"Oh, dip my emptied life into that ocean, plunge it into the deepest fullness. Let me, for once, feel that lost, sweet touch in the allness of the universe." Tagore.
I'm sitting in the Teen Literature section at the library, under the watchful eyes of "Cam Girl", "The Vega Factor" and "Catch 22". Across from me, an awkward, long-haired Jewish boy is waiting for the attention of a studious Muslin girl. A 21st century Romeo and Juliet. I could be wrong. They could have been forced to work together on a school project and, while she's doing all the work, he's reading a comic book. However, I think the comic book is just a decoy, a "cover" indicating that he's too cool to study, but too awkward to tell her how he feels about her. His comic book and her laptop give them something to get lost in while their eager teen feelings (which neither of them understand) race around inside them. In the meantime, a noisy old man, triangulating this moment, is with great import emptying his wallet of old receipts and crinkling them up into little balls. That being dutifully and necessarily done, he goes back to the Daily News.
When I got to reading, I didn't want to stop. It took an interrupting phone call for me to put the book down. Liz is the Key Hostess (Little Suzie Cream cheese) for a retreat, the topic of which is the turiya state, "the elusive 4th level of human consciousness. p. 196 Typically, humans experience and move through three different levels of consciousness - waking, dreaming and deep, dreamless sleep. The fourth level is, "the witness of all the other states, an intelligent awareness. . . And, if you can move into that state of witness consciousness, then you can be present with God all the time. This constant awareness and experience of the God-presence within can only happen on a fourth level of human consciousness which is called turiya."
As maddened as Liz is by those who can't provide adequate words to describe such a state, I feel the same about trying to sum-up what she's written about this amazing spiritual experience. I don't have the adequate words to discuss what she's written. I'm frustrated because all I'm doing right now is copying what Liz has written. But, so I don't look like a no-talent hack plagiarist, I'm trying to sum it up. And, I can't.
This stuff is leagues beyond me. Liz has found a way to spiritually soar and I'm stuck here on the ground. She's describing the tree tops and the clouds, the beautiful sun and I'm stuck in the house, watching TV and eating Hot Pockets. I can't fathom what she's talking about, though I'm sure what Liz says is true, that such a consciousness does exists. But, I can only gawk, gaze up in my dull, spiritual dumbness and wonder. I can only look up and imagine the beauty she flies amongst and kick at the dust in frustration and envy.
Liz talks about how afraid the people at the retreat are. But, she then admires their courage and, despite their behavior (the manifestations of their fear) she loves them. She loves them for their courage. "Your treasure - your perfection - is within you already. But, to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart. The kundalini shakti - the supreme energy of the divine - will take you there." p. 197
I wondered a few days ago how I could find the still water, the silence of the heart. A clue, an answer may lie somewhere in the meditation festival for which for which I have yet to reserve a space . . . because of my procrastination. The flyer sits in my pocket, gaining crumples, wrinkles and torn edges. Perhaps I'm afraid like the ones Liz writes about. I'm still afraid some one will catch me reading Eat, Pray, Love and think I'm a weenie. I'm afraid other writers at the writing space will think I'm pedestrian, sophomoric, bush-league or amateur.
I'm still concerned about what I think other people think about me. That's a lot of thinking. I'm going on my own journey. Screw them! This book has inspired me to change my life. I can only imagine the scene in the kitchen area when I look up from my book and yell at the people who are busy with their own writing and yell, "screw you! I'm going on my own, personal journey!"
Liz writes about reaching a state of bliss: "Nothing has changed, yet you feel stirred by grace, swollen by wonder, over flowing with bliss. Everything - for no reason whatsoever - is perfect." p. 197 She goes one to write: "According to the mystics, this search for divine bliss is the entire purpose of human life. This is why we all choose to be born, and this is why all the suffering and pain of life on earth is worthwhile - just for the chance to experience this infinite love. And once you have found this divinity within can you hold it? Because, if you can . . . bliss."
I wonder though (with a troubled mind), "why do we need the physical world to experience this infinite love? Wasn't our energy part of this infinite love before we were born? And, if we were already part of the divine, why did we need to come here to the physical world? What spiritual evolutionary state do we exists in before we come to the physical one? Everybody always wonders what comes after death. Well, what comes before life?" I imagine I'll find no answers in the physical world to questions about the metaphysical.
What's exciting is, though, is the wonder, the opportunity to maybe reach out amongst the stars and the galaxies, reach out infinitely to the great unknown, to catch a glimpse, a soul-touching glimpse of what astronauts, those sphere-wondering pilots who chase the heavens through, only get to observe, to measure. That is what I seek. I seek to fling out past the rings of Saturn, past the cold path of Pluto, out towards other galaxies, covering light years in an instant, to see what's up there, what's really, really up there. But first, I must be willing to venture into the great quiet that is within me, despite the fear of what I'll find, before God will scoop me up and fling me across the galaxies.
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