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Awake In The Dream
Awake In The Dream:
An Account of the Evolution Revolution
I had thought that for this story to be told there would have to be some material success - but I realize it's otherwise. The fact that I have nothing and am content is much more important. Anybody can be satisfied with success and wealth. Who can be happy without those things we have been programmed to believe we need?
I am outside the box and I feel beautiful. I have no money and I feel rich. I'm not bound by conventional standards and restraints. I don't require a particular structure to feel safe or secure. I need not possess, nor can I be possessed. I care not for name or fame – they rise and fall like the tide. I can enjoy without being attached to the enjoyment. And bear distress without being resistent to the distress. I don’t require another to love me; I have discovered the Love within – my true nature. What’s left? Just what is, in any given moment. I am open and available. I respond to Life as It presents Itself to me. I judge not, as I know all of creation is a manifestation of the Only One, and if I am judged it matters not. As one Master says: "What does it matter if the petty-minded slight noble souls? Does the mighty elephant lose its grandeur when dogs bark?"
Whether or not the state I have arrived at conforms to any particular definition of enlightenment or liberation is of no consequence to me. While I possess less than many, I have more than most. In being nothing, I have become everything. Consciousness is the key.
I have no more fear. I am free.
How did I get here? That's the story…
Although I was brought up well, appreciate beauty, and enjoy fine things, I wasn’t especially driven to achieve on the material plane, as once I became aware of the ‘spiritual path’ I considered the development of spiritual consciousness to be my essential work; so through the years I have done more or less whatever presented itself to me, always somehow getting by, engaging in a wide range of activities and experiencing at least three or four different sides of the tracks, from first class to no class.
Among other things, I’ve worked as a Head Start assistant, bank teller, the ubiquitous waitress, freelance photographer and journalist, organic wine salesman, natural food store cashier, carpenter’s assistant and private caterer. I’ve been an organic gardener in Connecticut and a live-in housekeeper in Beverly Hills. I’ve driven a taxi in NYC and a tractor in Israel. In Montana, as a volunteer, I organized weekly Art and Music shows, and designed and executed a traffic safety and courtesy campaign. And I sold Japanese yo-yos with my then nine-year-old son on the street in Boulogne, France one Christmas season until we had enough money for dinner each night. I’ve slept in a sleeping bag on a marble floor in the Plaka in Athens, wrapped in a blanket in a hammock in the rain on the island of Kauai, and in suites at the Peninsula Hotel, Hong Kong and the Oberoi in New Delhi. I know what it is to be comfortable, to have plenty, and to have nothing. I know what it is to have to ask for food every time you’re hungry, to ask for shelter from the cold at night, and to sleep on a couch in a public library during the day, because you’re tired and have nowhere else to go. And I know what it is to have a body so weakened by disease that you can barely get up to use the bathroom, have no appetite or even strength to eat, and can only lie in bed, helpless. I know what it is to be so broken that if some miracle doesn’t save you, you have nothing to live for - the end of the rope.
“Awake in the Dream is a story that will bring hope and encouragement
to those countless multitudes who are struggling to find meaning
in a world that tells them they have to look Barbie and be like Batman.”
Ima Celebrity, author of Something or Other
Introduction
All I am able to tell is from the experience I’ve had and the inspiration that comes to me. I haven’t ever had a model of exactly what I imagined myself to be - Jesus was in the mix, and so was Mary. Gandhi, Radha/Krishna, Siva/Shakti, Buddha, an Empress of China, an aboriginal woman, Turiyasangitananda, Bugsy Malone, Superman, and Sheena, Queen of the Jungle.
*
Transform yourself. Do what you would Be. Always follow your Heart. Let the longing guide you, it will bring you Home. Stay pure. Stay true. Stay focused. You will arrive at the place your Heart desires.*
“After a while,” Maharaj Ji said, “the journey is the destination.”
*
The Love in our Hearts is what lasts.
The Love in our Hearts is what shows.
The Love in our Hearts is what we demonstrate
with our every work, word, and thought.
The Love in our Heart is what we demonstrate with our Life.
***
The Love in our Hearts is what lasts.
The Love in our Hearts is what shows.
The Love in our Hearts is what we demonstrate
with our every work, word, and thought.
The Love in our Heart is what we demonstrate with our Life.
***
What do I deem of import in fifty-four years of ‘Life’? At one level, there are those interested in the minutiae: that my first memory is as a babe in arms in the rumble seat of a car; that having an intimate relationship with a man less than half my age was the most natural thing in the world, because even at forty-nine, I still felt nineteen. But how important is it in the big picture, that as a pre-school child I would wander safely around my Bronx neighborhood, maybe stopping at the corner candy store for a few inches of ‘dots’, a box of ‘brown babies’, or a marshmallow ‘peanut’? Or that Sundays at our house were a ritual of the inches thick New York Times, my mother doing the crossword in pen, with bakery rolls and danish, cream cheese and lox, eaten leisurely after a late rising? That outings for me were to a private box behind home plate at Yankee Stadium when Mantle and Maris were the home-run kings; upstate to the country estate of my father’s employer where I played a slot machine with the key to the coin box in my hand and learned to ride on thoroughbred horses; or strolls around the Bronx Botanical Gardens - the hothouses a special delight, with the rich, moist scent of one as mysterious and comfortable as the arid, stark environment of another? That happiness was my father’s hand holding mine - safe, secure, Loving - and that the world as I knew it came to an end one weekend morning after a sleepover at a girlfriend’s with a phone call from my mother saying, “Your father is dead”. Does it matter that he died of lung cancer after a few months of wasting away, rather than suddenly of a stroke or in a plane crash? No. Dead is dead. That single event, more than any other - the source of the Love I knew gone, feeling abandoned and alone - shaped the course of my Life. And we, human beings of planet Earth, in the arbitrarily assigned twenty-first century, laughingly, naively, arrogantly, ignorantly, continually, delude ourselves into thinking that we are in ‘control’. That we have ‘free will’. That we can somehow, by intention or force, seduction or wealth, produce the results we desire. Please.
At another level, none of it matters. The only thing that matters is the thread upon which the different components of this personal drama were strung, creating the garland called the ‘Life’ of - whatever she calls herself right now. The thread of ‘perseverance furthers’, of longing for God, of no compromise, of whatever it takes, of a ‘Date with Destiny’, of “I am not my hair”, of asanas, mantra, bhajan, satsang, meditation…
But I also know that while a tapestry composed of countless intricate details, when moth-eaten, still provides enough of the picture for the imagination to fill in the gaps, when we are speaking of a human ‘Life’, nothing can be taken for granted, anything is possible - and the most outrageous, incongruous and unexpected conglomeration of experiences may occur as the background for the play of any given persona. And while the particulars of this specific Life may in no wise resemble the particulars of another, or may in fact parallel another to some degree - the recipe and the apparent product are in every case completely unique - until we reach the goal where it all converges.
Nonetheless, the purpose of this particular rendering is to share the trials and tribulations, the peaks and the valleys, the weaknesses and strengths, the challenges and opportunities of my roller coaster ride, at least some of which may be relatable - to demonstrate that evolution is inevitable and that it is possible to go through anything that Life may throw (up) in our way, no matter how devastating it may seem at the time, and come out the other end transformed.
My intent is to give you enough of the background to make the drama preceding the denouement meaningful. So please forgive my omissions, let go of your curiosity, and practice accepting ‘what is’.
Hopefully, by reading this account, there will occur a rending of the fabric of Illusion we have allowed ourselves to be blinded by, and a shedding of sufficient Light to reveal a modicum of Truth to those with the eyes to see, and the ears to hear. So be it.
***
PART ONE
Prelude
Dedicated
to the One
in the Form of the Mother
She of Open Heart
PART ONE
Prelude
Dedicated
to the One
in the Form of the Mother
She of Open Heart
What is the story I am telling about myself? It’s the story of my stroll along the Path of Love - a story filled with tragedy, comedy, adventure and romance, pathos, agony, ecstasy and joy. The journey of the one now called Sahara, on the road to Oneness.
Chapter
Background
Background
You cannot get the juice of a sugarcane without crushing it. You cannot enhance the brilliance of a diamond without cutting it and making many facets. The body is like a sugarcane stalk. It is only when it goes through various difficulties that you can experience the sweet bliss of self-realization. That sweetness is Divinity Itself.
March ’98/Sedona
I am killing myself slowly. I’m severely depressed, my lower back has gone out and I’m having dizzy spells now. The fact of the matter is I would rather die than work at some minimum wage job that is neither inspiring nor creative, merely in order to survive. What kind of life is that? Not a life I am willing to live in this, my fifty-first year. Existence for the mere sake of existence? Days full of drudgery, being a drone in someone else’s hive is not my idea of a good time, and so, as much as I sometimes feel that I would like to end it all quickly, I am killing myself slowly, day by day.
*
If we have a natural disaster of catastrophic proportions in our world, it is because we have not advanced enough for an organic social revolution, and require crude events to shock us into awareness. If I have a catastrophic disaster in my Life, is it because I require a crude event to shock me into awareness?I’ve been living without a residence since September 1994. Almost three and a half years. Mostly, I’ve been on the street in Sedona, Arizona, with trips out to Montana, Washington, California and Hawaii. Sedona, in case you don’t know of it, is a high desert town of red rocks, vortices or vortexes - depending upon your inclination - practitioners and/or adherents of most of the healing modalities known to humankind, and believers in you name it/we got it.
Some people call this condition ‘homeless’. Personally, I have never considered myself to be homeless except in the moments of greatest despair. Personally, I consider myself to be an intelligent, widely experienced, talented and gifted individual, firmly bumbling along the spiritual path, and I can’t figure out exactly how I got in this situation.
***
from:
Chapter
Ancient History, cont’d.
from:
Chapter
Ancient History, cont’d.
Nineteen ninety-four was a momentous year. But then momentous years in my life were not rare. Still, nineteen ninety-four stood out. It began with cutting my long permed hair to within an inch of my scalp.
I’ll never forget the look on my son’s face when he came home from school and saw me: “My life will never be the same,” he said, shocked.
“Your life,” I replied, “it’s my hair. Your life will be fine.”
I did five weeks of fasting and cleansing (a practice I’ve enjoyed most years in the spring and/or fall), and along with the exercise and stretching I was doing regularly, it brought my body into a state of excellent health. I was fit, I felt good, and I even started to feel beautiful for the first time in my life.
When my son told me that spring, his junior year of high school, that he wanted to move out of our apartment and live on his own, I couldn’t protest. I didn’t want to keep him if he didn’t want to stay. He had been working part-time since his arrival in town three years before at the age of fourteen, contributing financially to the household, and demonstrating his impressive sense of responsibility. As time passed, he went from paperboy to waiter, earning substantial income. So the move was planned for the summer.
Somewhat stunned, uncertain if I was prepared for this separation, I took stock of the situation. The reason I had weathered the long and difficult Montana winters was because I promised myself I would give my son his four high school years in one location, and was determined to see that through. But if he was living on his own, did that mean I still needed to be here? When I asked him if he’d mind my leaving the state, his reply was, “Go for it, Mom.”
Liberated, I planned my departure for the fall, and cast about to find the next location for the outrageous script of my so-called life. I knew what I thought I wanted: warm climate, small town where I could get involved, preferably with a university for culture and hopefully, an enlightened consciousness.
My friend Marilyn Lily bought one of a pair of six-foot angels I had constructed over the past winter in my living room, in anticipation of a gallery she had intended to open called “Angels on Horseback” featuring works dedicated to the Mother energy. The gallery had been kiboshed by cosmic design, and she too was leaving Bozeman, heading for Santa Fe. This eleven hundred dollars, a generous sum, would provide my grubstake.
The summer was difficult, with the absence of my son, (the primary - read only - source of Love in my life), residing like a black hole both in the apartment and in my Heart. I had narrowed my choice of destination to a Greek Island or Arizona, and when Greece came up tails, Arizona was ‘it’.
I became excited about moving into a new life experience, and didn’t think twice about my ability to support myself. I’d been doing it this long, hadn’t I, and to
ok it for granted. Little did I know exactly what was waiting for me around the corner.Through the summer, I divested myself of as many belongings as I could, and when it came time to leave at the end of September, I stored the rest with a friend and departed quite optimistically, driving my Nissan Maxima loaded to the gills, headed for a new life in a milder climate. I imagined a town quite like Bozeman: a small population with a college or university surrounded by great natural beauty and laid out comfortably for transport by bicycle. The basic difference would be that I wouldn’t have to endure eight or nine months of cold weather annually.
Before leaving, I went shopping, acquiring some essentials and a few treats for my imagined new life. Inspired, I bought a NO FEAR baseball cap for my son, and for myself, a celadon green cotton sweatshirt with that same logo in a matching color boldly embroidered across the chest - a reminder and talisman as I headed once again, blindly, into the unknown…
***
PART TWO
Sedona - OhmyGod!
Dedicated
to the
Art of Surrender
Chapter
A Gift Of Song
PART TWO
Sedona - OhmyGod!
Dedicated
to the
Art of Surrender
Chapter
A Gift Of Song
When you have malaria, you take a bitter quinine mixture - medicine for your ailment. When adversity confronts you, treat it as a kind of medicine for your own good. Gold has to be melted and hammered to make it into jewelry; a diamond is cut to make it more brilliant. Likewise, troubles in Life serve to refine a person. Love should enable you to welcome even hardships as Divine Gifts meant for your good.
The route I planned took me to Salt Lake City, Lake Tahoe, Petaluma, Santa Cruz, Malibu and Phoenix, visiting friends along the way, spending most of the eleven hundred dollars I had started out with.
After five weeks on the road, I leave Phoenix driving north. My friend’s boyfriend has just pulled a loose tooth out of the front of my mouth with a pair of pliers. I’ve spent the past six days in Phoenix visiting and doing research at the library on small towns around the state, and I’m heading for the first area I’ll check out: the Verde Valley. I like living in the desert, but a ‘green valley’ sounds pretty good. Besides, when I tossed the coin it came up ‘heads’.
The highway out of town is two lanes in each direction, sparsely traveled once one gets a few miles out of the city. The scenery is of unrelieved desert, with only an occasional saguaro cactus to break the monotony. My car has been exhibiting some strange symptoms, and I’m on ‘cruise control’ at the speed limit, 65mph. The tape deck is silent, and my body is completely relaxed, with my neck resting comfortably on the headrest. I’m about a third of the way into the two-hour drive when I hear a voice, quite clearly and distinctly say out loud, “You have a date with Destiny.” Startled out of the mellow state I had been enjoying, I notice that there isn’t a single car in sight, and no midget is stowed away in the back seat, crammed among the belongings, which are piled almost to the ceiling. But there’s no mistaking what I heard, and I can replay it with absolute clarity in my head: “You have a date with Destiny.”
“Well, okay,” I say to myself, (always ready with a clever riposte when confronted by the paranormal), and continue, quite daunted, toward my destination.
***
Camp Verde is depressing, Cottonwood disappointing, and Jerome feels like a black hole. I am not at all attracted to settling in Sedona. From what I have heard, it is a little too ‘la-la’ even for me: vortices, psychics, medicine wheels and sweat baths - a veritable new age Disneyland. But it’s getting late and there’s something definitely wrong with my car, so by default I arrive in Sedona after dark and go directly to the Heartline Café, where my friend Rick, recently transplanted from Bozeman, is employed.I spend a couple of hours at the bar, sipping Perrier and kibitzing with the bartender and a few locals while Rick finishes his shift. Leaving the restaurant, we drive to the other end of town, and down a narrow road to the house where he is renting a room. I make up a bed on the floor and we stay up ‘til the early hours while he tells me about the local scene and cast of characters. In spite of my misgivings it sounds magical, and I feel open to discovering what awaits me.
The next morning, Sunday, we drive in tandem (he in his yellow Mustang convertible with the top down, me in my Maxima, packed to the gills) to the current local hangout, a coffee shop on the main and only road through town. When I get out of the car, I take one look around at the massive rosy-colored rocks dominating the view, and immediately feel the awesome power and majesty that is Sedona - knowing in my bones that something portentous is meant to happen to me here. Next thing I know, I’m opening my mouth, and firmly planting both feet inside:
“Whatever it takes,” I say, little knowing that those three words and the willingness behind them were sealing my fate as in stone. Better I had bitten my tongue.
Thus began the four most excruciating years of my Life…
***
At the end of May, I drove north for my son’s high school graduation. About four or five hours along, on the highway which runs like a ribbon through Utah, I was cruising at 75mph when suddenly, with no warning at all, I entered a torrential downpour. The next thing I knew I was hydroplaning, then spinning like a top down the highway until suddenly the car was flying at speed backward in the same direction I had been going. Time stood still. I felt no panic, just the hyper-awareness one experiences in such circumstances. I was completely relaxed, my hands resting lightly on the wheel while the car was moving rapidly backward down the highway, and realizing that I was heading trunk first for the embankment which dips about six feet before leveling out between the north- and southbound lanes, I calmly awaited my fate. In the next moment, it felt like two giant hands gently caught the backward moving vehicle and carefully turned it around, setting it in the right direction, and once again I was driving down the highway in the now diminishing rain. I looked around. Far in front of me I saw a couple of cars, and far behind me there was another. “Thank You, Lord,” I said in my heart, “I’ll be more careful in the future.”
***
*
At the beginning of February ’96, having been well conditioned by the trials and tribulations I had undergone since landing in Sedona, (in the same way that meat is conditioned or ‘tenderized’ by beating with a mallet), a certain Baba entered my Life suddenly, unexpectedly and certainly uninvited. First as a very small, unusually shaped photograph discovered under a rock at the heart of a Medicine Wheel, then by ‘signs and wonders’ at significant moments, leaving no doubt of the source. I was more skeptical than enchanted, however, and treated him more like an unwanted interloper than an omnipotent Avatar, not having a clue to his Reality at the time. Being reluctant to engage with what I thought was simply another Indian guru, having had two less than ultimately satisfying relationships in the past, I had no desire to once again dedicate my Life in order to reach my goal, only to be disappointed in the home stretch. So I kept him at arms’ length, essentially saying, “Show me what you got.”*
One Friday night shortly thereafter, I was hanging out at the health food store when Zon-o-ray saw me and came over. “We’re having a workshop at our place tomorrow,” she said, “Jerry is doing a seminar on clearing the emotional body.”
I laughed and replied, “Just what I need! My emotional body could use a good clearing.”
Jerry was someone whose work she had mentioned to me before. She and her partner had done various ‘processes’ with him, and felt that he had facilitated powerful movement in their lives. They honored his ability to provoke transformation. On the strength of this, I was open.
The next day I was there with bells on. Hot to trot. Ready to clear my emotional body with a vengeance: open up, let go, clear out, start fresh. The work was amazing. Powerful. Liberating. And it opened a crack in the dam through which an entire lifetime of emotional debris started pouring like a flood.
The three days that followed were a nightmare. I processed non-stop. Fortunately, my friend Danielle had given me her place to stay in while she and her boyfriend went to Quartzite for the annual rock and mineral show, so I had a bed to sleep in, a bath to soak in and the ability to prepare hot food at will - valuable support for what I was going through.
Realizing that I needed more help than I was getting, and that I wanted to go to yet another level with this ‘clearing’ business, I called and arranged for a private session with Jerry, who was willing to accommodate my reduced circumstances. Who knew that this step would take me on a path unimagined in my wildest dreams?
We went out on the land to do the work, hiking a short way to a spot in an unfrequented area of a nearby canyon. The session took most of the day. We began with a ceremony, freely borrowing from various sacred traditions, and I was moved into an altered state. At times Jerry would massage different parts of my body, releasing energy that had been stuck for decades, and I remember howling like a banshee, the demons of anguish and despair, anger and fear, rushing out of me like a cataract.
At one point, he asked me to write my name, handing me a pen and a pad of paper. In that moment, feeling totally removed from any previous identity I might have had, having changed my name four times already in the course of my adult life - whenever I felt the energy had shifted and required a new expression - I had absolutely no clue what my name was.
When I told him this, he said, “Okay, we’ll call you ‘Baby Doe’, and when you’re reborn, nine hours from now, you’ll know your new name.”
Taking ‘Baby Doe’ to mean a young deer, I readily agreed.
We then went through the final ceremony: a spiritual rededication of my Life to its Highest Purpose. I expressed the desire for three things: a Heart full of Love, the experience of Oneness, and planetary Service.
At the conclusion of the ceremony, Jerry said to me, “Now it’s time for you to ask for a boon.”
“What do you mean?” I said to him, “I just asked for everything I wanted.”
“No,” he told me, “this is something special, you must ask for a Gift.”
I had no idea what to ask for, and time stood still until from out my mouth came the words, “I’d like to be able to sing”.
Thus I sealed a fate I had no idea was mine - and even less of an idea where it would lead me…
We came back into town close to sunset, and I went to sleep early, completely spent. In the middle of the night I found myself in a state of semi-consciousness, not fully asleep, yet not exactly awake. I then experienced myself in my etheric body out in space in the vicinity of Sirius, the Dog Star. Soon there appeared another being that ‘introduced’ itself to me. It had no form, but felt ‘feminine’, and the field it occupied was a soft, deep blue edged with gold. The frequency of energy radiating from this being was warm, Loving, and very powerful. Suddenly I felt those same frequencies resonating within me, the way a crystal glass will vibrate to the sound of a note being struck on a tuning fork - and then I was back in my body on the bed, with the word Sahara echoing in my ear.
I slept like a log the rest of the night, and when I woke up in the morning, my forty-ninth birthday, I realized that I had received another level of initiation - that I now embodied that frequency of energy, and my name was Sahara.
*
The songs started coming a few weeks later. It was my daily practice to rise before dawn and greet the Sun in ceremony at a Medicine Wheel - a way to start the day acknowledging the sacredness of all Life and my intention to be One with That. On this particular morning, I was at Rachel’s Knoll, and found myself somewhere I hadn’t been before. I noticed the Peace Pole* that had been planted sometime previously, about which I had a bad attitude: thinking that as a man-made object, it had no business here, even if it was promoting Peace.*(Peace Poles are four-sided poles planted by an organization based in Japan, bearing the slogan: May peace prevail on Earth in different languages on each of its faces.)
Now it attracted me and I walked around it, examining the inscriptions. On the eastern face I observed that the saying was written in Aramaic, but seemed to have been inscribed in mirror-writing. Nonetheless, being familiar with the Hebrew language, I recognized the word shalom, peace.
Making my way to the Medicine Wheel, I performed my usual practice, circling the Wheel in prayer and entering its Heart at the conclusion, facing the just rising sun in the east. The next thing I knew, I was singing, in Hebrew, three words, over and over like variations on a theme: Nah’aseh shalom ba’adamah, which loosely translated means, ‘We shall establish Peace on Earth’. Both the sound that came out of my mouth, and the sensations that flowed through my body, were astounding to me, and I realized, completely awestruck, that my ‘boon’ had arrived. Ohmygoodness. I could sing!
*
Since that time the songs have been coming, arising spontaneously from within me. They are inspired by my incessant yearning for a merging with my own Higher Self, for Love without end, and further provoked for a period of time by my attractions to and infatuations with a series of very young men. At first the songs came while I was in the Wheel after ceremony at sunrise. Later, they could come anywhere, at any time. My Life became like an old-fashioned musical - I would break into song at the drop of a phrase, or the sight of a bird, or the moon. Feeling a song arising within me, like bubbles in champagne, and opening my book and picking up a pen, I would record the lyrics as they came, watching my hand write the words on the page as I listened to the melody coming out of my mouth. Then I would sing it over and over, until I felt that it was programmed inside me, available for retrieval on demand.*
Right from the beginning, I knew I was experiencing something phenomenal - after all, I was someone who lip-synched the words to Happy Birthday because the sound coming out of my mouth was so awful. Now, these amazing songs were coming through me - not only did they sound good, the feeling was incredible: like a current of Love coursing through me, body and soul. I could feel the music carrying me, feel the power of it, and knew the impact it would someday have…I also knew, very clearly, that although I had been gifted as the bearer, I was merely the instrument of a Will much greater than my own, and it would be that Will, and no puny effort I might make, that would bring the songs to their fruition - and that only in the appropriate season.
Still, I had no idea of the road I would have to travel to get there, and like natural childbirth, the labor has at times been almost intolerable. Nevertheless, every moment of pain is worthwhile when it produces the phenomenal Gift of Love that is a child, or a song.
Nor had I any idea of the changes I would have to undergo in order to be worthy of bringing this message, these songs, to the world. The transformation necessary in order to do this service has required a humbling of such an extreme nature, that I felt death embracing me on more than one occasion, and often desired to end the suffering that I felt I couldn’t bear…
***
