INITIATION IV: CRUCIFIXION (November 1980 - December 1982): The Eighth State: Brahman Consciousness
Part III (December 1981 - June 1982)
Annie's adultery was especially galling to me because I too had had plenty of temptations --- several luscious women, customers at 'Neath the Elms, had unsubtly indicated their availability --- but I kept my vows. Annie didn't. In all fairness, I must say I was not an easy man to live with. While I was bright, empathic and compassionate, doing everything I could to raise Annie's self-esteem, I was also addicted to the role of teacher/counselor. I was glib, arrogant, impatient, and something of a perfectionist. I was miserly in my asceticism; I had been known to place a light-bulb under the thermostat on cold winter days to save on heating oil. Annie and I had separate accounts and I did not attempt to control her spending, but was very tight with mine. While this meant I always had money saved to pay for our long courses that came up, I nonetheless begrudged every penny spent on pleasure and almost never went to the movies or to dine out. I was not especially romantic, while before our marriage Annie had been wooed and loved by literally hundreds of men, and was used to a lot of attention.
Finally around my birthday in March she asked me to leave, so she could explore the other relationship without distraction, as she told me later. I intuited the reason; considered us divorced; and began opening my vision to my next mate. I got a vision of a young, blonde-haired, green-blue-eyed woman, and knew our souls had agreed to meet. This was small consolation --- I wanted to burn out everything but enlightenment, once and for all. Bit by bit, everything else had been stripped away. I applied for a year-long course in Fairfield, Iowa.
The Movement kept dragging its heels on whether I would be accepted on CCP --- I forget what the acronym stands for --- perhaps "Creating Coherence Program" --- but it was a combination work-residence course, where for a hundred dollars a month and several hours' work on staff at M.I.U. a day, one could have room, board, do rounds of extra meditation, and find a real, part-time job somewhere to pay for it. By May, I simply decided to go out there, live in town, and do the extra meditations on my own if they wouldn't let me join the course. I preferred to be on the course, but I really wasn't looking to the Movement as my sole source of salvation any more.
When I got to Fairfield, I was suffering acutely --- I had always taken pride in my marriage, and now it was a wreck. Now, I was in a small, flat, smug town of complete strangers --- and an ugly town it seemed, too, in the midst of May mud-season --- with no distractions from my own emptiness. But when I showed up at the course administrators' office in person, they found a place for me on campus at M.I.U. almost immediately. The universe is funny; my room-mate Ken was a nice guy who had known my brother John when they were on staff together at M.I.U., and who himself was in agony over being dumped by his own girlfriend. Needless to say, the atmosphere in our monastic little dorm-room was not overly exuberant. He played the radio a lot; Toto's hit "Rosanna" will always remind me of those long nights of misery. Before long Ken left, and I had a private room.
Despite my inward sufferings, I was good at maintaining cheer, and I was quickly "promoted" from slicing vegetables in one of M.I.U.'s kitchens to the far more grueling job of scrubbing cookware amidst blindingly hot steam in the pot-room out back. It was a back-handed compliment; only the strongest, most enlightened course-participants worked here --- mostly Governors and men from Purusha, the TM version of Brahmacharyan celibate monks. As May crept into June, I began to lose quite a bit of weight in this two-hour daily sauna!
At the same time, I got a paying-job at the ice-cream counter of Golden Glow, a health-food store a few blocks away. I had several applications pending for full-time M.I.U. staff positions: one in the printing-press, and one in the T.V. studio. I brought the latest scrimshaw I was working on --- an antique elephant's tusk, which I had ornately covered with engravings of 19th-century ships, houses, and women in a rigorously framed composition --- to the interviews as my portfolio. In June I was offered a job managing M.I.U.'s new Unity Art Gallery, to substitute for my hours in the pot-room. I accepted with alacrity, and opened and ran the art gallery for two hours a day. I continued to work at the Golden Glow, which I had come to enjoy very much, turning down both full-time staff positions --- press and studio --- when they were eventually offered to me. By now, I had sniffed out the politics of M.I.U. and didn't want to be at their mercy in a full-time staff position.
My co-workers at Golden Glow --- Peter M., Mary, Kelly --- were fantastic people --- most slightly younger than I, who was now 26. All deeply committed to the spiritual path, they also knew how to have fun. They introduced me to new music by bands like The Talking Heads, The Police, and Men at Work. As soon as we closed the doors for the night at 10:00 p.m., we would dance around the store, sweeping the floors to the riotous noise of "Burning Down the House" and "Down Under." After we finished cleaning up, we often went out dancing with other friends, or skinny-dipping in cornfield ponds or in the Reservoir out by Quentin Wood's house. This was a whole new world to me! I was by now consistently missing the unofficial course bed-time of 10:00 p.m., often by two or three hours; for the very first time (except in India), I was OTP -- "Off the Program." I was still practicing my extra rounds of meditation, and I was filled with energy --- I did not miss the sleep.
Several of the people I met through the store would remain very important in my life. One was John C., a darkly handsome Celt who sold wheat-grass juice and sprouted-wheat loaves to Golden Glow. He was bright and funny, a talented writer and story-teller, and a passionate seeker of the Divine. He introduced me to his lover Vicki, also darkly beautiful, a sweet and wise woman who had a genius for mathematics and flower-arranging. We all became good friends, and our paths would intertwine ever afterwards.
One of my ice-cream customers was Kerry M., the beautiful blonde of my vision, though I had forgotten it and did not recognize her. Indeed, I was immediately attracted to her vitality and green-eyed beauty, but my first impression of her was one of tremendous arrogance. She was only 18, and an Aquarius, and my alarm bells went off ---"stay away from this one!" She set her sights on me, though, and from dancing and skinny-dipping we were soon staying up all night, talking madly --- then kissing, then more. I was completely wired with energy by now, and did not sleep at all for some time! Once while I was at work, Kerry and a female friend snuck into my room --- no women were allowed in our dorm --- and sprinkled rose-petals all over my bed. When I finally tiptoed into my room around midnight, my heart almost leapt out of my throat. Who knew I was Off the Program? What were they trying to tell me? I quickly surmised it must be Kerry, but I noted my inner flash of fear and paranoia with some disquiet.
One night around midnight, Kerry and I were gamboling around the trees on the M.I.U. campus, pretending to be deer, when I flung up my hand to imitate stag's horns and my wedding ring flew off my finger, something it had never done before. We searched the dark lawn for a long time, but never found it. The symbolism of the event was not lost on me. Was my marriage now truly over?
Now during this time, I had been speaking on the phone rather frequently with Annie, and she finally told me all. She had now been dumped by her boyfriend, who only had a thing, it turned out, for married women. I must confess I felt a trace of evil glee. When I told her of my new love, she reacted in shock --- she had expected me to stay safely celibate while she explored her sexual feelings for this other man. Now, unbeknownst to me, she began telling my relatives at home that I had abandoned her for another woman, conveniently omitting the fact that she had asked for the separation to indulge in infidelity first. My maternal grandmother, especially, was very sympathetic with her.
I felt very distant from my old life in the East --- almost as if I had died and been reborn. The most amazing thing was, Kerry and her mother Nancy belonged to a small group of seekers who were busily exploring other paths as well as TM --- they believed in "prosperity-consciousness," and worked with affirmations: Nancy, who was a Libra, had signs like "TRUST" and "THERE IS ONLY GOOD" strategically placed around her house. They had studied T.I.C., the Teachings of the Inner Christ, and had learned to contact their inner guides. They were interested in psychic phenomena, and regularly went to "channelers" in Iowa City. Rather skeptically, I listened to a tape by one such "semi-trance" channeler --- his name was Ron Scholastico --- and I was galvanized. As the voice came out of the machine, my spine again felt the powerful alignment of "no space," as when I fused with my Solar Angel. I had to explore this! The next time Kerry and her mother went to see him, I came along, and Kerry and I shared a session with Ron.
