DAYS 61-65: 10 Minutes & 10-50 Seconds of Gazing
“Meditation is not sitting with closed eyes. Meditation is: whatever you are doing, you are doing.” —Yogi Bhajan Over the weekend I became an uncle. My niece Charlotte, who we call Charlie, was born on Saturday night after 18 hours of labor. Then on Sunday I celebrated at the Gay Pride Parade in West Hollywood. Gay Uncle Brian, I like the sound of that. I have been steadily gazing either each morning or each night for all the days contained in the tenth minute, except for one due to morning and evening clouds. Each gazing session feels more substantial now, I think because it’s always longer than ten minutes. Ten minutes, a block of time. A chunk of life. A consequential section of my day reserved to gaze at the ball of fire, in direct contradiction to one of our culture’s most deeply held beliefs: looking at the sun can make you blind. While there is no conclusive scientific data to suggest you can go blind from looking at the sun, because it’s so goddamn bright, we don’t question that you can. It’s logical, it would seem, because if you try to stare at the sun at high noon it hurts, a lot. You do feel like you are going to go blind. So this belief has lasted centuries, virtually unchecked. Even the data that suggests it might be unsafe specifically mentions UV light as the main cause for concern. During the first hour after sunrise and the last hour before sunset the UV index is zero which means that in all likelihood it actually is safe to look at it during those times. Whether it can give me super powers like some of the ancient claims suggest remains to be seen. After almost ten weeks of gazing, though, I feel pretty confident saying it’s not harmful to the eyes. I can see better, both the visible world and the invisible world, and both are beautiful, and both are real. As the sunlight continues to cultivate peace inside me, and make tranquility blossom I find myself enjoying the moments of my life more. And not just the big moments, like becoming an uncle, but all moments. I find wisdom as I watch birds. I find joy feeling warm grass on my back. I feel happiness from, in each moment, feeling okay. This is the invisible world mingling with the visible world, creating a cocktail of holy wine which makes me drunk with pleasure. The visible: birds, the invisible: wisdom. The visible: grass, the invisible: joy. This new awareness of my external surroundings brings with it a new awareness of the invisible fortress surrounding my heart. And with awareness comes freedom. As I become aware of my inner walls, so illuminated by sunlight I begin to understand my patterns even more clearly. This awareness transforms behaviors that were once habits into choices. Once you are aware of something you do it becomes a conscious choice. Even if you still continue to do it you can no longer call it habitual, it is chosen. This empowers me to choose something else. This change in my demeanor and my disposition puzzles me. There has always been grass and there have always been birds, so what’s the big deal about ‘em now? The big deal is that I wasn’t present before. Sure, I walked on grass and I knew there were birds, but I didn’t care. My attention was distracted on my personal importance, on the story I tell myself about my own life. What was I going to achieve in life? What was I going to do today? Why can’t I find a lover who challenges my mind, fills my heart, and fires up my groin (not from STD’s but from passion) all at the same time? Now, as the sunlight burns through my inner smoke, I see that jumble of muddled thoughts for what it truly is: imagination, fantasy, invisible. And I start to live again, unbeknownst to even myself at first, in the present moment. I hear birds singing at least twice a day now. They always sang and I usually turned up the volume on my television. Now they sing and they capture me, they speak to me. The sun is the unifying energy hanging high above our planet making everything grow. It is the one thing that all of life has in common. Whether you are a plant or an animal, a flakey employee or a cheating husband, a weather pattern or a thought pattern, it is because of the sun that you are able to be what you are. So as I drink in more sunlight it seems to be tuning me to a common base frequency that all of life shares. I am daily reminded of our oneness again. Through the influence of the solar energy I truly feel the connection again between me and every single other thing in the universe. I seem to have a new and striking rapport with animals. They come to me and seek me out, I think to encourage me to continue on the quest, or maybe they can simply smell the sunlight on me; and they love that smell. My life is becoming a meditation because for the first time in a long time, I am doing what I am doing. I am present. SIDE EFFECTS: None BENEFITS: I am living more mindfully and deliberately in the present moment, with only the tiniest cooperative effort on my part. I am going with the flow, finally, and when you do that you are basically carried down the river of life.
DAY 60: 10 Full Minutes of Gazing – 2 Months Complete
Today I reached another milestone, ten full minutes of gazing. I have officially been doing this for two entire months now so I find myself again looking back and taking an account of my life. Bottom line: it’s better than it was thirty days ago. It’s not better because circumstances have changed. I haven’t been offered a book deal or anything and my collective still skates by with just enough money to make it to next week, but still somehow I know my life is better. I feel better. I finished my early morning chanting today a little after 6:00am so the sun had a thirty minute head start to take her place high above the horizon and shine brightly. But to my surprise she was gentle today. Despite being thirty minutes into sunrise the light emanating from the molten core of our solar system was the most soothing and welcoming I had glimpsed in days. I feel like I just ran a marathon and the gentle sun today was my tall glass of water. I stood side by side with Brett on the little patch of earth surrounding the parking meters on Highland Ave in front of the Golden Bridge Yoga Studio. Traffic was whizzing past us on the street, joggers were whizzing past us on the sidewalk and there was a homeless man near by taking a wiz. But we simply focused our eyes above it all and gazed. This promises to be a very good day, I thought to myself. And I was right. Brett and I had just made the decision yesterday to start a Farmer’s Market in the Golden Bridge parking lot and had a very productive planning meeting, all hopped up on sunlight and caffeine. Then as the day wore on our Farmer’s Market vision transformed into something more along the lines of an indian bazar where there will be artists, and musicians and face painters along with all the organic fruits and vegetables anyone could want. This new vision stoked the flames of my excitement even more. But where were we going to find all the vendors? Later that evening I was scheduled to attend and art opening with my friend Kelly and upon our arrival I noticed it had a section with booths where many local artists where selling their products to the attendees. I collected contact information better than a hoover collects dust. The Indian Bazar was already off to a very good start. My relationship to the Animal Kingdom has also been transformed since the sun-gazing began. On my post-gazing morning hikes with Nikki almost every single dog we pass comes up to me to say hello. Today in the park it was the same way. Birds fly low over my head and hover near by. At one point Nikki and I noticed a moth and starting discussing it’s wing structure and comparing it to a butterfly. In the midst of this it landed on the grass, and with the tiniest grain of sand eyes, stared straight at us. They say a moth is attracted to the flame so I wonder, has the sunlight set me on fire? About two weeks ago I was wandering home from the coffee shop blissfully after writing an entry in the blog and decided on a whim (read: tug from Infinite Intelligence) to make a pit stop in the park two blocks away from my house. I sat down on a bench and took out a book. Then I noticed out of the corner of my eye a tiny young bird and a beautiful golden yellow butterfly playing in a cluster of trees and bushes just a few feet away. The bird was brown with a splash of white on his belly. The butterfly was riddled with black speckles and perfect symmetry in his wings. I am not sure if they were playing with each other or just in proximity to each other, but they were carefree and beautiful. My attention had been captured. Over what must have been thirty minutes I sat transfixed on the dance of colors and shapes and life unfolding before my eyes. My heart was with their hearts. I didn’t know this at the time but I must have been making as much of an impression on them as they were on me…because they followed me home. Once I had regained my faculties I tried to dig into my book. But the words just seemed like senseless black smears on dingy paper compared to the butterfly and the bird. I closed the pages, gave the creatures a last wonder-filled look of farewell and headed home. About a block and half from the park I stop to admire a family of black crows chowing down on something in a patch of grass. I must have startled them because in a rhythmic plume they rise like black smoke and spread out on the telephone wire above. They are safe there. With my eyes tilted toward the sky now I notice for the first time the same tiny bird and the same yellow butterfly hovering overhead. Where they following me? I laugh at myself for the thought because, that’s crazy, right? Who did I think I was, fucking Snow White. I shake this off and amble peacefully back to the house. As I’m rounding the bend toward my mailboxes a butterfly dives down from the sky and flys low past my face. It was him, the same bespeckled butterfly. Instantly I began looking around and right over head the same tiny brown bird hovers. Almost in unison they seem to bid me a fond farewell because they both turn and fly off, seemingly now satisfied that I had made it home safe. The sun has caused the entire universe to rally around me. I click into my place in the universe now like a small but essential cog clicks into a watch. I am a defining particle inside the atom that
DAY 59: 9 Minutes & 50 Seconds of Gazing
I picked Nikki up again this morning after my chanting session and we made our way to the top of the mountain to gaze and hike. My weary legs didn’t want to hike today, but my love handles did. So with love I got a handle on my indecision. Nikki and I made our way to our usual cactus covered temple, gazed at another whiter brighter ball of fire today and then took a hike. As we hiked my skin baked in the sun and I felt alive. We were surrounded by nature even though we were surrounded by the city. The canyon and the early morning hours are both like an oasis from the hurried, scrambled pace of city living. I am not in Los Angeles at those moments, I am in love. In love with life, and every day more and more in love with myself. We hiked slower today because of the cries of our thighs, and at this more measured pace we noticed things. The clouds had formed a thick line above the horizon. It was beautiful. The canyon is blooming with many types of flowers I had never noticed before. There were red ones, white ones, yellow ones. It was a smorgasbord for the senses. This same buffet of beauty was here yesterday but my awareness was not. Awareness, it seems, is the deciding factor between what we experience and what we miss. Kundalini yoga is nicknamed “the yoga of awareness” because the exercises and techniques are all designed to produce a mental state that is more peaceful and receptive, able to appreciate the details as well as the broad strokes. I accompanied my friends Nikki and Kelly to look at a property they were thinking about renting. The house was currently occupied by two special effects artists so there were many unique details to feast my senses on. They had a green room in their garage so they can make videos in front of that screen and make it seems as if they are anywhere. They have a masked mannequin in their shower stall that scared the crap out of both Nikki and myself as we toured their home. A wall in their hallway was fur covered, and fascinating. Amidst all of this unique odd-ball creativity one particular detail jumped out at me most. In one of the bedrooms there were bull horns mounted on the wall. Jammed into one of the antlers was an empty box of Hungry Man TV Dinner. As I processed what I was looking at I felt this internal tug that said, look again, there’s more. I am sensing those tugs more clearly and more often since sun-gazing began and when I follow them I am always amazed in some way, so I did a double take. Suddenly the message was clear. The universe was telling me to take the bull by the horns and stope eating food that isn’t good for me, to stop being such a hungry man, and p.s. stop watching so much television. The Hungry Man TV Dinner jammed on Bull Horn art had served it’s purpose, I got the message. So now, I figured, he could take that god awful thing off his wall. Over the last few days I had been literally bingeing on TV and tasty treats . I don’t usually do that anymore, it was a resurgence of a past habit that I just embraced last week. Four days and twenty episodes of Arrow later the universe was chiming in. I don’t need to binge on the things I enjoy anymore, I can enjoy them from my new place of awareness. Hmm, I wasn’t aware of that before, that actually sounds nice. But as happens with habits the afternoon turned into the evening and I turned on the TV. I had two more episodes of the season left and I wasn’t going to let some off the wall message from the universe that had been mounted on a wall get in the way of my season finale. The universe always has to have it’s way though. Every link I tried to access would freeze or time out. Finally the links started popping up with a message that I wasn’t connected to the internet. I try youtube and that’s working just fine. So I try my links again, no internet. So I try youtube, internet is working in full force. I try again: links, no; youtube, yes. What the fuck was happening? Then I remembered the bull horns and I thought bullshit. I want to watch Arrow. But the Universe had spoken. In a bit of a huff and against my will I turned my attention to youtube. As I browsed I found many exciting links and videos about sun gazing. Within minutes I was fully absorbed in my explorations on youtube and even started posting comments on some of them, which if you know me, is something I never do. I don’t even have Facebook. I went to sleep feeling blissful from all the new information I had been absorbing. I didn’t need to watch Arrow because I had been shot with cupid’s arrow to reawaken my love for my research into this practice. When I woke up, on a whim I typed “sun gazing” into google and to my amazement one of my comments on one of the videos was the second listing in the search results. How was that possible? It wasn’t even an actual video, it was just a comment. And it was only posted fourteen hours ago. As giddiness over takes me because of the exposure this could mean for the blog, I already know how it happened. I followed a tug from the universe, although not willingly at first, and my subsequent actions had been blessed. Them’s the rules, folks. I didn’t make ‘em, but I’m sure glad I’m learning them now. When the universe tugs at me now, whether from bad art or Mozart,
DAY 58: 9 Minutes & 40 Seconds of Gazing – The Return of Nikki Lorenzo
My friend Nikki returned to gazing with me this morning. She did about five minutes to my nine minutes, which impressed me because she left off six weeks ago at about two minutes and thirty seconds. She drank in the light, commenting on the unfamiliar brightness that made it feel more like noon even though it was 6:10am. She was right. For the second day in a row the sun appeared white hot and uninviting in the sky as I gazed. Both yesterday evening at sunset and this morning at sunrise the molten disc of energy was in rare form, showing up to the party fully dressed and looking brilliant. Way too brilliant. For the first time in a while my brow muscles pulsated and did the dance in my forehead that feels like they are trying to hide behind each other for fear of getting burned. I imagine the little muscles in my forehead and face fighting with each other and pushing each other out into the line of fire…sun fire. It felt like bullets made of lava were hitting me right in the face. My eyelids didn’t have any interest in putting up a fight; they kept involuntarily closing. I had to use my fingers and literally hold my eyelids open to let the sun pour through my sockets into my body. Interesting that the little cavern in our face that holds our eyes is called a socket. It makes me think of an electrical socket and when I gaze I am plugging myself in to get recharged. I am a battery, the sun is the power grid, and the direct light reaching my eyes is the cord. I just open my eyes wide and plug the sunlight into my battery, and the best place to do this is the electrical socket, straight through my eyes. After the gazing these last two days my face felt hot. My eyes and the area behind my eyes felt dry and stretched, but more than that, I felt charged. Now that we are gazing for longer and longer stretches I expect the sun’s effects to get even more pronounced. After finishing the gaze we hiked up and down the mountain, feeling the glorious sweetness that comes from making healthy choices. I have been ingesting marijuana lately in joint form, and I felt this in my lungs. As I huffed and puffed my way up the mountain I thought about how in phase two of the gazing (4-6 months) the sun is supposed to heal my physical body. So my asthma would be a thing of the past. I have been considering the idea of switching fully from smoking to vaporizing my marijuana, but when that puff of dry air hits your lungs there’s just nothing like it. So I started thinking I could just bide my time and over indulge on my inhaler a little while longer and when month 4 rolls around I will be miraculously healed. But the sun whispers to me: wasn’t I just saying something about making healthy choices? I don’t want to go through all the work of cleaning up my lungs and being a smoke free human being, I just want a miracle healing, I protest. Is that too much to ask? Well, yes, actually the sun seems to reply. When we talk about Jesus and his miracles we don’t say he did miracles we say he worked miracles. So I think a miracle is just a speeding up and a completion of an outcome that we individually have to set into motion ourselves. If I want to heal my lungs I need to start making the choices that lead to healing. The miracle will be that I am healed more quickly, instead of taking years for my lungs to bounce back. The sunlight has been leading me more and more back to my sense of self, and self love. So when I wonder why I would voluntarily continue to destroy my lungs no answer comes. There is no answer, it’s simply preposterous and dysfunctional. I need to make another healthy choice, deliberately change my pattern and then respond from the new place when I experience the echoes of my old desires that were not rooted in self-love. The miracle isn’t going to come without the work. If I want miracles to work, I am going to have to work my miracles. SIDE EFFECTS: The bright sun lit my face and eyes on fire today. I could barely keep my eyes open due to the brightness. BENEFITS: I am realizing that I am a miracle worker, and I’m starting to love my work.
DAY 57: 9 Minutes & 30 Seconds of Gazing
I met a woman today in Starbucks who had a cute little bulldog who’s tongue was perpetually hanging out of his mouth, named Pugsley. He was irresistibly cute so my friend Nikki decided to get a picture of him. As this was happening Pugsley’s owner, a bubbly woman with a look in her eye that i couldn’t quite put my finger on informs us that Pugsley has a Facebook and a Twitter page. As a joke I ask if he responds to the posts people leave. The bubbly woman becomes grave, “oh yes he does, he does,” she assures me. I chuckle as Nikki and I head to the car. “Do you think that woman every gets tired of being out of her mind?” I hear Nikki ask. I laugh because she did seem like she was out of her mind, didn’t she? That was the look I saw, the disturbing stare of a crazy person who helps their dog post on the social networks on account of the dog not having thumbs, and being a dog. Then suddenly my perception changes and I realize Nikki had said “Do you think that dog gets tired having his tongue out all the time?” I tell Nikki what I thought she said and we both laugh thinking that’s what she should have said, because that lady was crazy. But then I realize I wake up every morning to stare at the sun and from the looks I get when I do it on the street corner, to some people I seem out of my mind too. This bubbly lady and her social networking dog make me think of how important our perceptions are. Because I thought that woman was crazy I heard Nikki say she was too, even though she had actually said something else entirely. I was finding evidence for my point of view in the world around me. I am starting to understand that that’s the mystical nature of the whole universe, it supports the notions of our subconscious mind, so if you think someone’s crazy, to you they are crazy. If your think your dog likes facebooking, then your dog likes facebooking. So I’ve decided to adopt a philosophy that life is good. And, true to form the universe is stepping right up to support my beliefs. Life is good. I say that now even when my mood doesn’t match those words exactly, because my mood isn’t the truth, it is just the expression of my perceptions. Life is good. How I feel simply dictates what I experience. It’s hard to put spiritual and mystical concepts into words, because truly they are describing something beyond words. In new age circles we are told to feel as if we already have the thing we want now, even though we don’t have it yet. Sounds like hooey designed to calm me down so I’m not as upset that I don’t actually have what I want right in front of me. Like when your dog dies and your neighbor’s mom tells you he went to live on a farm, I call bullshit. But it turns out we are not being asked to fool ourselves. We are being asked to change the tide of our internal vibration, because while feelings aren’t always the truth, they are the building blocks of our perception of our experience. See, that sounds so convoluted. The building blocks of our perception, what the hell does that mean? Let me try to put it another way. Our emotions are the result of chemicals produced by the brain to induce familiar mood states within us whenever we perceive there to be a catalyst for said mood state. Essentially every emotion has a corresponding chemical make up. So when you click with someone and start to fall in love that really is chemistry that you have going on. The point of this is to illustrate that the mood is a result of the chemical production from our brain. So the theory is that by practicing to maintain a specific mood state we can train the brain to become “hooked” on the chemical that corresponds to these new desired moods and wired in the direction of what we want to feel. This is essentially the underlying results of many forms of meditation and yoga and even the chanting that I do. Yogi Bhajan said it takes 62 minutes for new grey matter to begin forming in the brain. So if you can focus on something for 62 minutes you can basically “wire that in” to your head. This is why we chant for 62 minutes at early morning Sadhana. The result is a change in perception and the result of that is a change of reality. Whether reality bends to my will or my will molds to reality when this change in perception occurs is not clear; I tend to think it’s a beautiful blending of both. Sometimes even when you’ve been disciplined and faithful to a new routine and old temptation can come up out of nowhere. Whether that’s a can of coke, or a line of coke, a bad relationship or a shallow movie, when the craving comes calling all bets are off. When you experience an old pattern like this, even though you’ve changed, that’s really the echo of the pattern reverberating in your environment. If you respond differently to the echo than you usually did in the pattern, it proves both to yourself and the universe that you’ve changed, activating your faith, and the cycle ends. Responding differently means coming from a different point of view internally, from a different, more aware emotional place. So life is truly a reflection of our experience. As within, so without. As above, so below. Now instead of judging that woman as crazy I wish I’d gotten Pugsley’s Facebook page so I could “like” him after all. SIDE EFFECTS: None, again. BENEFITS: My mind is ready to be neutral and nonjudgmental
DAYS 53-56: Up to 9 Minutes of Gazing
I have been gazing steadily for the last few days, always at sunset because of the thick hazy mornings. As I settled into the routine of gazing in the evening I also settled into the habit of skipping my early morning chanting session, called Sadhana, and catching up on some extra zzzzz’s. I would wake up at 3:30am like a machine despite my plans to sleep in, but I didn’t let that deter me. I would hop up, pee, chug some coconut water and go right back to bed. I knew I was messing with a new circadian rhythm it had taken me months to stabilize, but hey, the sun wasn’t getting up either so I felt justified. Besides, the chanting sessions had started to become stale. There is this one particular recording of the chants that I find infuriating as it has Yogi Bhajan (the guy who brought us Kundalini Yoga) speaking over the chants, basically interrupting. Lately it seems that even though the Sadhana leader rotates every day, they all had some secret cabal and agreed to relentlessly over play that one tape. It about destroyed my motivation to go chant when I knew I’d be competing with Yogi Bhajan for the floor. He is like “head guru” or something, so even though he’s technically dead it feels rude to chant while he’s speaking. So I’ve been skipping chanting, sleeping in, bingeing on television and gazing at sunset. Until yesterday that is. My neighbor and kundalini yoga teacher, Brett, who also doubles as my grounds keeper was watering my back garden Saturday afternoon. I popped my head out and we began to chat. He asked me if I’d be coming to Sadhana the next morning and before I could answer he said “you don’t wanna commit?” He posed this as a question, trying to give me an out in case I would experience his inquiry about Sadhana as a pressure. He wasn’t pressuring me, but he knows I’m sensitive. I must have looked puzzled because he added “I only ask because you haven’t been there in awhile.” It hit home for me in that moment, Brett was right. I didn’t wanna commit; I hadn’t been there in a while. I love the chanting, but this recording being played every day was starting to drive me nuts. I started skipping Sadhana, in part because of it. Sadhana was a much needed addition to my life that drastically changed my schedule a few months ago and my priorities right along with it; I’ve gone almost daily since I started and even found ways to chant in the early morning while I was traveling, from the privacy of a parked car on the side of the road. I can’t explain how it works, but it does work. So I was feeling conflicted, I didn’t want to stop chanting, I wanted to love Sadhana again. The chanting all happens in the ancient language of Gurumuki, a variation of Sanskrit. The theory in that language is that the sound made by a word is the vibrational equivalent of the definition of the word. For example the word Har in Gurumuki means “Creative Infinity”, and the sound generated by the mouth and vocal cords when one pronounces Har and taps their tongue on the roof of their mouth just so, is supposed to resonate in the body as the feeling of Creative Infinity. It’s language and art and science all rolled into one. It’s some pretty trippy stuff, but I leave there feeling sturdied by invisible armor and with deeper inclinations toward self-love than anything I was ever able to muster with any other technique I tried before it. Chanting has lead me down the path of enchantment. So I have been in a bit of an internal battle to surrender myself to the recording every time it came on. The universe was testing me with it. It was my “thorn in the flesh” as Jesus might put it, to hear that once or twice a week and have to hone my skills and focus through it and past it and find my way to my own clear channel. And I did this gladly, well, I did it anyway, and sometimes I was glad about it. Then suddenly about two weeks ago the leaders start playing it daily. The universe was ratcheting up the tests. The flowers in front of my door remind me to be more patient and I think about them as I try to reconcile myself to continue on in Sadhana and find the love and vibrance I found in the beginning. But the opposite happened. I started skipping and my schedule started slipping. I was waking up later each morning and going to bed a tad later each night. I got hooked on the first season of a TV show called Aarow about a superhero who fights crime with a bow and arrow. I’m on episode 19 since Thursday, thus explaining the four day gap in my blog as well. So instead of doing “archer pose” in Sadhana I was watching an archer pose on television. My, how quickly things can change. I had been hesitating to send the leader of the leaders an email with my thoughts about the tape because who the hell was I? He is a master guru and I’m just some gay weirdo who sun-gazes and likes superheroes, what the fuck did I know? But what I knew is that Sadhana had been a healer to me and I wanted that back. A friend reminded me that this is something I do every day so it’s probably worth following up on and expressing myself. Then I realized I am one of only two people who go practically every single day so that’s 50% of the group having an issue. So I mustered my courage, coated it with the sunlight I’ve been storing up over these first two month and wrote the most honest and
DAY 52: 8 Minutes & 40 Seconds of Gazing
“A seeker of Truth looks beyond the apparent and contemplates the hidden. What the senses perceive is only a distortion. We all look for something that is not yet in existence, beggars look for coins, shopkeepers for profit, farmers for harvest, pupils for knowledge, and seekers for enlightenment. Non-existence is the treasure house of God in the process of becoming manifest.” -Rumi I gazed last night for eight minutes and forty seconds from an even higher point on Runyon Canyon than the usual cactus covered temple I’ve been using. I wasn’t even planning to go there. And I didn’t expect I could go even higher. As a last minute whim after a few errands yesterday evening I turned the car sharply and headed to the top of the hill, surprising even myself. There was a dead stop of locked traffic on that particular route so I turned, again on a whim, and found myself navigating the back roads. As I was driving up and down these beautiful back roads the ups and downs that have been stirring inside of me begin to smooth in relative comparison. With each winding bend in the road I feel my inner struggle unwinding and unbending. As I navigate my outer world, something more powerful or primal begins to navigate my inner world. I don’t know why or how this happened, or why the screen of my physical reality became such an obvious reflection of my internal struggle to transcend my suffering, but it did happen. My theory is that perhaps the need to focus on the map app, the steering wheel, the road signs and the oncoming traffic around blind turns forced me to let go of my inner struggle, because I had to concentrate. Or perhaps the solar energy coursing through me from my gazing has thinned the veil of illusion shrouding us. Whatever the cause, as I’m making my way around the blind corners, internally I am able to see. I can see the imaginary nature of my current suffering. It is made of worry, and anxiousness because I am on the verge of so many dreams. The worry’s aren’t real, they are based fundamentally on imagined future scenarios that have not yet happened. And my anxiousness come from impatience, as the flowers now blooming in front of my door remind me every day. The closer I get to my dreams the more vulnerable I am to the fear of them being taken away. That fear is out-dated, and also imaginary. The fact is my dreams are coming closer and closer everyday, in the end a most illogical cause for anxiousness or impatience. While getting lost in the mountain side, my center is being found. During my impromptu trek into the back roads of the Hollywood hills I, no surprise, make a wrong turn. I can see on the map the tiniest little street that can lead me back to my correct course up the mountainside, but the street is so small I can’ see the name on the screen. When I approach the street to make the course correction it is revealed the street name is Hermes. This reminds me of the supposed secret to life that was found inscribed inside his tomb: As above, so below. As within, so without. The universe is reminding me again, as plainly as can be, the outer world is simply and completely a reflection of my inner world. And then I realize that all the streets around me are named for the Gods, Jupiter, Apollo, Hercules, Venus, Zeus. I hadn’t noticed this before. I am literally climbing up the mountain on the backs of the Gods. Suddenly all my turmoil dropped away and I felt a net of energy guiding my car up the mountain. I was being carried by the Gods, even if “The Gods” just means my own internal confidence, I was elevated now. Maybe that’s what faith is, maybe the Gods are just the larger part of us waiting for us to acknowledge it. But minutes later my car dumped me out at the top of the mountain, and it happened to be a street right at the mouth of the parking lot I was searching for. Wow. I should let the universe navigate more often. I park and follow a trail I’ve only followed half way up once before. Another whim, but this time I know it’s not a whim, it’s an impulse from higher intelligence. I’m just going to start calling a spade a spade. The universe is very chatty, it’s full of messages, and I can translate them now. That’s the power of the sun. So I follow this path, and it leads me higher up the mountain side, to the highest point on the mountain you can go. I never knew how to get to this highest point before. It turns out the path had literally been right in front of me the entire time. The metaphor for my internal journey that I am now living in the middle of is starting to seem ridiculous. The universe might be a little cliche, but the message is clear as day: I am hear to guide you, if you could but learn to follow. I read the poetry of Rumi until the sun was at the prime deep yellow for gazing, set my time, and lit my eyes on fire. I walked back to my car hand in hand with the universe. As I drove down the mountain back home, I also stayed up in the clouds, knowing, on a deeper lever than I have ever known that the world is magical, and it’s on my side. “It is the sun that transforms stones into gems, it is the sun of eternal love shining in your heart that stirs it into service and leads it to mastery.” – Rumi SIDE EFFECTS: None BENEFITS: Everything I go through now, pleasant or pressured, seems to be an obvious teacher and
DAYS 49-51: 8 Minutes & 10/20/30 Seconds of Gazing
The universe has been speaking to me in no uncertain terms. I am supposed to relax, to be patient, to let the things I’ve been desiring and visualizing manifest into reality in their proper time. Let me explain how I am so certain that the universe is telling me to be more patient. And why I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it speaks to us at all. I’m on the brink of manifesting a version of my reality that I’ve been visualizing for over 4 years now. When my partner and I started our marijuana collective a few years ago we said that we were doing this so we could free up time to pursue our creative endeavors and not have to work for someone else in a grueling restaurant job while we did. During the first few years of running the pot shop I fell even more deeply in love with the cannabis plant, as I realized more and more the power this botanical miracle has to heal, and not just on a mental level. In concentrated doses cannabis is anti-inflammatory, and anti-tumoral. It literally shrinks tumors and reverses their effects. The research on this is spotty because of a mix of deliberate deception and incompetence, but I’ve seen this treatment work. I am treating a mole on my body this way right now, and it’s beginning to shrink. So I became infatuated, captivated by Mary Jane herself. I put my writing and my creative pursuits on hold, as my new passion to learn everything I could about pot took root inside me. The hemp plant itself has the hardest fiber of all plants that can be processed so it makes higher quality paper than trees, which would mean an end to deforestation. The oil from the stalk can be used instead of crude oil to make all petroleum based “plastic” items we use today, thus eliminating toxic plastic from the planet and replacing it with something lasting but safe. It can further be processed into non-toxic paint, heating fuel, car fuel, construction materials, cords, rope and clothes. Additionally hemp seed is the most complete form of food on the planet, being the only thing containing every known amino-acid chain as well as an abundance of nutrients and minerals. Just by being planted in large enough numbers, the amount of carbon dioxide it uses can single-handedly reverse our man-made carbon foot print, while the seeds produced can feed everybody three times over. And finally it’s one of the most advanced plants out there, being able to be both male and female, pollinate itself, grow in almost any climate and reproduce in vast quantities without any help, that’s why we call it weed. Pot, in short, is a miracle. I was caught in the thrall of this new phenomenon that has the potential to reverse every catastrophic trend facing humanity. I mean, we know it’s good for the economy! Four years and one visit to a psychic later and I am again as fully passionate about my writing and my art as I am about the planet-saving benefits of marijuana. So about six months ago my partner and I put a plan in motion to put ourselves in a better position to manage the company and not do the technical work as much, thus making our original dream into a reality. During the first four months of this transition I was committed to working hard, more hours and more shifts than I had in the last four years, in the name of progress. And it worked! The company was improving in leaps and bounds. I was growing tired, but the bottom line was growing too so I paid no attention to the fatigue. I pursued the growth of the company at the expense of all else. I got two new beautiful azalea plants in February before my sister came to visit and one month later they were dead. But the company grew more as the leaves of my azalea withered away. In the last two months as I’ve been gazing and writing about it every day my passion for my creativity has been reawakened even more. So I’ve started to grown more impatient. I have been feeling exceedingly frustrated as I’ve tried to rush things along. I want my company to double it’s monthly earnings. It’s well on it’s way; but I want it now. I want to spend less time working in my business and more time working on it and writing about it. My schedule of shift work has been greatly reduced so I can pursue my creative endeavors, but I want more, quicker. Now that my passion for writing is back and I’ve been teased with an extra day off, I’ve grown restless. Once I let the impatience get a hold of me and replace the gratitude, I’ve had one hurdle to jump after another. Drivers flake out, days are slower than anticipated, vendors want their money, and the technology has been throwing an all out rebellion, from the computers to the phones to that little machine I use to vacuum seal deliveries, I’ve been like a cave man swinging my club at fire to try and scare it away. And while I grunt and pout it seemed like everything I was on the verge of achieving was going up in smoke. On Saturday I thought I’d brighten up the place and my spirits so I gave Brett (who does all my landscaping) a budget for some colorful flowers to replace the dead azalea’s in front of my door. Then on Sunday I woke up, knowing I should be more grateful but feeling stuck in this rut of dissatisfaction nonetheless. Staring out at two dead azaleas. I began to meander around youtube and stumbled upon an Abraham Hicks video. Abraham Hicks is an alien entity channeled through a lady who brings wisdom to us from source energy, supposedly. So I click on it.
DAYS 46-48: Up to 8 Minutes of Gazing
Over the last three days I have been gazing steadily. The clouds have prevented the gaze from my cactus covered morning temple so I have been continuing to consume my light at sunset. I made it to the beach on Day 46 and gazed as the sun set behind the hills of Malibu. On Day 47 I gazed from the edge of my bungalow in the heart of West Hollywood, drinking in the light as my neighbors and passersby drink in the sight of a grown man crying while staring at the bright ball of fire hanging in the sky just above the synthetic jungle of buildings and billboards. I have been dreaming of living on a lake in a giant house with a wrap around porch lately. So when my neighbors invited me to spend the afternoon at a waterfall out in Pasadena I gratefully went along. We drove out in Summer, top down, music loud, and spirits soaring. The sky was a relentless thick grey, so thick you couldn’t even tell where the sun was located behind it. It was completely blocked out. It was only 4:20 at this point but in the back of my mind I wondered how I would do my 8 full minutes of gazing today. The morning had been cloudy like usual, and today it gave no sign of letting up. I dismissed my pending disappointment and decided I could feel that later if necessary. For now I was going to enjoy the hike through nature toward the waterfall that I had in front of me. One thing the sunlight has definitely illuminated for me: live in the present moment. So I knew I’d have time to fret over the clouds later and I put it out of my mind. The hike consisted of a dirt path through a canyon of rock walls that went along next to a creak bed. At some parts the water was trickling by and we had to hop across rocks to get to the dry path. At other parts the creak bed was dusty and dry and you could walk along it, as if it were the path. As I walked along the middle of the creak bed toward the waterfall I felt like a rebellious drop of water, making my way back to my source, against the tide, against the flow, and against all odds. After a sweaty but sweet thirty minutes we were almost to the rushing falls. Walking across the rocks with Nikki, Johanna and her sister Jessica, nature surrounded me today; she built a much needed sedimentary damn between me and the vibrations of the city in which I live. This external wall I put between the city and my body is but a misty reflection of the chaos of the inner city I’ve got pulsating non-stop in my mind, my veins, my soul. I’m hiking to this waterfall, to this wedge of nature in my outer world so I can build an internal damn and carve myself an inner wedge of green and sky and space. I needed to get away, both inside and out. So I retreated to a rock-encrusted waterfall to dampen the synthetic sounds of civilization and awaken the aroma and atmosphere of oasis inside me. I’m carving out of my rock-encrusted heart a place for the Spirit to flow, like the water flows in my tree-dappled afternoon hideaway. About fifty other people had this same idea, or perhaps they just wanted to get their feet wet. As I rounded the bend and descended on the mouth of the falls the sounds of merry shouting, laughing and playing filled the air, mingled with the constant sound of the gushing falls and created a cacophony that brought to mind a merry band of peasants blowing off steam in the forest after toiling all day for the king. This was break time; and time to break open, to breathe and to expand: past the city, past the cement cemetery in which I live, and past my own inner turmoil. As the water flows without ceasing it smoothes the rocks, and the sharp edges become rounded spots on which to rest weary bones. And as I rest I am being smoothed. Nature is filing down my sharp edges and no longer filing away grudges, so my soul too can become rounded and ready to be a resting place for another’s weary bones. I want this all now, I want healing now, I want enlightenment now. But I remember it takes decades, even centuries for a sharp edge to become a smooth surface on one of these rocks. I must be like these rocks, steadfast, unmoving, and in no hurry at all. Just here, just being, just existing in whatever shape I’m in now. Like the rocks, I don’t wash myself in the water of the Spirit, I just put myself in its path and let the waters wash over me. As we make our way back to the car at 6:40 the ominous and definitive grey hasn’t moved a muscle. And the sun is completely invisible. Disappointment flares up in me as I realize I may miss a day again. Even though it’s due to weather and not whether or not I get up, it’s still a bummer. After a small but tiring set of mental gymnastics on the ride home I finally decide not to resist the circumstance. I resign myself to extending my experiment by a day, doing my 8 minutes tomorrow and just being okay with that. Almost as if on cue, the clouds begin to thin out and I can see the bright disc of sunlight directly in front of me. After a few more minutes it sinks down below the helmet of clouds altogether but still hovers above the horizon, a prime gazing situation. With the blessing of my companions I pull the car over on the side of the road, kick off my shoes, stand
DAY 45: 7 & 1/2 Minutes of Gazing – Sun Beams & Burritos
I read in The Earth Was Flat by Mason Dwinell that sometimes during the early stages of gazing some old deeply entrenched patterns can re-emerge and seem to take hold as they bubble to the surface in order to heal and be released. It’s similar to a cancer patient who is healing from a juice fast feeling worse before they feel better because the toxins are being pushed to the surface by the nourishment (See “The Gerson Therapy” for details on natural cures for cancer). Before the toxins leave you fully, you experience them one last time in their death-throws; it’s called a healing flash, but it feels like a cruel joke. I have been dealing with acute impatience and a general feeling of “fed-up-ness” with the parade of mistakes and errors coming across my desk this last week. It’s almost comical how many things have gone awry, almost comical. I have been feeling stressed and tired for days. In the midst of this my business is going through a slow patch it can’t afford. The online menu is broken and the company that deals with that is telling me it’s not fixable. Also, the operators over at my phone service can’t seem to figure out how to charge a simple credit card. I forget, are we in the year 2014 or 1914? Because with all the different aspects of the technology I’ve come to depend on breaking down, it’s becoming harder and harder to tell. I think I am supposed to be learning peace this week. Or maybe the universe already thought I had learned it and it threw me this week full of problems and worries and setbacks to give me the opportunity to see my growth, to realize how far I’ve come. Well if that’s the case it back-fired, big time. I have written strongly worded emails, made frantic phone calls equating my phone problems to those of an impending apocalypse. I have brooded, panicked, and eaten my stress in the form of donuts and chocolate milk. And I haven’t been the most polite. I am trying to put my best foot forward when I interact with the incompetent monkeys at the various companies I associate with. I am intending to be patient. I know they are just an aspect of me, sent by the universe to reflect my inner state of being back to me. I know they, like me, are energy and molecules and we are connected at the most deep and fundamental levels. I know all is one. I known when I treat them with love I am also loving myself. But I have to say, interconnectedness of the universe notwithstanding, I could slug somebody today. Fingers crossed, this recent dip into the old pattern of an edgy demeanor and a short fuse is just a healing flash, brought about by my and the sun’s shared determination to see me heal once and for all. Last night I joined my friend Brett again passing out hand-rolled burritos to the hungry wandering the streets of Hollywood. The enlightened version of Brian filled with sunlight and awe can see that my problems are small when compared to the situations of some of my comrades making make-shift tents on cold streets every night. But the grumpy version of Brian, filled with expectations and needing reassurances doesn’t notice that reality one single bit. I had a bad day, Mr. Hungry Man, so don’t give me any lip or you ain’t getting a burrito, you got me! As the night wears on the same impactful gratitude I experienced last time exudes from most of these folks again, softening my self-righteous irritable shell. This time we rode in the van, and over the course of two hours we passed out over one hundred burritos to a very gentle and grateful population. One of the burrito slingers, Rob, has been coming for months and you can tell by his relationships with these folks. He greeted a few of the hungry people by name and asked one woman how she is feeling since being released from the hospital. Suddenly it struck me in a wave: these folks are not a project I can sign up to do, to make myself feel better, they are people. They are me, a suffering, real, deeply grateful and sometimes slightly intoxicated part of me. Reality changed for me in that moment. The very real suffering taking place minute by minute on these streets hits me in my solar plexus in a way it just didn’t penetrate two weeks ago. As I saw Rob interact with these folks I saw two friends talking over burritos. Rob’s peace and confidence and kindness is evident, brilliant, and striking. I realize that taking action produces the same results as sun-gazing. Rob puts all his love and attention into this, week after week. Not for credit, not for glory, just because it matters. He takes action, and that fills him the way I’m asking sunlight to fill me. Selfless service, or Seva, they call it. And it works magic. Rob’s good friend, also Rob, was there for the first time tonight. This Second Rob marveled at the fact that his friend First Rob, had been coming here for months and never said a word to him. This struck me too, and a bible verse from my stint as a born-again Christian flashed through my mind: but when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you, Matthew 6:4. It seems to me, from my perspective looking in that the reward is peace, purpose and joy; Rob’s face beams. Am I a fool trying to get from the sun what others around me seem to get from concrete, action-oriented good deeds? Or is it the sun’s influence on me that brought
