DAY 25: 4 Minutes & 10 Seconds of Gazing
I felt strange this morning. I missed the last six days of gazing due to a combination of cloudy weather, travel, a touch of oversleeping and finally what I interpreted to be a sun declared ultimatum that I must swear off of junk food or it was over between the Sun and me! Well I’ve become rather co-dependent on the sun over the last twenty five days so I’m going to make a go of this “no junk food” thing, starting with meat and processed foods and hopefully ending with six pack abs and a little extra bounce in my step (chai tea lattes excepted). I also traveled for 10 hours from New York City to Los Angeles yesterday so even my exhaustion was fatigued. My plane touched down in Los Angeles two hours late at 10:10 pm. My friend Rachel picked me up and we went straight to Taco Bell for some grub. Officially the no junk food policy hadn’t started yet, obviously. All they serve you on the plan is Doritos and eye rolls when you ask for a second bag; each bag has about six Doritos and some crumbs in it, so needless to say it’s not a very filling snack. After eight and a half hours I was a tad peckish. I enjoy healthy food, I do. So why do I feel like a prisoner on death row, and the gas chamber is actually Wholefoods and my last real meal was that Taco Bell I had eagerly inhaled. The sun was bright today. My eyes have lost all their conditioning, or at least a good chunk of it. I was fighting an impulse to squint for the entire duration this morning. It felt good to have my feet pressed into the cold earth and I began to feel myself expand again (and I don’t mean from all the junk food) as I stood out in the wide open, surrounded by hills and bunnies and birds and being drenched by the sun. I am not sure if the sun was coming on so strong because he missed me or because he was pissed that I hadn’t been around for a few days. While I lean toward the idea that he missed me dearly, I also must entertain the unlikely possibility that my eyes just need to get used to my daily doses of sun rays again. During my cloud-forced absence from sun-gazing I missed twenty minutes of cumulative light entering into my system. So in an effort to fill my cells back to the brim with solar power I am going to be doing 2 minutes of extra gazing at sunset each day for the next ten days in addition to the morning gazing. I like to think of it as a make up class. I am going to night school, well, sunset school anyway. SIDE EFFECTS: If you do not remain diligent and consistent the conditioning that you achieve does seem to diminish. My other theory is that the more toxic things I ingest the harsher the light becomes. BENEFITS: I will be visiting with the sun twice a day for the next ten days, and the giddiness still fills me every time so I’m thinking this is going to rock.
DAYS 19-23: Attempts to Gaze in Connecticut
I haven’t seen so much as a glimmer of the morning or evening sun in five days, and if the weather forecast in Fairfield CT holds true I won’t be seeing her tomorrow either. The last time I gazed I was standing in a converted above-ground subway station in New York City; later that same night a drunk angle came up to me and told me I needed to be in this gazing thing all the way and not eat junk food or drink heavily during this quest, in not so many words. And that encounter, hunched over the bar waiting for shots of gin with my drunk heavenly host had quite an impact on me. I took him seriously, took my shot, took a subway back to Brooklyn with Ben, and through circumstances beyond my control, took a five day break from sun-gazing. I tried to gaze, because I was inspired anew. I wanted to take the angels advice and be in this thing all the way. I woke up the next morning in Brooklyn with a hangover that was anything but heavenly, but I knew I’d see the sun that night when I arrived at my sister’s place in the small town of Black Rock, in southern Connecticut. My sister, Cheryl, tried to take me down to the water in her new Hyundai SUV but the clouds, that I’m starting to think have come to really dislike me, had gathered in such large numbers to mock me that it looked as if the sky was a piece of toast that had been slathered with far too much cream cheese to even be sure there was toast underneath. Undeterred, I thought I would make up the time tomorrow and keep moving forward. After all I was in this all the way now. Saturday morning I woke up before my sister and her husband, snuck out pre-dawn to do my morning chanting and find a practical perch from which to greet the morning sun. Before I left West Hollywood I loaded my favorite version of the chants onto my iPhone, so now parked in Seaside Park in Bridgeport CT, I popped my headphones into my ears, adjusted the car heat to the perfect level of cozy and chanted away. I found out later that morning from my sister that Seaside Park is a dangerous place in a bad part of town where white people in SUV’s are either buying drugs or getting mugged. I thought about what I must have looked like sitting in her car, a hapless dupe in headphones chanting my heart out; I suddenly became very grateful to still be alive. The sky brightened and the clouds smirked at me as they obscured the sun completely. I imagine now they were saying “you don’t get to see the sun today but at least you’re not getting shot at so don’t say the universe never did anything for you.” I reply in my head, “somebody woke up on the wrong side of the sun today,” which I think may have inflamed the clouds even more because Sunday morning I overslept. Sunday evening I was going to have dinner with my mom and her new boyfriend and despite the fact that my mom wanted to introduce me to a new Italian restaurant she thought I’d love, I requested we find a restaurant on the eastern shore of New Haven, facing west, so I could excuse myself from the meal and steal a few minutes of gazing as the sun went down. Everyone seemed okay with this odd request, even though it might seem crazy that I want to see the sunset so desperately. But I was desperate; I had missed two days in a row already. So everyone gave their blessing, everyone except the clouds of course; They were right on schedule standing guard at the gate. Monday was grey at both morning and evening, and this morning was unforgivingly and predictably more grey. As I was discussing this phenomena of the clouds ganging up on me, my sister pointed out that my drunk angel had said to stop eating junk food. I gave her a look like “so?” She laughed as she listed off the box of Oreo’s, the two boxes of danish, the swiss cheese flavored Cheez-it crackers and the piles of sausage I’ve eaten since arriving at her place. What was she trying to say? The sun was hiding from me on purpose because I’ve been eating like a toxic teenager? Well that’s just stupid I reacted and told her to go to work already. But now, as much as I hate to admit this, I think she might have a point. I don’t think she really believes that the sun is reacting to my diet, but she knows I would believe it, and it turns out, I think she was right. So now I have a choice, what kind of diet will I have today? And will the sun show itself to me again in reply. The forecast already predicts rain. We already have sausages in the fridge for dinner, and I’ve already missed five days of gazing. So I’ve decided to just enjoy my last day here, swerve with abandon into the junk food skid, and go at this gazing thing all the way tomorrow night, when I get all the way back home. SIDE EFFECTS: I think the sun has issued an ultimatum. Junk food or me! BENEFITS: I’m going to give up junk food…but just not yet, please, not quite yet.
DAY 18: 3 Minutes of Gazing – Manhattan
I woke up to a bright day in full swing and to the sounds of traffic roaring on this bustling Brooklyn morning. So seeing the sunrise was definitely out. Plan B was to watch the sun go down from The High Line, a decommissioned above ground subway track that has been converted into a beautiful, and I’ll say very well-designed Manhattan park. I’d been wanting to see this park for a while now and I needed to catch up on sleep from my marathon travel day yesterday, so I smiled at the thought of the warm sunset I’d see later, pulled the covers over my head and didn’t emerge for another two hours. Ben and I filled the rest of our morning with conversation and pot smoke as we laughed and caught up on old times and new developments. Ben is the type of friend I feel at home in, like an old sweater that I don’t wear much but when I do put it on I always marvel at how comfortable it is and it brings back so many great memories. The only reason I don’t wear it more is because it lives in Brooklyn and I live in LA. It even smells like old times. Okay so the analogy of the sweater begins to unravel at this point but the gist of it is that I was in high spirits frittering the morning away with an old friend. His hilarious web series that I like to say is loosely based on my life as a marijuana delivery guy is in the TriBeCa Film Festival this week so he took me along to the Filmmakers Lounge with him for the afternoon. While he conducted interviews I ate coconut macaroons. I plopped myself down in a womb chair in the converted Chelsea store front and caught up on my blog and on Catching the Wolf of Wall Street, the sequel to Jordan Belfort’s best seller The Wolf of Wall Street which I gobbled up like candy last year. At some point in the afternoon Ben wandered over to me to conduct one of his “man on the street” style interviews about filmmaking and who was my inspiration etc. etc. I spoke about my blog and my sun gazing adventure and then we discussed Joss Whedon, who’s lesbian witch storyline on Buffy the Vampire Slayer single handedly gave me the strength to come out of the closet and embrace who I truly am, as strange as that may sound. Later in the day the sound guy, Dimitiri, told me that he had been listening to Ben do these interviews all day and that mine had been intriguing and the only one worth listening to. And at the after party we all attended everybody wanted to know about this sun-gazing thing. This took me off guard because I am so used to it that gazing has become normal to me. All my neighbors in LA are either used to it or doing it with me so it becomes easy to forget that my sun-gazing experiment makes me look like a fringe lunatic who just happens to not be homeless. Right before the after party, and after the day of interviews, Ben and I made our way to The High Line where we scouted out the perfect expansive spot from which to gaze. Today marks three full minutes of gazing; another milestone I thought as the idea of “three minutes” registered in my mind and impressed even me. Ben kept the time for me and I gazed. Sunlight poured into my eyes and tears poured out. After it was over Ben did his first ten seconds of gazing and said he had the same experience of the brightness disappearing and the light inviting you in. The sun “revealed itself to him” is how he put it. We walked, wrapped in peace and excitement to the after party, where it turns out, I would answer many questions on my sun-gazing experiment. One of the men on the film crew is a fellow gazer from Ecuador, Sebastian, who said he gazed off an on for years and felt improvements in his confidence and his mind. After we were a few drinks deep, Sebastian and I went to the bar to get everyone another round. When we were alone his jovial drunken demeanor turned suddenly grave and ernest as he said “you can’t be drinking man, you gotta ask yourself why are you doing this? Why are you gazing and it’s not to do this, it’s not to eat that junk and drink,” then he looked at me directly in the eyes as he poked me in the heart with a gentle tap and said “only you know why you are doing this man, and you gotta do it all the way.” Then just as suddenly as the earnestness had come on, it evaporated and the jolly drunk party goer was back again. I felt deeply affected by his words, as if he had channeled an angel from heaven to give me an urgent message. Something sacred and important just happened it seemed to me. We grabbed the round of shots we ordered and headed back to our group, my mind reeling from a gem of wisdom given to me in the most unlikely of places at the most unlikely of times, and the messenger seemed to have no idea that anything profound or sacred had happened at all. SIDE EFFECTS: Drunken party goers may unknowingly channel angels from heaven that have personal messages for you. And then do a round of shots. BENEFITS: I am more and more at peace even with more and more strangeness manifesting itself around me.
DAY 17: 2 Minutes & 50 Seconds of Gazing – Sunset Park, Brooklyn NY
For a massive ball of fire that’s bigger than the planet it’s surprisingly hard to find a way to get a few minutes of a glimpse at it every day. Especially when I’m traveling. I am currently in NYC for a few days visiting some friends. I didn’t really think this all through because even though I am on the east coast (which I thought meant I was set for easy sunrise gazing) I am actually surrounded by very tall buildings that make it hard to see the sun when its low on the horizon, exactly the time when I need to gaze. I arrived to New York City’s JFK airport at 4:45 am. Sunrise was to be at 6:03 so I figured I had an hour and 15 minutes to get myself set up on the beach, relaxed and barefoot, and ready to gaze. I needed to be sure to gaze today because I only got 40 bullshit seconds of gazing yesterday on my way to the airport, through a mobile gas station, in my socks and shoes and in Summer (my convertible). All against the rules, but I thought, better than nothing. I didn’t want to take any chances of missing the morning show so I dropped $50 on a taxi and arrived at Brighton Beach/Cony Island at 5:30am, with plenty of time to spare before the sun was to appear. I squandered 20 minutes of that time away walking to a pavilion that I thought could shield me from the bitter whipping wind as I waited for the sun to shine. The pavilion didn’t help one bit, but it did have benches, so gratefully I sat down, plopped my luggage on the bench beside me, caught my breath and relaxed. I had been awake for 25 straight hours at this point (except for the hour of pot induced slumber I got on the plane) so I was a little pooped. I had plenty of time now and the sand was just right here in front of me for when the moment came. I wasn’t going to take my shoes and socks off any earlier than I had to because it’s ice cold out in these quiet pre-dawn hours. As the time ticked closer and close to 6:03 I noticed something strange about the sky. It was still dark, I mean the whole sky was lighter but the source of that light didn’t appear to be over yonder on the horizon. It appeared to be coming from my left, over the line of very tall buildings hemming me in. So for the first time in 5 years of having an iPhone I hurriedly opened my compass app to find that i was on a south facing beach and indeed I would not be seeing the sun rise over the water on the beach where I was standing anytime soon. Why don’t they tell you in school that even on the east coast you might not be on a beach that is actually facing east? I bet that’s a very common mistake and should be covered in third grade instead of teaching us cursive. I mean who uses that? I could have actually used the little tidbit about the beaches. Just my two cents. So I contemplated running in my pajamas, with my luggage and without my dignity, to see if I could catch the sun from the streets, or make it all the way beyond the buildings, or if only I could already fly, then I could just float up and see it all easy like. Instead I gave up. As I moped all the way to the subway I cursed how it still proved difficult to see the sunrise even when you were on the eastern goddamn coast of the country. I made my way to Ben’s neighborhood, got myself a sugar rush in the form of a vanilla chai tea latte and a donut and since I’d been awake for 26 hours at this point I promptly fell deeply asleep with my face pressed firmly into the hot pink and orange table top. I won’t confirm this for certain, but there may have been some drooling. The Dunkin’ Donuts pink and orange color scheme was the closest thing to a sunrise I was going to get today. So sunset became my only hope if I didn’t want to fall seriously behind. I spent the day relaxing in my friend Ben’s Prospect Park Brooklyn apartment, feeling at peace because I had formed a fool proof plan for catching the sunset today. I was going to Sunset Park, so named for it’s hills that put you high above most of the buildings and give you a good view of the western shore of Brooklyn as the sun sets over the water. Or so I thought. Sunset was to be at 7:54, so I left Ben’s place at 5:30, dropped $20 more on a taxi so I could relax with a slice of NY pizza in the neighborhood of the park while waiting for the right moment to gaze. The taxi driver acted like he was doing me a favor by not turning on the meter because I had agreed to pay cash, so he was only going to charge me $20. I was thrilled. I am being blessed in my endeavor by the universe because of my single-minded passion to follow through and getting a cheaper cab ride than the masses of “sheeple” who don’t pursue their passions the same way because of that fact, I thought. I congratulated myself for currying the favor of the universe yet again, and pitied the world around me for being so lost in their own drama that they couldn’t see what was plain to me, that life is trying to support us at every turn. On the return trip however, which was exactly the same distance, the cabbie clicked on his meter and my total ended up at only $12.00
DAY 16: Only 40 Seconds of Gazing
Well I screwed this all up. I tried to gaze at sunrise but there was a thick dark grey helmet of fog like I’ve never seen before at the top of the mountain on my usual grassy mound. I think the clouds had gathered forces after a weather pattern from Hoboken read my blog and told them I’ve been talking smack about clouds. The sky was literally smirking and telling me to fuck off! Well, you’re not so smart you wise ass little gigantic fog storm. I can just check the weather report on my handy dandy phone right here and see that, oh yup, it’s going to be sunny tonight over West Hollywood for the sunset. So in your face you puffy little gang of collected moisture, why don’t you go rain on somebody else’s parade. I turned around, drove back down the mountain in a huff, and vowed to see the sunset tonight, so all was well. This was not to be so. I was planning to sip some sun real quick at 6:55 and then head to the airport at 7:00 to catch a red eye to New York city to see a few friends and then head to my final destination in Connecticut to see my 8-month pregnant sister and her husband. As I was heading out I got absorbed in conversation with my ride to the airport and forgot all about the sun until we were cruising down La Cienega, top down, and the sun starts casting the deep orange glow that hits me like an alarm clock every day at sunrise and sunset now. I threw an “oh fuck” out there into the universe and thought okay I’ll do it at a red light. But it’s 2 minutes and thirty seconds, what red light is that freaking long (well there is actually this one light at six am that skips you sometimes and you have to wait forever, but that’s not the point.) The point is I was cruising to the airport to catch a flight and the sun was sinking lower every second. I managed to get 40 seconds of on the fly gazing in at the longest red light we encountered until a mini van pulled up beside us, between me and the sun. By the next light, poof, the sun was gone. Night fell upon me quickly. I popped a marijuana candy into my mouth at security that I’d been saving for the flight, and forty five minutes later I was in dream land. I started this blog entry when I woke up and was interrupted by the busy-body flight attendant telling me to stow my gear for landing. Stow my gear. Fuck her. I was on fire here. But alas TSA flight regulations and my eagerness to get off the plane forced my hand. So I am finishing up this entry now as I sit in my pajamas (which I wore on the plane) on a bench in Brighton Beach Brooklyn waiting for the sun to rise because I am not going to miss it again! For the first time since my quest began I will be gazing on the East coast over the Atlantic Ocean. In my pajamas on a beach in Brooklyn. Freezing my ass off. SIDE EFFECTS: Travel schedules must be planned around the sun’s schedule, because despite how much calm and tranquility she instills in me, she is completely inflexible when it comes to her sunrise and sunset appointments. BENEFITS: I discovered one useful thing about red lights. Finally red lights have shown their usefulness for something.
DAY 15: 2 Minutes & 30 Seconds of Gazing
I woke up at 3:30 am, went to the yoga studio, laid out my yoga mat, straightened out my sheepskin mat cover just so, arranged my water bottle in reaching distance, took off my socks, cleared my throat to get ready for the chanting, and promptly fell asleep for the full two hours of it. I awoke automatically at 5:58 am, as if the sun had volunteered to tap me on the shoulder so I wouldn’t miss our morning appointment. I packed everything up, put my socks back on, put my water bottle away and raced up the hill like I do every other day to catch the fiery frisbee as it hurls itself up toward the zenith of the sky. I arrived at our grassy mound with minutes to spare before the glow of the actual disc began to show itself. Brett and I have been learning a mantra to say in our heads as we stare, and to repeat to ourselves in the moments before we stare to ready our minds for the healing and vitality. The mantra: “The perfection of God is now being expressed through me. The idea of perfect health is now filling my subconscious mind. The image God has of me is a perfect image; my subconscious mind recreates my body in perfect accordance with the perfect image held in the mind of God.” I should explain here that by God I do not mean anything resembling an actual man, bearded or otherwise, and certainly not holding a staff and looking down on us with contempt. I also don’t mean a woman, shrouded in vines with the ability to command the earth at her will. And I don’t mean Jesus, or Buddha, or Gaia, or Mohammed. I simply mean the energy of life, the thing that makes anything you can think of grow. The force science can’t name but that is clearly underneath everything we call alive. By God I mean the force of life, the preference toward harmony, the surrounding energy that makes the sun rise and my fingernails grow. Atop the grassy mound, I pulled my socks off for the second time since 3:30 am, but this time I stood up, firmly planted on the earth instead of curled up in a ball on my sheep skin yoga mat sleeping through chants. I stilled my heart and began repeating our mantra out loud until the sun was fully in view. Then I switched to saying the mantra internally, switched on my timer, and gazed. There is no challenge in this aspect for me anymore. My eyes love the sunlight and they don’t squint or try to turn away from the easy morning spectrum that used to make my whole face contort in an ache just 15 days ago. The camaraderie between the sun and myself continues to deepen. I actually turned back to it on my way up the path after the gazing today, waved and said with a smile “Thank you, see you tomorrow.” The old man who I pass daily on his morning hike looked at me like “who the hell are you talking to?”, but I thought it was obvious. I am talking to the sun. I’m sure it seemed strange to him, just as the teary eyed weirdo who gazes from the heart of West Hollywood during sunset seems strange to my neighbors. But, I swear the sun waved back to me and said “you betcha.” The sun is continuing to communicate with me. I know it has much to say and much to relate and I push for answers as I gaze. I feel a hand being raised to me in the midst of the ball of fire saying “patience Brian, the secrets I hold will be revealed, but first you must learn to love yourself the way I love you. I shine on all things equally, all people equally. You too must learn to bring that sameness of love to all with whom you interact. And I will help you, but there is no rush.” But I want to transcend into bliss now, Goddammit! As I push for a new revelation the sun is unmoved, unbothered, and still unbridled. She warms or she burns. She enhances vision or makes blind. But one thing she won’t do: whatever I want, whenever I want. I am starting to understand that I don’t need to be in a rush, because the energy passed to me by the unpredictable sun is a rush of it’s own. I’ve been gazing, seeking answers and healing. But it’s simpler than that I’m learning. The only good reason to gaze, is so you can see the light. SIDE EFFECTS: Again, none! BENEFITS: Deeper feelings of calm and tranquility than I have experienced in years of city living.
DAY 14: 2 Minutes & 20 Seconds of Gazing
I tried this morning to catch the sunrise again, but the clouds were there first, determined to distract from the show. The clouds are like that asshole in movie theaters who answers their cell phone and has an entire conversation during the best action scenes. Just like the clouds at sunrise, they ruin the entire experience. So I stood in front of my West Hollywood bungalow at dusk a block away from Santa Monica Boulevard and gazed at the setting sun. From my vantage point in West Hollywood I don’t have the luxury of waiting until just 3 minutes before sunset because there are buildings in the way so I have to gaze when the sun is thirty minutes from setting and still has the sting of bright white heat beaming it’s way toward me. I know I can do this though because I stood here on day twelve and, although the light was bright and I cried, it wasn’t painful and my eyes adjusted just as easily. I was surprised and delighted. So, with my friend Johanna at my side I grabbed the earth with my bare feet, clinched my toes around the cool ground and stared away. Tears streamed down my face but despite the sharp white edges of the sunlight there was no pain today. My eyes are officially conditioned to accept the sun. I get squinty when the water pools up in my sockets but as soon as I blink it free my face relaxes and the gaze continues undisturbed. As my eyes adjust more and more to the light I notice new facets of the sun. For example, I can see now this ring that zips around the edge of the disc, it circles the sun in white, then circles the opposite direction in black, then changes direction and circles in white again. It’s as if the sun has the Chinese Yin/Yang symbol hidden behind it and we can see the outer edges of the black and white design as it teeters around and then around the other way, then back around the first way again. I am feeling more and more balanced within myself as I keep to my ritual and watch the sun so it’s no surprise that the very symbol of balance and duality would be housed up there in the ball of fire. The days are starting to blend together and I accidentally gazed for an extra 10 seconds today. There was no pain, no bursting of the retina, no dizzying blindness. Just ten extra seconds of beautiful yellow light. People passed by and did their usual double takes at the barefooted weirdo crying and wide-eyed like a zombie staring off into space. The distractions of the city and the strange looks I get don’t even phase me anymore. After we were done today Johanna commented that I was so focused on the sun. But the truth is that it is easy to focus because staring at the sun is even more delicious than staring at a piece of fine art. It’s alive. It is staring back. I am not simply appreciating beauty like one does when they gaze at a sculpture in a gallery, I am interacting with beauty. I am being unmade and remade by this beauty into something even more beautiful. They say looking at good art changes a person. I’m starting to realize that looking at the sun changes everything. SIDE EFFECTS: None BENEFITS: The sun has details within it, behind it and around it. And the more my eyes adjust to the light the more I can make out these details, and they are mysterious, breathtaking, like a treasure only a few lucky souls will ever get to experience.
DAY 13: 2 Minutes & 10 Seconds of Gazing
I have been doing this thing where I am trying not to wear my sunglasses anymore. In The Earth Was Flat Dwinell mentions that he no longer had the need for sunglasses after a while of sungazing. I thought about the unyielding brightness of the sun at high noon and about how I could barely keep my eyes open without shades or a hat or my hand on my forehead unless I wanted to stare at a gummy sidewalk all the way home. So I decided that going shadeless at high noon with blond hair and blue eyes sounded like it was almost a super power already, so I would start to build my arsenal of special abilities with that one. Dwinell’s book also mentions that the eye doctor’s who were interviewed for his documentary would more often than not say that wearing sunglasses can do more harm than good by weakening the eye and filtering out nourishing light. So in the spirit of experimentation and curiosity I am giving it a try with varied results. I have been at this for about a week and the first few days I had committed to this I carried my sunglasses around with me anyway just in case it became unbearable. I am blonde with blue eyes so I gotta be extra careful in situations like this. The sun is attracted to me, he’s totally into me, so you know, I’ve got to take precautions. Often in those early days I would inadvertently toss on my shades without even thinking about it. A few times hours went by. I would take my sunglasses off to read something and I’d squint and remember I’m trying to go without my sunglasses because the flood of luminous noonday sun reminded me. But even then I would involuntarily toss them back on as years of habit and muscle memory took over. I’d have to groan inwardly, remind myself that this is all in the name of science and blogging and magic and then I would muster my internal forces, call all hands on deck and make a conscious choice to do what I committed to do, to make friends with the sunlight. So the shades would come off, the brow would furrow, and decorum be damned the tears would start to roll. I wonder if I look distraught to the people who pass me by on the street. As I fight not to squint and keep my face relaxed I overcompensate in the other direction by holding my eyes intensely wide like a perpetually shocked mannequin. All the while a constant stream of tears falls down my cheeks from the lake building in my now puffy and red eyes. This is not even from a direct look at her, it’s simply from going shadeless in the afternoon. But I persevere because I remember that i couldn’t even gaze at the sun for 20 seconds without squinting and now I can look directly at it for over two minutes in the morning or the evening. So if my eyes can adjust to a sunrise and a sunset, they can adjust to this. Squinting is going to be a thing of my past. And if I can achieve that, then most certainly I can learn how to fly! Right? So I press on. Fast forward seven days and true to my expectations my baby blues are actually adjusting to the white bright midday light. I still carry my sunglasses with me, but they live in the bottom of my laptop bag instead of gripped by white knuckles in my hand. I am encouraged. I still look like a sad just-been-dumped gay boy when I walk the streets of West Hollywood, but it’s a small price to pay to be able to see every single thing in my experience more clearly than I could before. And that goes for internal things too, emotional things, non-verbal things. I am starting to be able to predict how others are going to react to the stimuli of their environment before they do react. I am seeing more clearly the cause and effect relationship between all things at all times. I am seeing patterns where I saw only the randomness of life. I am seeing methods where I used to see simply moments. And this new perspective, this tiny taste of what it means to see the future makes me calm. I am starting to let go of this deep unspoken fear that life is looking for any opportunity to blindside me with something. Instead I am starting to understand how you reap what you sow, and how our choices and actions and thoughts do truly create our experience. I am the author of my destiny and as I become more aware of that it fills me with peace. As I gaze at the sun, as I adjust to the midday light I find I am able to see more than I could before. There is another dimension to everything, the invisible aspect of each thing that is connected to the invisible aspect of every other thing. Quantum physicists call it the field of energy, Jesus called it The Kingdom of Heaven, Buddha says Oneness. I like to think of it as an energy net that we are all caught up in. And I can’t see the net itself, but I am starting to perceive the results of the net, the effects of the net. And the most outlandish part of all: the net can think and feel, and it feels pretty crazy about me. My vision has expanded. So I no longer think life is trying to pull the rug out from under me. How can life blindside you when you don’t have a blind side anymore? SIDE EFFECTS: I walk around looking like everyone I know just died because I’m not wearing my sunglasses in the unforgiving afternoon and it still makes me cry. BENEFITS: I am able to recognize
DAY 12: 2 Minutes of Gazing Part II – Outsmarting Clouds
I reached another milestone! Two full minutes of gazing. I keep thinking that every time we reach another minute it’s going to be an “event gaze”, like if gazing was a TV show then each of the minute marks would be a season finale or the episode when Heather Locklear joins the cast, or something. But it turns out that in both cases so far just the opposite is true. The one minute mark was obscured by clouds and thwarted, so the next day when I gazed for a minute and ten seconds I didn’t even recognize how far we’d come. Then today for minute two the clouds were up to their old tricks. The clouds and I gathered civilly, to watch the sun come up, and I thought there was plenty of room for everyone in this gigantic auditorium we call planet earth. But the selfish clouds wanted a better view and so even though they already had the front row they decided to stand up wearing huge hats and I just couldn’t see a thing. I would have thrown my popcorn on them if I’d had popcorn and could throw 40,000 miles. But I didn’t, and I couldn’t, so I just shook my head in frustration and moped back to the car. I couldn’t believe it. Again clouds had to conspire and on the day of two full minutes ta boot. But I had a plan! I was going to come back up here and watch the sunset. I would gaze for two minutes today, and I wasn’t going to let some puffs of evaporated water and pollution stop me! As evening rolled in I was fatigued and didn’t feel like making my trek up to the idyllic vista at the mountain crest. So I just moseyed out to my front yard and kicked off my shoes as cars whizzed by and passersby stared at the barefoot weirdo looking directly into the sun and crying. Two minutes felt easy, intoxicating, and it was over before I was ready for it to be over. But there was no hoopla, no mountain view, no ocean breeze, nobody else around. Just me and my milestone. SIDE EFFECTS: If you stay in your neighborhood to gaze, everyone will find out you are a nut job. BENEFITS: If everyone finds out who you are, you can finally just be who you are.
DAY 12: 2 Minutes of Gazing Part I – Clouds
I thought that doing my sun gazing experiment in Los Angeles would mean smooth sailing in terms of daily visibility; but relentless clouds over the last two days and some other shrouded mornings recently have made me realize the sun is playing hard to get. Nikki and I stood last night and gazed at brightly lit orange clouds because the sun would not reveal itself to us from behind the cumulus curtain. I realized then that I need to try and see the sun in the mornings because then I have two chances to feast on its energy and outsmart the weather. I woke up early this morning, and after the yoga & chanting session (which I fell asleep in) I made my way to our regular mountain top. Both Nikki & Brett are away in different desert locations so I am gazing solo for the next few days. As I was rounding the bend to the parking area the sky opened up just a little to sprinkle cool mist upon my face. I put Summer’s top up and made my way to our grassy mound despite the thick and discouraging tarp of grey covering me and obscuring the sun. As I stood there I tried to coax the clouds to part with my mind. I began to feel like they were ignoring me so I switched from coaxing to daring the clouds to open just to prove they could. I sensed that if they had fingers the clouds would be flipping me the cosmic bird at that moment. I regained my composure, reassured the sun that I was happy to come even if he couldn’t make it, turned and made my way back to my car. SIDE EFFECTS: Clouds can really mess with your gazing schedule. BENEFITS: I am learning to maintain my tranquility even when I don’t freakin get my way!
