Going Within (15 page)

It is time for spiritual technology to become specifically understood and taught. Use of meditation upon the chakras allows a person to envisage the world that lies within and to benefit from it. Opening our inner pathways permits access to power but it is a power available only through love.

Love is obviously a word used—and abused—by most of us. Within the circles where a spiritual search is taking place, it is a word evoked more often than any other. The need for ways to freely give and receive love is basically what motivates spiritual curiosity. I believe this need is what we all long to fulfill.

I had a close friend who was dying of AIDS. He was making his adjustments to what was happening to him, going through various stages of denial and acceptance of his fate.

On Good Friday of 1988 he called me with a question: “How do you accept love from others?” he asked. “Do you find it painful? Can you let it in?”

I didn’t know how to answer. I had never really thought about love based on the certainty of being bereft of all those I had to leave behind by dying.
Did one want to, as it were, shut off? Under such circumstances, what did love mean? I tried to think of some comparable situation that might hold some answers for my friend.

I remembered my father as he lay dying. He seemed so peaceful, so ready to go. He couldn’t move his arms or legs but he could talk a little, very slowly. I’ll never forget how he looked into my eyes and said, “Nothing matters but love … nothing in this world … not possessions, not fame, not even what you do. Only love.”

He didn’t say any more. But with those words and the look in his eyes I understood something grand, something even more than any of my spiritual studying had taught me.

And now someone else close to me was grappling with the same question. But his attitude was entirely different from that of my father. I could not really find anything to say except, “Yes, always accept love.”

Good Friday passed and so did the next day. On Easter morning I woke, alone in my house in the Pacific Northwest. The sky was cloudy. Raindrops glistened on the high trees outside my window. A streak of sun shone through suddenly.

I asked myself, “What does Easter really mean?”

I got up and went outside. The sun had disappeared and rain began to fall; first a misty drizzle, then a downpour.

I decided to go swimming in the rain. In the water I thought about love. What would it feel like to love
completely, wholly, over a lifetime, first with the driving, urgent, agonized need of youth, then the exchange of maturity, rich and full of fun and strength, and finally with the sweet, enduring love of age: I thought about all the other kinds of love there are, the unquestioning, totally giving nature of a beloved pet, the joyful innocence of loving one’s children, the happy, affectionate respect between friends, often accompanied by real devotion—my God, the world was full of love. I don’t know how much time elapsed. The raindrops fell on my head like chilled beads. It occurred to me that it was possible to love each and every one of those raindrops into warmth. I tried to isolate each of them and as they landed I savored and appreciated and loved each with a warm welcome. Soon I realized that I wasn’t aware of chill. I had shifted a cold experience by perceiving it to be warm.

It came as a mini-revelation. I climbed out of the swimming pool and stood up expecting to feel more rain on my body. Instead, as if on cue from some master lighting designer in the sky, the sun came out and the rain stopped. It was so immediate, so much like stepping onstage into the “spot,” that I felt myself smiling all over.

I headed for the house, thinking no more about it: got dressed and prepared to take my dogs for a walk down the mountain to the river. The sun was shining, and it would be a beautiful Easter hike.

I walked outside, the dogs leaping and gamboling beside me, and as I took the first step down the
mountain path, not only did the sun disappear, but a rain cloud opened above us and spilled everything in it! I hadn’t even seen a cloud a moment before. It was a different kind of welcome, but I couldn’t help laughing. I called to Sultan and Shinook and went back inside. As soon as I closed the door, the sun came out again.

I was intrigued. I immediately took the dogs out again. And immediately, as if on cue, the sun disappeared and the rain came down again. Was nature playing hide-and-seek with me, or was it a coincidence?

We ran back inside. The sun came out. We went outside, the rain started. Back and forth, back and forth. It was beginning to look like a vaudeville act. The dogs were very confused. But they didn’t give up, gamely following me in and out, all of us growing breathless.

Finally we went out again. But first I stood at the top of the mountain path and said out loud, “You’re playing games with me, aren’t you? Especially for Easter!” I didn’t know who I was talking to and it was all so ridiculous that I started to laugh again. The sun blazed! It was as though nature (God … whatever) needed acknowledgment of its power and, having secured it, no longer needed to play tricks.

Together the three of us set out again to trek down the mountain. A gentle breeze drifted over us. The dogs bounded ahead of me and I returned to my thoughts about love, about Easter, about nature.

Could one start to feel
complete
love by beginning with nature?

I walked by the river for an hour, then started back up the mountain. The sun, like an orange balloon, played tag with the clouds, chasing them away whenever they came too close.

As I trudged up the steep mountain path I was aware of how easily the dogs scaled the heights on their four feet and sensibly organized forms. There seemed to be no pain for them, their powerful bodies responding with natural ease to the terrain. But my legs hurt, my heart pounded, and in general I was again reminded of how lazy I could really be because I basically hated physical exercise that caused me pain. Then, in light of the morning’s experience, something occurred to me. Why not try loving the pain? Why not completely appreciate the experience with every muscle and sinew?
Feel
what each was doing, concentrate on the miracle of coordination that was my body? I began to alter my perception of the difficulties of the climb. I told myself that with each movement I was more conscious of what made up my body and that without the love of that awareness I wouldn’t even know I had a body. I caressed the pain, I felt it
work, I
welcomed it. I specifically isolated each muscle and tendon and loved the feel of them just as I had loved the feel of each chilled raindrop on my head.

Pretty soon I realized I had forgotten I was climbing; in fact, I was moving strongly, light and easy
with the terrain. The shift in reality that accompanied the shift in my perspective was really remarkable.

In the midst of this experience I thought of my friend with AIDS. His body lay inert, with no energy. Its demeaning and foul symptoms battered his spirit. He was angry with himself for allowing this—indeed for creating it. And angry at his doctors for not being able to heal him. Should I tell him about what I had just done? Could I have the temerity to ask him to give up his anger? To try to heal himself through self-love? Would it be outrageously insulting to suggest that taking responsibility for his horrible disease might be the beginning of a healing process, that it might be possible to understand and even to love his decision? Could I really say that fighting with hate was not the answer, that relaxing into love of wholeness might give him a much better chance and that to accept the love of others could be a literal tonic? I knew that at the very least, persuading him to accept the horrors for what they were would make them a whole lot easier to bear. That was something love could do.

I reached the top of the mountain. The sun still shone brilliantly. I stood for a moment, breathing in the crisp sun-drenched breeze, thinking, “God, I’m lucky.” And then, “Love must be what Easter is all about.” I opened my arms and said, “Thank you. I think I’ve just understood something about the power of healing that feeling love can accomplish.”

As if in answer, and as suddenly as anything I’ve
ever experienced, I found myself standing in the center of a crystal hailstorm showering down while beyond the sun continued to shine. Thousands of balls of shimmering ice diamonds sparkled and danced and glistened like a shining curtain that gently enveloped me. I was in a fairyland that spoke to me of natural miracles if I would only open up and listen. I stretched my arms out to catch the falling diamonds, feeling their icy burn in the palms of my hands. I looked up. There above me, through the airborne curtain and on the other side of it, I watched a circular rainbow form.

There they were, the seven colors coming into pristine clarity. Those were the same seven colors reflected inside me. I stood still, awestruck for a moment, drinking in the exquisite display. One by one, beginning with the red on the lower part of the rainbow, I watched each color until the violet appeared at the top.

Nature had spoken. I allowed the message to touch me. At first I thought I would cry. But I found myself smiling, glowing inside. I went right in and called my friend. We talked about chakras and he began to meditate and work with those natural, harmonious, unrecognized energy centers of his body.

He stayed alive nearly half a year longer than his doctors had expected. Before he finally reached the end he told me and other close friends that the great lesson he had learned from his disease was that of allowing himself to accept love. He had never had a
problem giving love. His was the problem of allowing himself to believe that others really loved him. Because he had been reluctant to nourish himself with the love of others his body had reflected that bereavement.

One evening, on the night of his last birthday, his closest friends gathered in his living room to say goodbye. We watched him walk in, proud and elegant in his satin robe and silk pyjamas. He sat quietly in the midst of the group while, one by one, we expressed our love for him. He accepted our offering with an open heart, and with an acceptance of his fate. He was, at last, at peace with himself.

After he passed on, those of us who had been with him that evening realized we had formed the nucleus of a new family, a family that revolved around the understanding that our friend, whom we would miss so much, had been one of our greatest teachers. His profound lesson? Learn to love self and accept love from others. Don’t wait until you are deathly sick to feel you deserve love.

9

Crystals

Our palate for the taste of life has become numb because
we
have forgotten
how
to dream.

T
he first time someone gave me a natural quartz crystal I laid it in the palm of my hand to examine it. I was fascinated. Not only was it beautiful: it seemed to have dimensions within dimensions, reflections within reflections. I held it up to the sun and allowed myself to sort of go inside it. It had six sides and the sunlight made it act as a prism, refracting the seven colors of the rainbow.

It had meant so much to the person who gave it to me. I held it in my hand, feeling uninformed and inadequate about what I was holding. What was the significance, beyond its beauty, of this mineral that seemed to speak to so many? I realized that lots of people were giving one another crystals. There were crystals of every color and configuration. What did it all mean? I began to read books on crystals. I found I was meeting people who called themselves “crystal workers.” Their expertise seemed vast and detailed.

This is some of what I learned.

The Earth is a living, breathing, evolving entity, just as we are. It has force fields of subtle energies, just as we do. It has veins and arteries of minerals and substances that carry with them storehouses of energy that receive and transmit constantly. Crystals, I learned, were mineral transmitters and receivers of cosmic energy buried in the Earth. As I read and learned about crystals I realized that wherever ground was considered sacred and holy there were large crystal deposits buried underneath. In folklore and among Indian tribes it was believed that crystals provided a path to amplification of life force from the Great Spirit. Mountain people claimed crystals relayed cosmic secrets to man, that they held thought forms and important mysteries from the past. … I learned, listened, and wondered. I knew that crystals amplify sound waves in a radio receiver, or light waves in a television receiver. Could they also amplify thought waves of consciousness in the human brain receiver? Were they, in effect, living expressions of cosmic consciousness?