Tantric Coconuts (26 page)

At the first four levels the self, not yet fully capable of monitoring and observing both mind and body, is progressively resuscitated from the ego’s stranglehold. It is only when the student truly grasps that he is not his ego and has another voice or aspect of being that he reaches the fifth level. Angel’s exercises both emptied or weakened Ted’s ego and built or strengthened the voice of his higher self. At the fifth level they began to pay off for Ted.

Reaching the fifth level was not easy for Ted, nor is it easy for anyone else. He did sense that a whole new spiritual dimension was waiting for him, but like a rubber band, he was consistently snapped back to his comfort zone, the fourth level. Angel knew from Ted’s cemetery dream and her own experience that the fifth level can be a painful, anxiety-ridden place to linger. She worked intently to help him move through it.

The morning after their arrival, Angel introduced a whole new set of exercises. At first Ted felt as if he had been sent back to kindergarten. The first exercise involved an easel and colored pencils. She had him draw things upside down. It was a fun exercise to help Ted dislodge his usual way of looking at things.
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Then Angel dug out her guitar and asked Ted to sing
along with her. Angel believed that, just as drawing introduces a different way of seeing, singing allows a different voice to arise. Finally she tossed pen and paper his way and asked him to craft a short story for a six-year-old boy. “If you can’t think of anything else,” she directed, “try something with Argo and bears. Boys like bears. Be silly and just have fun with it.”

These and the other exercises she gave him engaged and empowered the right side of his brain. On the morning of their third day in the park resting and doing the Work, with her confidence restored, Angel decided to try a more advanced exercise to explore and probe levels of consciousness unknown to most of the world. She simply said, “Lie down on the blanket, Ted. We’re going to try something again. This time it will go better.”

Angel began by readying her own mind to enter into a clear, empty place: a place of transrational clarity. Although it certainly does not always work, Angel knew that it is possible for the trained teacher to invite the student to occupy a passenger seat on the teacher’s journey into this space. The first step built on the previous exercises: she must get Ted to stop assessing, categorizing, analyzing, prioritizing, labeling, judging, discriminating, thinking, and knowing. Getting the superego to relax is no easy task, but by now Ted had the ability to at least relax its grip. Angel moved closer to Ted, took his hand in hers, and turned his palm upward. She began to massage his index finger from the palm to the root of his fingernail.

The first time Angel had put Ted in what he described as a trance, while rubbing his finger in the parking lot of the RV park, he had found it very frightening. Understandably, he
was not eager to repeat the exercise. “Just relax and close your eyes,” Angel again instructed. She sat by him quietly for a few more moments until she had fully activated her own awareness or uncluttered being. “What do you feel inside your body, Ted? What comes to mind? Suspend the critical voice. Tell your superego to leave you alone. Don’t judge or analyze; just sense into your body and tell me what arises.”

Ted tried to describe what he felt without assessing it or making it sound logical. “There is an expansion around the left lobe of my lung. There seems to be some energy there. A reverberation. Something is definitely happening, but I’m not sure what.”

“Good, just stay with it. Try to go deeper and be more visual if you can. Instead of pushing it away or ignoring it, see if you can go into it, merge with it. What can you describe to me?”

“It’s still very subtle. I’m not sure if it’s anything.” Ted’s mind made an unprecedented shift. Because he now totally trusted Angel, he did not resist this shift into a seemingly hypnotic state. He continued, “What I am sensing is a movement of some kind of energy. At least in my mind, it has a structure, like a vortex. Now it is expanding and gathering more energy—something is passing through this vortex, in and out like a breath. It’s almost like there has been an incision in my abdomen and I am breathing energy and life through this space and not through my mouth.”

“Can you put your consciousness into that space? Really explore what’s there. See if you can get inside it and look around. Let it take you where it will.”

Ted’s dreamy peacefulness went even deeper, but this time
instead of falling asleep, he tried to follow Angel’s lead. He felt very aware. Awake. “I can imagine this space and I am sensing it growing, and in fact my entire self is expanding rapidly.”

“How big are you now, Ted?”

“I am both expanding and diffusing.” Ted’s breathing was shallow, but his words were strong. “My sense of proportion is slipping away. But …”

“It’s okay. Try to stay with it.”

“I now find myself having expanded into the sky. Where the vortex of my lung was a few seconds ago is now a dark, star-clad universe and I’m just suspended there. I feel like one of those early cosmonauts, spacewalking in eternity. My relative size and proportion are lost—this territory is just too vast, too infinite.”

“Does it feel like infinite space, Ted?”

“Yes, but there is nothing. Absolutely nothing but me and a luminous darkness. Yet I can somehow see.”

“Are you alone?”

“I don’t feel alone.”

“In this space, Ted, are there any sensations available to you?”

“Yes. Tranquility, peace, and something primordial. It is so very empty. I sense the absence of time and all things physical.”

Angel’s voice was calm, soothing, loving, and accepting. “If you could put a word to where you are, what would it be?”

“The boundaries between me and the universe are collapsed. I don’t know where I start and everything else ends. It’s groundless. It’s peaceful nothingness.”

“Can you stay with that feeling?”

Ted teetered back into his normal state of being. He opened his eyes. “It’s gone.”

“Don’t be disappointed, Ted. You’ve just experienced something powerful. It will live in you for the rest of your life. It is very much a part of you. No one can ever take it away. You will travel back to this place again and you’ll get clearer about what you are experiencing.”

“What was it?”

“Don’t try to define it. If you do, it’ll become stale. Just let it be whatever it is.”

Ted sat up from the ground, where he was sprawled out on an old blanket, and looked up at Angel uneasily—wholly unsure if he should be committed or sainted. “What did it mean? Where was I? Was it a good thing?”

She gently encouraged him to lie back down. “Relax. It’s always been there for you. There was just too much chatter and distraction in your mind before. Too much knowing. You’ll come back to this space later. Don’t grasp for it or try to hold on to it. Resist the urge to define it and own it. Just let it be like a dream from which you have now awakened. Your right brain can sense it, intuit it, and embrace it without knowing. Leave it there for now.”

Ted kept his eyes closed and wondered what exactly he had just experienced. Was it God? Did some force or presence indeed underpin his existence? Was this some exhilarating mystical experience or just some bland, empty, and ordinary thing that had somehow eluded his consciousness for the last
thirty years? He didn’t know. He tried to follow Angel’s advice and just accept it without labeling it.

“Just rest here, Ted, for about twenty minutes. With this exercise there are sometimes little aftershocks. I’m going to go to the river and bathe. I’ll be back soon.”

Ted closed his eyes. He wanted to enjoy the peaceful tranquility that had just passed over him, but soon thoughts of Angel bathing crossed his mind. Again he slipped into a near dream state, except he was totally conscious. He was able to
see
Angel in his mind. Her lithe, strong body was perched atop a large boulder. A strong afternoon sun kept her warm as she leaned over and let her long black hair float atop the icy-cold current. Her fingers moved through her hair like a comb, helping the shampoo to dissolve into little bubbles that floated down the river and disappeared. She sat up, bent her right leg and crossed it over the left, and twisted her hair to squeeze out the excess water. When it was dry enough, she stood and looked over the hills like a guardian, with her hands cupped to protect her eyes from the sun’s glare.

Ted was unsure if he was just daydreaming or if he was somehow
seeing
Angel in his own mind. The prospect of some extrasensory experience frightened Ted, so he opened his eyes, got up, and sat in a chair, inviting the return of ordinary consciousness. With nothing else to do while he awaited Angel’s return, and hoping the exercise he had just experienced might make it somehow easier, Ted tried to plunge deeper into the fifth level.

The fifth level, he decided, was the logical extension of
the formula that Father Chuck had introduced to him a week earlier. At some point there had to be a consequence of less self. Angel had told him that when enough of Mr. Digit’s influence has been dismantled, the higher self emerges with its own unique voice. No longer a curious guest lingering on the front porch of his personality, the higher self moves in and becomes a functioning member of the psychic household. He wondered if that was what he had been experiencing the last few days: the growing emergence of a part of himself that he had lost somewhere along the way.

Lately he could almost feel himself cringing at his own Mr. Digit’s ego chatter—a constant barrage of wants, wishes, aversions, feelings, and thoughts. Sometimes it was just laughable. At other times it was depressing to realize that such an unruly little tyrant had been running his life. He used another of Angel’s exercises and tried to focus and welcome into his mind this new kid on the block—a calm, peaceful, and accepting presence.

Ted’s ego was bruised and banged up from all of the Work. The relationship between the egoic or false self and the true self had devolved to the breaking point.
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Around two fifteen,
Ted closed his eyes and let out a long, sweet sigh. Finally, it just happened: the pieces fell into place. Ted woke up.

He knew nothing but experienced everything. He opened his eyes and was able to locate the sensation, truly feel, the presence within himself that was not Mr. Digit. An almost overwhelming sense of love and gratitude flowed over and through him. He recognized that this space within him was the real Ted, his true self. He simply rested there, as if he had finally come home to peace. Still, it was somehow also frightening.

Angel returned from the river and sat down beside him. She sensed his awakening and his fear. “Ted,” she said, “I know your head is probably spinning right now. I warned you that this would be hard. You’ve come much farther along than you realize in a very short period of time. You now recognize clearly that Mr. Digit and his entire worldview are off target. The problem is that his software has been running your life for so long that without it you will feel lost. Even though you sense the presence of your higher self, you have not yet fully attuned to this new operating system within you. It may seem like you’re floating in spiritual no-man’s-land for a while. Trust me: eventually you will be standing on firm ground.”

Ted recognized some of what Angel was saying but did not entirely agree. “I am disoriented, Angel, but I’m also committed to this idea of sifting through the disparate parts of my personality structure and electing a new chairman of the board. I never realized I had this option. It’s exciting.”

“My mother called it something different. She said that alcoholics must turn their lives over to a higher power. I think
she meant that her Mrs. Digit personality was literally killing her and she had to learn to tune in to a different voice in her head. She was saying the same thing you are saying. She wanted to find the voice and turn her life over to it.”

“This higher power still seems like a small, whispering voice that I have to strain to hear.”

“Yes, Ted, our purpose in life, the Work, is to amplify that voice and learn to deeply respect it.”

“It’s always been there, but for some reason I stopped listening to it. I don’t know why I stopped hearing it.”

Angel only smiled. “You’re not alone—we all become very adept at ignoring this aspect of ourselves. The fifth level is about reclaiming your true self. Strange as it may sound, it’s not just alcoholics that struggle to hear the voice of their true self. Deeply religious people struggle at the fifth level just like everyone else. No one is exempt from doing the Work.”

Ted sat there for a moment and tried to let everything they had talked about over the last few days coalesce. He was anxious, so he stood up and began to pace around the fire. He realized that this shifting, waking feeling was vaguely familiar; it was like the shift from studying a foreign language to actually speaking it.

“You know, Angel, the tumbler on a safe is an interesting mechanism. All the parts have to be set at just the right spot. When that happens, the lock clicks and the safe door can swing wide open.” Ted thought a bit more and continued, “Randomly, it would take many lifetimes to come across the right combination of numbers that allows the tumbler to fall
into place. However, you’ve been giving me hints at the combination. It’s quite an amazing feeling to find yourself standing in front of an open door—suddenly aware of the entire contents of the safe. It’s an exhilarating rush. That’s how I feel right now. Everything you told me and what Father Chuck and the other coconuts provided has all come together for me.”

What was in that safe was a grand discovery. Ted felt as if he suddenly understood everything. Not just the levels but everything: the grand big picture of Angel Two Sparrow, Ted Day, and their journey together.

He realized who she was, why she was here with him, and what his vacation was all about. Ted was a smart guy but still, at the end of the day, like the rest of us, he’d had so many nagging little questions. Not one of them bothered him now. He’d had a blinding flash of intuition. Now it was up to him to slow that flash down and put the pieces together. The right side of his brain had given him the answer. Now he needed to learn to use the left side to slowly put the answers into words and explain himself as best he could. “Angel, I could be wrong, but I think I’ve got it.”