A Curious Spiritual Journey

Contents

Preface

Prologue: John Sees My Aura

Chapter 1. Small Town Boy

Chapter 2. The End of Innocence

Chapter 3. The Teacher Will Appear

Chapter 4. Across the Universe

Chapter 5. I Learn a Simple Technique

Chapter 6. Boarding School and Samadhi

Chapter 7. Last Year of High School

Chapter 8. Just Me and My Shadow

Chapter 9. Love, Sex and Death

Chapter 10. The Rock’n’Roll Initiate

Chapter 11. Synchronicity

Chapter 12. The Human Electron

Chapter 13. A Visit to My Guru

Chapter 14. The People That You Meet

Chapter 15. Karmic Stupidity

Chapter 16. Teacher’s College

Chapter 17. Coming Home

Chapter 18. Opening the Heart

Chapter 19. Gustavo Pizarro

Chapter 20. I’m Beginning to See the Light

Chapter 21. Gheorghe Blaj

Chapter 22. Been Here Before

Chapter 23. What We Experience is What We Know

Chapter 24. Inner Guidance

Chapter 25. The Witness

Chapter 26. Living a Spiritual Life

Preface

When I was thirteen years old, I was introduced to a spiritual teacher who belonged to a lineage of yogis from India. She taught about meditation, kundalini, reincarnation, and many of the things that are commonly associated with the mystical practices of India. In becoming her student, I adopted a meditation practice that I have subsequently maintained for over forty years. This is the story of the experiences that have arisen from that practice, and what they reveal about the spiritual reality that surrounds us.

My story will likely be meaningful to anyone with an interest in spiritual and mystical practice, and yogic meditation in particular. While there are many books that describe different methods and approaches to meditation, there are few that provide accounts of the direct results of those practices and the spiritual development that follows. Books that I regard as special in this category are Paramhansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi, Gopi Krishna’s Living with Kundalini, and Henry Thomas Hamblin’s My Search for Truth. While I don’t pretend to have attained the awakened state of these authors, I believe my story may be similarly useful.

For anyone possessing a spiritual sensibility, the world can seem a confusing place. We may sense the depth of Spirit that exists beyond the physical appearances surrounding us, but the activity and preoccupations of worldly life too often cloud our ability to see it. A sparsity of true spiritual teaching also means we may lack a practical means of accessing and understanding it. In my case, I was fortunate to be guided by a great teacher.

After I started meditating, I began to have profound experiences of the subtle world that exists beyond the visible. I became aware that I was much more than a physical body, and that there was much more to the world than the surface appearance of things. I began to perceive what my teacher and all the great mystics had described throughout history: that we are all part of a single great Source of Being—what people in various traditions might call God, Brahman, Tao, or Buddha Mind. As I started to awaken to this great omnipresence, and my existence within it, I entered a vastly richer experience of life.

Few people in the West have practiced yoga and meditation from childhood. This stands in stark contrast to traditions in places such as Tibet and India where children have often learned such disciplines from a young age. While hundreds of thousands of people in the West perform the yoga postures known as asanas, only a fraction learn and practice the meditation techniques for attaining the awakened consciousness that is the ultimate goal in the yogic mystical tradition.

This is the primary reason why I share my story. Given that I began to meditate from a very young age, I believe my experiences provide an uncommon picture of the process of awakening that occurs when a spiritual practice is adopted early and maintained throughout one’s lifetime. My experiences cover much of what is recorded in traditional yogic scripture, ranging from the transcendent to the comparatively mundane. At the same time, I believe they reveal the diverse and unpredictable course of spiritual development that takes place through a person’s lifespan.

I don’t consider myself a master. In presenting my account I don’t claim any degree of enlightenment. However, I believe some useful lessons have emerged in the course of my practice, and these may be useful to others as they pursue their own spiritual path.

Prologue

John Sees My Aura

A few years ago my wife and I were invited to a dinner party with some other couples. At one point the conversation turned to meditation and yoga, and someone asked if I meditated. I replied that I had been practicing for close to forty years. One of the guests who was an instructor of reiki, shiatsu and postural yoga looked at me keenly, studying me from head to toe. My hair was cropped short, and my pants and shirt looked like they could have been office dress.

"That’s funny—you don’t look like someone who would meditate."

I wasn’t sure how to respond. I knew people had all sorts of ideas of how yogis should look: saffron robes and sandals, maybe beads and crystals, or perhaps elasticized exercise attire. But these things had never been part of my practice. I had never imagined that meditation could be contingent on wardrobe or hair style, or even country or culture of birth. Her remark made me think of the time that I taught my friend John to meditate years before.

John was a classmate at the University of Waterloo who had grown up on a farm on the Niagara Peninsula. He had been baptized Catholic, but he had spent little time in church, and he knew nothing about meditation and Eastern teachings. When we went to Ottawa to work as student interns with the Canadian public service in January 1987, we started to get to know each other in earnest over occasional beers at the pub.

At some point in our conversations my interest in meditation came out. John asked me what I found in it. His brief experience with Catholicism had soured him on religion. He was curious what attracted me to contemplative practice in what was ostensibly a spiritual tradition.

I told him that meditation wasn’t necessarily connected with any religion. In my case, I enjoyed meditating because it helped me to clear my mind, manage stress and make better decisions. I could have also told him about the visions and psychic experiences that often accompanied my practice, and the fact that I did believe in a higher spiritual power, but I didn’t think it was necessary.

John’s interest was piqued. He confessed that he often lacked confidence and had trouble quieting his thoughts. He said that he would like to learn how to still his mind and experience the kind of peace and clarity that I was describing.

Could you show me how to meditate? he asked.

His request caught me off guard. I had never imagined teaching anything to anyone, let alone meditation. Despite seven years of practice, I still considered myself a novice, and it struck me that I should be some kind of certified guru if I was going to pretend to teach anything about it. I told him as much and he nodded with understanding.

Then something inside me stirred. Something told me it wasn’t right to leave him with nothing.

You know, it would probably be okay if I taught you some basic technique, I said. We would need a quiet time to do it, though. Evening would probably be the best time.

His face immediately brightened. That would be great!

A couple of nights later I rode the bus across town to John’s apartment. He made a pot of tea, we chatted a few minutes, and after discussing some basic elements of the technique, we sat down in his living room to meditate. The streetlights beyond the thin window drapes provided dim illumination, so we turned off the lights to create a relaxing atmosphere.

John had little furniture, so we sat cross-legged on cushions on the floor. As we adjusted our seats, he asked if it was necessary to sit in lotus posture, our legs and ankles twisted in the traditional yogic style. I explained that it wasn’t. The essence of it was to simply sit upright in any manner that was reasonably comfortable.

I asked John to close his eyes and place his attention at the point between the eyebrows. We started with a few deep breaths from the belly, then I told him to start connecting his ingoing and outgoing breaths with the simple hong-sau mantra. I watched him for a moment to ensure that he was doing it correctly, then I closed my eyes and settled into the rhythm of my own breathing.

Reflecting my years of practice, I quickly went into a deep meditative state. Within moments my bodily senses had fallen away, and it felt as though my awareness had expanded beyond the walls of the apartment and across the city. I lingered in this state for perhaps ten minutes, deeply calm and relaxed.

Eventually a thought arose in me. I knew meditation could be difficult on the first attempt, and I didn’t want John’s first meditation to feel like a grueling labor. I decided to end our session. I opened my eyes and looked at him in the dim light.

How do you feel? I said.

John was seated upright and very still. His eyes were closed, his jaw relaxed, his mouth slightly open. He opened his eyes.

Suddenly he appeared startled.

Woooah, he said, staring at me.

What is it?

I saw his eyes scanning my head and shoulders.

This is incredible—

What?

This might sound weird but … there’s light all around you!

I was surprised. Really? What does it look like?

It’s like this fuzzy white halo all around your head and shoulders. He leaned towards me, squinting. It’s thickest around your head.

Hey! That’s cool, I said. I shifted a bit to adjust my seat.

Woah! John said again. It moves when you move!

Interesting. You must be looking at my aura.

Aura?

My body’s energy field.

He gave me a puzzled look. What do you mean?

I had to think a moment.

Do you know when you feel positive and negative vibes from people?

Yes, for sure.

That’s the aura. It’s the body’s energy field. You can feel it as vibrations or you can see it as light. What you normally feel as vibrations, you’re now seeing as an aura.

Really? Are you serious? John’s eyes grew big. That’s amazing!

Apart from seeing auras, you might also feel vibrations as being pleasant or threatening, happy or sad, and that sort of thing.

I feel those things with different people lots of times, said John.

If you have a natural sensitivity towards auras and vibrations, and I suspect you do, then you will certainly find yourself feeling those things.

John appeared puzzled again. How can we feel energy with our bodies, or our minds, or whatever it is?

It might sound weird, but basically your consciousness is part of an energy field that is much bigger than your body, I said. "Each of us is just one little piece of consciousness within that larger Consciousness. Meditation helps to enhance our sensory awareness, and it’s common to start seeing and feeling the subtle energies of other people more often.

It’s like quantum physics and the idea of non-locality. Basically, your consciousness isn’t located in one place—or we can say it’s located in one place, but it’s also located in all places at the same time—and it’s connected to all things through the larger superconscious, including each other. If you tune into the superconscious through meditation, you can start to perceive all sorts of subtler energies and vibrations around you.

I paused. Does that make any sense? I’m not sure I’m explaining it well.

John nodded thoughtfully. Yeah, sort of. I think I know what you mean.

Here’s another way to picture it. You know the structure of an atom? With a nucleus and a bunch of electrons orbiting around it?

Yeah, sure.

Well, there’s a vast amount of space between the nucleus and the electrons. In fact, there’s so much space that we can basically say that atoms are made of space. Atoms are more a relationship of space and energy than they are an assemblage of matter. Do you know what I mean?

John nodded again. Sure.

Well, if atoms are mostly space, or essentially non-material, then you and I are also non-material, and so is everything around us. Everyone and everything is basically an expression of energy, and the energy is expressed in different localized forms that we call Jim, John, chair, house, pancake, oatmeal, and all the rest. In reality it’s all quantum soup existing as one continuous whole, but we perceive it through our physical senses as a series of separate objects or separate phenomena. It’s a trick of the human mind. However, when we meditate, we can sometimes access another level of perception that allows us to see and feel the vibratory energy working behind everything.

I stopped at this point to highlight the difficulty of describing it with words. I explained that it had to be experienced directly, and yogic meditation was one of the best ways to do it.

John wore an expression of wonderment.

So you liked the experience? I said.

Yes! Absolutely! I feel so …, he paused for a moment, "I feel so happy!"

Good! I laughed. That makes me happy!

We got up from our seats and returned to the kitchen. John made some more tea, we chatted a while longer, then I left for home.

In my years meditating, I had been out of my body, seen visions, and had a variety of mystical experiences. However, I had studied under an Eastern teacher and practiced for several years. How was John, a farm boy from a Catholic family, seeing auras after just a few minutes of meditation?

He hadn’t studied, and he certainly hadn’t needed to dress like a yogi. How did that work?

CHAPTER 1

Small Town Boy

The little town where I grew up on the west coast of Canada in the 1970s was not a hotbed of Eastern mysticism. At that time Sooke was little more than a village, with logging and fishing as its principal industries. We had a bank, a couple of small stores, and three small churches representing the major Christian denominations. I doubt Victoria even had a yoga studio yet, and it was twenty-five miles away.

My family lived outside of town on a small acreage surrounded by towering rainforest. Summers were hot and dry, winters were grey and wet. My dad managed the government liquor store and my mother was a homemaker with four children. There was no cable television, and when the winter rains blew hard, we were lucky if we saw more than snow on our set. Life was simple.

I spent most of my early years alone. By the time I was two years old, my sister was in first grade and my brothers were already in senior high school. When it wasn’t raining, I played outside with my toy cars, I dug with my plastic shovel in the garden, or I invented some form of imaginary play.

From time to time I would pause and study the huge trees surrounding me. The long cedar and fir boughs swayed slowly in the breeze, the leaves of the alders trembled and glistened against the blue sky. I would watch with fascination as the white wisps of clouds drifted slowly and silently overhead. In these moments, I felt like the last person on earth.

Looking back now, I was meditating in the most natural way. But it wasn’t always appreciated by those around me. I remember one instance when I was about five years old that upset my mother. I was lying on my stomach under our largest apple tree, watching the ants as they clambered along the tiny stalks of grass, when she came outside from the kitchen onto the back porch.

Jim, time for lunch!

Some part of me heard her, but I didn’t respond. She shouted again.

Jim! Come get washed!

I was jarred awake as though from a deep sleep. I turned