Off-Road Touring

[Guest guest]

"You just went off the road and down the embankment! How can you be

so calm?" she asked.

"Oh, I am fine. I don't do this regularly, but obviously, it was not

my moment to leave the earth, so I am going to need to call for a tow

truck," I replied.

My account is less dramatic and much duller. However, when the

vehicle was spinning, I did see my life flash before my eyes, and a

great sense of peace and calm enfolded me. I did not resist the

motion or action of the vehicle, and in the end, my parking job was

as perfect as could have been arranged on that roadway. I could not

have "planned" or thought this out to enable the outcome.

On the other paw, I have died before, once when undergoing a serious

root canal surgery, and once when my heart simply became erratic and

then stopped. I have a condition known as "Wolfe-Parkinson-White

Syndrome" and this means that there are two elecrical conduction

pathways for the pace maker of my heart. Because I practiced Prana

Yoga for many years as a young person, the serious symptoms of this

condition never really caused anything other than brief mis-beats.

But one morning the rythm went totally wild, fast, slow, ultra fast,

and then nothing...zip...nadda. Poof. Out of body. Floating above

the Domain with a Name. Into the beyond and into the infinite

cosmos. You can see all around, not like with eyes...and there is

much to see.

Long story short, what happens and what and who you communicate with

alters your life forever, even if you don't reenter your body.

I did. I don't much chitty-chat about it. It's all very personal,

and most of it defies words in any case.

Long story short. Life is precious. Don't waste it. Make the most

of it. Help those who need help. Be kind. Forgive. Love thy

neighbor. Try to leave the place neater and cleaner than how you

found it.

Everyone is the miracle.

Blessings,

Love,

Zenbob

[Guest guest]

Chapter 16

 

 

Off-Road Touring

 

"It is not death that most fear, but life."

Ixnay

 

 

It was about 10 PM, and I was commuting from Boston to New York in

late September of 1984. It had been a bumpy year, so to speak. Baraka

was completing a post-graduate degree at Columbia University while I

remained in Boston, on the brink of a rather complex career turning

point.

Earlier that afternoon, I had just retrieved my car from a Boston

body shop after an unenviable encounter with a runaway bus in Cuban

Harlem. This had been my second visit to that particular sheet metal

doctor, who was kind enough to remind me, as I drove away, that "the

third time is the charm". In retrospect, I must admit that these

little cliches, floating around in the vast collective consciousness,

have an odd way of validating themselves.

 

I was overly familiar with the stretch of highway that I was

currently navigating, and mind had slipped into semi-automatic,

entertaining the random road musings about work and love and mortgage

payments.

Glancing up, I noticed that I was approaching my designated exit

along the Saw Mill Parkway. It had come up sooner than expected,

punctuating my reveries.

I checked the rear view mirror to see if I could move into the right

lane to exit, and saw a pair of headlights in what seemed a good bit

of distance behind me in the right lane. I felt comfortable about the

lane switch, but as I began to cross over, I was rear-ended by the on-

coming car, which had been moving at much faster speed than I had

calculated. I was pushed into the guardrail to the right, then lost

control and swerved through the rail on the left, plunging over the

side of the hill.

As I plummeted down the hillside, my visibility was thwarted by the

darkness and the strobe-like streaks from my headlight beams as they

bounced wildly off the onrushing landscape.

I knew with complete certainty that "this was it."

Not only was I about to die, but it was actually going to be quite

gruesome, with mangled body parts and all the attendant horrors now

swarming back from the 60's cautionary "Drivers Ed" films. An

enormous fear raced through me on the wings of adrenaline – the

primal survival thing pushed up against sure knowledge of sheer ruin.

Suddenly I hit the bottom of the hill, but unlike the movie finale, I

did not explode in a blazing fireball. Rather, my car catapulted up

through the air, flipping over and over as it crossed the oncoming 2-

lane highway. It continued air-borne across the service road, finally

slamming into the side of the hill on the other side, where it

proceeded to roll down a bit until it hung, teetering, on the edge of

an embankment.

 

It must have been while I was in mid-air (although my recollected

sense was that time itself had truly stopped) that the fear was

swallowed up by a great silence. This silence was deeper than I had

ever known and certainly beyond my feeble adjectives, and yet

curiously "familiar", as if It had always been here, just behind the

chitchat of everyday mind. Spontaneously, there was a "knowing" that

I could never be implicated by death, but more to the point – that

there had never been, nor could there ever be, such a thing as "I".

There was no car, no accident, no trace of any self. There was no

narrative or story line of "my life". Awareness of Being, boundless

and inexpressible, immense vastness with no center, no movement or

anything that could be called by any name – such words and phrases

don't even touch it!

 

Then I was suddenly "back" in the crushed driver's seat, and my left

foot had pierced through the floor board of the car, and was dangling

shoeless in the air over the embankment, shattered. People were

milling about, sharing their disbelief that someone could have

survived such a disaster!

I was engulfed in tears, but these tears had nothing to do with the

accident, or survival, or relief to be essentially in one piece. I

was dissolved in the core of the heart, and these tears were tears of

Gratitude for such Grace, that I had been set free of Death, and had

come Home at last.

Even as I write this I am overwhelmed by these same tears.

Our True Nature is Unimaginable Freedom!

We are not what we suppose ourselves to be, not what we have been

told we are, and certainly not some soulful bird in a cage of skin

and bones! The whole universe appears and disappears in ordinary,

majestic perfection within This – This That We Are!

The only "recourse" for me now was Love, for this is the perpetual

wave rolling on the Ocean of Being, and this is the only obvious

motion and activity of Life Itself, despite what may "seem" to be in

the imaginary history of experience.

 

When the paramedics placed me in the ambulance and closed the doors,

they immediately fell silent and stopped their busy work – overcome

themselves by the current of Bliss filling up the space with Heart

Light. They stared at me, and then at each other, and one said: "What

is happening here?" as the three of us all began to weep in unison at

the unmistakable Presence permeating the ambulance. We took each

other's hand, and all were drawn into the Stillness. At the emergency

room we all embraced, and they were reluctant to leave. One

said: "The miracle was not out there. It's in here!"

 

An interesting postscript to that event was brought to my attention

later. Several of my friends reported intense experiences of Presence

timed to that very night. Another, who was sitting hospital vigil

with her husband in the final stages of his terminal illness,

reported that -- at around 10 PM that night -- she was overwhelmed by

a brilliant streak of light which shone through her heart and into

and around her husband for several minutes. By the next day he had

recovered completely from his illness, much to the bewilderment of

the medical staff.

 

I share this with you now because

you often wonder about death,

and I tell you –

 

have no fear.

[Guest guest]

on 7/5/02 10:49 PM, zen2wrk (AT) aol (DOT) com at zen2wrk (AT) aol (DOT) com wrote:

Try to leave the place neater and cleaner than how you found it.

--==========================

Bring back Kyoto? Yeaaahhh!

Bessings to you good man Z,

Shawn