Further
There is a perfection to the web of life that we can’t always see. The forest for the trees? Yes, I think it’s something like that.
Last spring I was asking for a natural way to share my column. My boyfriend was here on his first visit from New Zealand and I had been away from email for a while. One day I sat down to go through some of them and I saw a message from my sweet sister-friend Deneise Newman, a forwarded call for writers from Stephanie Reiter at Love Serve Remember Foundation.
Stephanie’s invitation to talk further came just as Andrew was getting ready to leave, and I told Stephanie so when I replied. The warmth in her response back to me made me realize, “I have a shot at this.” Connection.
I loved answering the questions she asked, name dropping Vrindaban, acknowledging the Dead shows as being as influential as any blue, oddly square-shaped book.
This blog brought me back home again in an unexpected way. That is, I wasn’t focused on Ram Dass or even NKB satsang. Ah, see, there are not limitations to the guru, to the love RD is writing about in Be Love Now. Now I’m smiling as Durga Das comes on my Pandora. I had recently been at a kirtan with him and Mira recently. Yes, we are everywhere.
Nevertheless, finding myself expanded as a writer — and nothing could have been a more perfect launching pad — simply by doing nothing: by staying home and getting to know my beau after 18 years beyond those beaches in sunny Greece . . . it’s quite amazing how we grew into each other over these years and seas, but that’s another story.
See? We don’t see the whole web. It seems as if there are other stories. But it’s all one.
I got my natural way to share my column. That’s one major boon.
I got to read every page of Be Here Now, those mysterious pages, looking through the images to see Sita moving aside. Surfing with Shiva while I read Jed McKenna’s books and my whole world fell apart. Writing with these pages gave me a generous place to sink into, process and create about the changes: Hail the vampire!
Hail the Now.
Hare Hare Mahadeva Shambo chants through my Pandora soundtrack. Kashi Vishwanata Gange.
See, I sat on the banks of the Ganges and heard this chanted at puja and felt all points on the compass land right there. I credit Neem Karoli Baba for carrying me to the other side of the world, to a dusty little ashram in another ancient town, another ancient river blowing my mind. The only way I knew I wasn’t completely lost, completely out of context, was the pendant around the neck of one of the curious Indian men who gathered when I showed up. That familiar face was there, in an otherwise completely foreign setting.
There are things in my life I mentally push and push and push against.
They are in contrast to the areas I do not. The contrast is in the feeling – am I pushing or am I still?
I’ve been asking, What’s next? Grieving the end of this writing process. It’s been special in so many ways. It’s like when I smoked the joint at the Dead show at Nassau Coliseum the one time my dad came to a show. I had brought it in in my sock and pulled it out during the show. Sorry dad, this is my turf.
That’s how it’s felt here. Ram Dass territory — my turf. My homeland. My basketball court.
Ram Dass brought me to some of my favorite people in the world: the Frires family. Our Cleveland satsang was a place no one else in my world went. I always feel on retreat with those cats and remember something of my roots, of what calls me home.
So what’s next?
Yes, it will be Now then too.
Here’s how we can stay in touch:
Go to my column’s home page and sign up to receive newsletter updates. They are a direct way to keep on sharing my writing, as it flows in from many different blog rivers.
Join us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/StayOpen.
And this Saturday evening (and then available to stream from the archives), I’ll be a guest on Living on the Edge: Grief Transformation with Andrea Hylen. She’s been reading our blog and has resonated with the internal time one takes during major shifts and transformation — and the interplay with friends and family when the shift (or the moment) doesn’t include them.
That conversation with Andrea came from what I’ve been writing here. Which came up because in 2001 I met Rick Frires at a Ram Dass/Krishna Das retreat in Oregon who then introduced me to our Cleveland satsang when I was back in the states, which is where I met Deneise Newman who sent me the email from Love Serve Remember.
If you want to bake a yogini from scratch, first you have to create the universe. We do not see the whole web.
Eighteen years ago on a ferry traveling to the Greek Islands I saw some long-haired guys who looked like they might be hippies like me (traveling around asking people, “Grateful Dead?” and usually getting a blank look in response). I ended up traveling with these guys for some days and the first night in the guest house, the cute one with the long, curly, dready hair pulls a Grateful Dead t-shirt out of his bag. He’d never heard the band, but he’d been wearing the shirt for years. Classic skull and roses.
A few weeks ago that same guy comes to the States for the second time, now toward the end of this writing project that soothed
!!!!!!!! interuption to tell you as I’m wrapping this up, the song I composed my introductory post to comes on Pandora
and we DO see the web.
That must mean we’re complete here.
Thank you SO MUCH.
To continue the conversation, please visit
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You may also enjoy my original blog (thank you Ryan Adams): www.WhatAmIDoingUp.tumblr.com and its younger sister,
www.PocketNotepadBrilliance.com
Majestic by Jesse Heron
