He Punched Me In The Stomach!

Climbing the Mountain in Flip Flops

Ok, ok—I’m sorry if you’re tired of this, but I have to write one more post about my bumbling spiritual journey in the 1980’s. We try to stick to writing about fun discoveries in music and the arts, and parts 1 & 2 of this were related to the fabulous artist and writer Leonora Carrington, but this post is just related to the comedy of last week’s story of how I fumbled around looking for kicks on my obscure paths to enlightenment. So, I will keep it brief, and then next week we will get our focus back…I promise! ;)

Shortly after the events described in last week’s blog post, I bought more books on meditation, etc. I must have really been on a quest for something, but this time it was a bit more mainstream route. I found a person who taught “passage meditation”, translated primary texts from all the “great” religions of the world, and tied these texts to his “8-point plan”. I think I bought the basic meditation book at Orr Books on Lake and Hennepin along with a couple of his translations of spiritual texts: the Dhammapada and the Bhagavad Gita, and then I started practicing meditation.

I remember in the back of the book there was an address to mail to for a catalog of other titles. When I received the catalog there was also information about a retreat that you could go on in San Rafael California. I can’t remember how I roped my sister Debbie into doing this with me, but she took up the meditation with me, and she must have been getting into it because she and I made a plan to go on this retreat.

Me and Debbie

Note: I am intentionally withholding the name of the writer/teacher/guru who wrote these books because of the absurd situation that this led to. I truly like this method of meditation, and I continue to get a lot out of his teachings.

So, here’s the funny part:

We flew to San Francisco the night before the retreat began, and I remember eating a beautiful seafood dinner. We wore plastic bibs with lobsters on them.

The retreat was held at a convent and was surrounded by beautiful-smelling eucalyptus trees. We were given a little room, like a dormitory-type room. We were awoken very early for meditation. Every day.

I remember my sister propping herself up in the back of the room against the wall for our morning meditation and falling asleep. Later, she asked me why they had to have the morning meditation that early in the morning.

Too early.

They had meals in a large room with long tables and lots of windows, it was beautiful. I remember talking to people at the table but they were very proud of the fact that they did not just talk incessantly “for no reason”, which they attributed to the positive gains they had made through the meditation practice. I took the hint.

The food was terrible, very healthy but SO bland. My sister really didn’t like it at all, referred to it as “a pile of seeds”, and I remember her whispering at one point “Maybe we could just go back into San Francisco for fun, it’s only about a 30-minute drive back!”

I remember being outside on a little break and talking to this very friendly, funny man who looked like he grew up in California. He wanted to show me a book he bought, so he ran to his car and came back with a book that was titled something like “I Am”. I can’t remember exactly what the name was but, honestly, it was something very simple like that. He was conveying how profound it was, and I really liked him, and I told him that I wanted to read the book.

Finally we met THE GURU-He was old and fragile and came in for an evening meditation with us. During Thanksgiving dinner the other night, my sister said “I do remember him coming in the room and it was like he had a huge aura and halo around him!”

I was very excited to meet him, I wanted to tell him how I was progressing and how good I was doing mentally because of the meditation, so I pushed my way right up front. He was seated on a sort of royal little chair with people helping him on either side. He looked very sweet and kind. Now, I didn’t have great boundaries when I was younger, and I was rather terrible at respecting other people’s boundaries. I just didn’t learn about that until later. So I just sort of went right up to him and was going in for the hug when…

…he punched me in the stomach.

I was so shocked. I then started to imagine that maybe he was trying to pass on a spiritual message to me, that he had aimed energy directly into my solar plexus, and that it was some sort of spiritual lesson. Now I am pretty sure it was just him asserting his boundaries. HAHAHAHA!

For the last evening, my sister and I went back to San Francisco for some decent food. It was so nice to just sit and talk to my sister outside of our room on the landing, and the weather was so beautiful. The hotel was in Sausalito or San Rafael.

I remember I kept going to the vending machine at the hotel and getting candy. That’s all I remember of this particular “quest”.

Thanks for indulging me!