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.
