From the Depths

There are moments in life when we change. It’s more common, i suppose, to consider and mark the changes in our outer lives, like a new car, job, or even a birth or a wedding; but our inner lives, the places that are not visible, have significance too. These outer changes are sometimes called translational, and the inner, transformational. Here’s a story about the latter.

It was a first for both of us, a pair of seeker/finders, me and my friend Jim, traveling across country by car, going from the Midwest to an island in Puget Sound and back. What adventures we had! On the way west we hit his home town of Missoula serendipitously in time for Jim to give support to his mother at a critical junction in her life as it played out in a courtroom. Nearby at Great Falls we visited a place that featured the work of cowboy artist Charles Marion Russell, and then onto the Great Spring, a huge out-welling of water that doubles the flow of the Missouri River.

While in Washington State a travel highlight was a day trip Jim and i took guided by our mutual friend John. Somewhere near Mount Saint Helens we hiked up into a valley to a place held sacred by Native American antecedents of our guide. It took most of the day but finally we emerged into a clearing where on our right an eddy of clear cold water of a mountain stream had carved a small pool in the rock, where water swirled. On our left was the shear rock face of a cliff. It was marked by an opening several feet above the clearing floor, the lower half of which was boarded, making an improvised damn which held back a portion of the hot spring water that spontaneously arose from within the mountain. How incongruous in this natural environment to see a green plastic garden hose exiting the cave and to see that it was actually a supply tube to fill a wooden bathtub placed in the meadow half way between the cave and the pond, between hot and cold.

John explained that the tradition was to bathe in the tub and then in a more purified state of cleanliness enter the waters of the cave, which we did. When body temperatures rose to a point of being uncomfortable the idea was to exit the cave and hustle down the sloping meadow and plunge into the pond of icy swirling water. It was an exercise roughly akin to a Finnish sauna with its famous snowy finale. In both cases i suspect that the purpose of which was to induce an altered (temporary) state in its participants.

More adventures followed, like the time on the return trip when we were at a loss for a camp site for the night, someplace off to our right in the vastness of Montana the base of a fully formed rainbow appeared. It seemed to beckon us, and without any communication other than a knowing glance we exited the Interstate and followed the rainbow. We halted for gas in a small town and inquired about camping, “Oh yes,” the attendant said, “Just around the corner is a village park where you are welcome to stay the night.” We set up camp in the otherwise deserted site and began to cook dinner; and just as things were simmering in savory aroma another pair of travelers appeared. The evening evolved into a pot luck bit of camaraderie, where four travelers met at the foot of a rainbow.

Jim was a wonderful companion. Our only disagreement in two weeks of travel was whether or not we should fill the gas tank one last time before splitting the cost; that resolved i dropped Jim off and aimed for home a few miles away.

Alone now, i punched the radio preset button to my favorite FM radio station that played classical music; something that i had dearly missed traveling west, and now within range at last. It was as if i had been holding an empty space within, a sort of longing, and filling it was the most wondrous of sounds, a full orchestra performing music that was so close to my heart that i could have happily passed out of this world riding on its tender ministrations. It was Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, the Pastoral –a paean to the Natural world.

The effect of this hearing was profound. It triggered a sound from the depths of my own being. Some sort of harsh guttural cry arose in me, right from the root of being and struggled its way upwards and out through my throat. Call it a primal scream, if you will; but as it happened i burst into tears and simultaneously came to fully understand that the works of Beethoven, more clearly than any other composer, represent human aspiration. And that, whatever place in life we find our selves, we are inextricably linked to all other humans everywhere and in every time who long for a better life, a life that is made up of both exteriors and interiors.

The sum of the experiences in this summer of 1972 left me changed. A state of being had become a stage. I became firmly ensconced in a view beyond that in which i was raised. Beyond mere personality, beyond ethno-centrism, into a world vision; which in turn has now provided a basis for yet another transcend and include transformation; the view known as Integral.

<Beyond Duality: Enlightenment!

Sudden or not? It’s
An old argument, but don’t
All coins have two sides?