There was a group of us that we're all pretty young and hung out together including the friend that greeted me at my first meeting. We all gathered at our friend Rod’s house in his basement. It became our club house of sorts. That basement and Rod became crucial to my spiritual development. I was introduced to a whole world of artistic and spiritual concepts down there.
Rod become my closest friend and introduced me to things that would prove to change my life forever. We experimented with guided meditation the teachings of Ram Dass and Kahlil Gibran. We took the spiritual principles of the twelve step program very serious and explored all the possibilities of the loose definition of Higher Power. It became our starting point. I began to understand the difference between spiritual and religious life. I felt like my new peer group understood and supported me in my own personal search for a spiritual life.
Rod is also a very talented artist, so art was also a big part of what happened in the basement. It was kind of a ashram version of Andy Warhol’s Factory. So in many ways those days in the basement shaped who I became. I have some very fond memories of “wedging” in the basement. Wedging is what we called it when we would stay up all night and drink huge amounts of coffee. Wedging was like our initiation, so if you wanted to enter our secret basement society you had to wedge. Some of the most amazing talks took place at 3 or 4 am. Something about being completely open, to tired to be anything other than who and what you actually are.
Many interesting things began to happen as a result of my time in the basement. The psychic part of my brain somehow got switched on in full force. I wasn’t really sure what was going on at first, it started as a form of empathy. I would walk into a place feeling great and leave feeling the feelings of whoever was around me. Because I had no experience with such things, I simply owned those feelings as my own. I ignored all of this as much as I could for as long as I could. However, our ongoing meditation sessions, overnight discussions and general spiritual shenanigans amplified all of this.
This may be a good time to interject and give an explanation of what I mean by psychic and so give some greater insight into what I was actually experiencing during this time. I believe that what most people consider “psychic” is only a extension of our existing human senses. What I mean by this is quite simple. The human brain filters out all information that it deems unnecessary or that it can’t put into context. This being said, I do believe that certain people are more psychic than others, just like some people can hear or see better than others. However, I also believe that everyone has the potential to develop any of their psychic senses.
Based on this, I have further concluded that most children are naturally psychic because their brains have not figured out how to filter out all the other information. As we get older we learn to ignore this other information. There are many colors, smells, sounds and so forth that our sense organs detect but our brain filters out. What we are presented with is only a fraction of what we actually experience. So psychic senses are simply things that get past our filters. For whatever reason my filters never fully developed. I think the drugs and alcohol worked to do this instead. So when I got sober all of these impressions began to come back to me. The more I played with meditation and sleep deprivation, what filters I did have became weaker and weaker until I was unable to control any of it. That in short was what was happening during this time in the basement. So even though I did not feel the torment from my “Holy War” days, I did feel a bit like I was going crazy. I was very fortunate to be surrounded by such supportive and loving people. They just seemed to love me now matter how crazy I felt on the inside.
Rod was another one of my spiritual teachers, I looked up to him a great deal and felt so naive around him. He introduced me to so many things. It is Rod that truly gave me permission and in fact encouraged me to explore my spirituality. He would tell me Hindu stories and then we would constantly tell each other the things that we learned on the path. With Rod I felt like I had found a fellow traveler. I would go on to have many more, just as important, just as amazing. Rod however was the first person to show me this kind of love, that spiritual love that is born out a mutual love for the universe. I would later come to understand this love had a name, the Buddhists call it Bodhicitta.
We would return to the basement throughout our journeys. It was a safe place for all of us. I think we all grieved when that house was sold and we no longer had this sanctuary. Like exiled mystics we all carried the vibe of it with us like treasures, wishing, wanting, needing to show them to whomever would care to see.
One day I came over to Rod’s and the kitchen was all a buzz. There was strange smells and interesting activities all around. Rod had decided to make tie dyes. So I of course jumped in to help with this endeavor. Having no idea at the time this simple act would lead to yet another strange chapter in this mystic’s saga. Rod would experiment with his tie dyes until he got them perfect learning from some Deadheads and hippies. Then he would pass that on to me. It was this partnership that would move things to another level altogether.
He decided to build a business out of tie dye art and so we started mass producing them. I’m not really sure how I ended up helping him run this business, but I am so glad that I did. We ended up setting up at fairs and traveling around a bit selling shirts. It was one of the most spiritual times in my life. I was beginning to awaken in some pretty major ways. It was during this time that I began to realize that I was good at something. I was good at mysticism and understood it. I also realized I wasn’t at all stupid, I was pretty smart actually and could understand some pretty deep and complex concepts and it was during these hippy days that I realized all this. It was a combination of Rod, our conversations, the travel and the freedom of living in a tent in the big wide world that opened me up in ways that I could never imagine. I felt like the crazy yogis of India, the insane hermits of the Himalayas or the ash covered ascetic chanting to their gods in the desert. Something between a holy man and a wild animal. It was beautiful! I was meditating, chanting, making art, meeting people, and traveling. I couldn’t have been happier. Rod fed me and payed for everything. I thought that was a fair exchange for my small part.
My brother was getting married during all this and I of course was expected to attend. So I had to leave in the middle of one of our shows to go to Indianapolis for the wedding. Now, my brother and I are about as opposite as it gets, so this wedding was a big expensive to-do. I showed up feeling like a half crazed, half enlightened wild eyed maniac, covered in dirt and fake tattoos. Me and Rod would sport fake tattoos from one of the other vendors. That is most likely why I associate tattoos with sacred art. Anyway, I felt so out of place at that wedding, I didn’t feel like I belonged in that world at all. I couldn’t wait to get back to my wild mystical existence.
When I think about it now I realize that I have spent a lot of time trying to live my life like I lived it then. I would gladly work for nothing if it means I don’t have to concern myself with money. I will devote whatever time I have to spiritual and mystical practice and I absolutely love deep and honest conversations. Oh, and of course I have collected a few tattoos. I think this is when I started to view money as a distraction and also realized that as long as I had food and shelter and could practice my mysticism I could be very happy. In fact the happiest. So you could say the Photo-Monk was born during those times, I just didn’t possess either the photography skills or the spiritual training yet. The concept however was there for sure
Rod and another friend of ours would join the Navy. That would end those days. Although I tried to keep the torch burning. It was always his thing. I thought then that I was just there for the ride, but in retrospect I was just there for different reasons. I didn’t care about tie dyes or even art. It was God I was seeking and in those quiet moments of contemplation with no other concerns I could catch glimpses of something luminescent just long enough to keep me interested.
With Rod gone and my spiritual awareness growing, I began to read everything I could get my hands on and sought out teachers from everywhere. The traveling had made me hungry for more knowledge, after all during our shows I met Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Atheists and artists. In fact I was once showed how to chant a Japanese Buddhist chant by a Carny at a show. He handed me a card with “Nam Myoho Renge Kyo” on it and a set of Mala and I spent several days in the tent chanting away. It was these kind of experiences I wanted more of. So I walked on God collecting.
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