Seeking:: An Encounter with Spiritual Ecstasy and Its Aftermath

By Paul Moser

A young man in full rebellion against his Catholic education is swept up not by an addiction to drugs or alcohol, but to something every bit as powerful and potentially destructive: the overwhelming state of ecstasy brought on by his single-minded drive to live a solitary, ascetic life. 

Grappling with an affluent but empty upbringing

• Language: English
• Publisher: Currach Press
• Release date: Dec 13, 2019
• ISBN: 9780984794171

Paul Moser

Paul Moser is a writer who has spent 30 years as a winemaker in Napa Valley, California. He is boring but articulate, with terrible taste in music and academic degrees he has never used.

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INTRODUCTION

Like so many love stories, this one is full of irrational behavior, regrettable scenes, and flat-out craziness. Unlike most love stories, it does not include a conventional pair of lovers, but instead concerns a zealous individual and his search for love and meaning through arduous, lone-wolf spiritual practices.

It’s the story of someone with a particular form of the Seeking Syndrome, a condition that affects everyone to a greater or lesser degree, manifesting as a restlessness that pushes us, sometimes recklessly, toward a liberating something, an expansiveness, a hard-to-define sense of fulfillment just beyond our ken. Examples are not hard to find: from an elaborate assault on K-2 to an expensive sweat-lodge weekend in Sedona, from NASA space shots to tequila shots at the corner bar, there is plenty of evidence that the raw itch for transcendence is going to get scratched one way or another.

It was this itch that drew an earnest young person into the sphere of metaphysics and meditation, harnessing fervent, ungovernable desire to tenacious self-examination. Metaphorically—and only half-jokingly—you could say it is what happens when you give a powerful magnifying glass and a good pair of tweezers to someone who is already obsessed with lint.

It is inevitable that the events recounted here be interpreted by some as a cautionary tale about the dangers of introspection, and rightly so. We all have heard this one in some form or another. You know: Rather than sit in a tree and contemplate your navel, you should be out there, engaged in the world, making your way, doing well by doing good. How can it serve any good purpose to risk getting lost in one’s own mind?

I very much empathize with this point of view. When you look at the terrible mess that our world appears to be, you don’t have to be Mother Teresa to realize it can use some help. Your help. Your money, your kindness, your elbow grease at the charity spaghetti feed or the soup kitchen. With all the hot-button emergencies around us, it is reasonable to object to the notion of sitting very still in a room for hours at a time, or even to the very notion of self-exploration. The whole thing smells of self-indulgence. But, to suggest a broader view of what might be helpful to our world and our lives in it, I would offer a couple of additional points.

First: The world is wide, and help can take many forms, some more visible than others. And there must have been a reason that no less a figure than Socrates put so much emphasis on the dictum Know Thyself. Even those who temperamentally find it easy to pass by the implications of this idea are probably going to agree that Socrates was talking about something more than your taste in movies and your limit for drinks. Just how deep an issue he is addressing, and how to explore it, is up to each of us to decide individually.

For the second point I turn to the New Testament, which, along with patriotism, has unfortunately become one of the last refuges of scoundrels. Using the Bible to make a case for one’s closely held point of view is a national sport, and I am absolutely not interested in adding to the debate. I would like only to point out one particular quote attributed to Jesus, the guy with ultimate street cred in America. He apparently said, Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven, and all else will be added unto you. This story, messy as it is, is about that idealistic search.

As it unfolded, the search triggered extraordinary and overpowering experiences that were—as I found in trying to write about them—very difficult to describe. But I realize now that that problem comes with the territory. Actual exploration is never about places we have already visited and that lend themselves to easy description. As the poet Richard Wilbur wrote, All that we do is touched with ocean, yet we remain on the shore of what we know.

This book is my best shot at describing a plunge into that ocean, and the heavy work of a lifetime: returning to a different, more heartfelt shore.

1.

It was around 2 a. m., the time I seemed to wake up during those few months, abruptly, watchful, with a feeling something between obedience and anticipation. After a string of cool days, the air in the house was chilly enough that I wrapped myself in the burgundy-and-black throw my mother had crocheted for me years before.

On that morning, in the fall of 1974, I stationed myself as usual, facing the picture windows of my little rental-on-a-hill in Redwood City, California, allowing me to keep company with the shimmering, uncountable lights of the Bay Area. They would be there when I opened my eyes, something beautiful to greet me.

I sat on the floor, cross-legged, with a couple of throw pillows under me. I kept my back straight, though my famously bad posture fought back as always. Being about as flexible as a floorboard, I had never been able to assume the more gymnastic, classical meditation position called the lotus, or even its less demanding variation, the half-lotus. Though the literature I had read agreed that those positions made it easier to sit for extended periods, I had long since decided that my physical limitations weren’t going to stop me from diving deep into the practice of sitting meditation, however I could manage it.

I should have been lonely, I suppose. I went for days without seeing or speaking to anyone, including my girlfriend Jess. When we talked on the phone, I could hear how wary she had become of my growing preference for solitude. She sensed I wasn’t fending off isolation—I was embracing it.

As had been the case for a few weeks, I didn’t do any of the usual meditative practices I had learned from my reading. The mantra, the visualizations—all of it had drifted away. I didn’t try to do anything. I was just watching, keeping a vigil without knowing what I was waiting for. It was wonderfully peaceful. There were no bad rock n’ roll songs in my head, no critiques of myself or the world in general. There was a slow-mo character to my thinking, as if I were a pool of water that had always had a steady torrent flowing through it, but was suddenly mirror-placid except for a cupful of water tossed in at random intervals. There would be silence in my mind for a few minutes, and then a thought. Maybe This is strange. Then silence again.

Because of my make-do, awkward sitting technique, the strain on my hips and back had become a reliable alarm, insisting after about an hour that I open my eyes and relax my position. But on this particular morning, I brushed past it. I held my position, ignoring my trembling muscles. In spite of the chilly early morning air, it wasn’t long before rivulets of sweat slid down my face and back. My few thoughts were erased by the clarity and intensity of the pain. I didn’t see this as any sort of self-punishment or solitaire version of S&M, but more as a demonstration of dedication to a path I had chosen for myself.

My steely determination didn’t allow for even a faint awareness of the profound influences that held me there; that realization would be a long time in coming. When it finally arrived, it would not only be acknowledgement of the influences themselves, but of just how ruthlessly I had buried them, in an unmarked grave, deep inside.

A few thoughts punched their way through the burning, saying: Why not sit here a little longer? Just a little. The pain is nothing but resistance to being here, right now. Just muscles that can’t surrender their memories. Why keep running away? Why not let yourself be here?

So I kept going. There was finally nothing left but sheer stubborn will: no meditating, no watching, no equanimity—and certainly no deeper questions about how I could withstand such pain, much less why I would invite it in the first place. I could feel my t-shirt sticking to my chest, my hair plastered to my forehead. Everything fell away; I concentrated on the act of breathing.

Time went by, my muscles alternating between periods of violent shaking and steady, implacable tension. I heard only a constant hissing sound—the flow of blood sounding in my ears?—which eventually became a much louder ringing noise. There was a snatch of Gregorian chant that morphed into the sound of a crowd of people, murmuring and shuffling through a large hall, then amplified and sharpened into the sound of children on a playground. Emerging from that noise, cutting through it, was a single voice that I knew well: my mother’s. I heard her calling me, the way she often did at the end of long summer days, when it was time for supper and I was outside playing. I felt a surge of affection for her, and I answered silently, wanting to reassure her. I’m here, mom! Over here! I’m fine! I’m doing just fine!

My thoughts came back at me then, harshly. What did I think I was doing? This was sick. No one in his right mind would do any of this. Did I imagine this was how Francis of Assisi got his start?

Sarcasm was always a strong suit for me. In the world as I had known it, barbed self-criticism was an art form.

I felt myself splitting open. Not just that the muscles in my hips were about to be ripped apart like pulled pork, but that something was opening in my heart and mind, expanding in a startling way. Then, in an urgent tone, a thought came: Be born. Be born. The air became thick with some kind of powerful nostalgia and empathy—was it compassion? Whatever it was, the stuff vibrated in me like a bow stroke on a cello. Be born. Be born. And I nodded my head, sweat dropping from my eyebrows to my cheeks.

I raised my right hand and laid my fingers gently on my sweaty temple. Even more gently and slowly, I cupped my cheek in my hand. The gesture was tender and loving, completely acknowledging the strange and dangerous seas I was sailing. It wasn’t judging whether I was crazy or not, wasn’t trying to make something happen. It was totally supportive, the kind of touch that I had only rarely experienced from anyone, and certainly not from myself. When I put my hand on my face it was usually rough and unthinking, like scratching an itch, or rubbing my eyes. This was something very different.

When I finally broke my position, the flood of relief I felt was tinged with disappointment. There was something left undone, a place I had not gone yet.

After a few hours of sleep, as the sun was coming up, I did my series of yoga postures followed by more sitting. Then, the usual stirrings of thoughts about food. They were noisier than ever that morning, because my fasting had become increasingly severe. Why not a decent breakfast? Why are you doing this, what’s the point? It’s masochistic. The answer that emerged was: Millions of people around the world are starving today, and the least I can do is to share a little solidarity with them. Even then I was aware it was more complicated than this. Eating issues always are.

I had only a mug of tea that morning, and by lunchtime my stomach was cramping and contracting; I paused often to take slow, deep breaths. I had learned that deep breathing was important around what would have been normal meal times, when a kind of automatic anticipation of food kicked in. Hungry as I was, I naturally felt a surge of desire to bolt the food even as I was preparing it. But the stronger the drive, the more I resisted, the more I stood back and marveled at it. Just look how desperate I am for this food! Deep breathing pulled the plug on my almost panicky sense of urgency.

That afternoon, I ate a piece of toast with avocado and melted cheese on it. Sitting at the table, I handled knife and fork gently. I cut a small corner, chewed it slowly, waiting fifteen seconds or so after swallowing before repeating the process. It took a long time to eat. But I had time.

I had quit my miserable liquor store job two weeks before. It was the second miserable liquor store job of my short working life, and the interval that separated the two—a year spent in France, working for Stanford University—had by contrast made that second job even more depressing than the first. I knew with certainty it was time to leave when, after a little more than a year, I finished my sitting practices one morning and realized the only reason I was going to work was that I needed the money. There was nothing else to it, and it just wasn’t enough.

At the end of my last day, I came home feeling elated and rock-solid about my decision. I had very little money saved—about eight hundred dollars—but it didn’t matter. As I sat on my cushions that night, in the dark early hours, I knew what it felt like to do the right thing, the harmonious thing. Not necessarily the exciting thing, or the outrageous and daring thing, or even the moral thing—though it might or might not have been all of those—but the thing that felt genuine. It was a moment so sweet and luminous that I just wasn’t used to it.

With time on my hands, I began to do yoga and sitting three times a day. If I ate at all, it was two small meals, one in the morning and one in late afternoon. It was a routine, but one that was new every day, each moment arriving slowly and gently, loaded with possibilities. Simple things delighted me: sunlight through windows, the taste of tea, the soft touch on my cheek of air in motion. I bought a few cheap art supplies—a simple set of ten watercolors with some brushes and a watercolor pad, some bottles of India ink. I painted unremarkable craggy landscapes and views of lakes and forests, constantly fascinated by the process, especially the various effects of watercolor.

Then there were my afternoon walks, wandering the streets of the hills above the bay, past endless rows of trim tract houses to outlying neighborhoods of weathered, overgrown bungalows bracketed by empty fields of anonymous dry brush. At first for an hour, later for two or three hours at a time, I was never sure why I walked. For exercise? Okay. To explore the area? I guess. I never thought of it as meditation or therapy or as anything other than taking a walk, but it became a powerful force.

Leaving my house felt like a launch into deep space. I never knew where I would go until I got to the next corner. The sound of my own footsteps, a car horn in the distance, the sight of the rows of wonderful magnolias lining the streets—all of it became a sort of communing, something I took in very deliberately. I was often brought up short by the realization that my experience of what was around me had always been so second-hand. I had been taught to learn just enough to allow me to categorize and dismiss everything I encountered, to stop wondering and get on to the next thing. The walks encouraged me to go back and learn how to use my senses all over again, as if I were a child.

It was amazing I found my way home every day.

Just a few weeks later, I found myself sitting on the floor of a lecture hall at Lone Mountain College in San Francisco, along with about a hundred other people, doing a guided meditation led by a bearded, saffron-robed Sufi master. It was unlikely on many levels, but most especially because of my bedrock ferocious desire to be alone in whatever my interior explorations were. I saw organized religion—especially Roman Catholicism, the brand I had smoked for many years—as toxic. I didn’t even like the word meditation, really; it was just too loaded. It conjured up images of Asian people with shaved heads and flowing robes, all of which reeked of organized religion.

The room was cool and musty-smelling. The only sound to be heard, other than the speaker’s voice and an occasional cough from somewhere in the group, was the ticking, tapping noises from a couple of old radiators in opposite corners.

Having brought my cushions from home, sitting on that floor was a familiar experience, one that brought with it the familiar buildup of strain in my hips, the screaming tension in my back and neck. After listening to nearly two hours of guided meditation and reflections on mysticism, I had to keep my eyes closed. The act of looking at anything sapped too much energy from the effort to cope with the raging of my body. Some familiar, scathing, self-critical thoughts contended with the refined voice of the Sufi master, but even those were dying out in my personal furnace.

I did some deep breathing. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t change my position or abandon it completely. We weren’t being monitored, as is done in strict, regimented sitting practices like Japanese zazen. But I had decided—in this familiar cold sweat, in this mad, stubborn overdrive that was now so familiar to me—that I wouldn’t budge until the talk was over.

As the minutes crawled by, I found myself praying he would finish. When finally he paused for a long moment, I thought I was saved. Instead, I heard him say: Now I am going to pass into the consciousness of each one of you.

2.

There is a lyric about family in Tim Minchin’s song White Wine in the Sun which says, These are the people who make you feel safe in this world. When I first heard this, at age sixty-three, I finally realized the truth: As I grew up, there were no people who made me feel safe in the world.

On my first day of school in 1955, I sat at my desk and wept silently. It didn’t help much to notice I wasn’t alone; more than a few of the fifty-eight kids in that first grade classroom were crying, too. Sister Constance Mary did her best to put us at ease.

Why are you crying? Do I look like a bear who’s going to eat you? Grraaaahhh! She waved her arms and flashed her teeth, drawing a nervous laugh from us. It would take some time to settle in with this person who seemed a lot like a woman, but couldn’t possibly be one. This strange impish face peering out at me from stiff white headgear covered with a head-to-toe cascade of black. Black. It was worrisome. So unlike anything else in the world.

She distributed a box of Binney & Smith crayons to each of us (Eight Different Brilliant Colors!), along with a single sheet of paper that smelled of some sort of medicine and bore the simple lines of a page from a coloring book. It was a picture of a fight. One figure—long hair, fluffy wings, serene expression—was clad in knee-high tunic and breastplate, and stood tall with sword poised to strike. The other was falling, shielding its horned head with its arms, its bat-like wings collapsing under it.

I was more at ease now, coloring. I knew how this worked. It was a relief to have something to concentrate on. I was good at staying inside the lines.

Sister explained the story of Saint Michael and Lucifer, the great battle between loyal angels and demons, between Light and Darkness. She told us details about heaven and hell, and about our own role in the battle, our duty to see that good prevails.

It was fun to color St. Michael—a light touch of blue for his wings, yellow for his hair. Lucifer was less fun, mostly because the color choices were limited, as far as I could see. Red was useful, black was inevitable. There was that black