DAYS 43 & 44: 7 Minutes & 10/20 Seconds of Gazing
I attempted both of the last two mornings to gaze and was again stopped in my tracks by the clouds, by the unyielding wall of grey. But the clouds just don’t get my goat anymore. The universe is just making things interesting. Well I see your clouds and I raise you a sunset. So I’ve been trotting out to the western edge of my bungalow at about 7:00 pm to watch the sunset before it disappears behind my local grocery store and into the night. Both of these evenings my neighbor Brett joined me for the gaze. I read an article recently that suggested you cover your eyes with your palms after the gazing is over and stare at the after image until it disappears. Once it has disappeared completely you know you have absorbed the light. As Brett and I do this we compare notes. His image is shaped like a blob, then a star, and it’s green, with definite yellow and red outlines. Mine is shaped like a bat, then a cross, and it’s sporting the same emerald center with the same yellow and red bands of light surrounding it. We look like two sad yogi’s crying into our hands as we absorb the light from our gaze, teary eyes cupped in our palms on the side of the road. All signs to the contrary, I couldn’t be happier. Each night as the after image fades away I imagine the light settling in the backs of my eyes. I feel the heat in there. I can only hope it’s burning up the chaff in my thoughts and cooking the wheat into a nice warm loaf of bread I can use to feed my soul. Over the last few days, despite my constant devotion to the gazing my life has become busy with the stresses of running my own small business. You know the kind of stresses that can be both mundane and life-threatening all at the same time. For example the business phone system stops working altogether. Mundane, because everyone’s had phone problems. Life-threatening because my business is a delivery service where you call in orders, so a broken phone is a broken business and a broken business is a broken budget and worry creeps in over the stress and tension begins to set up shop again in my belly. I remember you, but the sun evicted you I think, indignant. “Well, I’m back now,” Tension smirks at me “because you’ve been worrying again, and when you worry you create this toxic environment in your tummy that I just can’t resist.” So now I get penalized for worrying? And when did this happen exactly? When did the peace and calm that had been activated by the gazing get replaced by my obsolete but apparently deeply entrenched patterns of stress and worry? My business had a few slow days, and I found myself a bit under slept, and quick as a card shark dealing from the bottom of the deck, I was left with a bum hand, a pit in my stomach, and a pile of worry just chipping away at my peace, piece by piece. Why is it so easy to see the right thing to do when its somebody else who has to do it? But when it’s my turn to make the conscious choice, or the healthy call, or the appropriate decision, I just end up in a drive-thru or a bathhouse, or god-forbid a police station? Well, I discovered why, it’s because I’m a sage. I read in The Master’s Touch by Yogi Bhajan that a sage is not wise, a sage is one through whom wisdom flows. Well, I think that describes me to a tee. My friends tell me I give great advice. Over and over again people come to me to solve their problems or mirror back to them a perspective they have not seen. I open peoples minds, I’ve been told. But I am pretty sure I’m not wise. I have a lard-hate relationship with junk food. I fall in love with unavailable men. I watch Jack Baur run down the clock on the new 24 series when I should be running outside. And I can be convinced at anytime that a can of coca-cola is a great idea even though I have gum problems! So it’s safe to say I’m not the wisest. I’m a regular dotto in dungarees, sweating my balls off in Los Angeles like every other dotto with a dream and a day job. But I have people seeking my take on their problems more times a day than I can count. I am a dumb-ass through whom wisdom flows, you know, a sage. I should probably start to write some of that wisdom down, and then oh, here’s an idea, follow it. SIDE EFFECTS: The after image bends and transforms into different shapes as my cells absorb the light and I think I am being bent and transformed by the light as well. BENEFITS: I have reached a leveling off point where the next wave of drastic changes is still out on the water. I feel it coming, but it’s not here. For now I am gently rocking, daily gazing, enjoying my time out on this open sea, wondering just where I might end up.
DAYS 40-42: Up to 7 Minutes of Gazing
“All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusion is called a philosopher.” -Ambrose Bierce. So here’s my philosophy, all paths lead to the same place so let’s let everybody live how they want to live. I have been gazing steadily at sunset for the last few days. Despite this new re-commitment to my devotion (after my hangover missed day) and the large amounts of sunlight (about seven minutes each time) I have been having a pretty tumultuous weekend. I have been feeling a calm and tranquility that is mystical, deep, and steady. So you can imagine my surprise when the naysayers started to get under my skin and really piss me off over the weekend. Some of the closest people in my life don’t know what to make of the sun-gazing. They don’t try to stop me, but if they could they would. People have been accusing “how can you be so sure it will work?” Well, I’m actually not sure, I reply, that’s why I’m doing an experiment. But this is met with indignant grunts and eye rolls. It’s just not rational and it’s dangerous, simple as that! Oh, well, I was thinking it was kinda heroic, but everyone is entitled to their point of view. I also recently read an article on RationalWiki.com that said categorically we cannot harvest the sun’s energy in the eye. Okay, maybe so, but are we really willing to say we are certain, without any tests? The article rests on the knowledge that we don’t have the same kind of photoreceptors as plants, that allow them to harvest the sunlight for energy. The article has no evidence to support or disprove the theory. The theory sounds reasonable enough. But in science classes centuries ago we were told the earth was flat. That turned out to be completely wrong. And the best minds believed this way. We were told this based on the best theory (read: guess) of the time, not because we knew it for sure, but because we thought we were right. Only one hundred years ago we were told flight was impossible. A mere fifty years ago or so we were told the atom was the smallest particle, with this same stubborn certainty. We were wrong on all counts. And a measly thirteen years ago we were told that the Twin Towers collapsed from the bottom because planes hit them at the top. This is just the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. But it’s the prevailing theory. And just like in the days of Galileo, we as a species seem to find comfort in believing the prevailing theory, even as a scientist wastes away in jail, or the truth remains buried under Freedom Tower. If most of us believe it’s true, it’s just easier for the rest of us to fall in line. This makes sense, after all, because we are a generation raised in a culture that glorifies lies and honors secrets. From the simple to the most nefarious, the lies of our culture are all around us. I was told by more than one teacher that if I crossed my eyes for too long they’d get stuck. That’s a lie, told by a teacher! If we frown too long our face will freeze that way. Another lie. From the Santa Clause myth to the propaganda about why war is necessary, we have built our society on deception. The grand lies from the government and the banks keep the paper economy turning; while the white lies we tell to each other and ourselves keep us from seeing this at all. So I have no intention of taking anyone’s word for it when they tell me that the sun can heal or that it can blind me. I’m not taking anyone’s word for anything more than what it is. As the Big Lebowski would say “that’s just your opinion, man.” Instead, I am conducting my own experiment, and if you don’t like it, don’t follow along. With the internet there is more access to information than at anytime in human history; what a perfect time to explore our own passions and beliefs. I think we as a species are being called to explore our own individual paths and to celebrate complexity and novelty in a way never dreamed of in generations past. The world is too complex to follow obsolete patterns of culture. We each need to map out our own journey. What works for one person will not work for another. Nothing is fool proof. But if you think there is something that’s absolute truth for all of us, all the time, then you really are a fool. We live in a time where we have virtually unrestricted access to anything we want to know. It makes sense to explore whatever rivers stir our passions, not to just get carried by the flow of the mainstream. Maybe that makes us philosophers, maybe lunatics. Or maybe as Ambrose Bierce suggests, they really are the same thing. SIDE EFFECTS: None BENEFITS: I have more and more courage to explore my own path, no matter how that looks to anyone else.
DAY 39: 6 Minutes & 30 Seconds of Gazing
This morning I made my way up to the mountain for the first time in a few days. I have been sleeping in until six am for the last few days, missing chanting, but getting some much needed rest. I gazed at the sun from the edge of my West Hollywood property, where I have to wait until the sun is higher in the sky above trees and buildings and therefore brighter. Today, though, finally, with my hangover fully behind me and a good night of air conditioned sleep I popped up at 5:30 bright eyed. I watched the sun from the cactus covered mound on top of the mountain that has become like my sun-gazing temple since my quest began. This is where I belonged for now. I sat down for this one, buried my feet into the earth, felt a wave of peace and joy, happy to be on this perch again, and gazed at the sun for six and a half minutes with my hands around my brow. The light was gentle, inviting, and invigorating. I felt a strong connection to the sun this morning, like we were in tune today in a way that I haven’t felt since the six days of clouds a few weeks ago. As I made my way down the path and back toward my car two stocky Hungarian women passed me in the opposite direction. One woman was speaking to the other, but seemed to have one eye on me. I heard her say “I’m just glad you’re coming now, because you gave up, and you’re back.” Ouch, I thought. I wouldn’t want a friend telling me I gave up. Before I could even finish that thought I realized I’d missed two days in the last two weeks and day 37 was for dumb reasons having to do with booze and boys and being up way too late. I knew instantly the sun had used her to speak to me. She spoke to her friend in her thick hungarian accent but the sun had spoken directly to me. Had I given up? Was I not taking this seriously enough? I wouldn’t have put it that way, but now I was feeling an urgency to prove to the sun and myself that this was important to me. Just as I’m deciding how severely to beat myself up over this a loving Golden Retriever appears and nuzzles right up to me, seemingly from nowhere to shower me in unconditional love and remind me of the lesson I had just learned yesterday, forgive thyself. Again I knew this was the golden sun communicating through a golden retriever the second half of his message. “I love you no matter what, just to be clear; but like I said through that Hungarian lady, I’m glad you’re back.” I smiled, feeling support like I’ve never felt before from the invisible guiding hand of the universe. It’s good to be back. SIDE EFFECTS: None. BENEFITS: The more sunlight I take in, the more clearly I can hear and recognize the universe’s messages to me.
DAYS 37 & 38: 6 Minutes & 10/20 Seconds of Gazing
I got drunk with one of my closest friends who I hadn’t seen in a while and slept through morning gazing on day thirty-seven. I somehow missed it that night too, more focused on my hangover than my spiritual overhaul. I was just about to lay into myself for this lapse in judgement, and missing gazing over it too. Well I oughta be ashamed. But I’m not. That’s what the clarity of the sun has really offered me so far in this early part of phase one. Self-acceptance is the first step before self-improvement can even be a possibility. So I forgive, I chuckle at my willful disobedience, and I just let it go. I woke up vibrant and ready on day thirty-eight and gazed, knowing the sun had already moved on and was happy just to see me showing up again. He traveled all the way around the world just to be here with me today. I suppose the ups and downs of the journey are what make life interesting. At least that’s what I used to believe and that’s probably a big part of why my life has been a wild ride from the day I came screaming into the delivery room straight through until today. From the summer I spent living in a family friend’s attic while my mom struggled to sustain her children and her dignity while getting a higher education, to my time traveling around war-torn Africa helping the poor get medicine with my then born-again Christian buddies, the adventure has raged. From 184 pounds to 134 pounds and back again, the ebbs and flows of my life seem to be right on tune with the ups and downs of my jean size. From my days guzzling coca-cola to my days snorting cocaine I waited in long lines in the amusement park of life, determined to try every single ride they had to offer. As I now sit on the bench, nauseous from the fried dough and the non-stop action, I search for a gentler ride. So I’ve started chanting, and sun gazing, and by some miracle I’ve started slowing down. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been having a blast. But like any day at a the amusement park, I’m ready to wind down in the air-conditioning and sleep in the backseat of the car as I journey back home. I made myself comfortable in the world of debauchery, excess and the unusual because I crack under the weight of others judgement. I wish this wasn’t true, but I just can’t stand to be judged. On the fringes of our organized society there is far less judgement and more tolerance because by it’s very nature the fringes include the weird, the misfit, the inappropriate, the edgy, risky, raunchy and downright disrespectful, they’ve adapted with a thicker skin and a highly developed sense of adventure. So people living and thriving out here have been conditioned to hold no judgements. Too many unusual things present themselves here, and forming opinions about each and every one and carrying those opinions around would prove exhausting. So the philosophy of the fringe is “It’s cool dude, as long as it’s harmony. And if it’s not harmony but not violent it’s still cool. And if it is violent but also consensual, well that’s cool too.” So in short, it’s cool, dude. This nonchalance about my eccentricities and boldness and quirks relieves me, even soothes me. But I don’t feel at home in the world of excess anymore. It has been a good friend to me, giving me experiences of fun, acceptance, meaning and of course love. It was a part of my destiny to ride every roller coaster I got on, asking my Better Judgement to wait for me at the end and please hold my jacket. But destiny has moved on. My Better Judgement wants to go, and my will wants to go now too. It’s been a long day. But just where am I going, that’s anybody’s guess. Without getting into too many details because my mom reads this and I don’t want her to worry, I had my fun with drugs and sex and bending the law and all the crazy stuff the kids have been doing. I found meaning there. I found something familiar. Vestiges of the energies of past lives maybe; or perhaps I just had to sow some wild oats. Now I long for meaning some place else, the horizons of new adventure, with the sun and with my soul. The hardest part of this journey has been to finally realize once and for all that shame and regret over choices I’ve made is more destructive than any of the consequences of the choices actually ever were. There were consequences, but they were my teachers. The consequences have formed me. The self-loather and self-pitier who wasn’t patient enough with the Brian going through those adventures is the one who made the journey harder than it had to be. You can’t learn a life lesson when all you’re focused on is how you screwed something up. I believe we are given just what we need, just when we need. And that’s why even though I drank too much and missed a day of my quest because of it, I’m going to let that go. Indeed, the light-hearted energy of the sun is why I can let it go. Today’s lesson: forgive thyself. SIDE EFFECTS: Obviously drinking too much can fuck anything up. BENEFITS: I feel more love because I love myself more. Finally knowing that clearly is worth the price of a hangover.
DAYS 35 & 36: 6 Full Minutes of Gazing
I gazed at sunset yesterday for five minutes and fifty seconds, and then again this morning for six full minutes! Six full minutes. And it was every bit as intense as it sounds, both of the last two sessions were. Last night and this morning I was skating on thin ice, gazing at the brightest edge of the safe hour and the difference was clear as day, pardon the expression. Yesterday evening the sunset was at 7:43pm, but from my vantage point in West Hollywood I have to gaze at 7:01pm or I lose the disc behind buildings. Even though both times are in the safe hour the degree of brightness between 7:01 and 7:37 (when there are six minutes of sun left) is like night and day (again pardon the expression, the sun has me delirious with punlight). And this morning I slept in, getting over the last vestiges of a cold and laziness so I had to wait for the sun to rise above the buildings in West Hollywood, but still catch it before 7:03am, when the safe hour would be over. There was a thin ray of hope I’d find the perfect window to gaze, sun of a gun. I had been sunset-up for failure. All puns aside though, I did manage to find bare earth facing east and gaze for six full minutes. But things haven’t been cozy and thrilling like they were in the beginning, they have been bright and strong and almost adversarial. I read an article recently about the gazing which recommended you put your hands around your eyes so that as the light enters into your optic track it is passing through your own electro-magnetic field. That sounded logical, if even as yet untested, and since the sun was off the charts bright I employed that technique these last two days. I surrounded my brow with my palms, not obscuring my view of the direct ball of fire at all, and the brightness became slightly more tolerable. The constant pulsating and involuntarily blinking began to subside and I felt myself entering into the sun like I had in the past. It went from sounding the alarm to inviting me inside for hot tea and sun chips. I guess it didn’t recognize me at first, after all it was so bright I also found it hard to see. My eyes aren’t yet ready for the bright outer edge minutes of the safe hour. How will I master fifteen minutes of gazing, or forty-four? My eyes wanted to go screaming for cover at five minutes fifty seconds, and they tried yanking themselves out of my face at six minutes to jump to their deaths five feet four inches below on the sidewalk. I put my hands around my brow again and was able to talk them back off the ledge and into their sockets, but it was a close call. SIDE EFFECTS: It has been harsh again these last few days. I am having trouble keeping my face relaxed and my eyes opened. BENEFITS: I have received numerous comments this week about how bright, white, and clear my eyes are. And I still feel more clear headed and less anxious, even though the last few days have burned with stress the way the sun was burning my eyes.
DAY 34: 5 Minutes & 40 Seconds of Gazing
It’s getting lengthy. No, I’m not talking about the blog, thank you very much, I’m talking about the sun-gazing. Each individual gazing session is almost six minutes now. My eyeballs are being power-washed by the sun in longer and longer bursts every day. I feel the cataracts of misconception and pre-conceived notion flaking off my dusty eyes with each new sun-blasting. This practice, also called Sun Yoga, like any yoga, is having the promised result of creating more awareness. I can see the dissenters in the tribal council of my mind and easily wave them off. I can hear The Judge’s voice specifically, menacing, booming but benign. And The Victim, all out-raged and pissed the fuck off, and wounded, he reminds me, seriously wounded. Then there is The Prosecutor, perhaps the most dangerous of all the voices, feeding me self-loathing while sounding reasonable. “Well, you did say you were gonna stop eating junk food so it’s only right The Judge find you guilty for enjoying a pastry for breakfast.” Yeah, I agree, that sounds right. I do suck. “And don’t forget,” The Prosecutor continues “you’ve never had a serious relationship, which means you will most certainly end up alone, so why don’t you just let The Victim cry in peace and stop judging yourself.” Wait, what? Was I the one judging. No way, you were judging me. The Prosecutor just laughs. What the fuck was so funny? “I am you” he counters back, laughing harder. Almost cackling. Before the sun-gazing I used to get lost in all this mental drama. I would hop into the car, race right down that courtroom in my mind and start asking questions and demanding answers. And I’d be held in contempt. Sometimes I’d sit on the couch going over the court transcripts for hours, trying to figure out what was true, what wasn’t, and how did I end up in this courthouse cell? And god forbid I find out some uglier stuff I didn’t already know about myself. Outcome: likely. Until recently. Now I can pick those voices more easily out of the din inside my head. This part of me that can hear those other voices, the Spectator, if you will, he’s aware of the whole drama, but he’s not a part of it. As soon as the Spectator zeros in on this chatter he can decide to lose interest, stand up and walk outside and down the courthouse steps to the park. That’s what I do now, both figuratively and literally, I walk to the park. The voices are replaced by birds and dogs and sunlight. And the Spectator is getting some fresh air for a change. Court is adjourned! SIDE EFFECTS: I do have a mild ache behind my eyes just after finishing today. Not in my eyes, but behind them and in my forehead. BENEFITS: I can hear myself think again now that court is no longer in session. Testifying against yourself can get very exhausting.
DAY 33: 5 Minutes & 30 Seconds of Gazing – Running Late
This morning I woke up feeling better than yesterday, but not yet over my cold. I had it on pretty good authority (and by pretty good authority I mean spotty internet research and assumptions) that you are supposed to heal during sun-gazing, not come down with the common cold. What the fuck? I was thinking as I rolled out of bed all headaches and snot. Also because of this sniffily plague, I overslept and raced out to my side yard to do the morning sun-gazing just minutes after the one hour safety window had expired. The sun rose at 6:03, and now at 7:06 I was beginning my five and half minutes of gazing. Gulp, this was it, I was gazing too late in the day and I was going to go blind, like everyone who loves me had feared. But, stubborn and relentless, I gazed anyway. The sun was noticeably brighter, and stronger this morning as I caught the ending credits of the sunrise. It was like war trying to get my brow muscles to relax and my eyelids to stay open. For the duration I was gushing tears, blinking, squinting, and just for good measure my nose was running. Even as my face began to ache from the brightness I drank in the light with a kind of perverse relish. I am a believer now that this light is effecting me, changing me, guiding me; so allowing the slightly brighter radiance of a tardy gaze session to flow into my eyeballs stirred me with excitement. I wasn’t just taking the sun today, I was taking the sun extra strength. When I have a headache Advil extra strength always works faster, so I thought, the extra strength sun may work faster too. The sun and pill popping probably operate on the same general principles, right? It’s not that I am in a rush to be whole, I am simply eager. I am a dog sniffing at the door of wholeness and I’m not going to go away. Let me in! So I’ve been doing more research. A website called HeartsCenter.org describes this nine month practice as being something one needs to do only once in their lifetime, and having three distinct phases. The first phase is one to three months, the one I am currently experiencing. In this phase the effects are said to be primarily emotional and mental, which by my accounts so far, seems to be right on track. It is suggested that during this phase you simply gaze. No prayers, no mudras (specific hand positions), no mantras, no nothing. Just be. When I read that instruction it resonated highly with me because I feel like that’s just what the sun has been saying all along. Relax. Be. And I’ll do the rest. Indeed, it was the passive yet all-encompassing nature of this practice that attracted me to it in the first place. So I’ve stopped reciting my mantra for now; I stand silently, cultivate awe, and simply gaze. The second phase, which is three to six months, is the primarily physical phase, where healing of the body takes place. During this phase it is suggested we stand with our arms up and wide with our palms facing the sun. As we do this we shall visualize the sun light entering our left palm, healing us, and exiting our right palm. Finally the third and final phase of the practice is designated as the primarily spiritual phase. In this phase we can expect to see the super-human abilities manifest, and higher states of awareness, compassion and enlightenment take hold. I have been on a spiritual quest my entire life. I think my first words were something like “Mamma, what is the nature of existence?” Now as I stride through my second month of this sun-pregnancy I am abuzz with anticipation. Could the next eight months hold all the answers I’ve been searching for? Why do tragedies occur? Can I avoid them? Is God a force or a dude, or a woman? Can I effect my environment with my mind or my attitude? In a world that sometimes feels harsh, or downright awful, how do I hold on to gratitude? The changes that have happened to my mile-a-minute mind over the last 33 days have been profound, real, and definite. I’m not simply existing with a slightly tweaked demeanor, or a rosier outlook. I am fundamentally more deeply at peace. My circumstances haven’t changed much. I don’t have it better than I did before. But I feel better. Things seem better. And I think that’s just the thing ancient and mystical text are pointing to when they explain how we can control our physical reality with our thoughts. The environment doesn’t actually change. We change. And from this changed perspective we can see other facets of the same environment that were not visible to us before, so we experience it differently, which in essence means we have changed our reality. I can sum the effects of my gazing this way so far: my life circumstances are the same, but they seem better, I think, because my disposition has become, well…sunnier. SIDE EFFECTS: The sun doesn’t tone itself down just because you show up late, so sometimes your face hurts. BENEFITS: My life is like a watercolor painting and the entire thing is being washed over by a shade of light that makes the whole thing seems more vibrant. Specifically less worry, more patience, more joy, more neutrality about the craziness of life that unfolds around me. It’s not indifference, it’s detachment. And it feels lighter, I feel lighter.
DAY 32: 5 Minutes & 20 Seconds of Gazing – The Hungry
Brett, my partner in sun-gazing, has been feeding the homeless every week since the new year. A small group of dedicated folks meet at the yoga studio every Wednesday night at 6:30. They make over a hundred burritos for the first hour, then break off into a few vehicles and drive around hollywood passing out the spoils for the second hour. Because I had two encounters with homeless folks over the last week who turned out to be very pleasant people with very timely messages from the universe (see previous posts), The Bag Lady was even rooting for me, I figured I’d have a great time and might just get more mail. I committed to this over a week ago and had been looking forward to it, but when I woke up Wednesday morning, BAM! I was sick. Some kind of cold, with the body aches and the chest cough. It was mild but absolutely unbearable, if you know what I mean. I debated canceling but decided I wanted to follow through. I remember what Yogi Bhajan, the guy who brought Kundalini Yoga to the West, would say “commitment is the first step toward happiness.” But now as we were pulling away in Brett’s truck my latest wave a nausea and body aches was making me second guess myself. We stopped at a crosswalk and I truly considered jumping out and bolting right there, straight to the NyQuil and straight to bed. Then a homeless man wandered past the windshield, in front of us. We locked eyes and then he continued on his way. Suddenly he does a double take, then a triple take! Then this dirty stinky smile bag turns back around again and with a mischievous glint in his eye he yells “you guys are Jehovah!” Then he starts giggling to himself as as stands there swaying.Who us? I mean we were going to feed “his people” I reasoned, and the universe had kind of settled into the rhythm of using the homeless to send me messages of late, he would make number three. I guess this was reasonable I figured, because we all get into little ruts, so why not the universe. Suddenly I felt a surge of energy, I knew my cold was still there waiting to return at midnight and turn me back into a sick little pumpkin, but my decision to stick it out and go had been confirmed, it had been blessed. By this guy. And I felt energized. Brett and I giggled about the strangeness of the Universe’s directness in communicating to us of late, and by the time we arrived at the studio I was feeling regular, calm and energetic. The cold was there underneath, but for now I was doing what I was supposed to do, and I felt just fine. Everyone was friendly and welcoming. And it turns out, fascinated about sun-gazing. I felt like a guest on each and everyone’s separate talk show giving the same spiel about the sun and the ten seconds and the healing and how I might not need to eat and I might get super powers and I mention NASA yadda yadda. Everyone is enthralled, and secretly I loved every second. But it does always surprise me how genuinely interested and curious most people are. I think maybe it’s because we all have the sun in common. It gives us all the possibility of life, whether fare skinned or furry, and everybody has heard of it. So I continue to pontificate about the potential to go without food altogether as I roll up burritos to give out to some very hungry people. This irony makes me think what a powerful equalizing tool toward freedom the sun would really be if it can fill us to the brim and replace the need for food. The gazing is said to work on all of our appetites It works to diminish our wild cravings in all areas of life and calm us and satisfy our energy needs. Are our appetites really a prison that we have been deceived into believing we can’t live without, that prison being food. I think about how if we didn’t need to eat, or if we knew we didn’t need to then this whole “feeding the homeless” thing wouldn’t be necessary, and so much of the stress of life, the fight to survive and the inability to rise up to thriving would just–poof–be gone in a snap. In the blink of a sun-filled eye. As we pull away to begin our burrito blitzing adventure Brett brings me and fellow burrito slinger Wendy into a sort of foot-ball huddle over the center console of the Audi and says in whispered tones “now, the first thing you need to know is this, we don’t say ‘feed the homeless.’ They may take offense to that word. We are offering people a burrito who look hungry.” Apparently “homeless” is an offensive word in their culture. And why not, I think to myself. Every other culture gets to be offended by some stupid-ass meaningless slur, why not the homeless, er, I mean hungry, I thought. If any group has the right to be a little short tempered, I reasoned, it’s them. And yes they have a culture. And it is connected. At one point we dropped some burritos and water off to a couple in a tent and after a powerful thank you without missing a beat the gentleman points to another tent shrouded in darkness about two blocks away, and says to make sure we get those guys too. They look out for each other, I marvel as we take off in the Audi’s warm bubble away from the cold Los Angeles night air. At one point after it gets dark I mistake a bush for a homeless person when we are trying to get the last few burritos passed out. Time is of the essence now and a bush and a pile of
DAY 31: 5 Minutes & 10 Seconds of Gazing – Month 1 Complete
With one month and over five straight minutes of gazing under my belt I’ve decided to take stock. Is this really working? What changes, if any, have solidified and become regular additions to my life. Am I healing physically? Mentally? Emotionally? I’m not really sure. What I am certain of is that something real and visceral has been initiated between the sun and myself. Prior to day one of my gazing adventure I had taken up another new practice in my investigations into the spiritual/invisible side of life: early morning chanting, called Sadhana. For the forty days leading up to the gazing I began a ritual of waking up before the sun at 3:30 am in order to do a yoga set followed by 92 minutes of chanting and meditation. By the time it’s all over at 6:05 am the sun is peeking up. Necessarily, I am exhausted by 8:30 at night, so taking after all the ten year olds I know I go to bed soon after the sun goes down. I realized after the first few weeks of chanting that one effect of this new schedule is that I have adjusted my bodily rhythms to be in sync with those of the sun. I am awake for every single hour of daylight, every single day. This makes the days feel bigger, not longer. I can get more done, and I have more fun. My experience of life has expanded as my rhythms set themselves to the natural rhythms around me. I think this rhythmic adjustment to the daily dance of the sun has aligned the many aspects of me with each other and with the earth. What I mean by this is that even though I still have a million and one things to do every day, I don’t feel like I am going in a million and one directions. I feel like I a going in one direction, and that direction is forward. The part of my nature that finds conflicts and bathes in the drama they reward me with is being sanded down by sunlight, smoothed over and polished. The Toltec say that we all have within us a part of our mind called the Judge and part of our mind called the Victim, and they work against us, tearing us down and stirring up the most destructive parts of our nature. As the sun has washed my brain I picture the Judge on his bench, staring down at the Victim, but this time he slams down his gavel, now glowing with the light of the sun and pronounces “charges dropped, case dismissed.” Whatever the latest thing was that I trotted into the courtroom of my mind to hang myself with, it has lost its power. They all have. Because when I bring these faults or inadequacies into the courtroom now I find the Judge in a good mood, the Victim gets released, and me, the Prosecutor, well I find myself for the first time thinking I should be a defense attorney. Because when I give myself shit, I finally come to my defense now. SIDE EFFECTS: I have no night life to speak of any more because my night life is spent sleeping. But my nightlife didn’t consist of that many constructive things anyway so this may be a benefit in disguise. BENEFITS: I am awake for every hour of daylight, so now when people say “if only there were more hours in the day,” I smile to myself because I know that there are.
DAY 30: 5 Minutes of Gazing – The Game
Life is starting to seem like a game to me. I had two random strangers chime into my world yesterday to unexpectedly yank me out of my melancholy, the Smoker and the Bag Lady I’m calling them. And last week I had my Drunk Angel tell me to cool it on the drinking and the junk food. These were the Universe’s preferred vessels, or God’s Chosen People, if you will. I’ve also been getting conflicting messages from events, rockstar parking in my crowded non-permit free-for-all of a neighborhood every day lately, and then parking tickets for the dumbest of infractions. The growing business on one hand and overdue bills on the other. Everything is contradictions: obstacles followed by blessings, then more obstacles. On one hand I am feeling more aware and more tranquil than ever, but on the other hand, with my growing business and my growing family, I am facing more challenges than I am used to. The sun-gazing makes things plain to me. It makes me more aware of cause and effect which I think is a mild version of being able to see the future; so I see the various ways anything can go wrong more clearly now too. I realize something: life seems like a game sometimes because it truly is a game. From the darkest tragedies to the most potent joys, from garlic breath to garlic toast, we set this life experience up, right down to the last detail. And then we rigged it to play itself out in response to our states of being, but we don’t get to remember how responsive and pliable reality is until we get here and go through some of it. Some of us never remember. That’s the game. And that’s why sometimes we feel provoked. Or victimized. Or cursed! Life is playing with us. That’s the way we set it up. By we, I mean all of us combined as one being, the Great One, or the Grand Self, or the Universe or dare I even say-God. If the universe is all one thing experiencing itself and that one thing happens to be a vastly intelligent consciousness evolving; then it makes sense that as we fragment ourselves into trillions, nay, infinite pieces (in the form of all the humans, creatures, insects, plants, flowers, clouds, rocks…you name it) that we would have set it up in a way that ensures that we would, in fact, evolve. Clearly we elected not to keep the memory of this grand plan of ours, so knowing we would have the Great Amnesia, we put in a back up plan. We planted methods for how to remember the truth. Those are the paradoxes, the mysteries. Pondering them and contemplating them has the power to bring back our memory. The Great Amnesia is really just the state we are in normally, it’s the state we are born into, by agreement. It is the state from which we seek enlightenment. Enlightenment is simply our original state of peace in which we understand we are all one, all things are one thing, and there is nothing to fear because this is just a game; it’s the state of our higher self, our self pre-birth. Consciousness is experiencing Ourself from the perspective of each thing, however that thing perceives; that is what it means to be omnipresent. We say God is omnipresent; because we are all God, all things are God, God is manifest in all life. It would stand to reason that mechanisms would be put into place to make sure our consciousness has a rich environment of opportunities in which to evolve, improve, create. So we tell ourselves to visualize something we want in such vivid detail, but then to hold no expectation of how it will turn out. Another contradiction. But we do this because if you have too rigid an expectation you will strangle the manifestation. Well doesn’t that sound like a needless paradox, like a wasteful mischief put in place by God or the Universe if God or the Universe was a teenage punk? I mean what the hell is that? Want it, but don’t expect it, because then you won’t get it. But let it go, or “die to it”, whatever the hell that means and it will be yours. That sounds exhausting. But that’s just the point isn’t it? We set up a beautiful world for ourselves to play in, water, abundance, sunshine, each other, endless variety and difference to amuse and explore…but we set up little paradoxes to bump up against our little utopia and make us question ourselves, examine our emotions, and come hell or high water, to improve, because that is the object of the game in the first place. The abundance is still here on earth, it always has been. Our filters made of our beliefs create our experience. What kind of joke is that? Unconscious beliefs create filters that control my perceptions? Well then how the fuck am I supposed to know what’s real? How do I figure out what the hell is really going on? That’s what the challenges are for. They are the mystery and the paradox of life that make us take a longer look at ourselves, all molecules and cells and DNA and muscle and personality and realize, whoa, I’m kind of a miracle, aren’t I? Who in the hell made me? And then we ponder existence, then God. This attitude of pondering is the precursor to humility and has the effect of loosening the filters of false belief we hold that cloud our perceptions. So the false beliefs cause a distortion in our perceptions that cause us to bump into obstacles, which cause us to ponder our existence, which can cause us to examine and over come our false beliefs. What is the point of a crazy intricate cycle like that? The point is to evolve. We have to become impatient to learn compassion when people are impatient with us,
