A STORY

Here is what happened to me. A story. I tell it as it comes to me. I was born. I grew. I attended school. I got married. I got a job. In each of my jobs I learned a bit then wanted to do something else. This continued through about six jobs. In a couple of the jobs I was my own boss. I tired of me as a boss as easily as I tired of the others. I was 39 and very miserable by this time. My wife and I  had divorced after two children were born and the eldest was 5 years old and the youngest still a baby. Living as a divorced man with children and another job I burned the candle at both ends you might say as long as I could until I was really running on fumes, My life seemed to have no direction, like a sailor without a compass lost at sea might feel. I even considered suicide. 

One day I stood by a lake as this question formed inside me “If you are there, please help me.  Send to me a mentor. Somebody who can understand me.” It struck me as odd that I used the term “mentor” for it was alien to me and was a word from my ex-wife’s line of work. But it came to me at that very moment. The feeling was that I could really use a friend who was as crazy as me, or had been, as inept at life as I was. And at that moment I became aware of a man on a bicycle peddling toward me. That man stopped because he and I recognized each other from having attended the same workshops in the past for the purpose of quitting the habit of smoking cigarettes. Both of us had been smoke free for several years. We talked. Actually I am certain I did most of the babbling while my friend, named Buddy, listened. When he had heard enough he invited me to attend a meeting with him. I agreed without any description of the nature of the meeting we were to attend. I did not care so long as Buddy was going I wanted to go. The meeting turned out to be a group of drunks from Alcoholics Anonymous. 

I attended meetings for several months where I was overwhelmed with a large number of friends, mentors, who knew and understood me very well indeed. My time with them led me to investigate another world. The world within me is what I mean. To begin to understand me. I am pursuing that knowledge right up to this moment for very many years.

I want only to tell at this time that I became acquainted with a teacher who agreed to teach me how to meditate. He called what he teaches “The Knowledge of oneself” and said it was different from what most call “meditation”. There were some techniques. We were to pay attention to the fact we happen to be alive through the techniques is all I will say. I found it very difficult to do them for even a half hour. It was a struggle. I felt I was doing something wrong. Or there might be something wrong with me. Then the teacher offered to all his students a second chance to come to a review of the directions he gave and I attended. At this time what I heard him say that alters the whole affair for me was this: “These techniques I suggest are very simple. You were fully capable of doing them when you were an infant. No effort at all is required. If you are experiencing difficulty you are causing it.” From that moment until now I have experienced the meditation with ease and comfort. It began for me a lifelong friendship with something back of life that is immense. The fact of life. There is no effort at all to my spending time that way everyday. That concludes the story. It is just a story. There is no hidden meaning. If the subject interests you check it out for yourself.