, if I keep walking.
The path up to the restaurant is clear.
I walk.
This concludes PART ONE of my book and our journey here. There are four more parts to go. Four more parts that take you deeper and deeper into your own journey of mind and life, into transition and finally freedom, transcendence.
You are welcome to contact me, and if you do so please note that I am no longer the same person I was during this early part of my own journey. I’m simply ‘remembering back’ to it, a task that is sometimes difficult to a mind that has… gone further than what is being written here.
But it is important to make the effort, to show the beginnings. I hope you enjoyed the reading and that it helped along the movement of your own journey to your self. Wherever you are in the world, whatever your circumstances… you’ll see that even with our differences, we aren’t so different.
I will be adding the commentaries over the next few days. As you read them they will lift even more veils… you’ll then want to read the book all over again, a level deeper! That’s how it works.
Care,
Neil