Psychic Oranges

In 2004 and 2005 I was living in Netherland: not the Netherlands – Netherland. Netherland is my own mythological country – it’s neither here nor there, but someplace else. In Netherland I was living a life-between-lives, neither married nor not and with money in the bank, but only a part-time job, I was neither needy nor not. I hadn’t a clue what the future held in store for me, but was unable to go out and find one for myself, so I explored the only terrain that was open to me – myself. I went to workshops and seminars, psychics and tarot readers. In spite of all the extraordinary experiences I’d had on San Juan Ridge, in India and in Bali, I remained skeptical. I knew what was possible, but remained convinced that things like spiritual healing and “second sight” were gifts accessible to only a few rare individuals. With as open a mind as possible I wanted to find out more. I wanted to find out if I could do it, too. If not that, I wanted to find out how it was done. But where was I to look and who was I to trust? I decided that for once in my life I was going to trust my instincts or intuition. And so my search began. I’ll tell you later about how I found James and Michele and experienced some success with psychic or spiritual healing – I’m still not sure which is which or whether or not they’re the same. And later I’ll talk about Holosync and brainwave entrainment, but right now I feel like telling you about Psychic Oranges.

My search began rather mundanely: I googled “psychics” and clicked the “search Australia only” button, since I was neither curious nor confident enough to take a chance on an overseas experiment. It’s amazing how many people claim to be psychics. Some are, I’ve discovered, some are some of the time and some only think they are. So far, I’ve never met a complete charlatan, though I’m sure they exist as well. Of all the “psychics” in Australia, one caught my attention: it was a website called “Psychic Oranges.” I liked the title so I had a look. As it turned out, the reason the author gave his website that name is because the smell of oranges was his first psychic experience.

Intrigued, I decided to see how much the workshops cost. To my amazement and delight, I found that one was coming up soon, it wasn’t expensive and, incredibly, it was going to be held just up the road from where I lived – a 10 minute drive away! I called the number and signed up immediately.

The presenter, Michael Wheeler, was a tall, lean young man who didn’t come across as mystical or spiritual in any way. He started off by telling us what his website had already told me: how he became psychic and how it was not a special “gift” but something that was already within us if we knew how to tap into it. This was what we were going to do that day. He didn’t waste a lot of time with the preliminaries. After explaining to us what we were going to do, we began with a guided meditation. He was going to take us through the chakras and help us induce a theta brain wave state, in which we would be receptive to psychic images. Then, while we were still in that state of deep relaxation, we would sit at tables outside opposite a partner and see what happened. The partners were chosen before the meditation so that our minds would not become disturbed afterwards.

He was an effective guide: it was a very nice meditation, not unlike the one I was practicing at home at the time, so I had little trouble following him. My first partner was the young woman I happened to be sitting next to. The psychic exercise we were to do was for one of us to take a piece of jewelry – a watch, a ring, anything – hold it in the palm of our hand, close our eyes and go with whatever thoughts and/or images came into our mind. Michael Wheeler called it “psychometry.” If you want to know more about it, google it or click this link on “About.com”

She gave me her watch. I held it between my palms, closed my eyes and waited. As instructed, I made no attempt to filter my thoughts or the images that arose in my consciousness. I simply waited and as the images arose, I told her what they were. Her only job was to listen and not comment until I was done.

As clear as a bell, the first thing I saw was a sailboat – a beautiful, old-fashioned teak sailboat. Don’t ask me how I knew it was teak. It was painted white, yet I was certain it was teak. I got the distinct impression that it was solid and reliable.

The next thing I knew, I was looking at the mast and sail from the sailor’s point of view. My conscious, critical mind jumped in momentarily when the mast mysteriously morphed into a golden lance like the ones used by medieval knights. “Wait a minute,” it said, “that’s not what I’m supposed to be seeing.” As instructed, I let go of those thoughts and let my imagination take over again.

All by itself, my perspective changed and I found myself looking at the lance from a distance. It was being proudly held aloft by a handsome knight in shining golden armour riding a pure white stallion. Strangely and a little disconcertingly, I felt like I was falling in love with him.

Perhaps it was that discomfort that made the image fade. At any rate, it faded. I opened my eyes and asked my partner what she thought about my psychic journey.

It had made no sense to me and I still felt a little uncomfortable about having a romantic fantasy about another man, but it made perfect sense to her. Her fiance was an accomplished sailor and when they went out sailing together, she felt safe and secure when he was at the helm. And he was very much her “knight in shining armour” – she was deeply in love and looking forward to their wedding day, a few short months away. In short – I was a psychic!

If I was a psychic, the young woman’s fiance turned out to be a “super-psychic,” though it didn’t seem so at the time. Like mine, the images and words that came to his mind made little sense to him, but like me, he followed our teacher’s instructions and let them come out unobstructed. It went something like this:

“I see you sitting at a desk overlooking a field. It might be a soccer field. The word ’soccer’ is coming to my mind. At least, that’s what I think it is. It sounds more like ’soaker’.” He was clearly confused, but didn’t let that stop him.

“You’re sitting at a desk, working very hard at something. It looks like you’re writing. Your house isn’t old, but it is decorated like something out of the fifties. There’s a glass-topped coffee table and some plastic flowers. I don’t know why, it just feels like the fifties. Does that make sense to you?”

With that, the spell was broken. He opened his eyes and shrugged. We tried to fill in the picture with something I could relate to, but nothing he said matched anything in my experience. I quietly feared that in my future I’d be living in a cheap rented home close to a footie oval somewhere in Australia. But that was always my fear. My future prospects were pretty grim at the time.

That was in 2005. Flash forward to 2007 and I find myself sitting at a desk in my newly built home in Sihanoukville, Cambodia. There’s a plastic clock in front of me and a plastic bouquet behind me. My home can best be described as “French-Khmer,” a style that originated in the fifties. I didn’t have a glass-topped coffee table in 2007, but I do now. For the record, I didn’t buy it. Sopheak did. Downstairs in the living room, our gaudy chandelier would have been quite a status symbol in an American home in the fifties and our wedding photos in their kitschy gilded frames look like something my parents might have hung on the wall in our first home – the one they bought in about 1952 with my Dad’s GI loan.

And what about all that stuff about a “soccer field” that sounded more like “soaker?” My house does overlook a field, but it’s divided up into paddies for growing a local vegetable. Close enough? No. But just down the road, at the Sokha (sounds like soaker without a hard American ‘r’) Resort, there is a soccer field. I often ride past it on my bike. The grounds of the 5-star Sokha Hotel are an important part of my spiritual life here. There’s almost never anyone on the quiet stretch of beach near the soccer field and I go there frequently for some much-needed quiet and solitude. In fact, it was there that it dawned on me just how freakishly accurate my fellow psychic experimenter’s vision had been.

I wish I knew where this couple is now. I’d like to tell them my story. What’s most interesting to me is that I’m sure that the young man was only there to indulge his fiance, yet it was he who had the greatest success. I have a feeling this might be why he was successful – he wasn’t trying. Like they say in Zen, the key is in “effortless effort.” Why is this so? I’m pretty sure it’s because when we are thinking, we are in a “beta” or fast brainwave state. Beta is great and necessary for dealing with this plane of consciousness, but is completely useless when it comes to the psychic or spiritual planes. These are the province of the slower alpha and theta frequencies. Remember I said that in our guided meditation Michael was taking us into the theta state? Well, I’ve been there since, naturally and aided by brainwave entrainment software. When we’re dreaming we’re in theta. It’s the place where dreams can come true.

I just googled “Psychic Oranges” again and am happy to see that Michael Wheeler is still in business. His website is quite a bit slicker than I remember it and he’s written some books and CD’s. Check it out

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Psychic Oranges

In 2004 and 2005 I was living in Netherland: not the Netherlands – Netherland. Netherland is my own mythological country – it’s neither here nor there, but someplace else. In Netherland I was living a life-between-lives, neither married nor not and with money in the bank, but only a part-time job, I was neither needy nor not. I hadn’t a clue what the future held in store for me, but was unable to go out and find one for myself, so I explored the only terrain that was open to me – myself. I went to workshops and seminars, psychics and tarot readers. In spite of all the extraordinary experiences I’d had on San Juan Ridge, in India and in Bali, I remained skeptical. I knew what was possible, but remained convinced that things like spiritual healing and “second sight” were gifts accessible to only a few rare individuals. With as open a mind as possible I wanted to find out more. I wanted to find out if I could do it, too. If not that, I wanted to find out how it was done. But where was I to look and who was I to trust? I decided that for once in my life I was going to trust my instincts or intuition. And so my search began. I’ll tell you later about how I found James and Michele and experienced some success with psychic or spiritual healing – I’m still not sure which is which or whether or not they’re the same. And later I’ll talk about Holosync and brainwave entrainment, but right now I feel like telling you about Psychic Oranges.

My search began rather mundanely: I googled “psychics” and clicked the “search Australia only” button, since I was neither curious nor confident enough to take a chance on an overseas experiment. It’s amazing how many people claim to be psychics. Some are, I’ve discovered, some are some of the time and some only think they are. So far, I’ve never met a complete charlatan, though I’m sure they exist as well. Of all the “psychics” in Australia, one caught my attention: it was a website called “Psychic Oranges.” I liked the title so I had a look. As it turned out, the reason the author gave his website that name is because the smell of oranges was his first psychic experience.

Intrigued, I decided to see how much the workshops cost. To my amazement and delight, I found that one was coming up soon, it wasn’t expensive and, incredibly, it was going to be held just up the road from where I lived – a 10 minute drive away! I called the number and signed up immediately.

The presenter, Michael Wheeler, was a tall, lean young man who didn’t come across as mystical or spiritual in any way. He started off by telling us what his website had already told me: how he became psychic and how it was not a special “gift” but something that was already within us if we knew how to tap into it. This was what we were going to do that day. He didn’t waste a lot of time with the preliminaries. After explaining to us what we were going to do, we began with a guided meditation. He was going to take us through the chakras and help us induce a theta brain wave state, in which we would be receptive to psychic images. Then, while we were still in that state of deep relaxation, we would sit at tables outside opposite a partner and see what happened. The partners were chosen before the meditation so that our minds would not become disturbed afterwards.

He was an effective guide: it was a very nice meditation, not unlike the one I was practicing at home at the time, so I had little trouble following him. My first partner was the young woman I happened to be sitting next to. The psychic exercise we were to do was for one of us to take a piece of jewelry – a watch, a ring, anything – hold it in the palm of our hand, close our eyes and go with whatever thoughts and/or images came into our mind. Michael Wheeler called it “psychometry.” If you want to know more about it, google it or click this link on “About.com”

She gave me her watch. I held it between my palms, closed my eyes and waited. As instructed, I made no attempt to filter my thoughts or the images that arose in my consciousness. I simply waited and as the images arose, I told her what they were. Her only job was to listen and not comment until I was done.

As clear as a bell, the first thing I saw was a sailboat – a beautiful, old-fashioned teak sailboat. Don’t ask me how I knew it was teak. It was painted white, yet I was certain it was teak. I got the distinct impression that it was solid and reliable.

The next thing I knew, I was looking at the mast and sail from the sailor’s point of view. My conscious, critical mind jumped in momentarily when the mast mysteriously morphed into a golden lance like the ones used by medieval knights. “Wait a minute,” it said, “that’s not what I’m supposed to be seeing.” As instructed, I let go of those thoughts and let my imagination take over again.

All by itself, my perspective changed and I found myself looking at the lance from a distance. It was being proudly held aloft by a handsome knight in shining golden armour riding a pure white stallion. Strangely and a little disconcertingly, I felt like I was falling in love with him.

Perhaps it was that discomfort that made the image fade. At any rate, it faded. I opened my eyes and asked my partner what she thought about my psychic journey.

It had made no sense to me and I still felt a little uncomfortable about having a romantic fantasy about another man, but it made perfect sense to her. Her fiance was an accomplished sailor and when they went out sailing together, she felt safe and secure when he was at the helm. And he was very much her “knight in shining armour” – she was deeply in love and looking forward to their wedding day, a few short months away. In short – I was a psychic!

If I was a psychic, the young woman’s fiance turned out to be a “super-psychic,” though it didn’t seem so at the time. Like mine, the images and words that came to his mind made little sense to him, but like me, he followed our teacher’s instructions and let them come out unobstructed. It went something like this:

“I see you sitting at a desk overlooking a field. It might be a soccer field. The word ’soccer’ is coming to my mind. At least, that’s what I think it is. It sounds more like ’soaker’.” He was clearly confused, but didn’t let that stop him.

“You’re sitting at a desk, working very hard at something. It looks like you’re writing. Your house isn’t old, but it is decorated like something out of the fifties. There’s a glass-topped coffee table and some plastic flowers. I don’t know why, it just feels like the fifties. Does that make sense to you?”

With that, the spell was broken. He opened his eyes and shrugged. We tried to fill in the picture with something I could relate to, but nothing he said matched anything in my experience. I quietly feared that in my future I’d be living in a cheap rented home close to a footie oval somewhere in Australia. But that was always my fear. My future prospects were pretty grim at the time.

That was in 2005. Flash forward to 2007 and I find myself sitting at a desk in my newly built home in Sihanoukville, Cambodia. There’s a plastic clock in front of me and a plastic bouquet behind me. My home can best be described as “French-Khmer,” a style that originated in the fifties. I didn’t have a glass-topped coffee table in 2007, but I do now. For the record, I didn’t buy it. Sopheak did. Downstairs in the living room, our gaudy chandelier would have been quite a status symbol in an American home in the fifties and our wedding photos in their kitschy gilded frames look like something my parents might have hung on the wall in our first home – the one they bought in about 1952 with my Dad’s GI loan.

And what about all that stuff about a “soccer field” that sounded more like “soaker?” My house does overlook a field, but it’s divided up into paddies for growing a local vegetable. Close enough? No. But just down the road, at the Sokha (sounds like soaker without a hard American ‘r’) Resort, there is a soccer field. I often ride past it on my bike. The grounds of the 5-star Sokha Hotel are an important part of my spiritual life here. There’s almost never anyone on the quiet stretch of beach near the soccer field and I go there frequently for some much-needed quiet and solitude. In fact, it was there that it dawned on me just how freakishly accurate my fellow psychic experimenter’s vision had been.

I wish I knew where this couple is now. I’d like to tell them my story. What’s most interesting to me is that I’m sure that the young man was only there to indulge his fiance, yet it was he who had the greatest success. I have a feeling this might be why he was successful – he wasn’t trying. Like they say in Zen, the key is in “effortless effort.” Why is this so? I’m pretty sure it’s because when we are thinking, we are in a “beta” or fast brainwave state. Beta is great and necessary for dealing with this plane of consciousness, but is completely useless when it comes to the psychic or spiritual planes. These are the province of the slower alpha and theta frequencies. Remember I said that in our guided meditation Michael was taking us into the theta state? Well, I’ve been there since, naturally and aided by brainwave entrainment software. When we’re dreaming we’re in theta. It’s the place where dreams can come true.

I just googled “Psychic Oranges” again and am happy to see that Michael Wheeler is still in business. His website is quite a bit slicker than I remember it and he’s written some books and CD’s. Check it out

My Back Pages

11 May, 2008

My Back Pages is the story I didn’t want to tell when I started my other Postcards from Cambodia blog. It’s the story of my “spiritual” life. I put spiritual in quotes because I’m still uncomfortable with that label. It conjures up pastel-coloured images of gurus and saints, of astral travel, oracles and other “mystical” phenomena. Indeed, these chapters are about all of the above, but I no longer put them into a box separate from my everyday, “mundane” existence. Shall I call it the story of my “inner life?” No, that won’t do either, because I no longer see a distinct difference between my “inner” and “outer” lives.

So what is it about? It’s about my relationship with what my dearest friend Penny once called “the Happy.” We were driving down the dirt road that led from the Loka, our 40 acre “estate” comprised of a long-abandoned house and a few trailers, to town (Nevada City, California) to do the weekly grocery shopping and laundry. I’ve forgotten exactly who brought the subject up or why, so let’s pretend I was asking Penny what her definition of spirituality was. If anyone could tell me, it would be her. Not only did she exude goodness and charity, she performed miracles. Penny is a remarkable woman.

By then I’d had a few “mystical” experiences myself, but like Penny and Michael (then her husband) and the rest of us on the Loka, I’d become disenchanted by most of the gurus and “spiritual paths” on offer in the sixties. It hadn’t been long since I’d returned from India and my memories of that trip were still fresh in my mind. America was a strange and hostile land to me. The reason I moved onto the Loka was because there was nowhere else for me to go. When Penny and Michael invited me to live in a 7′X10′ trailer on the land they rented for $40 a month, I considered it a gift from God, as indeed it may have been.

So we were driving down the road. I asked Penny and she replied, “I call it the Happy.” She may have elaborated, but if she did, I don’t remember what she said. All I remember is that her words chimed like churchbells in my ears and I exclaimed, “Yes! That’s it!” In a nutshell, it’s a state of inner happiness, simple as that. I believe in the Happy because all that is kind and gentle, all that is generous, forgiving and loving in me springs from that source. If those things aren’t at the essence of “spirituality” then what is?

As “spiritual revelations” go, I know the Happy doesn’t sound like much, but when it’s there and when I listen to its voice, it reveals the mysteries of the universe to me. It is the engine of my soul. Sometimes I can actually hear and feel its humming. When it’s particularly strong, I still occasionally feel a current rise up my spine and tap me gently between the eyes. And then everything glows. Once, in India, I believe it revealed itself to me in all its glory, but it was more than I could take and I closed the door. Nonetheless, the afterglow remained and has been quite literally “the light of my life” ever since. I could jabber on for ages about it, but Walt Whitman said it best almost 150 years ago in his “Song of Myself” so I’ll let him do my talking for me for a little while:

I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you,
And you must not be abased to the other.
Loaf with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips, and gently turned over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stripped heart,
And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet.
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth,
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own,
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of creation is love

I first read those lines back in about 1969 and they’ve been ringing in my ears ever since.

I hope I’m not getting your hopes up my dear reader, whoever you are. If you’re looking for the definitive answer, the magic mantra or a spiritual guide, you won’t find them here. I’m on a journey, just like you. I just thought it would be nice to sit down, take a load off and have a chat. If I’m talking to myself, so be it. I like solitude. But if you’ve sat down with me, I’d love to hear from you.

The Khmer Gourmet

Hi anyone and everyone. The following is the latest entry to my website, Postcards from Cambodia.

The Khmer Gourmet

24 April 2008: I had one of the weirdest experiences of my life yesterday. I ate at the Khmer Gourmet for the first time since its original owners sold their business almost a year ago. That in itself isn’t weird, but what happened was.

The Khmer Gourmet was neither Khmer nor gourmet. It was the brainchild of two young Americans, Thane and Sam. They had little in common except the fact that they were in love with Cambodian sisters. That, I believe, is how they met. Starry-eyed with love, they briefly went back to America to sell their cars and whatever else they had of value. When they returned to Cambodia in about September, 2006, they pooled their resources and opened KG, a small cafe on Sihanoukville’s Victory Hill. When I arrived in October, they had just opened for business.

I was staying at Dada’s Guesthouse, just up the street. I generally wake up at six or six thirty and welcomed the one cafe on the hill that opened as early as I did. Thane handled the morning shift and so Thane was the first of the pair that I met and he and some of his early morning customers were my first sources of information in Sihanoukville.

In the early weeks of our relationship, I listened to everything Thane and his clietele had to say. I learned that corruption was the name of the game in Cambodia, that most Cambodian girls were manipulative bitches and that Cambodians would steal anything and everything they could after beating or murdering its rightful owner. Amongst the words of wisdom I picked up at KG were the following:

1) All the expensive cars in Cambodia had been stolen in Japan and sold to well-connected buyers in Cambodia (if you had the right connections you could buy a nearly new Lexus for $1000. I wondered how any money was made, since the shipping cost alone would be more than that)

2) You could buy a five-star general for $30,000 (if their friendship came so cheap, then how could they afford the mansions they owned?)

3) That most of the big Russian money in Sihanoukville was made running guns to Sri Lanka and Africa, in child trafficking or the drug trade (wouldn’t, I wondered, anyone divulging such sensitive inside information be killed?)

4) That the reason for the periodic crack-downs on unlicensed motorbike drivers was because the police commissioner owned a fleet of tuk-tuk’s and was pissed off because they weren’t making any money (it had nothing to do with crappy driving?)

 

There were many more such stories, but the one thing they all had in common was that they were false, or at least distorted. This slowly sank in as I began to question those who told me the stories – all of whom related them with an unquestionable air of authority. Many of them originated from one source, a young man who had spent the past six or seven years down at Occheuteal Beach smoking weed and impressing newcomers with his expertise in all things Cambodian. Other stories just made the rounds from one “seasoned traveler” to another. Like the one about the guy who had been knifed for his motorbike.

It’s true. It happens. People get beaten and killed for less in Cambodia – but not that often. In this case, a man had been knocked off his motorbike. The bike was stolen and he broke his collarbone in the fall, but he wasn’t knifed. This was the first version I heard and I heard it from him. But within a couple of days I was being told about a knifing and then a murder. Strangely, they all happened “last night.” For about a week I thought that the streets of Sihanoukville were a virtual slaughterhouse until I realized I was being told the same story over and over again – re-arranged and distorted like a game of Chinese whispers.

And that was the Khmer Gourmet: a virtual cornucopia of myths and fear-fuelled half-truths. Fun for awhile, but it became tedious. By the time I came back in January I was feeling rebellious. When Thane told me not to buy a new Suzuki Smash Revo motorbike because they were the most-coveted by murdering thieves, I determined that the Suzuki was the bike for me. It’s been well over a year and 20,000kms and I’m still alive and riding my moto.

Sadly, the Khmer Gourmet never really prospered. Hyper-active Thane and laid-back Sam got on each others nerves and got sick of working long hours for small money. After too-lengthy negotiations with their only prospective buyer they sold out cheaply and moved on. And now I can return to my story . . .

 

I’ve had enough of “the hill” and rarely go there anymore except to have a meal and a beer at Papagayo’s a couple of times a month. Other than that, except when we go to visit Dada or my best friend Joe, I generally avoid the place. It seems to be a magnet for beer-bellied, tattooed pseudo tough guys and Made-in-Thailand dreadlocked “dudes” on their rented dirt bikes. “I survived in Cambodia” and “Cambodia: Danger! Land-mines” are the tee shirts of choice amongst this crowd. Ten years ago they might have had something to brag about. Twenty years ago, definitely. But not today. Go down the road to Serendipity Beach or the Sokha Resort and you’ll find legions of middle-aged couples, children in tow, happily strolling through the “mean streets” of Sihanoukville. To date, I haven’t heard of anyone being blown up by a land mine. As for murders, the last one I remember was up on the hill about a year ago, when a French bartender stabbed a customer he didn’t like.

But the hill is on the way to my friend Joe’s house and I hadn’t eaten breakfast when I hopped on my mountain bike to pay him a visit, so I thought I’d given the new Khmer Gourmet a try. I’ve met Tom, the new owner, before, so he recognized me when I rolled in and after asking me again for my name, he introduced me to his one and only customer, whose name I’ve forgotten. I’ll call him Gary because I’m sure it wasn’t that.

Gary and I got to talking and as it turned out, we have a lot in common. He is from Santa Cruz, a city I know well since I went to college there for awhile. He had also lived on Maui at about the same time I did (late sixties, early seventies). And we had both spent time in India in the early seventies. It took Tom three tries to get my order right, so we had plenty of time to talk. With only two dishes (quesadillas and burritoes) on his menu and a choice between coffee, green tea and black tea for beverages, that was quite a feat. But I was in no hurry, so I happily let it slide.

An hour and a half passed in swapping sixties’ stories and by the time I excused myself I was so immersed in the past that I was thinking of myself as “Bob,” the name I used until it was replaced by “Rob” when I moved to Australia in ‘85. Gary and I reminisced about hitchhiking up the California coast, back when it was “cool” to be a hitchhiker and about when hitchhiking was outlawed on Maui, which just made things easier – we’d just walk along the road until someone picked us up. Didn’t even have to make the effort to stick out a thumb! I told him about the day my teenage surfing idol, Paul Gebauer, walked into the Lahaina bookshop I worked in, so stoned on LSD he was praying to Jesus, Buddha and Krishna to “help me get it together in Lahaina-town” because his astral body had split off from his physical body and gone somewhere else. We talked about Hari Krishnas and Jesus Freaks and when Tom mentioned Bhagavan Das, originator of the classic hippy slogan “BE HERE NOW” (popularized by Ram Das in the book by the same name), I almost wept as I recalled the amazing time I spent with Neem Karoli Baba (Ram Das’ guru) in India. I must have told the story well, because Gary and Tom almost did, too. One of these days I’ll tell it to you, too, whoever you are.

As the conversation wound down we talked about the most mysterious part of the era: why something so magical and positive came to an end. Tom chimed in that he blamed Charlie Manson and I mentioned Altamont. I also mentioned Bronte Baxter’s wonderful blog entry, Where Have All the Flower Children Gone, which asks the same question (she blames the Maharishi). But the question remained: why weren’t the good vibes enought to cancel out the bad? We didn’t have an answer for that one.

Anyway, by the time we were finished discussing these weighty matters I was so detached from “the present” that I had stepped back in time and erased everything that’s happened in my life since the early seventies. I was a hippy backpacker exploring the world for the first time. Everything looked exotic and exciting – I was a “stranger in a strange land,” seeing it all for the first time. It was not “as if” I was seeing it all anew – I was seeing it all anew. Very hard to articulate, but that’s how it was. I got up from my table with a wide-eyed grin and assured Gary that we’d get together again soon. I paid Tom, got on my bike and waved goodbye.

“How’s your baby girl?” Tom called out as I gazed down the totally unfamiliar street – and it all came rushing back. Thirty-five years had passed. I had two kids and an ex-wife in Australia and a brand new family in Cambodia. Everything had changed. But then again, maybe not. For a brief moment in time I’d been, like my friend Paul Gebauer, in two times and places at the same time – my body in Sihanoukville, Cambodia in 2008 and my spirit in India in 1971. But in that instant when my consciousness shifted from “there” to “here” and “then” to “now”, one thing remained constant – my existence, my Being, if you like.

As I reflect on that strange occurrence, I think that it’s probably healthier, and definitely more comfortable, to be here and now, wherever they may be. But the important thing is to BE.

 

An Introduction

Hi, If you’d like to know why I’ve called my blog postcardsfromcambodia, have a look at my new website, www.postcards-from-cambodia.com. I was drawn to WordPress by Bronte Baxter’s fascinating blog, www.brontebaxter.wordpress.com and was drawn to her blog via the David Icke website. My main reason for being here is to share some experiences with others.