DAY 168: 18 Minutes & 10 Seconds of Gazing
My horoscope today says the sun enters my sign for a month tonight and it’s going to be a personal power period for me. Well, I’ll tell ya, I like the sound of that. I keep having this feeling that my prosperity is right around the corner, and I am starting to realize that is precisely why it always feels like my prosperity is right around the corner. The sun has awakened desires in me for certain specifics in my life: a paid writing career, my own TV show, book tours, a lake house, a large and harmonious family, etc. I finally believe I deserve those things and can achieve those things. So I have been working toward those goals and making progress. But as time goes by and reversals occur (like my unbearably slow month of August at the pot collective) my enthusiasm begins to wain and I become disgruntled, wondering when then hell my abundance is finally going to come. As Eckhart Tolle says in A New Earth abundance and lack are inner states of being that manifest as outward reality. I realize now that what started out as enthusiastic visualization became unsatisfied yearning inside me. I want the lake house now. I want more money now. I don’t have enough yet. This shift is a subtle one because I am shifting from a healthy desire or wish to which I am unattached but is fuel for my imagination to an unhealthy desire to which I am attached and if and when it doesn’t come to pass on my time table I allow it to rattle me, to interfere with my inner peace, and so, as the universe continues to deliver it’s unwavering support for my energetic beliefs, I begin to experience lack, so I can be supported in the feeling of “desperate yearning” I’ve been putting out there. The Great Whatever gives what my energy field says I want, every time. Well, that part is a comfort at least. Now, how to master my energy field so I can get what I really want. The truth is that abundance is all around me now. I have a warm bed, a full refrigerator, my own business, my own blog, a team of employees to help me out, a new niece, a loving family and good friends. So what the fuck is my problem then? I have dreams, and I have not mastered the art of containing those dreams, nurturing them and bringing some version of them to reality without becoming attached to them. Once I attach, I strangle them, and they cannot come to pass. As the channeled Alien Entity Bashar says “we must follow the path of our highest excitement without holding onto any expectation of how it will turn out,” which I take to mean, without becoming attached to results. This is a delicate path to walk in ones mind, but I am beginning to realize it is the magical path, the path of mastery, of divinity, of being able to truly and miraculously manifest one’s own reality. Jesus took two fish and one loaf of bread and managed to feed throngs of people. How? Because his desire was pure, he was not attached to it, and he exercised faith. With faith, focus and an inner state that is already peaceful, we too can develop these types of super powers, and we too can effect our environment for thousands of years to come. But the main pre-requisite: we have to know it’s possible first. That part, I’ve finally got down. Every time I meditate I experience some positive result. Every time I sun-gaze I come away feeling deeper and more in touch with who I am. The methods of mastering this kind of magic all seems so complicated because in our current culture it’s a zany foo foo position to take, that you and life are both alive and can interact. But once you embrace this truth, the path toward further enlightenment becomes simple: meditate, stay centered, don’t forget who you are. It’s not easy, because our culture tries to pull us back down into the unconscious state that has become normal in our times, but it is simple. A little discipline, devotion and practice. Huh? Seems like the way to advance spiritually is the same way to advance at anything else. Practice makes perfect. SIDE EFFECTS: I become more and more aware of mental and internal blockages, which are not fun things to realize. BENEFITS: Once you are aware of these mental and internal limits, they cease to become limits and instead become opportunities to grow. And that part is pretty damn cool.
DAYS 139-167: Up to 18 Minutes of Gazing
It’s been thirty days since I’ve written in my blog and about 7 days since I’ve been sun-gazing. Many factors have caused my gazing to be sporadic and my blog entries even more so, the most significant of which, I now understand, has been the sun itself. Ever since phase two began and I rounded the 15 minute mark of gazing two months ago things began to change. Each gazing session feels significant, like I can feel the sun melting old dysfunctional parts of my brain away. Each time I gaze there is a buzzing in my skull and an almost etheric calling from the universe to stand taller, to glow brighter, to live in the world as a beacon. A beacon of what, I don’t freakin’ know, the whole beckoning thing has me totally freaked out. It’s not like I “hear” an actual voice calling out to me, I’m not crazy. It’s as if the sun used phase one to burn up all the mental and emotional ties that were holding me in the place of my old fear based and anxiety ridden belief system about life; so in phase two it’s calling me to stand up and enjoy my new freedom, to embrace the newly discovered expansiveness of my soul, and to—gasp—be myself! That act, I realize, is the biggest act of courage a human can take, to fully become yourself, and then be yourself. It seems like being yourself should’t take so much courage, that it should be the most natural and comforting thing in the world. What could be easier than being authentic, and wearing no masks? I know when I go to halloween parties the first thing to come off is the mask because of the chaffing and the sweating, so in life, it would seem like we’d be much comfier if we just didn’t wear masks at all. But that’s not the case. Our society currently is so thoroughly programmed. From rules of etiquette to dress code, from political correctness to sensitivity training, our society has become so rehearsed and performed that when someone is actually being themselves and coloring outside the lines of what we consider acceptable behavior the rest of us actually look on in fear. “What are they doing?” “They are going to get us in trouble.” “Come on honey, let’s go to the other side of the street.” Being yourself, I’m realizing as the sun calls me back to my truest nature, is very discomforting. The discomfort comes not because being yourself is hard, it’s not, it’s the most exhilarating thing in the world. The discomfort is because everyone around you expects you to be what you were, to continue the performance of whatever roles you accepted in adolescence to garner approval from those around you; to wear the paper mache mask you made in third grade and like it, Goddammit. But I can’t go back to masks. I must go forward on this spiritual journey, led by the sun. The fact of the relentless sunrise every morning makes me understand I can get up again and again and that each new day is a new start and a new opportunity to embrace myself, embrace life, and accomplish my goals. The circumstances of my life have been swirling around me in a constant ebb and flow that has become crystalized in the place between prosperity and daily struggle. The struggles with my marijuana shop are a reflection of my own inner struggle to accept the prosperity that is my birthright. I have grown accustomed to struggle. I have made “sticking it out through adversity” an identity, a badge I wear, and until I can take that badge off and accept the abundance of life, the abundance of life will elude me. The universe has no interest in challenging my belief systems, only supporting them. So in its unwavering support, if I believe that I must struggle to find worth in this life, then struggle I will encounter. If I believe that abundance is all around us and we need not toil and struggle to attain it, then that too will become true. Life is a mystery, a living being itself that actually responds to me, to my whims and preferences, but not the ones made of words in my brain, the ones made of energy in my being. If I feel struggle, I will get struggle. If I feel ease, I will experience ease. As Martha Beck would say “External circumstances don’t create internal emotional states, internal emotional states create external circumstance.” It may not always be easy to see this, but that’s because if you don’t believe it the universe will support that unbelief. That is where the magic is, pick your beliefs and then watch reality change before you. I know this is true because I experienced it for the four months of my phase one in minor ways almost every day. As I’ve struggled to come to terms with new levels of trust in myself and in the universe in phase two I realize it is because the sunlight has finally dug down deep enough and is scraping at the bedrock of false but dearly held beliefs I’ve ascribed to for longer than I can remember. Each new bout of sun gazing, at this length of time, scraps and tears away at those beliefs. I didn’t realize this at first, but it’s what’s caused me to skip. I wasn’t ready for how quickly my old notions would be stripped away. Now, as I write this, I feel more ready. The powerful nature of the phase two transformation started to make my head spin, I shrank back, bewildered. But I’m not afraid anymore. I long for the next unbelievable levels of freedom and prosperity waiting for me. SIDE EFFECTS: Foundational parts of your personality will begin to shift and float around your consciousness like dislodged parts of California after that one big earthquake. BENEFITS: Those parts of
DAYS 128-138: Up to 16 Minutes & 10 Seconds of Gazing – The Apocalypse of Catastrophic Armageddon (Read: Temporary Setback)
The world has ended. My life as I know it is over. The prosperity I have been enjoying since the sun-gazing began has departed from me, making me think the timing of it was a coincidence to begin with. It occurs to me that this may seem like a pretty steep loss in faith considering the magical four months I had previously enjoyed. But I assure you it is not. I came home from my five week vacation (I know that seems long, but again, I assure you, it is not) feeling rested and ready to jump back into a new routine with zest and vigor. And then the tides began to turn. The marijuana collective had basically hit the skids. We had the slowest patch we’ve experienced in almost a year, and at a time when our bills and the stakes and my expectations couldn’t be higher. I have grown accustomed to a certain level of prosperity, of magic, of synchronicity. I have come to expect it. So when my partner and I had to skip three paychecks in a row in order to make payroll and restock the menu I was starting to feel the pinch. And with the pinch comes the pit in your stomach that says this is scary, and that you’re a failure, and that even though you’ve managed to turn it around every other time this one is somehow different and you’re headed for bankruptcy, your mother’s couch, and a humiliating 20 year high-schoool reunion. “Oh what do you do now?,” some heinous bitch would ask. “I sleep on my mom’s couch cuz my pot business went belly-up.” Humiliating. I should be able to sell pot to people with my hands tied around my back and blindfolded; this is pot we’re talking about. And so my thoughts continued on like this, turning every emotional whim of anxiety into some kind of doomsday scenario where everyone I’ve ever met on the planet joins in the “Brian’s a great big failure” chorus, because why not, everybody’s doing it. As the third week of no paychecks rounds the bend I have literally sunk myself into a state of misery. I’m declaring it, I’m officially poor. “Nobody has ever experienced this kind of dire drastic poverty so nobody can know what I’m going through,” I think to myself while sipping my $6 coconut water in my back garden in my pajamas on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Then I pick up the book I’m about to read for the next few lackadaisical hours and think to myself “this is rough. I have nothing. If we can’t get paid this is a sign of my mis-management and it’s a personal failing. I ought to be ashamed.” Then I kick my feet up, feeling thoroughly miserable and distraught now, having worked myself up into a mental frenzy, and read for the next few hours on my outdoor couch listening to my personal water fountain a few feet away. “Life has it in for me,” I think, forgetting entirely at this point the 4 magical months of blessing, abundance and divine communication that came before this. And I also don’t seem to realize I still have Sunday’s off, $6 coconut water, and time enough to sit around in my pajamas and read. That realization would get in the way of my misery, so the epiphanies would just have to wait. I marvel at the power of the mind to create an emotional state, not based on fact, or reason, but just because. What little tenuous benefit of the doubt I had been learning to bestow upon the universe was so completely and easily blown to smithereens, it surprised even me. I had been abandoned and betrayed. By whom? Why, the Universe of course. It has taken time to personally come down, make life great, then strip it all away, in order to, you know, fuck with me. Just as I’m at my most miserable and ridiculous I get my electric bill, which is showing the total for two months and is past due. Gulp. It’s getting worse. My life is getting worse. Unable to see the delusions and exaggerations for what they were, I became easily lost. I was sun-gazing sporadically yet exercising zero mental discipline. Finally the fear seized me, in a way I now realize was a blessing, a spark, the beginning of a bright fire. Without even realizing it, I begin to run back to Sadhana and my meditation and I literally started running again. I guess if the collective insists on feeling out of my control then running and the pursuit of wisdom was at least something I could control. Will somebody let me know when all this studying about wisdom will actually make me wise? But somehow without my cooperation these efforts of mine wedged a gap in between the storms and the fire tongued thought dragons swirling all around in my mind. And for a second I was able to remember that everything is going to be okay. I didn’t believe it yet, but I could hear how ridiculous it all sounded. I was driving up to sun-gaze a few nights ago, still feeling miserable, but attempting to gaze anyhow. As I was turning onto Nichols Canyon road a truck cut me off. Just as I was about to totally freak out and go ape shit on this guy in my imagination, because haven’t I been through enough, I notice in his back window a sticker that reads “Be Mellow Dude.” I can’t help but crack up laughing. This lets a little more light in. I am reminded that the Universe is still trying to get small messages through. It resorted to having a guy cut me off in order to tell me to chill out. “Bold move,” Universe, “well played.” But the bumper sticker works. I begin to chill. I persist in my meditations, mostly out of fear and misery and being at my
DAYS 126 & 127: 15 Minutes & 40/50 Seconds of Gazing – The Gong Bath
My landing in Los Angeles last week was anything but smooth. It started with my flight being delayed on the runway, so a hundred tired folks were trapped together in a giant metal tube. Not good. Then I landed at LAX an hour late, exhausted and not yet even aware of how sad I was going to be missing my niece (and my sister and brother-in-law). The next few days I threw myself into long 10 hour work days at the collective but couldn’t seem to get anything done. I kept waking up in a funk and going to sleep sun-bathed but sad. You know that nagging feeling you get in your gut when you are packing for a trip and you are sure you forgot something but you can’t figure out what it is? Well I had that feeling when I was leaving my sister’s place, but upon arrival in West Hollywood everything was present and accounted for. Phone charger, check. Toothbrush, check. Books, check. As the long California days passed I couldn’t get rid of that feeling, what had I forgotten? Today I realized what it was: I had flown back to Los Angeles ten days ago, but I left my heart back in Connecticut with my little niece Charlie. She had stolen it and she was welcome to it. I attended a yoga “gong bath” yesterday. It promised to shake things loose inside me by harnessing the power of the super moon through the vibrational essence of the gong, and empowering me with energy to take more action on my goals. Well that sounds like just what I need, so I signed up and made myself comfortable for this two hour sound journey into my soul. Well it turns out the first forty-five minutes are a pretty intense yoga/dance set where I sweat much more profusely than I had been intending. The instructor told us that Kundalini works in such a way that you get out of it benefits in direct proportion to the effort you put into it. And since I payed $25 for this I decided to go all out. I could use as much benefit as the universe was willing to give. By the time we were ready to lay flat on our back for the gong bath I was physically exhausted so I was ready for the sounds to echo through a tired body and mind and shake loose any old encrusted habits and thought forms that “no longer serve me” as the instructor said. The gong begins. I empty my mind as sound radiates throughout the room and throughout my body. This is going well, I start to think. Then the thought wars begin: -It’s going great but your biz is still slow and you’re near broke -Stop, empty your mind, that’s needless worry, the money always comes -Please, that’s a cop out, you’re rent is late -It’s not a cop out, prosperity does always come -Yeah, then why are you so worried about it? -I don’t know, fucker, that’s why I came to the gong bath, to shake it loose -Well, it’s not working -That’s because you won’t shut up. -Wait, I take that back, I’m at peace with myself, hear the sound, hear the sound -Sounds kinda like a helicopter -You’re right, good observation -Thanks, see we can all get along in here together -Together like when the avengers all team up in one movie -Yeah that was so cool, Joss Whedon nailed it -Stop, we aren’t present anymore, let’s go back to the sound -Speak for yourself, I was present. -Come on, I didn’t mean it like that. -Well, you said it like that -Okay, you know what, forget this, listen to the sound listen to the sound. And the war raged on like that in my thoughts for then next 75 minutes. I’m not sure how much got shaken loose during the gong bath but I came out of there understanding the triggers in my mind more, and now the trick is going to be learning how not to pull on them. I sun gazed at the top of the canyon with Nikki about two hours later and the sun was easier on my eyes, even at the bright part of the safe hour. Maybe something did change inside of me “vibrationally” because the sun-gazing certainly came easy today. I went home, toked up on some of my medical marijuana and realized I have been seeking alternate courses of treatment all day long, from light to sound to a plant from the ground. I’m finding healing in the sun, in a gong, and at the end of a bong. I went to bed happy cuz that shit was strong. SIDE EFFECTS: I feel more emotionally raw, open and exposed. BENEFITS: I think that means I can properly heal now. Fingers crossed.
DAYS 114-124: Phase 1 Complete/Phase 2 Begins
Today I am about a week deep into phase two. This is the phase that should yield me physical healing and appetite changes. I came back to my Los Angeles home about a week ago, to my pot collective business and to all the stresses that go along with it. The city buzzes at a frantically faster pace than the lazy crawl of Black Rock CT. For the five weeks I was home it was something out of Leave it to Beaver. In my sister’s neighborhood one afternoon I witness that the postman seems to have taught the neighbors dog some tricks which he demonstrates for the owners, who are delighted, and then feeds the dog a cookie from his pocket. I observe this idyllic scene out of the 1950’s from across the street and begin wondering if I’m going to see the milk man next, leaving you a supply in glass bottles and picking up your empties as he cheerfully waves a howdy-ho to Olga, the elderly woman who doesn’t miss a thing from the sill of her perpetually open window. The mail man came up to our porch next and struck up a conversation with my brother-in-law Craig that revealed the mail man knew to bring mail from their old address to this new one and that they had a kind of friendly rapport that if you attempted to generate with your mail carrier back in Los Angeles could result in your getting shot, or at the very least intensely glared at. Half expecting Dorothy and Toto to amble pleasantly home from their frolicking I decided I liked this quaint friendliness and Los Angeles could go fuck itself. I actually was back in Kansas, and by Kansas I mean Black Rock CT, and what I really mean, is home. I have been feeling overwhelmed since I got back to L.A, which is why, even though I have been steadily gazing, I haven’t written in my blog. Add to that my ache from missing my new niece Charlie, ten weeks old today, and needless to say, it’s been hard to focus. I felt like stress eating one day last week and actually drove all the way to the Ralph’s to get some Golden Birthday Cake Oreos (my sister and my summer favorite) to discover those “limited edition” flavors I became addicted to in Connecticut aren’t sold at the grocery store here in Los Angeles. I was momentarily horrified, then grateful that there wasn’t a dealer for my vice on this coast after all. This way I can kick that stuff for good. And to my credit I haven’t had one single Oreo (of any flavor) since I left Connecticut. If my sister is reading this, I swear to God, that’s the truth. Mentally, I feel like it’s the job of this blog to uplift and inspire because that’s what I’ve been experiencing from Sun Gazing and because that’s also what I expect Sun Gazing to do. So at times, when I don’t feel particularly inspirational or fired up I just skip my entry for the day. There is enough grey in the world, this blog is about the sun, goddamnit. Then I remember this blog is supposed to be my honest renderings of my experiences with sun-gazing, not some obligatory uplifting-platitude-of-the-day drivel, Lord knows, there’s plenty of that crap out there too. So here I go, posting an entry when I don’t fucking feel like it! I am deep into the fifteenth minute, yesterday was fifteen minutes and 30 seconds. So every time I gaze now it’s a fifteen minute chunk of my day. This substantial swatch of moments means I can focus and let go and try to empty my mind of the stress and worry of constant thinking (yes, even in phase two that stuff still comes up) and planning. But it’s been the opposite. I haven’t been able to quiet my mind. It rings and dances with the machinations of my hopes and desires, juggling more balls than a circus clown. This unexpected barrage of new restlessness caught me by surprise and has caused new desires to grow stronger. I wan to be back home with my family. Now I’m hoping that teleporting is on the list of magical abilities I can get from sun gazing; because I’d be home and holding little Charlie right now if I could. Abra Cadabra! Nope, still in West Hollywood. SIDE EFFECTS: Sun-gazing is no match for missing your ten-week old niece. BENEFITS: I just don’t feel like putting anything down today, so there!
DAYS 108-113: Within the 14th Minute of Gazing
I just finished reading Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert,which I found to be an incredible story, told with emotion, humor, and whit. Because the sun-gazing protocol I am following consists of three distinct phases I have been drawing an analogy between the three sections of her book and the three phases of gazing that I am undertaking. She took a journey through three countries, eating in Italy, praying in India, and loving in Indonesia. I am currently finishing the first phase of gazing and I realize it has been my “Eat” phase. Phase one is the first three months and mainly yields emotional and mental healing. This has been true but as it turns out I have also had an insatiable appetite for all things junk food related, and while home here at my sister’s I have completely reawakened my love for Oreo’s. In a moment of self-doubt I wonder who wants to read about sun-gazing from a fat slob who can’t seem to get his Oreo addiction under control? I wish that were a euphemism for something else, something harder and more cosmopolitan, like booze or quaaludes, but with all these new limited edition flavors coming out it is actually the Oreo that I can’t get enough of. The ever evolving chameleon snack that becomes just the right amount of sugar and soggy when dipped in milk that even the gross flavors end up tasting good. I swear, when coated with milk, they all taste a little different but the exact same amount of good. I gave away a bag of Limeade Oreos last week by surreptitiously tossing them in my sister’s neighbor’s mailbox, because they were gross and I knew I’d eat them anyway if they stayed in the house. Limeade Oreos, disgusting, right? And they were, actually, a terribly disconcerting shock of a cookie. But I had milk in the fridge so that didn’t stop me from digging the cookies back out of the mailbox, downing an entire row (read: 12 cookies) and stuffing them back in the mailbox before anyone was the wiser. My name is Brian and I am a Oreo-aholic. Hello Brian. I know it’s a serious problem because all the signs of a true addiction are present. I don’t care if it’s the good shit (a golden birthday cake Oreo or a marshmallow crispy Oreo) or whether it’s been totally stepped on and cut with foot powder (watermelon Oreo or raspberry sherbet Oreo). I kept telling everyone I didn’t have a problem. I’m on vacation at my sister’s house so things would come out of my mouth like “I’m on vacation, its just this one time.” But when you say it’s just this one time every night around 8:30, which one time are you talking about, exactly? The time when you ate so many of the classic Oreo that your shit turned dark black for days, or the time when you puked golden Oreo back into your highball glass that was already running dangerously low on the milk chaser, only to be overly full but still burst into tears when you couldn’t eat the last few Oreos with milk; yet you still managed to stuff them in your face like a champion? I’ll also say “I never do this back at home,” which happens to be true but it’s because I don’t buy them for myself because if I do I know the whole package won’t be around for more than one day, and only that long if it’s lucky and depending if I remembered to get milk. I lack self-control. This leads me to declare the ridiculous “I’m only eating them because they’re here,” to which both Craig and Cheryl reply with an incredulous look that says “but you’ve been doing all the grocery shopping since you’ve been here.” Oh shut up, will you? As my pants tightened around me so too the noose of addiction strangled my will. When the Oreo’s run out or aren’t around I’m thinking about the next time I’m going to get to have Oreos. So I google searched them. This was a big mistake because I discovered so many flavors that I had totally missed, some of which sound awwwwwwwwwwesome. There is the Neapolitan Oreo, the Strawberry Milkshake Oreo and for special holidays they roll out the Gingerbread Oreo or the Candy Corn Oreo. I want that Candy Corn Oreo so badly I can almost taste it. But only almost, which is why October can’t come soon enough. The second phase of my journey, which begins today and ends around the time the Candy Corn Oreo will be back on the market is, decidedly, the “pray” phase of my sun-gazing journey. Phase 2 of gazing is said to yield mostly physical results, like bodily healing and diminishment of painful symptoms or diseases altogether. I am expecting the sun to free me of the limitations of my asthma and restore my weak gums (even though I’ve been pounding them with Oreo sugar). Like Gilbert, who used her “Pray” phase to learn devotion I will meditate in nature and at the parks more, lean on trees, reconnect to the ground through “earthing” (more on that later) and truly make phase two a devotion to my physical healing. I don’t exactly think the sun needs my help to heal me, this is a magic technology after all. But I want to show the universe that I’m serious and as my Drunk Angel from a few months ago admonished that “I’m in this thing all the way.” I have been indulgent in my “eat” phase, before I even realized that’s what I was in, or that because of Gilbert’s book, that I would be calling it that. And as I move, figuratively from the excess of my “Italy” to the calm of my “India” I will be trading in my indulgence for devotion over these next three months or so. As Gilbert says in her book “I want
DAYS 101-107: 13 to 14 Minutes of Gazing – Clouds & Butterflies
“What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.” —Lao Tzu Over the last week I have steadily gazed through my thirteenth minute and rounded the fourteen minute mark, from various places all around my old stomping ground. I grew up in Connecticut, came of age surrounded by the same smells of salt water and seaweed that surround my niece Charlotte now. I have been attempting daily to gaze but the storm clouds have wedged little gaps in between my sought after steady stream of sunlight. As I approach the end of phase one (mental and emotional healing) and the beginning of phase two (physical healing) I find myself aflutter with excitement. My gums and my lungs are still in the crosshairs of my subconscious mind, the parts of myself I plan to dump all the sunlight on over the next three months. If the drastic emotional and mental changes that have occurred in me during these first three months are any indication then I fully expect to be asthma free with perfect dental health by Thanksgiving, whether I continue to chomp on Oreo’s or not. I’m calling phase one my caterpillar phase. I have been steadily growing, but slowly; crawling around, and not really sure what was happening to me or what I would become. As Buckminster Fuller says “there is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.” As this phase comes to a close (by next week I will be solidly into phase two) I sense myself slowing down, settling in for the long-haul: my physical transformation. I am spinning my cocoon, in my natal ground; with a healed mind and heart the sunlight is taking aim at my body now. I feel serene, yet completely untethered. I am continuing on my sun gazing journey, but with a strong sense that a roller coaster ride of mental healing is winding down and that a hibernation phase of physical healing, a cocoon of solitude, is descending upon me and around me. A butterfly danced for me the other day, and posed for an entire series of amazing photos, like I was a hot director and this was going to make her career. When I first approached this Monarch butterfly, a bee came flying toward me, obviously scouting out my intentions for the butterfly. When I didn’t swat at the bee or react in fear I believe the butterfly knew it could trust me, because that’s when the magic started to happen. The butterfly would hop around from flower to flower, each time getting closer to me and each time at a new angle with the sun striking it in just the perfect way to illuminate the details and the beauty. At one point at the height of this hour long dance with a butterfly she sat on a flower three inches from me, posing like a queen in the sunlight. She was peaceful and seemed to be responding to me, truly posing for my camera. My sister’s friend who was on the porch when this happened seemed amazed at how the butterfly did seem to be interacting with me, not simply being observed. “That’s amazing, Brian,” she said, “maybe it’s the sun-gazing, maybe the butterfly can sense you are more in tune with nature.” Well, fuck yeah, that’s what it was. I had a bird and a butterfly follow me home from the park a few weeks ago when I was in the thick of phase one, so I had no doubt this was another fantastical and mystical result of the gazing. But last time the butterfly remained at bay, never less than 10 feet from me. This time she was within inches, tranquil, almost obedient. I have a goal now forming in my mind, I’d like a butterfly to land on me before this adventure is through. Just putting that out there. In the meantime I am content. I have found a routine with the gazing that grounds me and stabilizes me. I am feeling like a charged battery, a battery spinning a cocoon. Apparently sun-gazing can’t stop me from mixing metaphors. “Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.” —Nathaniel Hawthorne SIDE EFFECTS: None BENEFITS: I can communicate with nature now, with effortless clarity it would seem.
DAYS 97-100: Scattered Thunderstorms & A Slight Chance of Gazing
“The rain to the wind said, ‘You push and I’ll pelt.’ They so smote the garden bed. That the flowers actually knelt, And lay lodged — though not dead. I know how the flowers felt.” – Robert Frost It has been stormy here in southern CT since last Saturday. I drove with some friends to the top of a large hill overlooking all of New Haven and watched the sun set from a place called East Rock Park. The vistas were stunning; as my friend Brian said “the tops of the trees look like broccoli or kale from up here.” I don’t even particularly like broccoli, and yet I agreed, it did look like that and it was still beautiful. Aside from those stunning eight minutes of gazing from the expansive view high above the city the sun has remained hidden since then, behind storm clouds and thick sheets of rain. The next four days rolled by without so much as a peek from the morning or evening sun. I have loved thunderstorms ever since I was a child, so I happily made due with the gloom and grey and feasted my senses every chance I could get on the mist and sounds and roar of the storm. As I watch the storms from my sister’s front porch I contemplate how thunder and lightning are actually the same thing. Lightening is the visual aspect and thunder the audible aspect of the very same event. But because light travels faster than sound we see lightening and then some seconds later we hear the thunder crash down upon us. I think again of the quote on the tomb of Hermes, “as above so below, as within so without,” and I begin to wonder what storms might be raging inside of me. The I think about my now six week old niece Charlie, going through her first growth spurt. She has become more fussy and inconsolable. Her skin and bones are stretching. Her tear ducts are becoming active so when she cries we can see actual tears now, which makes her crying harder to see. She is learning to see farther, hear more, and her skin is becoming more sensitive to touch. For the past four days she’s been constantly hungry, and continually fussy; I can imagine this spurt may feel like a storm to her. So in an effort to bring her some peace we decide to give her a bath. She is laying on her back and I am standing over her at her feet. Cheryl is lovingly caressing her with a warm washcloth as I am holding her still; leaning over her, like an idiot. Suddenly, and without warning, she farts in my face. “That was disgusting,” I proclaim, “your farts smell like your mommy’s did when she was 3 months pregnant.” And just to give you an idea of what that smells like think of someone eating seaweed, vomiting it into a gym shoe and then washing that shoe with the toilet water from an outhouse at a ball game. It smelled worse than that would. I regained my composure, draped a cloth over Charlie’s poop hole and once Cheryl and Craig were done laughing we got back to the business of getting little Charlie clean. We all mused over how lucky that was because she could have just as easily pooped all over my face. I had been leaning right into it, after all. My sister said she’d have fallen on the floor laughing if that happened. We prop Charlie up now so Craig can wash off her back, and to stabilize her I am holding her but, she’s basically using the palm of my hand like an armchair. Then I quip “how about if she pooped now?, I’d drop her.” She would have been pooping right into my hand. “No you can’t!” my sister protests and we are all chuckling, basking in the levity, a truly perfect family moment. Then I feel what I think is another fart. Then something hot and sticky on my hand. “It’s happening, it’s happening now,” I proclaim, sounding the alarm. Charlie had in fact shit on me, putting us all to the proverbial test. Craig and Cheryl think I am joking at first because I had just been saying how gross it would be if this happened. They laughed in innocent delight. Oh, funny Uncle Brian, always the comedian. Either my face turned red or I began to cry because finally they realized I was serious. I was beside myself in a poopy panic. In hindsight it wasn’t that big of deal but you have to understand I have never been shit on before, as unusual as that may sound to you, by anyone of any age. I kept saying it’s the sun gazing. Shit I say just keeps happening now and manifesting quicker than I can say “get me a baby wipe” so I should have known. I should have known. My sister (almost) peed her pants laughing she tells me. Charlie’s father and mother were laughing hysterically as I was racing to the faucet to wash my hand under the hot water. This baby poo was bright yellow and stuck like glue. I had to rub it off. Oh it so totally was as gross as it sounds. After I calmed back down I felt this strange glow. This incident made me love her more. We had bonded. I knew now she felt totally safe with me. And she had tried to warn me after all. I realize now that the fart in my face was her baby version of a shot over the bow. Poop is coming, stand down, she was telling me. I didn’t listen. Just like thunder and lightning are the same thing, so too a fart and the poop that follow are the same thing too. Smells are just microscopic particles of whatever it is you are smelling actually traveling into your nose and
DAYS 95 & 96: 13 Minutes & 20 Seconds of Gazing
“Life is far too important to be taken seriously.” – Oscar Wilde I have acquired some new abilities since my gazing adventure began in April. These new abilities of mine might seem like normal aspects of any functional adult to most people, but if you’re like me, you probably have a pile of dysfunction to overcome and the mental gymnastics you play with yourself day in and day out can get pretty exhausting. So these new abilities I’m referring to have so drastically changed my quality of life and experience of living that they seem to me to be like super powers. For one: I believe in myself. I mean, yeah, I guess I have always believed in myself in that obligatory “my life is meaningful” Hallmark kind of way. But now I am not just thinking about confidence. I am not practicing it or rehearsing it. I feel confident, in my cells, bones, blood and heart. This confidence is a completely pervading sense of security and tranquility. My self-confidence used to be linked to my aspirations and my goals and achievement of those goals. And that isn’t very restful. Because in order to validate my manufactured “thought-up” sense of confidence I had to keep achieving stuff, or at the very least, try to achieve stuff. My sense of well-being was based on my self-conjured identity as a go-getter, a dreamer, a quote/un-quote good person. Now my confidence isn’t located in my mind, it’s a holographic serenity that is spread out among every cell of my being, charged by the sun, void of anxiety, and fully relaxed. I don’t feel confident in my abilities, or my aspirations, or my accomplishments necessarily anymore, I feel confident in the guiding, loving, supportive nature of the universe itself. And that confidence, knowing I can’t mess it up because the Universe doesn’t get tripped up by my moods and cravings, is stronger, deeper…pure. I think it’s what the ancient mystics called faith. So I’m looking forward to moving my first mountain soon. I’ll keep you posted. Secondly, my wisdom is growing. I’m wising up! I’m not saying I know the secret to enlightenment (although I might know it, because I’m starting to think the secret is sun-gazing), but I seem to have an ability to more quickly pinpoint the cause of suffering in my own life when something crops up and I can nip it in the bud. I can easily pivot my moods from my obsolete habits of despair and crisis to peace and hope, without the mental gymnastics twisting me into a mess of anger and worry. And when others have asked me for advice lately the shit that rolls out of my mouth surprises even me and, I’ve been told, was just what so-and-so needed to hear. Solutions are the focus, problems are the seeds of opportunity now, something to welcome with faith, not something to shun. And when solutions fly out of my mouth they are always brief and simply stated, as I can imagine the universe would want it that way. The Universe is complex, but not complicated. Love rules the day, and grudges leave smudges that keeps the wisdom at bay. I’m grudge free, smudge free, and feeling like a wise guy. Lastly and perhaps fundamentally most important: I am completely and utterly happy with my life. My circumstance aren’t vastly different than they were on April 7th, when my sun gazing experiment began, but my perception of those circumstances is completely transformed. There are still family issues to deal with. There are financial hiccups, technology glitches, and unexpected accidents. Events still spark tumultuous emotions at times and I still make just as many mistakes as I always did. But as Oscar Wilde suggests, I don’t take it so seriously anymore. The solar energy has caused my soul to relax. If sun bathing relaxes the body then sun-gazing relaxes the soul. My mind has been trained to count my blessings, thank my lucky-stars, and take a few long whiffs of those goddamn roses everybody’s always taking about. Let me tell you, they smell damn good. I realize now that I do not need to achieve happiness, I can simply choose it. And now that I know that you better believe I fucking choose happiness. As Abe Lincoln said “folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.” I don’t know how to explain or account for the transformations taking place inside me except to say that since my gazing began my transformation began. Science doesn’t yet know how to quantify these types of results, so we are left only to share our stories and inspire each other. We are left with faith. Take a leap because I can tell you with certainty now, The Great Whatever out there is going to catch you. I’m serious. But not too serious. “And still, after all this time, the Sun has never said to the Earth, “You owe me.” Look what happens with love like that. It lights up the sky.” — Hafez (Persian Poet) SIDE EFFECTS: As per usual, none whatsoever anymore. BENEFITS: Confidence and Faith, Wisdom and most importantly Happiness.
DAYS 93 & 94: 13 Minutes & 10 Seconds of Gazing
“Either war is obsolete or men are.” -Buckminster Fuller The human race is advancing toward the brink of something huge, and depending on who you ask we are either nearing catastrophic annihilation or approaching an evolutionary leap forward. Sometimes I think we are headed for destruction, like when my sister reads me an article about a father who left his baby in the back seat of a car all day resulting in the baby’s death, not by accident, but as a plan to collect the infant’s life insurance money. Or when I feed the hungry on Wednesday nights with the Khalsa Peace Corps and it becomes clear there are going to be more and more hungry before there are less. More children grow up fatherless. There is an island size mass of garbage in the pacific ocean, a hole in the ozone layer, more frequent tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes and nuclear waste spills. The price of oil skyrockets while taxes soar. Wars rage and people are blown to bits by pipe bombs every single day. The media continues its campaign of lies as the perfect sequel to the propaganda drenched indoctrination taking place in our public schools. We are taught not to think as children and then distracted by a culture of meaningless amusement throughout our adulthood. So sometimes, when I contemplate the fear based alarmist predicament our planet and our culture are facing that the mainstream media can’t seem to shut up about, yeah, things seems a little bleak. Then sometimes I’m certain we are heading toward an evolutionarily leap forward; in technology, medicine, and mainly consciousness. Buckminster Fuller once said “whether it is to be utopia or oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment…. Humanity is in a ‘final exam’ as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in the Universe.” When I hold little Charlie in my arms I know we qualify to survive. At least when we are first born we do, that pure angelic essence of peace, the utter state of vulnerability under which we grow qualifies us. As we grow our thinking mind causes us to stray from our pure center, but I have to believe the quality of our essence never changes. The purity remains, underneath our choices, our experiences and our mistakes. When I give burritos to the hungry I see a depth of gratitude that comes from that place of purity. When I see the unflinching and unconditionally nourishing sun rise or set I know we qualify. The smell after a rain storm; when the rainbow forms just over head. When someone lets you in their lane in traffic, or pays that extra dollar you are short at the grocery store. When I read about the explosions of complexity and creativity coming fourth in our world in an attempt to solve problems: from neighborhood watches to bit coin; from candles made with repurposed jars to solar panels and electric cars, we continue to recycle, not just our garbage but our imagination, our motivation, our relentless desire to survive. This morning in Starbucks as I was waiting for my drinks I noticed a little boy who couldn’t have been more than 7 or 8 years old sitting in an easy cross legged yoga pose, with his hands in Guyan Mudra (the thumb pressed to the index finger with the other three outstretched) eyes closed, apparently meditating. Then after a good silent minute (what I imagine seems like an hour for someone his age) he popped up and danced carefree next to his mother. “You’ve got a free spirit there,” I told her. She smiled, “yes I do.” I asked where he learned to meditate like that and she said she had no idea, “he didn’t get it from me.” The logic behind putting your fingers in that position is to complete an electric circuit in the body enabling the person to become more receptive, and coherent. In Yogic terms the human body is a technology and the yoga poses are the science by which we tap into the body’s potential. I’m realizing humanity is even more clever than I thought. A child can perhaps tap into his innate knowledge of how the human body functions and takes it upon himself to meditate in the middle of a coffeeshop, knowing without knowing he even knows, just how to complete the circuit that will enhance his experience. It begins to seem after all, like we are stretching our arms and legs and, as a species we are getting ready to take that leap, both a leap of faith and an evolutionarily leap. I believe we are about to jump headlong and with abandon into the vast energy field of potential: toward harmony, tolerance, joy and love that, in the final analysis, will be the defining mark of humanity. All of nature cooperates in a symbiotic relationship that benefits the whole. We just need to fall in line with the existing melodic flow of nature to inherit the Utopia that is our destiny and not only survive, but flourish. As I sit and watch the sun come up each morning over the ocean in Black Rock CT I feel my connection to that energy, and I know that as long as it continues to nourish me I will continue inching forward toward the brink. The brink of what, exactly, remains to be seen. SIDE EFFECTS: None. BENEFITS: I see a message from the universe or something to be inspired by in almost everything that happens now-a-days. I am part of the whole, and that understanding is making me whole.
