On 8/25/2014 5:12 AM, TurquoiseBee turquoi...@yahoo.com [FairfieldLife]
wrote:
I'm back in Leiden but still on vacation. Meaning that this time the
frosty, almost (dare I say it?) spiritual Road Trip Mindset I always
get while on vacation didn't go away when I stepped off the road. In a
weird way, it's like experiencing hours of deep, thoughtless samadhi
while meditating, and then opening your eyes and standing up and
discovering that it doesn't go away. Cool.
So, having awakened all happy and looking forward to the day, and
having decided to celebrate that feeling in the best way I know how, I
decided to venture forth to one of my favorite writing cafes and rap a
bit.
And therein lies the rub. After thinking "But what to write about?"
for about the hundredth time, staring at a blank screen, I still had
nuthin'. Two cups of good capucchino and I'm still staring at
Hemingway's white bull. Nada. No inspiration whatsoever. Same happy
feeling, but with no content to write about.
Then an old song came on the cafe's sound system. I heard the words "I
been warped by the rain, driven by the snow..." and they hit me with
the subjective power of an acid flashback, carrying me back to other
times I've sat listening to this same song over the years, especially
during transitional periods.
The song was popular during the time I first walked away from the TM
movement, and I loved listening to it then because it always helped me
to remember that in walking away from TM I was walking TO something
else, something better. The song is called "Willin'", and I've
included a link below to the cover version that played on this cafe's
sound system a few minutes ago, and also to the original version, sung
by the song's author, the late Lowell George. So if you want a
"soundtrack" for the rap the song inspired, you've got one. :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJHcD0kHTGk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNqv85coyTw
Anyway, here's the rap. It's short, and about the delight of realizing
that all these years later, at age 68, I'm still willin'.
All these years walking a spiritual path, and I'm still willin' to
walk one.
For that I guess I should thank Maharishi, and Rama, and all of the
other people who served as teachers for me along the Way as I walked
that path in the past. I may not have chosen to follow *their* path in
the end, but I do appreciate their contributions to helping me walk mine.
I even appreciate the bad parts of studying with them. I saw both of
these supposedly badge-wearing park rangers along the spiritual path
do some fairly awful shit to people who had chosen to believe in them
and follow them. The kinda shit that could potentially turn me off to
the very concept of "spiritual path" forever.
But it didn't. I still consider myself walking a spiritual path. I
took everything they threw at me -- both good and bad -- and I'm still
walking. At this point I don't have any particular "goal" in mind at
the supposed "end" of that path, or have any rational reasons for
doing so, but I still walk one. Go figure.
So what do I consider a "spiritual path," *for me*? I guess that, for
me, it's the inability to shake off the delusional belief that when I
wake up every morning, the day ahead of me is much more likely to be
fun than it is to be a bummer.
So far, life has been extremely kind to me, so on 99% of the mornings
of my life that I have awakened and had this delusional thought at the
start of a day, it has actually turned out to be true.
I probably wouldn't have been as lucky if I'd been born, say, in a war
zone, or in the squalor of some third world nation. But for whatever
karmic reasons, this delusional belief has always *worked out* for me,
so I'm still willin' to believe in it, and keep walkin'.
That's all I had to say. This is just a cafe rap over coffee about
having a good start to a day that I'm pretty sure is going to get even
better. I'm probably not going to be writing many more such raps for
this forum because it's grown too repetitive and boring to participate
in, but I felt like writing this one, so I did. If you're one of those
people whose first thought on reading it is to want to crap on it, and
me...well...feel free. Chances are I'll never even read your response,
so the only person whose day it will sour is yours. Your call. :-)
Meanwhile, I'll still be walking my own path, and if 68 years of
personal history is any indication, having a pretty good time doing
so. Cool.
>
You can tell when a guy is old when he talks more about where he has
been instead of where he is going.
