In Vietnam I was never wounded. But now, all these years later, I have been. Although in my role as a combat photographer in the infantry where I was shot at a few times, maybe because I had this youthful sense of my own immortality, it didn’t seem all that frightening. I think what has happened to me now—thirty years hence—is that I’ve finally received the wound that will change the way I think. When I first returned from Nam I wondered at times why I’d been so protected. Even though it didn’t take me long to jump back into life here at home, I began to question my existence on this planet. What my life was for. This is when my spiritual quest began in earnest. It was when I began to look for answers to the big questions—like "why am I here?" and "what is my purpose on earth?"
But for many years of raising children and supporting a family, right up until this October 16th when I had my first of three heart operations, I haven’t really given much thought to the possibility of my own death. Thinking back, the fears I had in Vietnam seemed fairly unreal compared to what I feel now.
My body, which I always took pretty much for granted—which always did whatever I asked of it without much thought—now feels fairly fragile. My life seems tentative. Having had three heart operations in two months has led me to feeling this way. Following the first two operations, I felt that my heart was fixed and I could resume my normal life. Not so, this time. Now I’m not sure. I’m not willing to accept that everything’s going to be okay. Instead, I feel like I’m walking on a floor made of thin, brittle sticks; that I might break through at anytime and fall to my death. When I feel the slightest pain in my arm or even the slightest tightness in my chest, I am reminded how close I came to death not all that long ago.
In the back of my mind, I feel this sense that I could die at any time. It’s not that I have a death wish—it’s just the opposite. But still, the feeling’s there. I know I can’t wish it away—that’s not going to work. This is something I have to face, own up to, to try to understand.
I’m not ready to die. I have more of my story to tell. I’ve completed a first draft of my second novel and am writing a proposal for book #3. If nothing else, I’d like to see these projects manifest. These and the ones which haven’t revealed themselves to me yet. Also, I am certain that there is much more I have to learn in this lifetime—reason enough to hang around.
When perfect connections are made, between events or between people, it might seem like coincidences exist. But what is really happening is that we’re mistaking those events for being "in the zone", "wired to the universe" or whatever you want to call that perfect state of mind where we are realizing things at the very moment they happen. We’re experiencing no time delay. Yesterday I spent more than an hour thinking about the subject I wrote of in my journal, "giving up control", letting things happen, going with the flow. So, after I was finished with thinking these (for me) fairly deep thoughts, along comes a messenger from far in the past, Doug Borwick. The phone rings, I hear Doug’s voice, and thus begins a re-connecting with an old friend from the early days spent with Maharishi. The year was 1972, it was Fall and I’d just spent all my money to join more than a thousand meditators from the U.S. and Europe, in La Antilla, Spain—a small tourist town on the Atlantic coast between Gibraltar and Portugal.
Doug, myself and a fellow from Las Vegas—stage name, Dave Diamond—were randomly thrown together in a small beach house. Maharishi’s people had rented most of the houses along the ocean through the autumn and winter to the course participants. In our house, Doug quickly became known for his intensity. Although he spent virtually the entire day in his room meditating, whenever he appeared outside his room, he always seemed to have something to either complain about or to teach. He seemed to be "the expert" on almost everything! As much as we all loved him, he grated on people’s nerves because of his overly zealous way of rendering opinions on whatever the subject.
So here was Doug 30 years later—yesterday—on the telephone delivering news about a healer, the message related in the same overly zealous way I remembered. That is to say Doug’s Swami was the ONLY Swami on earth worth consideration and if you didn’t believe that, Doug was going to convince you. Doug currently spends seven months of his year, he told me proudly, in Swami Kaleshwar’s ashram in south India. This is particularly pertinent to me because it immediately connects with what I have been thinking about—back to the idea of "letting go".
I’m guessing that Gurus, Sages and Masters everywhere are trying to teach "letting go" to everyone who sits at their feet. During my years with Maharishi this was an oft-repeated message for me: learning to let go—in my case, mostly of the fruits of my labor. I think that one of the reasons I left Maharishi’s tutelage, after spending six wonderful years, was because I believed in my heart that I didn’t feel the need for someone to stand between me and my God. And this is what I found myself telling Doug after listening to him expound about Swami Kaleshwar.
Do we need to have a teacher on this earth to help guide the way? Certainly Maharishi’s wisdom has guided me through many storms. I am fond of saying that after Vietnam screwed me up, Maharishi saved my life. I still believe that. He gave me rules to live by that have guided my ship past many deadly shoals. But I have also felt, rightly or wrongly, that at some point it was up to me to take responsibility for my own life—to grow up spiritually and dare to break with my teacher and set sail on my own! It seems to be my karma to learn things the hard way. When learning is made too easy for me, I don’t seem to grasp the knowledge being offered. It seems that for me it takes a more difficult experience in order for the lesson sink in.
What always haunts me is the fact that I might be wrong about needing a teacher or a guide. Had I remained working for Maharishi, receiving his daily blessings, I might be enlightened today. And so, with the question of "letting go" freshly painted in my brain, with Doug presenting the possibility of introducing me to yet another enlightened teacher who is willing to guide another willing student, I wonder if paying Swami’s ashram a visit might not be the right thing to do…
One of the great values of opening up my heart is the feeling that comes of being connected to people and to the universe. What follows is the feeling that everything is being taken care of—that God or Mother Nature or Whateveryouwanttocallit is functioning through me. Because the more I open up and let things in, the more I am letting the Creator in—the Force that is running things. The more I do this, the more I let go of trying to control the universe, the easier things get.
The less I feel the need to run things, the more time I have for what is really important—basic things like breathing. Before, when I was busy with "something" every minute of the day, I would sometimes actually forget to breathe! It was my mother who used to remind me: "Take a minute and breathe." And so I would. Now it is my wife. Sometimes, believe it or not, I am actually capable of reminding myself! I am using breathing as somewhat of a metaphor here, meaning that breathing is another word for self-discovery. So, whenever I have these moments when I am willing to give up control, I open myself up to the possibility of learning something new. Perhaps one of the first and most important things I have learned is that I never really had control to begin with. It’s that other thing called God or The Laws of Nature that is in control.
Interestingly enough, I don’t even have to believe in God or Whateveryouwanttocallit. I don’t have to join any sort of group or attend church or even think of myself as religious, to find that God is working for me. Basically, there is nothing I have to do. Or, to say it in a different way, I have to do nothing. It is all being done for me. My life is being lived for me. It is true that it is me that is doing the living—but it also is NOT me. It is Whateveryouwanttocallit being me or playing me. If I can just keep this wacky thought in mind, at least part of the time, then I think life can actually be fun—and easy.
It is this lesson that I have been learning—over and over again—my whole life. It is one of the underlying messages in my book Beneath Buddha’s Eyes. When the main character, Peter Hill, finds himself at the end of his rope—he seeks refuge in a Buddhist temple—a young monk hands him a plate with a single leaf on it. Peter’s natural instinct, is to complicate things, to question whether the leaf is for contemplation or what and what its significance might be. But, after his mind is completely blown by exhausting himself with endless thoughts about what a leaf on a plate can possibly mean, he eats it! He finally loses control. Peter reaches the point where he can no longer figure out for himself what to do, so it is at that moment that some basic God-given human instinct takes over for him—lunch.
During one of those precious moments of clarity that sometimes appear, I’ve suddenly seen the value of my web site. Because I have never been quite sure just why, exactly, I have it—beyond the obvious reason it was built—to sell books.
The creation of the web site has been a magical experience. It has been one of those journeys that from the very start—because of the complete ease of it all—seems truly enlightened. I’m not exaggerating when I say this. Because just about all I did at my first meeting with Lee Fleming and Stanley Thompson at Infopulse LLC was show them a copy of the proposed cover of my forthcoming book. Although they work as a team, this was really Lee’s project and I give her the credit for "getting it" right off the bat. A few weeks later, when I viewed her initial design for the homepage on the screen, it took my breath away. It was the same with each successive page. It was as if Lee was translating my thoughts into the creation of the site—even before I thought them.
It is a wonderful and powerful experience to have a site of my own—especially since, in another moment of clarity, I realize what the web site should be used for. It’s simply for sharing my story. It’s my soapbox, my pulpit, my microphone. This is what blogging is all about for me—it’s one of the steps I am taking as I practice being more open. And in that sense, it’s learning to give something back to the world. Because for me—or for any human being—sharing one’s soul is a most direct and powerful way to give. I believe that every soul on earth has a story to tell, and this is mine…
It is obvious that our government wants us to go to war. And as a citizen of this country and father of two boys who could someday be asked to fight, I have reason to be concerned. But what disturbs me most is that I am beginning to recognize something I’ve seen before; a scene reminiscent of the time I was drafted and sent off to fight in Vietnam.
Way back then, because it was so difficult to understand why we were participating in that war, our government thought it necessary to create a marketing campaign to sell the idea of the war to both its citizens and its army. We soldiers flew halfway around the world to fight the evildoer Ho Chi Minh and his evil soldiers, the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong. We had learned to hate them so much that we virtually turned them into cartoon characters and called them gooks. By the time we arrived in country we faced an enemy we had come to believe was truly diabolic.
Looking back after all these years, it seems to me that our enemy then was not really all that different from us. They were as much the pawns of marketing strategies as we were. The young Vietnamese soldiers were also fighting the personification of evil. Unfortunately, what takes place in any war on the battlefield ends up having little to do with strategies. As the main character in my book Beneath Buddha’s Eyes explains to his therapist years later, "war is about one thing only—it’s about death and dying." Over time, war becomes distilled down to battles being fought by individuals, and in the end many of the individuals die.
What is happening right now in our country is so sad because we have forgotten that in the end wars are fought by individuals. Obviously, we didn’t learn the lesson of Vietnam.
It seems as if this all happened just yesterday—the government’s Marketing Plan set in motion at the same time as the build-up of troops and munitions on foreign soil has begun. Especially because I’ve seen this all before, the inevitability of war is frightening.
I’m not against fighting evildoers; I’m on the side of the Hobbits. But what I’d like to see is our Marketing Directors—the President and his advisors—marching into Baghdad, gas masks in hand, at the front of the column before our sons.
Today I am confused. I am trying, like every one of us, to be happy. Now, more than ever, I am minding my own business, trying not to let the insanity around me intrude on my peace of mind. After all, I am in the process of healing a heart in need of repair.
I tell myself that, going forward, my goal should be to give more love to my fellow man—as corny as it seems, to learn to love each member of humanity. I know that I am the only one hurt by holding a resentment towards anyone. In that light, my goal must also be to find love in my heart, even for those whom I would really rather not. Perhaps I am performing this exercise selfishly in order to allow my newly repaired heart to have a fresh start. But I let the love flow!
Yet all around me, the world seems to be going crazy. My very own country appears to have created a marketing campaign targeted towards convincing its citizens that we are the ones elected to rid the world of evil. In order to personify evil, so that we might relate more easily, our government has given it a name—Saddam Hussein.
I suppose one of the rules of good marketing is to create a simple concept, a sound byte—to make sure everyone grasps the idea in an instant. The second rule surely must be to replay the sound byte relentlessly until it is something we must dream about. By now, I think we all get the point that Mr. Hussein is indeed the embodiment of evil.
Although I never intended to talk politics in my journal, I am now driven to do so only because politics is continually intruding on my personal space, disrupting my private peace.
To be continued…
Things happen when they’re supposed to happen. I’m convinced that if I could see the big picture of my life—and I do get glimpses at rare moments—I’d know that everything happens for a reason and exactly when it is supposed to happen. More than that, each event is the result of all the other events in my life leading up to it. We all have our past karma, from this and past lifetimes, but also—and this is most important—we influence our karma for better or worse by what we are doing at present. The present is like a filter which our past karma flows through, so if we are doing good at the moment, that helps to make better our bad karma; and vice-versa.
Dealing as much as I have lately with my own mortality, I am very much aware of the importance of living in the moment. More than that, what I am practicing, is following my bliss as closely as I can. When the idea comes to do something, as long as it’s good and won’t harm someone, I try to follow up—to do it as quickly as I can. I’m practicing living like there’s no tomorrow. This might sound a little like a cliché because so many self-help gurus are talking about this stuff—you know, "be here now." But whether or not a lot of people are talking about this stuff is no matter to me. This is what is important to me now and that’s what matters. Recently I heard the thought expressed in a wonderful way: "The future is a mystery, the past is history but now is a gift—which is why it’s called the present."
I guess it could be called "tuning in." I’m referring to being on the same frequency as that wonderful little voice that is able to guide us. But the big question is, when we’re turning the dial, how do we know when we have the correct station? For me, it’s all intuition. It’s "going by the gut" not by the intellect. The intellect—mine anyway—serves mostly to talk me out of things. You know what I’m talking about—a really good idea comes along, one that feels clean and fresh and new, but because it’s new and different it’s also a bit scary. Even though I know in my gut it’s a good idea, the intellect checks in with a whole list of reasons for not doing it. This is the way the small voice is shut down and when that happens repeatedly I get into the practice of not listening and then eventually not hearing the voice at all.
This is where I’ve been lately—in the place where I don’t hear my inner voice. The way I know this is mostly because of all that’s been going wrong with me. I mean, I must take responsibility for my heart shutting down. Who else would I blame it on anyway? It’s nobody’s fault but my own and it’s time to "listen up" (as they say in the Army) before it’s too late.
You would think that having had open-heart surgery would turn my thoughts towards spirituality. But it hasn’t. Instead, my mind has been filled—more than ever—with thoughts of the physical. I’ve had a follow-up operation and now, as it turns out, I have to have a third. All this focus on what is physically wrong with me, and the options for repairing that, has kept me thinking right along those lines, as if I was a doctor.
The small voice inside me (the one that whispers so quietly you usually can’t even hear it with the normal noises of life covering it up) is beginning to make itself heard. The voice tells me it wants to know what my problem is—spiritually—and that maybe when I figure that out, the answer to the physical will follow. Listening to the small voice, I am sure, should be my job now otherwise I’ll find myself more lost than I’m already starting to be.
Last Friday, our cherished friend’s life was tragically cut short in an auto accident in Iowa. Christine Walker should be remembered because, although she lived her life as an artist quietly, she had a lot to teach us all. Christine was one of those people who lived life fully—something many of us strive for but are not able to achieve.
My wife and I spent a week with her this past September, when we felt were ready to make a move from Connecticut to a quieter, gentler place—Iowa. Christine invited us to stay with her in her humble cottage beside the National Guard Armory in rural Fairfield, Iowa. Although we did not end up moving, we had the wonderful experience of spending a week with Christine.
Christine was generous. She was a real, no-bullshit, no-punches-pulled woman. She was also subtly beautiful with her slight build, reddish brown hair, milky-light Irish skin. Her strongest, most striking element were her penetrating blue eyes which always felt they were looking deeper into me than almost anyone else ever has. Her eyes were what revealed her trueness best—they sparkled and they were clear.
While my wife and I and our youngest son were with her, we were in the throes of making major decisions: First of all, whether we should move. Second, if the private Maharishi school was the right one for our son, and third, which house we should rent—the oversized sprawling mansion on a hill outside of town or a more humble brick house close to the school. Our indecision on these—and some other fronts—seemed fairly monumental to us but Christine had a way of cutting directly to the quick, which enabled us to decide each issue with minimum fuss!
Christine’s lifestyle fascinated me. She lived alone, having been divorced for twenty years. My teenage son found it frustrating that her television only received one channel—I found it endearing. What I found revealing was her collection of highbrow magazines including The New Republic and The Economist—interesting selections, I thought, for a woman who was a sensitive and accomplished artist. But that was Christine, difficult to define and especially good at being her own person. The absence of TV forced me to update myself on issues I would have otherwise never considered, but luckily Christine always available to engage in ensuing discussions on subjects ranging from politics to spirituality with many stops in between. She was one of the most fun people to talk to I’ve ever met.
Last February, when returning from a working trip to Madagascar, I arranged a stopover in Paris for a day. Christine had been spending time there with her lovely daughter Judith, an art student. I met the two of them at Judith’s apartment, which of course was filled with paints and canvasses. We headed off to lunch at their favorite restaurant on the Right Bank.
Those few hours spent with Christine and Judith turned out to be one of those small blocks of time which, when considered later, turns into a kind of precious jewel. When I think back, all the hours surrounding our luncheon have somehow disappeared; the bus ride into Paris from Charles de Gaulle airport, the walk from the Arc de Triomphe, where the bus dropped me off. What remains is the time spent sitting in the restaurant with Christine and Judith. Although I couldn’t tell you now what we talked about, what I do recall is the feeling around the table. The feeling was one of an exchange of love between mother and daughter, and the love they had to offer to a friend.
When I am doing a good job of being a writer I remember small moments that are somehow windows which allow me to see through the world of shapes and sounds into the reality of things. The luncheon in Paris was one of those moments. It makes me happy to think that Christine’s life provided many of these moments to all those who knew her. I am privileged to be in possession of this small jewel of time spent with this remarkable woman. I hope that whenever I think of Christine, she will feel the great appreciation I have for who she is and the love that she so easily and genuinely inspires.