Everything’s coming up roses
I’m going through an interesting transformation.
I remember coming back on a ferry from Cold Mountain Institute in 1976. We’d just done a week-long Enlightenment Intensive course and I’d had a peak moment or transformational experience. (1)
I’d realized who I was in the workshop and was bathed in love.
And, on the way back to Vancouver, I told a lie. … And love vanished.
I don’t want to do that again. Here I am in this wonderful experience of peace, and peace is so delicious, so inviting that I want to stay here. I know, I know. Get it, lose it. Get it, lose it. But it’s a siren song. Anyone who hears it would want it.
Like love, I never knew this that I’m experiencing, which I’m calling “peace,” existed. Never, ever. I knew something called “peace” existed, but I did not know what peace was. Quite clearly I did not, as I now see.
So I’m dropping any thought that has any relation to aggressiveness. What I was seeking by puffing myself up I find by letting go. Back at the starting point, but knowing it for the first time. (2)
***
The other influential time when I experienced peace I’ve described elsewhere. (3) It lasted only a short while but introduced me to peace as a consciousness state. Now here I am in peace on a continuing basis (for as long as it lasts) .
I look around me and laugh. I see all manner of sights, which trigger all manner of estimations of whether I’d like to do that or go for a walk there. But now I see that what I’d be seeking in doing those things I already have and it lives inside of me; not out there.
Without even thinking about it, I draw peace up from my heart on the in-breath and luxuriate in it. I remember, as a young child, hanging out with my grandfather at the Fontainebleau in Miami. He was rich. We were not. Being part of this scene (able to charge to the room number), I felt secure.
But we know what a house of cards that is. How many times have we found ourselves again in debt or out of a job? No security there.
But in this space of peace there’s a tangible sense of security. There’s nothing wrong in this space. All is well.
As the 1959 hit song said, and you gotta get that this is a reformed troll (4) singing it: Everything’s coming up roses … when I am in peace.
Footnotes
(1) I distinguish a peak experience from a realization in the following manner. A peak experience happens when I experience bliss, which lifts me up AND I have no question in my mind. A realization happens when bliss lifts me up and I do have a question in my mind. I see so very much more clearly and less attached at the higher level that the solution to a problem I may have in mind becomes instantly clear. When I come back down I call what was a simple observation in the higher realm a “realization” in the everyday realm.
So a “peak experience” is just an experience; a “realization” is an experience plus an answer, insight, etc.
(2) “We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
(T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets at https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2886568.)
(3) “The Peace that Passeth Understanding,” July 18, 2017, at http://goldenageofgaia.com/2017/07/18/the-peace-that-passeth-understanding/
(4) See:
- “I Feel Happy, Said the Troll Under the Bridge,” August 24, 2020, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2020/08/24/i-feel-happy-said-the-troll-under-the-bridge/
- “Thank You to the Troll Under the Bridge … and Goodbye,” January 26, 2021, at https://goldenageofgaia.com/2021/01/26/thank-you-to-the-troll-under-the-bridge-and-goodbye/