Be here now
I have the book, Be Here Now by Ram Dass by my bed. I keep opening it to a random page. Kind of like a divination of sorts.
I am often very past focused. Perhaps to a detriment. I first encountered this book in a somewhat superficial way in college. I was spending lots of afternoons in the room of my neighbor across the hall getting high . We would pass the book around pondering the illustrations. I remember paging through it very fast , getting little bits. Though nowhere near the level that Richard Alpert described, I was using drugs in the same way that year to break down my conditioning. After about a year I broke myself down enough to need professional help on my journey. Once I was mentally back on the straight and narrow, I faced the challenge of a physical illness that wore me down to the point that I thought I was going to die. After my surgeries I spent several days in a trancelike state. A friend brought me the books " The Kin of Ata are waiting for you" and True Hallucinations" by Terence Mc Kenna. In my hospital room in Germany, I would sleep for hours dreaming through the vast reaches of these books. The nurse woke me up and I had just a thin grip of consciousness on the cold white room with tall windows. I stayed there for weeks. My friend Hini snuck me out into the yard to play frisbee and eat Langnese ice cream. I would just lope along after the frisbee but not catch because of my chest bandage. It was almost Easter. When they cut the plaster off it was like shedding a cocoon. A hard shell with blood and salves underneath. With a new body covered in cuts and bruises from the painful process of rebirth.
I'm being right now with this same sense of the body as a convenient illusion . I'm trying to break another cocoon of sorts. Every page of Be Here Now reminds me how I err in being future focused and goal oriented to the exclusion of the present. I feel like I'm trying to create something new. Right now.
I am often very past focused. Perhaps to a detriment. I first encountered this book in a somewhat superficial way in college. I was spending lots of afternoons in the room of my neighbor across the hall getting high . We would pass the book around pondering the illustrations. I remember paging through it very fast , getting little bits. Though nowhere near the level that Richard Alpert described, I was using drugs in the same way that year to break down my conditioning. After about a year I broke myself down enough to need professional help on my journey. Once I was mentally back on the straight and narrow, I faced the challenge of a physical illness that wore me down to the point that I thought I was going to die. After my surgeries I spent several days in a trancelike state. A friend brought me the books " The Kin of Ata are waiting for you" and True Hallucinations" by Terence Mc Kenna. In my hospital room in Germany, I would sleep for hours dreaming through the vast reaches of these books. The nurse woke me up and I had just a thin grip of consciousness on the cold white room with tall windows. I stayed there for weeks. My friend Hini snuck me out into the yard to play frisbee and eat Langnese ice cream. I would just lope along after the frisbee but not catch because of my chest bandage. It was almost Easter. When they cut the plaster off it was like shedding a cocoon. A hard shell with blood and salves underneath. With a new body covered in cuts and bruises from the painful process of rebirth.
I'm being right now with this same sense of the body as a convenient illusion . I'm trying to break another cocoon of sorts. Every page of Be Here Now reminds me how I err in being future focused and goal oriented to the exclusion of the present. I feel like I'm trying to create something new. Right now.