Everybody's Here

By Paul Forster

As I stumble and crash around with Zen and Yoga I am always heartened by the tales of fellow travellers who have gone before me. I love Ram Dass, Jack Kornfield, Steven Copeland and so many others who have shared their amazing journies. EVERYBODYS HERE is in the same vein, it is my story, my journey. At its best it may inspire you, and even if it doesnt quite reach those heights it will let you know youre not alone. Divorce, suffering, love, mountain pilgrimages, joy, drugs, ten years of yoga, koan study, trying to raise my daughter the best I can, and facing the endless nets of fear and ego--its all here.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 22, 2001
• ISBN: 9781465314598

Book preview

EVERYBODY’S

HERE

Paul Forster

Copyright © 2001 by Paul Forster.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,

or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing

from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-7-XLIBRIS

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

Contents

INTRODUCTION

THE WORDS

ACCIDENTAL AWAKENINGS

GROUP THERAPY

GOOD-BYE TO COLLEGE

WILDERNESS

BEAUTY AND SORROW

SUFFERING

BUDDHISM AND THE KENSHO

HALF-TIME

INTRODUCTION

After a long sweet summer that included two Sierra backpacking trips, a stay at the Tassajara Zen Center, abundant yoga classes, frequent meditation, and, most importantly, a spiritual experience that blew my doors off, I felt the vocarra, the calling, to share my journey and I began to write Everybody’s Here, though it had another title at that point.

That was months ago and now it’s the heart of a rainy February: I’m immersed in school politics and power plays, kids are crying about their grades, parents are calling, I haven’t been sleeping well, I’m bored of being single and often gut-wrenchingly lonely, taxes are due, I have to have a crown put on a tooth which insurance won’t cover, my ATM card quit working leading to a credit nightmare with the VISA people, I have stacks of papers to grade and lessons to plan; the list goes on.

Reading the introduction I wrote to this piece back in those soft sun-filled days, it seems like pure madness: zealous, unguarded and ungrounded.

Here’s introduction number two:

I’ve received great love, hope and inspiration from other people’s spiritual journies: the more faulted the person, the more stumbling and accidental their journey, the greater the comfort they’ve given me.

When I was in yoga teacher training with Eric Schiffman he gave me this kind of comfort. I’d been out in a very conservative corner of Utah for three years struggling with the humiliations of earning a graduate degree, and then gotten immersed in clinging to a very stressful rebound relationship. I was just getting sucked right into the vortex of the Great American Goody Hunt. I was reading tax manuals instead of soul books and living under a curtain of fear. In the emotional wasteland of those post-divorce days I was desperate to appear as a functioning successful adult and terrified that my divorce would make the world would see me as a loser, a Peter Pan, an overgrown boy who never made it in the real world.

Emeshed in this tightly wound space I went into yoga teacher training with Eric and one day he stopped talking about Triangle Pose and started talking about the nature of the universe, the nature of our human journey, and I felt this sudden flash of reawakening, this flash of, Oh my God! All these things I used to value before the train wreck of my divorce and my quest for the perfect investment plan are still there! I left the fire and went out into the cold and dark, but all the while the fire was burning behind me! Immense relief flooded through me as I realized that the fire hadn’t gone out, it had only seemed that way because I had choosen to leave its warmth and light.

Looking back into the last forty years I can see that here and there, like distant fires on dark hills, I’ve had a precious handful of such moments. I’ve had them out in the world’s wildness under the sky and wind, and deep inside myself in the lonely canyons of grief. I’ve had them chanting with Krishna Das and listening to John Lennon, Jackson Browne, Van Morrison and other musicians who sing about the journey. I’ve had them while reading Ram Dass—bless his garralous, chatty, loquacious, open, sharing soul—and while reading his opposite, the tight-lipped, private Peter Mathessein, who, it’s clear, went through absolute agony when it came to revealing his personal and spiritual struggles in print.

Now I’ve been called to take my turn. That’s where I set out to create this from: to share with you those distant fires on the dark hills. Those lightning flashes in my life when the dark clouds of fear lifted and the great mystery, or at least one small corner of it, was illuminated.

I’m sloshing and sliding around half-way up the mountain (and still believing there is a me and there is a mountain when this summer I knew better) and here’s the story of how I fell and fumbled and stumbled my way here. If these writings give you even a taste of what other stories and songs of their kind have given me then, like a runner with the Olympic torch, I have done my part in passing on the flame.

THE WORDS

it was winter when the words came again

when they rose from the fields where they had thrown themselves down like exhausted soldiers when

they drifted up from the mossy sea-caves where they had once plummeted down like stones it was winter when they began their heavy march back into my life suddenly they were everywhere pouring out of kitchen jars

hatching like eggs snowing out of a clear sky they tapped gently on the windows and when I refused their summons (as any wise man would) they split the marble doors of my house in a shower of smoke and stone i stepped outside to see a flock of doves that wheeled once and then fell out of the moon the white feathers gathered at my feet and read: patience, my son, patience though the years behind you have been long and full of suffering you shall not rest and

Your heart shall be as a tired horse slowly furrowing the fields of this world with the heavy plow of love

ACCIDENTAL AWAKENINGS

I was a singularly unspiritual youth. My parents gave me zero religious training; I never went to church, read spiritual books or had spiritual experiences. I felt no draw whatsoever toward Yoga, Zen, Christ or any other master or tradition. My dreams were all about sex, rock and roll, fame, money, recognition—I was not one of those lovely young people who volunteer at rest homes, send money to Green Peace or long for the purity of the monastic life. Now, as a high school teacher, I see many of these teenagers, they’re already on the spiritual journey, they’ve already seen that the Great Goody Hunt isn’t going to do it for them and they’re off to find more, or less. I was not one of those kids.

I was a terror. Pink Floyd, the bong, the beer, the party, any kind of female action I could beg or plead my way into; that was what it was all about. Yes, I was filled with pain and anger and longing and loneliness, but I thought the answer to these aches was money, fame and romantic love, I figured once I got my hands on the Goody Pie and got my share of ego treats I’d be fine and all those nasty, unpleasant emotions would evaporate.

So I went off to an arts college to become a great writer-director-actor, and one day my friends (who were all going to be famous too) and I decided to take mushrooms. We were by no means looking for God, love or spirituality. Our experimentation with mushrooms was much more the fulfillment of a dare than anything else, more of a desire to live up to the image of what we thought a wild, rebellious college student should be.

Here’s an account of that first experience starting at dinner in the dining commons the night before. I’ll skip the long run-down on names and personalities: just picture a group of first-year college kids around a table in the late 1970s and soon enough the personalities and the nicknames will sift themselves into clarity.

The First Opening

The new confidence I felt now that I was in my second quarter as a college student was quickly challenged at the first dinner after the winter break. The topic of magic mushrooms came up, as it could hardly fail to when they were being grown, sold and consumed all around us. Blindman and Chris showed no interest but Jeff and No-House announced they were eager to try them. Come on! Let’s all do ‘em! Come on! All of us together!" the ever-eager Jeff crowed.

Doug and I looked at each other.

Why not? No-House asked. We’re in college, right?

Yeah, Jeff agreed. "We’re supposed to do stuff like this. Come on! What do you guys say? Come on!"

Not for me, Chris shook his head. My brain already zaps like one of those purple bug-killing things; I’ll stick with beer.

Me too, Blindman said. I’m scared of that stuff.

What about you guys? Jeff demanded.

Doug and I were suddenly the center of the table. We looked at each other and I saw the light of mischief begin to illuminate his blue eyes. I will if you will, he said.

Jeff shouted in approval and I grinned bravely while my heart fluttered: What if I went insane? Had a bad trip? Beer and pot were one thing, but mushrooms? I hid my fear and joined in the discussion of where we would try them. We settled on a Saturday mushroom trip starting at the Marine Research Station on the coast north of town.

Saturday, after a nervous breakfast, the four of us gathered in Doug’s room to eat the mushrooms we had bought from the Deadheads down the hall. The mushrooms had a horrible taste, thick and pasty with a stale, mealiness that reminded me of the dog biscuits I used to eat as a three year old. Doug’s Mountain Dew was essential in swallowing them down and burning their sticky, pasty taste off my teeth. When the mushrooms were finished we gathered up our notebooks and tromped down the dormitory halls with guilty, sheepish, excited looks on our faces.

Doug drove us out of the college and north of town in his old Opel Manta. He was a finicky, nervous driver under normal circumstances; worried about coming on to mushrooms he was positively painstaking. He stopped for an hour at every sign and kept well under the speed limit. Sensing Doug’s fear the rest of us kept quiet and let him guide us with hushed awe. I was already getting little waves of the hallucinogen and I felt reverently thankful that I was not at the wheel.

The Marine Research Center was at the end of a dirt road, surrounded by brussel sprout fields. Doug guided us to a careful stop in the dirt parking lot and we tumbled free of the car and its accompanying worries with loud yells of relief. The wind was brisk and cold and bore on its back a grey and scudding sky. We put on our jackets, grabbed our journals and began the march along the path that followed the coast.

Jeff Essex ran ahead and topped the first cliff before the rest of us. Silhouetted against the sky he looked down on us and shouted, Lazy dogs! Bad! Slow! Come on! Come on! He was speaking a language that was beginning to develop between us. In this idiom adjectives, verbs and nouns were stressed and often used as complete sentences while articles were left out. Bad and Good were key words and replaced whole paragraphs of description. This language was public domain and developed on social or festive occasions; in the quiet of pairs or solemn moments we seldom used it.

We ran and scrambled after Jeff, tossing rocks into the hungry green ocean and us throwing words at him. I was nervous and excited. The small waves I’d felt in the car gave way to larger ones. As they grew bigger they left the purely physical realm and seemed to sweep something open in the way I saw the world. I stopped shouting at the others and fell to the back of the group. I began to have these strange new thoughts about the meaning of life that disappeared as soon as I tried to grab them; it was like curtains blowing away from a window to let the light come streaming into previously dark rooms and then falling back into place as soon as I turned to look. This absorbing process must have been happening in the others because the shouting died away and they also dropped into a steady and reflective pace.

The curtains fell away for longer periods of time and I began to have realizations that hit me with the force of a kick: I realized I spent most of my time being concerned and afraid over silly things; I realized that other people were beautiful but like me they lived entangled in a net of fear; I realized the earth was beautiful, beautiful to the point of being holy. These ideas unfolded in me like flowers and then dried up and fell away to be replaced by others. Suddenly stung by the thought that all the magnificence I was going through would escape I pulled out my notebook and wrote while I walked. No-House was soon doing the same, while Doug was lost to introspection. Only Jeff stayed in the outside world, he looked with absolute fascination at things and insisted that we come and look too. You guys gotta check this out! he said about a piece of iceplant.

It’s just a plant, No-House said.

Aw, no, man, it’s not just a plant, Jeff insisted, it’s perfection—it’s life! That’s what it is! It’s life!

You’re high, I told him.

No I’m not! No I’m not!! The ridiculousness of this denial hit us all and we began to laugh.

I’m high, No-House said. I like it. I thought mushrooms might be all out of control and silly but I feel more in control.

Who’s high? Jeff asked innocently, his brown eyes gleaming with big black pupils in the center, and we all laughed again. Aw, he whined, you guys don’t understand my plant! Don’t feel bad plant—I love you, I understand.

I’m thinking better than I ever have, No-House told us solemnly.

I think I never realized how beautiful life is, I said. If we had more experience with drugs this comment would have brought on a hurricane of laughter, but as we were all naive acolytes it was taken seriously.

Like my plant! Jeff howled. See? My plant’s beautiful, and it’s life!

My stomach feels kind of funny, Doug observed. What’s that? What’s that over there?

A farmer’s truck was moving through the rows of brussel sprouts. The truck was far off but coming in our direction. Doug became agitated, They’re coming to kick us off, he said, I know it. We can’t be here, we’re not allowed to be here, we should leave.

Aw, they’re just working, Jeff said, They’ll leave us alone.

We should go, Doug said.

Menial, No-House announced in the brusque manner of our new language. Menial farmers, they’re not going to kick us off, we’re not hurting anything. He plunged back into his writing.

We’re trespassing on their farm, Doug said, his agitation was palpable, his movements were stiff and jerky and he kept his eyes on the truck.

Ahhhhh! Jeff joked, throwing his hands in the air, it’s paranoia, the drugs are making us paranoid!

‘’Let’s go, Doug said, I want to go." He started walking back the way we had come. The rest of us looked at each other and groaned with our eyes. We had to follow him because he had the keys. Fortunately, right at that point, the truck turned around and went back the way it had come. Doug relaxed and our walk continued.

Soon the incident with the truck was forgotten and we were once again silently falling through newly-opened doors in our consciousness. The mushrooms drew me down deeper and deeper. Now it was not just new ideas that came in to roost—but I began to see whole processes of thought. I would trace a thought, back to another thought, and then the thought before it, until a whole belief system stood out as clearly as a cloud in a blue sky. The very process of my thinking was illuminated to me as if I were looking at a dot-to-dot painting. For the very first time in my life I was not my thoughts, I was something separate from them. What that separate entity was I didn’t know, but the very action of watching my mind and being separate from it was my first step forward into a new area of life. I flung myself down and tried to capture this revelation on paper.

No-House flung himself down beside me and began to write furiously. Doug took out his notebook and joined us, and then even Jeff succumbed. Thirty feet below us the ocean rolled up against the cliffs; again and again the tall, slow waves lifted green muscular chests skyward, eager to embrace the rising earth, and when their energy was expended the waves fell back into their white beds of foam like tired lovers.

I wrote.

The meaning of life, the meaning of art, the meaning of religion: I thought I had them for the taking and like fish in a barrel I speared them with my pen. It was an ageless scene: four young men under a winter sky, beside a lonely northern sea, scribbling madly, eagerly hunched in their jackets, thick heads of hair blown by the wind. A sudden and very real Dead Poet’s Society.

One by one we noticed that Doug had quit writing; that he was standing on the edge of the cliff looking out to sea. This seemed so amazing to us that we stopped and watched him. He brought his eyes in from the sea and contemplated his notebook with an expression of deep thought. Then he looked into the longing sea again. He raised his eyebrows and shook his head, and then, with sorrow, he tossed his notebook over the cliff. The pages fluttered like the white wings of a wounded bird and then the sea rose up and swallowed it.

We were struck dumb. The wind blew, the waves rose and fell, the energy of the earth created a noise that was deeper than silence. Doug sensed us watching him. What’s there to write? he asked. What’s there to write that hasn’t been written before?

After a moment’s silence we exploded into a raging argument over Doug’s statement. No-House was especially incensed. The argument eventually passed on to a fixated observation of a plant Jeff found and we forgot