The Form

“No recycling today”, I said to Oz, as I served up some tofu scramble and left over lasagna for breakfast. He was looking at me with the obvious expression that something was up.“Will you cover my shift”, he asked. “No way, I got stuff to do”, I said. His expression shrunk back to his usual friendly smile.

“Oh well… We’ll miss you out there”, he replied.

I didn’t care about recycling just then. I was looking forward to attending some of the workshops, as well as spending a few hours on the beach just enjoying the beautiful day. The schedule was just over flowing with a whirlpool of classes and workshops. At two pm, Bernie Prior was offering a workshop on something called, “The Form”, and later in the afternoon I had my eye on Tantra Yoga.

Feeling refreshed and full, I set off for a contemplative walk through the forest. The small trails wandered through the dunes and through the ferns and tall grasses. I found a quiet spot to enjoy the sight and sounds of the moment. Again, walking on, barefoot, I noticed that the forest spilled out onto the beach in little patches of shrubs, and sand, mixing according to some unknown law of order and chaos. I finally stepped out onto the beach, took a deep breath, sat down, and promptly fell asleep. I guess staying up all night finally caught up with me!

I woke up peacefully, but then jumped to my feet hoping that the workshop by Bernie Prior had not started yet. I arrived late, of course, and was quite surprised when I saw Bernie’s students doing some kind of healing on the participants. I had no idea what “The Form” was so I just took a seat and watched. The leaders of the workshop were standing over the participants and moving slowly through a set of organized movements. They would move their hands slowly, aligning energy or something within the participants. I sat and watched this go on for a while and sooner or later a session would end, kind words exchanged, and the participants would head off to somewhere else. Or should I say they would float off to somewhere else: They looked so peaceful and grateful! Now they had my attention. I was intrigued!

A serene looking woman motioned for me to take a seat, and just like that it was my turn. She instructed me to just close my eyes and focus on my breath. So I sat back and began to get relaxed. As the session began I became aware of her movements in front of me. I felt nothing unusual and after a while I started feeling a bit self conscious. I thought to myself that it wasn’t working, and that I wouldn’t know what to say when it was over. “Oh well”, I thought, “at least it is relaxing to just sit here. No harm I guess”

I settled into the familiar feeling of peace and non-dual awareness of meditation, and waited to see what would happen. “Oh wow”, I thought as I was surprised by a feeling of expansive bliss. Something just opened up inside like a curtain, being drawn back and a bright light of love shone down on me. The light was visible to my mind’s eye and I danced with it, swirling and vibrating, mixing and melding. I felt like a new born baby, and a perfectly clear awareness of Truth shed wisdom on my life experience as the person known as “Terry”.

Then the tears came…

The presence of Truth was so blissful and so full of compassion for everything and everyone. In this bright fire of Truth all the memories of suffering of the world burned and disintegrated. My heart was purified and I seemed to transcend the fragments of ego and selfishness. All this occurred in the realm of experience: not a single word was spoken, no teaching was given, nothing. Between the tears of joy and compassion and release, I began to laugh. I simply could not contain the joy. I could not hold back the smile that jittered and danced across my soul. The happiness simply overwhelmed me.

Then the peace came...

I too, like the others, slowly came back to reality, shared a few peaceful words of thanksgiving, and then parted ways with the guide. I had experienced something that I had few words to explain, and few experiences to compare to. In my next blog I will step off into the unknown and attempt to share my understanding of this experience and how it relates to spirituality at large. Please stay tuned and post comments or send me an email if you wish. Thanks for reading and sharing with me.