فصل 5

5

From Absolute Peace to Absolute Turmoil

Shelly and I returned home from the weekend trip, but I could not relate to the life I was coming back to. I had changed completely in a matter of hours. My normal inner state had been transformed into a state of absolute clarity. Neither desire nor fear could touch me in those early days. Even thoughts faded away before reaching my seat of awareness. All I remember experiencing at that time was a powerful, unwavering sense of one pointed intention—I will never leave this state. No matter what, I will never allow anything to take me from this place. No voice of my mind had to say that to me; it was who I was. I was no longer Mickey Singer. I was the one who would never betray that peace or allow anything to disturb that transcendent stillness.

I was like a child having to learn everything all over again. I had to learn to eat in a way that was consistent with that peace. I used to smoke pot; I stopped completely. My state was crystal clear, and I didn’t want to dull it one iota. I had to learn to go to classes and take tests while remaining perfectly centered. I was in a doctoral program, on full fellowship. I had to learn to use my intellectual mind without disturbing the peace that I now loved more than life itself.

During those next few weeks, I felt like I had been born anew. I found myself yearning to go back beyond. In fact, every time I sat down to meditate I was drawn back into an elevated state. Some veil had been torn aside inside of me, and it was now totally natural to pass back through it. I started waking up at three in the morning to be able to do prolonged meditations. Throughout the day, I would sit whenever and wherever I had the opportunity. Only a small part of my life was about my outer existence. What I was really about was learning to stay deep inside while my outer life passed before me, leaving me at peace.

I wasn’t able to stay that detached for long, however. After two to three weeks, the unassailable inner peace began to develop cracks. These cracks allowed the voice of my personal mind to leak back into my sanctuary of silence. I struggled to get it back. Oh, did I struggle. But the struggling itself was inconsistent with the absolute stillness. There was nothing I could do. I had to just sit in here helplessly watching as the Land Beyond My Dreams gave way to my noisy inner state. It never dawned on me that I could try leaving my outer existence in order to maintain the inner stillness. That effort would come a little bit later.

Though my deep inner peace had begun to fade, I never fully returned to my normal state. Even when the personal mind and emotions started back up, I was much further behind them than I used to be. There was also another major change: I was now experiencing a constant flow of energy rising up within me to the point between my eyebrows. It formed a vortex of pressure that forced my attention to that point. For example, if I was looking at something, it felt like I was concentrating my gaze through my brow rather than through my eyes. This didn’t affect my ability to see; it just kept me closer to the meditative state at all times. Note that focusing on the energy flow was not something I was doing; it was something that was happening by itself. I was just aware that the flow had never been there before, and now it was always there.

The pull of my attention to the point between my eyebrows became both my teacher and my friend. When my mental voice had something to say, I now had a choice—pay attention to the voice or keep focusing on the inner flow of energy. I eventually realized that if I didn’t want to listen to the mental chatter, all I had to do was slightly increase my concentration on the energy flow to my brow. The thoughts would then pass right by without disturbing me. Letting the thoughts go became a game to me. All of life was a lighter experience than before. My personal melodrama would still come up, but it could not pull me down into it. I had been gifted with this inner flow of energy to help me work my way out of myself. More important, I now knew what it would be like to get away from my personal self. My intention was firm and resolute—no matter what it took, or how long it took—I was going to find my way back beyond.

It didn’t take long, however, before outer changes began in my life that rivaled the inner changes I was going through. It started with Shelly. One day she told me that it was time to move on. That really threw me for a loop. Though we had only been married a year and a half, the foundation of my personal life had been built around her for years. I tried in vain to hold on to her, but at some point I saw something I had never been able to see before: the sheer strength of my personality and intellect had not given her the room she needed to breathe. If I truly loved her, I had to let her go. Right at that time, I had a friend who needed someone to house-sit while he was away. I moved into that house and began the process of nursing a broken heart.

The sudden change in my outer life had a profound effect on my inner work. I was already totally committed to my regular meditations. Exploring the inner state of deep peace had become the purpose of my life. Now I had another very powerful source of inspiration: I was watching a human being in almost unbearable pain. My heart exuded pain all the time, and my mind was literally broken. It was as though the foundation of my self-concept had been removed, and my personal self was in free fall. I didn’t know how to put it together again, nor did I even want to.

If I concentrated very deeply during meditation, all the turmoil melted away. There was silence and peace. The silence was not as thick as it had been before, but it provided me a place of repose. When I came back from meditation, turmoil and pain was what I returned to. So my daily experience was now either heaven or hell. There was nothing in between anymore. My “normal” way of being was gone. In one fell swoop, who I had been—was no more.

More and more I chose meditation. It was not just a way of escaping the pain; meditation gave meaning to my life. I was committed to going beyond—permanently—and the changes in my life were helping me get rid of an entire part of my being that was holding me back. The personality expressing itself through that mental voice was no longer so sure of himself. In fact, he no longer knew which way was up. These outer changes had humbled him. He had thought he had it all figured out—well, he was wrong. It was definitely easier to let go of him when he was in pieces.

During that stage of my growth, I watched very closely as the self-concept attempted to redefine itself. In place of a married man with a defined career path, my thoughts started to envision myself as a meditator who was seeking a deeper truth. But even in those early days I didn’t want to regain strength based on another mental concept of myself. Whenever I noticed thoughts being stitched together to create a new “me,” I knocked the chair out from under them. It was very painful, but I was willing to let it all go if it freed me to explore beyond.

My friend came back to his house, so I moved out. I didn’t care where I lived; I just needed to be alone. My life was pretty simple. I was meditating, doing some yoga, and periodically I would go to class. I had no possessions except my schoolbooks, some clothes, and my VW van. I used to take long drives in the countryside surrounding Gainesville. I had once found a beautiful spot in the woods near a neighboring town where there was a small, abandoned lime pit. The pit was filled with crystal-clear, blue water and was surrounded by nothing but a vast area of scrub oaks and pines. I drove out there, and that is where I lived.

I was becoming more and more of a hermit. It was not so much that I was running away from something—I was running into myself. My intention was very clear at all times: I wanted to go back deep inside myself. My problem was that I had no idea what to do with my personal self—a.k.a. “Mickey.” His very existence was holding me back from where I yearned to go. If I didn’t work at it, the focus of my attention would keep getting drawn into his personal melodrama. That was clearly the opposite direction from where I wanted to go. “Mickey” was down and out; I wanted to go in and up. In those days I was certain of one thing: he was the problem, and he had to go. I had become dead serious about getting rid of him. But I had no idea how.