I attempted both of the last two mornings to gaze and was again stopped in my tracks by the clouds, by the unyielding wall of grey. But the clouds just don’t get my goat anymore. The universe is just making things interesting. Well I see your clouds and I raise you a sunset. So I’ve been trotting out to the western edge of my bungalow at about 7:00 pm to watch the sunset before it disappears behind my local grocery store and into the night. Both of these evenings my neighbor Brett joined me for the gaze. I read an article recently that suggested you cover your eyes with your palms after the gazing is over and stare at the after image until it disappears. Once it has disappeared completely you know you have absorbed the light. As Brett and I do this we compare notes. His image is shaped like a blob, then a star, and it’s green, with definite yellow and red outlines. Mine is shaped like a bat, then a cross, and it’s sporting the same emerald center with the same yellow and red bands of light surrounding it. We look like two sad yogi’s crying into our hands as we absorb the light from our gaze, teary eyes cupped in our palms on the side of the road. All signs to the contrary, I couldn’t be happier.
Each night as the after image fades away I imagine the light settling in the backs of my eyes. I feel the heat in there. I can only hope it’s burning up the chaff in my thoughts and cooking the wheat into a nice warm loaf of bread I can use to feed my soul. Over the last few days, despite my constant devotion to the gazing my life has become busy with the stresses of running my own small business. You know the kind of stresses that can be both mundane and life-threatening all at the same time. For example the business phone system stops working altogether. Mundane, because everyone’s had phone problems. Life-threatening because my business is a delivery service where you call in orders, so a broken phone is a broken business and a broken business is a broken budget and worry creeps in over the stress and tension begins to set up shop again in my belly. I remember you, but the sun evicted you I think, indignant. “Well, I’m back now,” Tension smirks at me “because you’ve been worrying again, and when you worry you create this toxic environment in your tummy that I just can’t resist.”
So now I get penalized for worrying? And when did this happen exactly? When did the peace and calm that had been activated by the gazing get replaced by my obsolete but apparently deeply entrenched patterns of stress and worry? My business had a few slow days, and I found myself a bit under slept, and quick as a card shark dealing from the bottom of the deck, I was left with a bum hand, a pit in my stomach, and a pile of worry just chipping away at my peace, piece by piece. Why is it so easy to see the right thing to do when its somebody else who has to do it? But when it’s my turn to make the conscious choice, or the healthy call, or the appropriate decision, I just end up in a drive-thru or a bathhouse, or god-forbid a police station? Well, I discovered why, it’s because I’m a sage.
I read in The Master’s Touch by Yogi Bhajan that a sage is not wise, a sage is one through whom wisdom flows. Well, I think that describes me to a tee. My friends tell me I give great advice. Over and over again people come to me to solve their problems or mirror back to them a perspective they have not seen. I open peoples minds, I’ve been told. But I am pretty sure I’m not wise. I have a lard-hate relationship with junk food. I fall in love with unavailable men. I watch Jack Baur run down the clock on the new 24 series when I should be running outside. And I can be convinced at anytime that a can of coca-cola is a great idea even though I have gum problems! So it’s safe to say I’m not the wisest. I’m a regular dotto in dungarees, sweating my balls off in Los Angeles like every other dotto with a dream and a day job. But I have people seeking my take on their problems more times a day than I can count. I am a dumb-ass through whom wisdom flows, you know, a sage. I should probably start to write some of that wisdom down, and then oh, here’s an idea, follow it.
SIDE EFFECTS: The after image bends and transforms into different shapes as my cells absorb the light and I think I am being bent and transformed by the light as well.
BENEFITS: I have reached a leveling off point where the next wave of drastic changes is still out on the water. I feel it coming, but it’s not here. For now I am gently rocking, daily gazing, enjoying my time out on this open sea, wondering just where I might end up.
