My Spiritual Adventure, Part 2
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”― Aristotle
That very next weekend after that life-altering class I went to a potluck where everyone there was no one I knew, and was hosted by the organization that this teacher ran. I have never been the best at small talk, especially around people I did not know at all. I mostly kept my mouth shut, and just watched and listened. I was invited to this potluck by the people who had put on the class, since I had expressed an interest in learning more about this inner sound. I spent most of the afternoon getting to know some of the people there. Most of them had already started some type of meditation program that involved this sound, but a few others were in the same boat as I was. Just kicking a few tires and seeing what was what.
After we had chowed down some really great food, mostly of the healthy and organic type, our ‘spiritual mechanic’ who had given the pretty amazing lecture spoke for a while. He was very low key and unassuming, but I was enticed by what he had to say. A few people asked him questions, but overall it was pretty laid back. Apparently he had been meditating on this ‘sound current,’ as he called it, for more than 20 years and had started teaching it just a few years ago. He wanted to make it clear that he was not a guru or master, and that he didn’t want anyone’s devotion. In fact, if anyone tried that, he would not teach them. He would probably get up and leave the room, thus leaving you to your own thoughts. He had learned in the eastern devotion schools, but then left them behind once he started his own school. He preferred to just be a simple teacher, a coach, a friend, a confidant if possible, and at times he could be coaxed into working as a spiritual mechanic. In essence, helping people fix some of their spiritual problems that were holding them back.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that last part, but I certainly wanted to know about the sound current. Later in the day he gave the beginning techniques for those of us who wanted to learn how to ‘meditate on the sound current’. Meditation wasn’t a practice I had any natural tendency to want to do, but I thought I’d give it a try for a while and see what happened.
It wasn’t until two days later, exactly on my 20th birthday, that I actually got around to trying out the techniques for the first time. Right, the ripe old age of 20 and I was learning to meditate; close my eyes, sit up straight, relax and listen to that inner sound a whole new way. That inner sound I had been trying to avoid for almost 15 years. I was either on to something, or had completely lost it. Time would tell.
In the beginning time did tell. Over the next three months I had experiences, but I also suffered. This new time had only told me one main thing. Meditating on the sound current gave me a bad headache about 50% of the time. But oddly enough I still did it on a regular basis, because it did relax me and it did energize me. That price just seemed a bit steep at the time, but overall I figured it was worth it.
I now had to take the one step I wasn’t too confident about. Ask for help from the spiritual mechanic, to see if I needed some kind of tune-up or maybe my oil changed. Actually I didn’t ask for his help. Some of my friends did on my behalf. He didn’t live in the same state as I did, and he traveled around a lot doing lectures and visiting his students. So, it was a couple months before I saw him again. Oh, and by the way, if I haven’t already said, his name in this world is Bruce.
I decided early on that if I was to truly take part in this system of meditation that I would give it my all and see if there was anything to it. I didn’t just want to go through the motions and do it half-way, and then waste my time if it didn’t work for me. So, what does ‘work for me’ mean? Well, they advertised that it would relax you, give you more energy, make you feel like you were more awake, and just generally make your whole physical life go better. All that sounded wonderful, but was it real? Also, they said that as one gets into the more advanced lessons, other types of experiences could (would?) occur. I might start remembering past lives, travel out of my body, have experiences in other levels (dimensions) which would relate to my spiritual progressions.
The idea of simple meditation was starting to get quite a bit more complicated than I envisioned. I decided I would just focus on the simplicity of it, and make sure I took care of that first. As far as the other possibilities … well, I didn’t know about past lives and wasn’t sure if I believed in that anyway. But I kept an open mind and just didn’t think about it. As far as out-of-body experiences, I’d already had that happen several times. And actually, I wasn’t sure I even wanted that to continue. And as far as multi-level experiences, I did find that concept intriguing. But we would see how everything else went first.
As I said the first three months had been difficult for me, but I kept going because I was getting something out of it. And now, Bruce the spiritual mechanic was in town and I was a bit hesitant for my checkup. I took my time getting around to having him work on me, but that day eventually came. I had watched him ‘tune’ others. ‘Tuning’ was a way he would clear roadblocks for his students. Roadblocks that were causing them to have problems when meditating. I wasn’t really sure why meditating would cause problems. That didn’t make too much sense to me.
When I first met with him he asked if I was doing the eye dissociation exercise on a regular basis. (Note: Basically, this particular exercise relaxed and loosened up control of your physical eyes so that you spiritual vision could come ‘online’.) I had to be honest and tell him I didn’t do it as regularly as he hinted I should be. I guess I didn’t think it was that important, but he stated that it was one of the cornerstones to the whole system. I really had no idea. He added that this meditation system was an active one, not a passive one, like so many others. And that you were traveling ‘inside’ the spiritual realms. So you needed your spiritual vision working in order to see where you were at and where you were going. Well, now that certainly made more sense.
But then I had to reveal the problem I had with doing it at all. My eyes would water a lot and then burn if I did it for very long. They seemed very tense and sensitive to doing this exercise. So that’s when he decided he needed to take a look at me spiritually. I stood right in front of him, a few feet away, and he closed his eyes and ‘worked’ on me silently. This went on for almost 15 minutes or so, and there were a couple times I could feel things going on in myself. I began to feel lighter and better all over. When he finally finished, he opened his eyes, looked at me serious, then came over, put his arm around me, and said, “You want to tell me about the drugs you’ve taken.”
Wow, that certainly surprised me. He could see that? I told him it had been several months since I did any of that, and certainly not since I had started meditating. And that I had quit for good anyway, being just an exploration phase for me in my late teens. Then he told me that on several of my spiritual levels the ‘ceilings’ were burnt to a crisp. He had to do some repair work to clear that up, but there would probably be more work to do in the future. He couldn’t repair it all at one time. And apparently my headaches were caused from me going up in meditation and hitting that ceiling, which blocked my access and caused tension in my head. In essence, the drug-taking had caused this whole problem.
He really seemed to on to something, and I vowed at that point to clean this up and get clear of all that. He said if I kept with my daily meditation, did the eye exercise, and kept in contact with him, it should clear up. He also mentioned a retreat that would happen this summer in northern California, and he hoped I could make it. Turns out, I did make that eventful trip to a majestic mountain called Mt. Shasta, and it truly changed my life forever. But that is another story for another day.
Stay tuned next time for part 3 of 3 …
TMC