I was twenty-one, sitting on the floor of Ilene’s apartment in Gracia, the hipster neighborhood of Barcelona, and I had never felt so lonely. Forty-two of us on the same study abroad program, supposedly having the same experience, and I felt like the only one having mine. Language barrier, culture shock, isolation as the only out gay of my group and my financial aid hadn’t come through. I studied the drab gray-green walls, peeling in places, a few stray nails poking out. A single lamp with a bare bulb. A card table buried under books, laundry, mail, dishes. Ilene lounging on the futon, leafing through a magazine. Somewhere outside, or maybe above me, or below — a strange heaving sound, over and over, that could have been lovemaking…or pigeons. Either way, it only made the loneliness worse.

I reached for the top book on the pile and handed it to Ilene.

She flipped through the book — a collection of Oscar Wilde stories — and started reading aloud: The Selfish Giant. I didn’t know the story. I didn’t see it coming. Somewhere in the last page, big fat tears started rolling down my cheeks as the realization arrived that the small, wounded child in the garden was Jesus, and by the time the giant was covered in blossoms under the tree, something in me just gave way.

I cried and cried. I crawled into my friend’s arms and cried my eyes out as she awkwardly patted me on the back. I cried for the giant. I cried for the child. I cried for myself and I cried for humanity. I couldn’t have told you, in the moment, whether it was the beauty of the story or the loneliness underneath it finally finding a way out. And somewhere in the middle of that crying, uninvited, another voice surfaced — my stepmom’s, from some aside years earlier: if any one of my kids was gay you’d be kicked out of this house. I wasn’t consciously afraid of that, I was just in this moment of overwhelm and there it was, riding along on whatever door the story had opened.

I don’t know how long I cried. Long enough that I was, in my own words, basically all cried out. My friend broke the silence: “So, did no one read to you as a child?”

At that time, organized religion and I weren’t getting along. Patriarchy, misogyny, smiting the gays and all that. I had just come out within the past year and was deep into my queer education, so pretty much anything religion was on thin ice. Having said all that, I also believed that Jesus was actually a real person. I saw the Bible as a book of stories…let’s say historical fiction, written and rewritten by men to their own agenda. I couldn’t take it seriously.

But, stories can carry truth without being true. And there is something about the big picture of religion that resonates: divine forces, human purpose, morality and ethics. Which brings me back to the stories that gave me all of that first — the Chronicles of Narnia.

I loved those damn books! I’d started the series in sixth grade, one book a year, and it never went in a straight line. Sixth grade: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Seventh grade: reread book one, then Prince Caspian, started Voyage of the Dawn Treader but got stuck...not sure why…it wasn’t all the Pevensie kids, Eustace was a jerk, I don’t know. Eighth grade: I reread book one, book two and breezed through book three, started The Silver Chair but the plot lost me. (What’s a Puddleglum?) So the next year I’d pick up where I left off, rereading what I already knew before pushing one book further into what I didn’t.

I couldn’t have told you what I personally believed at seventeen, but by the time I got to The Magician’s Nephew (the creation of Narnia itself), many of these Christian-based ideas were in me, long before I ever sat on Ilene’s floor in Gracia.

I’d known for years I had a spiritual streak, but avoided that path because in my mind the final destination was something I’d already ruled out. So what changed in December 2020 — why did a wine rep with an aversion to organized religion suddenly start meditating every single day? I don’t think anything changed, exactly. I think I finally got curious. (Aaaand… my dad died, aaaand there was that foreboding existentialism of Covid hanging over everything.)

December was day one of paying attention to what I’d already been given. Narnia, The Selfish Giant, and forty years of half-formed beliefs were now pushing me towards a new path. I wanted to know where they would take me.

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My wife rolled over, yanking the blankets back. “Just don’t make it all about winning the lottery.”

“I’m not,” I muttered, trying to stay zen and not stomp across the hall.

The law of attraction had totally worked for her the day before and she didn’t even believe in it. I was the one who told her about E², a book of experiments to prove that your thoughts can become reality. Like, if you think of seeing a purple car, then all you see are purple cars on the road.

I’d been sitting at the kitchen island, reading the Amazon reviews out loud. Five stars from a woman who needed money for her kids, and that night at her job as a server in a casino, someone hit the slots again and again and again, each time tipping her until she had exactly the amount she needed. Crazy.

“You just have to put your intention out to the universe and it’ll come to you in forty-eight hours. At least that’s what the book says.”

She actually pouted. “I think I have been putting it out there to get this office rented.”

Right. Her psychotherapy office. The first six months of covid left a giant question mark over everything. By the time fall came around, every rent check she wrote had hardened into frustration that calcified into depression.

She came over for a hug and I wrapped my arms around her. “Maybe you didn’t really mean it before. Do you mean it now? Let’s put it out there.” I nestled my face into her neck and gave her a quick kiss, focusing on her wish.

Not two hours later, she got a response from the ad that had been languishing in the depths of Craigslist. I gave her a wink. “You email him back right now and then we can talk about how the universe works.” Her face lit up — she had forgotten she’d even set the intention.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it. What was I going to manifest?

Since I’d started the meditation routine in January, my conscious mind was like a squirrel, flitting from one idea to the next across the metaphysical spectrum. In addition to the E² book, I had been reading Edgar Cayce, the early twentieth century mystic who believed — among other things — that every person has a direct line to the energy of the universe. No middleman required. Just sit down, get quiet, and ask. He called it the mind is the builder: what you hold in your mind, you create in your life. Thoughts are things. Intentions have weight.

I had believed something like this for years and it was the basis of this meditation experiment — I just hadn’t been doing much about it.

So that February night, drifting off to sleep, I decided to ask for something specific.

Seed money for my foundation. Ha! “My” foundation, only to be used for good.

I have always wanted to run a foundation. I mean, who wouldn’t? Social justice work, angel investing for people who need it, giving money away to organizations trying to solve the problems that feel unsolvable. It had been a fantasy for so long it had become a joke — even my resume, crafted at age twenty-seven, was headlined: Dream Job — CEO of my private foundation funded by my Superlotto winnings.

OK, universe. Let’s make this happen. Forty-eight hours from Sunday, February 7th, at 10:28pm.

I went into the meditation room. I put on my headphones, draped the blue blanket on my legs and scrolled through tracks on the app. This day I picked music only so I could focus my intention. I honestly wasn’t trying to think of the lottery. Things just pop in my head when I meditate. And then to test if a thought is coming from my conscious mind, I push it away or tie it to a helium balloon and let it float away. If it comes back, I try to be open that it might be an actual answer.

The music washed over me and I settled into my breathing (in through the nose, out through the nose). My mantra at first was “I am open to the energy of the universe” and then I shifted to a focus on this seed money idea. My mind wandered, how would it come? Inheritance? Too sad, that’s like the Monkey’s Paw, bleh. Stocks? Who am I kidding. A new job? Something else?

I tried to push that all away and stop my conscious mind from running. Just let it all float away. Then the number 13 popped in my mind followed by the letter A. Could it be 13… million? 13 million dollars. Tie it to the helium balloon… goodbye 13 million dollars. Then my old resume popped in my mind and the idea of the lottery was stuck. Was that from the universe or was it my conscious mind trying to force a path? But 13 million, that would be an incredible nest egg of capital, invested properly would generate massive returns for doing good in the world. Could I manifest that for my lifelong dream in two days’ time? I came out of the meditation, grabbed my journal and jotted it all down.

I tried to be open to whatever was meant to happen, but secretly I was sure it would be the lottery. No amount of helium balloons could float that idea away now. I’d bought plenty of lottery tickets in my time, but I was never so sure as now. Per E², the Law of Attraction does not fail! I went downstairs to work but was super distracted, googling the legalities of setting up a foundation, lottery tax calculators and, of course, the amounts of the jackpots. The numbers weren’t coming up right, though. SuperLotto wasn’t 13 million. Neither was Powerball or Mega Millions.

That didn’t deter me. I ran upstairs to get some shoes and saw the clock said 11:11, which is one of my personal signs that the angels are communicating with me. I must be right on track! I jumped in the car and drove down the street, but I wasn’t sure where to go.

I headed towards a convenience store a few blocks from my house. The first thing I saw was a sandwich board with the lottery logo and LUCKY RETAILER in big block letters. The store sign said A-1 Convenience. I looked up at it and knew. I careened into the parking lot, put on my mask, went in, and bought one each of Powerball, Mega Millions, and SuperLotto. You only need one, right? But just to be sure, I added a shiny red Valentine’s Day scratcher and went to two other gas stations and bought an additional ticket of each jackpot.

I stuck them all in the pages of my journal.

I won nine dollars.

The Mega Millions gave me five. The SuperLotto gave me four. Nine dollars of seed money for my foundation. Big whoop.

My wife looked at me across the couch, squeezed my feet and said tenderly, “I don’t want to say I told you so. Why do you let yourself get all worked up?”

“It’s like Santa Claus,” I grumbled. “If you don’t believe, you don’t get.”

I threw my journal on the ground. It landed with a thump, spilling the orange losers and a flash of red onto the rug.

“I do believe,” I went on, “in the universe and in abundance and that there is enough for everyone to go around. And that all you have to do is ask for it.”

I conceded, reluctantly: “No, not that I’m going to win the lottery necessarily. But that somehow a path will open that will take me to my dream. I guess I wanted a shortcut. And it was fun to believe.”

I reached down to pick up the spilled tickets to recycle them.

The red one wasn’t a dead ticket. It was the Valentine’s Day scratcher. I had completely forgotten about it.

I found a penny. There were ten squares. Scratch off a love symbol and you win that prize. A 2x symbol and you win double. An icon of a flying wad of cash and you win ALL the prizes, including the grand prize of twenty thousand dollars.

Adrenaline pumping, I started scratching. The penny revealed the tip of some wings —

And then my phone rang.

I didn’t recognize the number at first. When I picked up and heard his voice, my stomach did something complicated.

J.L., my former boss — the man who had fired me twelve years earlier.

I hadn’t spoken to him since. There had been a lot of feelings about that exit — and I hadn’t forgiven him. At least I didn’t think I had. But before my brain caught up with my mouth, I surprised myself and said: “It took me a long time. But I forgive you.”

I genuinely felt that the universe had sent him to me at that exact moment for a reason. And it wasn’t the lottery.

And then he told me why he called.

I had a 401K with his company. One I had mostly forgotten about. He had tracked me down because he thought I might not know it was still there.

Twelve years ago it was twenty thousand dollars.

It was now seventy-seven thousand dollars.

The universe, it turns out, is very literal.

It heard seed money for my foundation. It did not hear lottery jackpot.

I have thought about this a lot since then. About how the intention I set was never really about the lottery — I told myself it wasn’t, but honestly, I was lying. I wanted the shortcut. I wanted the dramatic gesture, the big number, the Hollywood ending!

What I actually got was a phone call I didn’t know I needed, and an old wound healed.

I went back to the scratcher to finish scratching the square.

Wings. Just wings. Not a flying wad of cash. Fine by me.

But I’m still waiting for my 13 million.

January 15th, 2021. Today was a good one! Still is. Taking a few minutes to find what I want to do. I started a guided that cleared chakras by color and then got distracted because I remembered I needed to turn on the heat at the cabin. So I went to another one — just music, Increase Focus Clarity and Positivity by Energy of Sound. It was just beats and electronic sounds and I really liked it. I asked for protection and healing and then just tried to empty my mind by saying “I am here to serve humanity” and “How can I serve!”

NOTE: “How can I serve” became something close to a daily mantra for a while.

One more thing — and this goes back to yesterday — at one point yesterday the guide created imagery of energy in the root chakra and I realized I had my hands in karate meditation in a kind of circle. I felt that energy like I was holding it, it was so strong. Today I put my hands on my legs, not touching each other. At one point I shifted and adjusted my hands and thought of how the yoga person (from a video) holds the finger and thumb in a circle when she does the meditation poses. So I closed my finger and thumb together on each hand. And now could I feel the energy — it was so electric and vibrant! I stayed with that for a long time. It was wonderful. I could feel it flowing.

January 16th, 2021. I listened to the track 11:11, which is (just noticed — so hi mom!) music, Spirit of Ascension 432 Hz.

I’m not sure what the frequencies mean. But overall a meh meditation. My FB account got hacked in the middle of the night and I’m very distracted trying to get back in.

I did have a mini “episode” last night at the cabin — was it the altitude, the alcohol... not sure. I had a bad stomach, laid down on the couch and tried to drift. My hands were on my (roiling) belly and I decided to close my thumb and finger in a circle like I did in the meditation yesterday. I imagined the energy swirling there in my midsection, moving the bad energy — out with the bad, in with the good! Eventually I dropped off, dozed, and pretty soon felt better. Good enough to go back in the bed for the rest of the night.

NOTE: In numerology 11 is a Master Number, and 11:11 is considered an angel number. I can’t tell you exactly how I got from white butterflies to owls to 11:11, but for me, it’s my mom.

April 4th, 2021. 16 min, Morning Meditation with Archangels and Medicine Wheel, by Sofia Light Jewel

It was good but got too complicated at the end. She likes to bring in so many identities it can get confusing to remember who is who and what I am trying to hold or focus on.

But I saw a golden flamed light in a circle around me, protecting me. It turned into a grid that went through me, all around me. Each archangel came down to me with their light, bathed me. I breathed in and received. Love, healing, clearing, protection. The light made a bubble around me.

But I was a little distracted, and while I could see all of this, I was not feeling it deeply. I was listening to her and to what was happening in the room, outside of the room. Very conscious in this meditation today.

One good thing was I woke up in that dreamy state and again could feel the energy — and I was able to hold it, stay in it much longer. Maybe now that I am aware of it, I can make it happen, work with it, hold it. Not sure what is the point yet but I will just keep moving in that direction and see what comes to me.

April 6th, 2021. 11:11, Matthew Jaidev Duplessie

Wasn’t super into it this morning. Started with music asking who am I and why am I here and just fidgeted and couldn’t focus really. I switched tracks. Saw 11:11 and got tingles up and down my legs. And that continued — shivers and tingles up legs, back, torso. I saw myself reaching out. I imagined embracing the energy, receiving the universe in my arms. I tried in my mind to receive my guides, my loved ones, like I was hugging each one — I couldn’t name them but knew they were there. I just basked in the energy and feeling of vibration. No tears today. Gratitude and positivity.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again, neurological or spiritual…I couldn’t say. But it was fascinating not only to experience it and recognize it, but to call on it when I needed it.

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January 6, 2021

I woke up at 7:30 and went right away to meditate. Cayce and others say morning is best. I was quite sleepy — I hadn’t had a great night, so maybe I was still close to that kind of consciousness. I put the blue blanket on my lap this time so I wouldn’t get cold.

I flipped through some music — piano was too mellow, I wanted something to bring me into the day. I picked a drumming one with “energy” in the title. I liked it and immediately had a lot of those twitches. There was drumming and chanting that sounded to me today like “who are you.” Perhaps on another day it’ll sound like something else.

I’d rate the practice fair. But that’s me judging the result and not settling into the process. I was aware of my body the whole time. I had a pain in my back that came and went, and I wonder if that’s just from sitting still. My neck was stronger this time; my head didn’t drift and flop around as much. I asked for energy from the universe for what I need to do, and imagined the top of my head opening to receive.

Not sure how I feel. “Normal,” I suppose. Nothing profound today. (I again was preoccupied with what I might report after — writing in this journal — and hopefully I can let go of that soon.)

January 8, 2021 (morning)

I did a morning meditation on the app, a little short at 15 minutes. I was very monkey mind but not as twitchy today. I Googled the twitchy thing — it’s pretty normal. Most practitioners said it’s like excess energy from stress and should resolve with more practice. At least that’s what I’m going with.

My mind was quite active, but while I was very aware of my body, I was able to forget my “outlines” — the feeling of my hands on the blanket, my feet on the floor. My back had some pains again and I had to readjust and shake it out in the middle. Then an itch on my eyebrow. Ugh.

I read an article that referenced studies on how meditation can physically strengthen the brain. That’s also a goal — fix my brain. That was my concern at the start of shelter in place. So this could be another benefit. Or perhaps meditation is the answer to my asking to fix my brain. Funny how that can work…

January 12, 2021

Good Morning Meditation by Michael MacIntosh. Quiet music and voice. It was good, not great. I only used a blanket and didn’t pull on pants, so I had a hard time not feeling the cool air on the backs of my legs. Lol. This was a guided meditation about being in the moment and imagining feeling happier and happier. It didn’t quite resonate. Early on he created an image of opening your third eye, a star of energy.

I had a lovely image to focus on — my third eye in the shape of a star, almost 3-D, and the energy of the universe flowing in. That was nice. I’d like to get into a practice of asking for protection and health — white light and golden light — at the beginning of each meditation.

So I felt neutral, nothing really profound today. On with my day. Now I’ll say thank you: thank you guides, thank you angels, thank you to those who have passed who help me — Dad, Mom, Ramos, Carol, Judd, Rafi, Grandparents, Uncle John. I’m sure there are more. If you reveal yourself to me, I’ll try to look for your signs, and then I can name you in remembrance.

January 13, 2021

Third Eye Chakra Singing Bowls, 27 minutes. I didn’t sleep well last night (and I won’t blame my wife!!) so I wanted peaceful music and stayed lying in bed.

Since I’d had the third-eye imagery the day before, this title resonated, and I was able to invoke that image of the star opening to allow the energy to flow. I mostly tried to forget my physical body. I was aware of it, I knew it was there, but I did a pretty good job of not feeling it. I had some moments — I could feel the cold of my eyes where they were watery, a pain in my hip, my lips parting open at one point. But all momentary. I let them go.

I was in the void. I was the music. I was the Tibetan singing bowls. I was each tone, each chakra, all the energy. It reminded me of the C.S. Lewis book where he experiences another existence, and being the music, the vibration, was an entire existence. I’m not that intuitive, but I feel like I was there for a second or two.

I don’t feel like this was a profound meditation — just restful, like practice. It was good, just not insightful. I do hope I’ll have more of the other kind. I like feeling really connected to spirit and the universe — that’s kind of the point, right?

January 14, 2021

Today I listened to a meditation from Sofia Light Jewel on grounding. I like her voice and pace. It was about being a tree — pretty basic for grounding, but very effective. I was super into the first half and really felt the roots, saw the grounding light and energy going from me to the sun.

And just as I was letting my conscious mind judge that “this isn’t about the first lesson, cooperation,” (from the Edgar Cayce book), she literally said, this is about cooperation of self and universe, connecting to others and the whole of humanity. It really is. I have to let go of my agenda — remember, it’s about the process, not the results. I have to trust that I’m on the right path, that what I choose for my daily meditation is what I need for today.

That goes along with what I was reading in the Cayce book about the Lord’s Prayer. For something rote and memorized and repeated without thought, it’s good to examine in depth. “Give us this day our daily bread” — people focus on the bread, since it’s usually grace before meals.

But if the emphasis is on this day, how does it change?

Now. This day. This day is what feeds us.

This is being in the moment, living your present, and asking source for nourishment, for what I need to sustain now.

What kept you going back to something before it ever got good?

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So says Edgar Cayce. Pay attention, he says, and the guidance will come. I was desperate for this awareness, for a connection. For answers. I longed to bring comfort to my family, still reeling from my dad’s passing just five months before we lost Kaitlyn.

In the days and weeks after the bouts of ugly crying, the memorial, the monotony of work from home, I still trudged into my meditation room daily, some days escaping, some days flailing, but all days asking and asking. Insights came on the oblique, when I wasn’t expecting, but I might have been trying to pay attention so hard I jammed the signal.

Until the hypnosis class in April.

It was early, barely past six one morning, and I was in my favorite drifty, dreamy state half in and half out of sleep. I had a lot ahead of me that day: a drive to the city for my second vaccine, and then, later on Zoom, my Soul Contact class, but I wasn’t ready to shake myself awake just yet. Behind my closed eyes a room came into focus — not the vague sense of a room I usually get in meditation, but a real one, sharp as waking: white, pointy tropical flowers, a wall, and light coming in from somewhere to my right. I was afraid to look towards the light in case the whole thing dissolved. It didn’t. It held for a long time. And then, in a second image, someone stood in a bright opening, far off, and waved. I had a rush of recognition.

It was Teddy. My spirit guide. A British dude named Theodore, according to a psychic I saw in my twenties. I know how that sounds. I would talk to him as a joke, and eventually, I stopped fighting his existence. He’s been kicking around my reality ever since.

My journal entry from the day before this, I’d asked. I’d totally forgotten I’d asked. I sat in that same room, and asked for support, from my people, my angels, my guides. And Teddy waved.

The class met over Zoom. A dozen of us learning to walk each other into past lives from our spare bedrooms and home offices. We worked in pairs. First I guided a woman named Cathy, and I was good at it; she went under easily and came back moved, and told me I was a natural. And to be honest in those days when so little was in my control, it felt good to be good at something.

Then we switched, and it was my turn to go under.

I was weirdly blank as I dropped into trance. I knew I was in trance as I was twitchy and I had that closed eye thing happening, but I was just not seeing or perceiving anything. I didn’t see the tunnel or the light I was guided to, but as my index finger was twitching, which is a yes signal for me, I told Cathy I was ready. Off I went.

I was immediately overwhelmed with sadness and grief. Whoa. After long moments of holding back the sobs trying to stay open and calm (wasn’t working…) my mind’s eye finally returned a stark, familiar image of Kaitlyn, sitting on the floor, head slumped, not moving. I could feel Help me, Help me. Was that her, heartbreakingly, asking for help? The anguish intensified. We tried, I cried out, we tried. I could feel her helplessness, the wall around her that no light or love could penetrate. I cried and cried – not sure if I was crying me or crying her. It was all so hopeless.

No one could help. It reverberated through me. No one could help. No one could help.

And then she rose up out of her body. No more pain. I felt the words, and then said them out loud. No more pain. She’s gone to the light. As these words repeated my body calmed. I felt the agitation and desperate anguish leave me. And peace flowed in. Peace, I said. Peace will come. Peace will come.

I’m not sure who that was meant for.

And again I saw Katie’s face, but this time smiling and teasing, saying I didn’t do it on purpose. I didn’t do it on purpose. I’ve seen this image, heard this refrain in meditation, in dreaming before. I will hold on to this as my truth.

The next session I went in with an intention. I wanted to reach Katie. I wanted a message…for me, for her mother, her father, for anyone. Proof that she was somewhere, that she was alright, that the line between here and there was thin enough to pass a word across. This was the thing I’d been asking for every morning and now I had a trained guide. If ever there was a moment to receive, this was it.

Nothing came about Katie.

I was frustrated. Other things came, but on the one thing I’d asked for, silence. Near the end, my guide asked if there was any other insight around this, around wanting to communicate. And the answer arrived, clear as anything I’ve received before or since:

Not at this time.

Are you kidding me? Screw you, universe. But as I sat with it, it dawned on me, who am I talking to? How did that idea get in my head? It was just there, like the words to Katie’s Prayer or Carol’s hug, like a knowing. My anger ebbed, turning a bit towards wonder. I’d asked for a message and been told I couldn’t have the one I wanted. The refusal itself was the message. Not no…just, not yet. I left the session hopeful.

But trusting those messages will come is the harder thing. My job is to pay attention, to keep showing up in that room, ready to receive. I know this now in a way I couldn’t have known then, in the thick of it all. The further I drift from the regular, daily practice, the less I seem to receive. And I don’t think that’s the universe going quiet. It’s me not paying attention to the unseen forces. Not having faith. Paying attention isn’t something you just achieve once. You have to keep choosing it, choosing to be open, to stay connected.

So I do. I keep showing up. Because not at this time, I’ve learned, is not the same as never.

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This is the second post in a series on grief. More forthcoming.
Read the first one here: No More Pain, No More Fear

She was young. She struggled. It’s complicated, she was complicated. And we loved her. Fiercely. Who among us can say we know exactly what burden another carries.

Once, when she was about six, she dragged me to the armchair and plopped in my lap with her sticker books. I’m sitting there uh-huh-ing and nodding as she showed me Pikachu and other kid things I had no clue about. She then jumped off my lap and ran to her coveted stash of special stickers. She cut one off with the little kid safety scissors and gave it to me, just for Auntie Tracey. Rainbow-colored letters declared “Girls Rule, Boys Drool.”

I felt seen.

The news came on a January morning, and for hours my mind could do nothing but shriek WHY, as I was in and out of tears. Eventually I sat in my meditation room, mindlessly scrolling the usuals: Raise Your Vibration, Manifest Your Reality. Ugh. Then an image of the divine mother and the word prayer flicked by. I went back…compelled, really, to The Devi Prayer by Craig Pruess. A track I probably would never pick on any other day, but this Sanskrit hymn, melancholy and haunting, matched.

I didn’t try to be still. I let the grief come in waves as the ethereal voice anchored the room. Twenty-one minutes of a verse repeated in a language I didn’t understand. Somewhere in the middle of this Sanskrit mantra, I started hearing my own words: No more pain. No more fear. No more hiding from the light. I don’t know where those words came from. I wrote them down when I opened my eyes. This is Katie’s Prayer.

I got an image of her. Curled up, sleepy, like a kid who fell asleep in the car — with light slowly oozing in around her, so gently that she never had a chance to choose it or fight it. Then she wakes up on the other side, and it’s too late to come back. I don’t know what to make of that image even now. I only know it didn’t feel like something I made up. It felt like something I was shown.

And in the middle of all of it, a flash of Carol. My friend from the hot tub story. A nurturing feeling, like a nanny taking a small hand: she’s okay. She’s going to be okay.

I spent the rest of the day on the phone with my family, talking, comforting, being comforted. So much to process, to hold. That night I put the Devi Prayer on again, hoping to find that moment of solace, and instead I couldn’t even keep my eyes closed. Every time I settled in, I had to get up for a tissue. I’d focus and breathe and let it come — and bam, overwhelmed. I’d writhe and shake and cry and then slowly calm down. Try again. The wave would rise up through my midsection, hit my heart, and crash.

I started thanking everyone I could think of who had gone before her — my dad, my mom, Carol, Judd, Ramos, Angie, Uncle John — and every name brought the wave back. In my journal that night I wrote: It’s no good, but it is good. Peace Katie. Peace.

The next morning, I wanted to float away and lose myself, but the practice did something different. No energy, no Sanskrit, no images. I came out of my meditation abruptly, eyes just popping open, with one clear thought: I have to apologize to my sister. When Michelle said she would be the one to call the extended family and deliver the news, I had stayed silent. I let her carry it. Not cool. The meditation didn’t comfort me about that. It just told me what to do. I called her and said I was sorry.

At the time, none of this looked like anything. That week all I could do was be in the moment. Twenty-six days I’d spent practicing exactly that, and then grief made it involuntary. Only now do I see how the practice was working. Revealing the path, providing guidance and messages. If I can receive. If I can pay attention. If I can get my conscious mind quiet enough…something else can come through. Sometimes it’s a prayer. Sometimes it’s a tissue box. Sometimes it’s an instruction to go apologize to your sister.

What I needed to hear, the morning after Kaitlyn died, was that she was okay. That the light had found her. That her pain was finished. Shanti, shanti, peace, peace.

I played the Devi Prayer every day for the rest of that month. I still call it Katie’s Prayer.

This is the first post in a series on grief. Read the second post here.

If it feels repetitive, meh, just skip it, but, I dunno, you might find some diamonds in the rough that didn’t make it to any of the essays.

And my aside is that in this time of AI scrutiny, I am both happy and dismayed that I actually write with a lot of em dashes!! Sigh.

December 6, 2020

This journal is dedicated to my spiritual journey. It may be a memoir or a journal or a place to just muse. But the intention is to work through Edgar Cayce’s 12 Steps to Mastering Spiritual Growth.

NOTE: I’ve already busted myself on no books, no teachers! First off, I got the title wrong — it’s actually Edgar Cayce’s 12 Lessons in Personal Spirituality by Kevin Todeschi. And “work through” is really overstated. What I actually did was use each lesson’s title — Cooperation, Ideals, Faith, Fellowship, Patience, Oneness — as a loose monthly prompt. When I didn’t have a clear intention for a meditation, I’d search that word on Insight Timer and pick a track. Just a nudge in a conceptual direction. I only mention it as the chapter titles may be referenced in future essays or entries.

I’ve always been intrigued by memoirs w/ a purpose, i.e. Cooking w/ Julia and that guy who followed the bible for a year.

NOTE: Busted again. I wrote “Cooking w/ Julia,” which is not a thing. I meant Julie & Julia. December me apparently didn’t fact-check either.

And let’s not forget the bajillion health & wellness transformation stories, blogs & forums. There is something about following someone else’s path, their story of ups and downs and hopefully growth at the end, that is very satisfying to me. So perhaps this is a good opportunity to chronicle my own journey. I have lacked the discipline in the past but I really feel a strong pull and desire to do this at this time. It is a matter of focus and energy and I think by just showing up, it will materialize.

“The mind is the builder.“ — Edgar Cayce

December 14, 2020

I’ve always been reluctant to profess my views on anything, let alone spirituality. Who am I? I’m no expert — not religious, not a pastor, not even a student. No degrees or certification or any authority backing up what I have to say. It is intimidating to think I might share my point of view with the world.

But I don’t have to, right? This should be a journey for me first. Study of my own experiment. And then if I have some success, let’s see where I can take it.

Who am I? In the sense of “who do you think you are”, that deters me and puts me in my place. But really, that’s what I’m trying to find out.

December 15, 2020

I had a thought last night — an analogy that is basically my life. Well, my career. I sell wine. I’ve been in the business over 20 years. I have no formal education, certification, or other bestowed authority regarding wine. Yet many consider me an expert and readily seek my advice on all wine-related matters.

A regular person can be considered an expert. Can I accomplish that in the sphere of spirituality?

December 26, 2020

The image that sticks in my memory from the Narnia book Voyage of the Dawn Treader is when Reepicheep sails to the End of the World — and only he can go the whole way. Everyone is sad and angry. But it is him dying. Of course I cried along with them.

So while I am not sure I truly believed in God and Jesus and all that Christianity purports, the seeds were planted. And I think I wanted to believe it.

There is a source of energy and life. I am part of that. Everlasting and eternal.

Like Reepicheep, my flame will not die.

December 27, 2020

Just making notes of some prep for my spiritual journey via Edgar Cayce. I’ve been listening to the podcast Reflections: The Wisdom of Edgar Cayce. The host is Peter Woodbury, who is a specialist in past life regression. I will try to take his course in 2021 if available. He is personable and I get a good vibe from him.

The other thing I’m doing is reading The Boy Who Saw True — the diary of a clairvoyant in the late 1800s, similar to Edgar Cayce. It is fascinating. And I love the language, as well as learning about the day-to-day stuff, i.e., Ma says only commoners eat onions.

December 30, 2020

We watched Soul the other night, and while I enjoyed it, it wasn’t as good as some other, similar movies. It made me think about how movies have informed my concepts of spirituality and the afterlife. I loved the portrayals in Beetlejuice — one of the first movies I thought was clever like that. There’s A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful Life, but those are a bit old-fashioned. The one that really caught my attention was Defending Your Life. Loved it, and it totally resonated. I saw it in my early twenties, I think. It made an impression and guided my thinking on what it means to be in the material world. Little brains!

December 31, 2020

I asked for a dream but now can’t remember any. Just part of one where I forged a very long pipe. I did watch Forged in Fire right before bed, and the guy made a very long sword. Hmm.

January 3, 2021

I did my first meditation of the year. I have been procrastinating terribly since forever with meditation. It is so easy to do, yet for some reason so hard. Even this morning I turned on my phone and got into the apps to find some music and almost was able to distract myself out of meditating — Google Music cancelled, then the meditation app kept stopping. Somehow I felt it was a test of sorts. I could have easily given up. But I persevered and did about 19 minutes. I actually found some lovely piano music that reminded me of George Winston’s December.

I was quite monkey mind for a while. I’m not sure what I was expecting — I do have some experience with meditation, creating 10- and 20-minute naps and hypnosis sessions. Well, I did sit instead of lie down, so no sleeping. I think it’s better to have that awareness, to allow for that lucid, dreamy state as opposed to actually napping. But even Cayce says sleeping isn’t a bad thing, so I won’t worry about it if that happens.

Once I was maybe 5–10 minutes in, I started to have moments of forgetting about my body — I was very aware of my hands on my legs, but then I’d forget, and then it would come back, and then I’d forget again. I also kept drifting back to what I would write about after the meditation, which felt like a bit of a fail. I think I semi-intentionally didn’t write until now, 9pm, to be sure what I reported here wasn’t contrived.

I finally slipped into a hypnotic state — where my body gets a little twitchy — at a change in the music. I’m glad to have music. I’m not sure I could silently meditate without a guide. I suppose that’s something to work up to.

In this meditation I was trying to focus on breathing, but was a little preoccupied with the whole purpose and task I’ve set out for myself — writing a book. Will it be a book? Perhaps it will be something else. Or something just for me. I was concerned with performance. Though as the time progressed I could tell I was settling in, and I found I kept repeating: focus on the process, not the results. It’s about the process, not the results.

So while I believe that in general — I have been very worried that I may not end up with a book, after all my talk — perhaps my eventual mantra came from my guides, and was my answer today. What I needed to hear. So I will keep on with the process and eventually this black book will be filled. Maybe it will be something and maybe not. And I will be okay with whatever it is, as it will be my journey to greater spirituality.

What’s the thing you keep meaning to start? I’d love to know what’s sitting on your bench.

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We’re singing along to the oldies and he knows them all — Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jim Croce — and we’re having a good ol’ time. Until he starts playing Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” and I feel like I’ve been sucker-punched.

That song always reminds me of my oldest friend from high school, Carol. The month before, unexpectedly, inexplicably, at fifty-one years old, she died. And I didn’t get to say goodbye. I don’t blame her family for keeping their privacy. I blame Facebook. I saw her every day…there she is at a Fleetwood Mac concert, there she is at the beach with her grandkids. I hearted the photos. I knew everything and I knew nothing. Somewhere in all those years of scrolling we stopped being people who called each other and became people who watched each other. We just lost touch, except it never felt like it.

It was like a minute ago that we were walking across the school parking lot, seventeen years old. Though honestly, Carol might have been fifty-one her entire life. She loved the oldies. She wore mom jeans and carried a big old purse. At seventeen she had a full-time job, a forty-year-old boyfriend, and drove a wood-paneled station wagon.

What I wish I could have told her was how much that summer before I left for college meant to me. We waited tables together at The Golden Bear, a local diner, and hung out almost every day, driving around in that station wagon while I got my education in the oldies…The Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, The Drifters. If we sang “Under the Boardwalk” once, we sang it five hundred times at the top of our lungs. Driving to Great America, or across the state line to underage drink at our friend Donny’s bar in Kenosha. Every time we crossed the line she’d shout, “We’re in two states at once!” Every. Single. Time. We always ended up back at the Golden Bear, drinking coffee, talking and laughing like crazy. To this day I overtip — not just because we waited tables, but because Carol was always so generous, grabbing wads of singles out of that giant purse and throwing them on the table as we ran out the door, making some server’s night.

Back in the hot tub, the memories bubble to the surface easily. But so do the regrets, the woulda-coulda-shouldas. All I want to do is escape. Not because of the sadness, exactly, but because I can feel it all coming up in front of my father-in-law, in a hot tub, on Christmas. The song ends and I grab a towel.

But before I can get out, my wife — who has a keen intuition — says, out of nowhere, “Hey Dad, what’s that one about the tar melting on the roof or something?”

I stop short. I know what song she means. A song my father-in-law, in fifteen years of me being part of this family, has never played.

And without missing a beat, he starts to sing it.

And what happens next is almost indescribable, but I’ll try. The tingles. In my legs and shooting up, warm and buzzy, through my torso, my shoulders, and in a blink enveloping me completely. Just wrapping me up, like a hug from a friend.

Carol is right there. Not a memory of Carol. Carol. And what she is saying, without a single word, is: it’s okay. The goodbye I didn’t get to say, she came to say instead.

So what else can I do? I belt it out like the old days.

I downloaded apps, deleted apps, re-downloaded apps. I found guides whose voices made me roll my eyes and others who made me cry within sixty seconds. Some mornings were transcendent. Most were ordinary. A few felt like a complete waste of time, and I did them anyway. (That’s the whole secret, actually. You just keep showing up.)

These are the tools that helped me do that. (By the way, no links or affiliates. I just want to share!) The apps I tried, a few tracks I kept coming back to, and a little bit of what happened when finally, after twenty years of being told to just sit with my eyes closed, I actually did.

Welcome to the experiment.

The Apps

Insight Timer — Tried and True
This was, and still is, my main meditation app. I used it in the beginning mostly because it was free, but I now pay the yearly subscription, as well as donate to individual teachers. It has a massive library searchable by many filters (length, topic, music only, no music, religious, secular, etc.) and thousands of teachers from around the world. When it went down for updates, I really had a mini-freak out. Great for newbies or zen masters.

Calm — The Famous One
Apparently it’s the most downloaded meditation app, but I just didn’t connect here. It has a polished interface, celebrity narrators, and is fairly easy to navigate. I tried it briefly while Insight Timer crashed but unfortunately, I did not jibe with the one teacher I tried. I was not interested in having Lebron or Camilla Cabello lead me in a meditation, so I probably didn’t give it a fair shake. It could be worth a trial, especially if you want a more beginner-friendly, secular experience.

Aura — The Algorithm
This app uses your listening history to surface tracks for you, though most tracks skewed short (3–5 minutes), making it hard to go deep. Oh wait, it just took me several days to navigate the interface and find how to sort by time. Duh. User unfriendly or user error? One feature Aura has that I’d like to see on Insight is that the app plays a little more space music (w/ ocean, birds, etc) quietly at the end of each track. A nice touch. I’d consider paying for this one as I did have a few very profound moments with Aura’s teachers.

5 Tracks Worth Finding

1. “Increase Focus, Clarity & Positivity — Energy of Sound (Insight Timer) A music only track that I still come back to. One of the first tracks to invoke in me incredible imagery. In life in this moment, I was feeling mired, my internal light dimmed, but this imagery was very powerful. From the journal: “I see a figure with a rod of sunshine blasting out of their ass, running around just so joyful. Pretty sure that was me. It was profound and moved me to tears.”

2. “Learning to Surrender” — Sarah Blondin / Live Awake (Insight Timer) Blondin is in a category of her own with extremely prosaic guided meditations that hit home in almost every track. This meditation reframed surrender not as giving up, but as releasing what’s blocking you so the universe can do its work. Very profound stuff. From the journal: “I saw my own fear of failure, of writing, of doing, as almost a physical thing impeding me. Can I just set that aside and get to the heart of the work?”

3. “Things I Wish Someone Had Told Me” — Sarah Blondin / Live Awake (Insight Timer) Another 5 star masterpiece from Blondin. Her very first line: “I wish someone would have told me all I needed to do was sit with my eyes closed.” My sensei told me exactly that — twenty years before I listened. This one really resonated with my base need to do this entire experiment. It just hit home at a vulnerable moment. From the journal: “To prove a point, I burst into tears at the end.”

4. “Healing & Raising Vibration” — Kenneth Soares (Insight Timer) One of my early favorite teachers that has a hypnotic voice, soothing cadence and compelling imagery. This shorter track with drums, chants, and solfeggio tones guides you to your soul tribe around a fire, building a swirling ball of green light filled with your intentions — then releases it like a million seeds into the world. It sounds wild, but it worked for me. From the journal: “One (shard) landed right in my heart chakra.”

5. “Gratitude as a Magnet” (Aura) A simple, grounding track that reminded me: mind, body, and spirit are three equal parts — and we let mind dominate constantly. Meditation is the tool to find the other two. From the journal: “To sit in the now, to just be — that is what meditation is.”

The Journal: Writing It Down

I did the entire year in longhand. Four classic, hard cover Moleskine notebooks, 5” x 8.25”, filled front to back over twelve months. There is something about pen on paper that feels right for this kind of work. The hand slows the mind down just enough.

I’ll be honest: I also tried typing. During the experiment I decided to learn, and promptly developed tendonitis in both hands the moment I introduced the pinky into the equation. My body definitely had opinions about that plan.

After the year was over I discovered the reMarkable tablet, a device that genuinely replicates the feel of writing on paper in a way that truly has to be experienced to be believed. (is that from their marketing materials?) The added bonus is it can convert your handwriting to text. I use it today and it has been a revelation. (And the pens…don’t even get me started on pens. That’s a whole other conversation.)

The point is: the tool matters less than the habit. Paper, tablet, voice memo, the back of an envelope…whatever gets the thoughts out of your head and somewhere you can return to them.

So, are you ready to get started?

One morning in late January, I found out. I now believe it was every energy that supports me declaring, “Tracey, this is how you do it.”

I picked a track: thirty minutes of chanting and singing meant to awaken gratitude for being here, in this body. But getting past that first five minutes was often the biggest challenge in those early days. Distracting myself with reading about the teacher, the track, quelling the “am I doing it wrong” narrative. Finally, finally getting quiet. Closing my eyes, I pushed away the doubts and settled on a mantra of “I am here.”

The response was immediate. Transported to the deck of our cabin in the Sierra foothills, I was looking out at the trees and a wave of gratitude came up through me so fast I started to cry. Not misty. Big crying. It went on for over a minute, just me and the gratitude…and then joy…and then love. Overwhelming. And then my conscious mind woke up. What if my wife hears me and thinks I’m being silly? That thought put me right back in my body, embarrassed. Bliss or self-consciousness. Ugh.

I wanted to get back to that ecstasy. Focus on breath, eyes, scalp, neck, hands. Mantra. Again. Breath, eyes, scalp, neck, hands. Mantra.

And then there was a ball of energy in my hands.

This is where the question of perception stops being abstract. I did not see a ball of energy, exactly. I felt it, the way you feel anything you’re holding. It had size and presence. Like a fiery basketball. And it wasn’t behaving the way energy had behaved in other meditations, where it flowed through me on its own schedule. This just sat there in my hands, waiting. I had to decide what to do with it.

So I squished it. I packed it like a snowball, and the energy went up into my arms. I squished and squished until all the energy was in me. I then looked up, if “looked” and “up” mean anything with your eyes closed on the floor of the spare bedroom, and I saw beams of light coming down the way sun comes through a break in clouds, through an opening in a ceiling that wasn’t there. I grabbed one like it was a rope and pulled it toward me. Piled it up, packed it, squished it, took in the energy. Did it again.

And then, instead of pulling the next beam down, I climbed it. Hand over hand, like the rope in gym class, which, for the record, I never made it to the top of. This time there was a top. I got to the edge and I could see that I was quite in the dark down below. I knew that represented the earth, the physical body, the ordinary. I could see glorious light above, as I grabbed the edge and pulled myself up into the light.

Here is what I can still describe in detail, five years later: standing up on a pedestal, rotating in this glorious, warm, healing, cleansing light. The mantra shifted on its own. I am cleansed. I am energy. I am the light. And when I noticed I’d gone nearly translucent, the light filling me from head to toe and my chest puffed out, the image that arrived was Superman. Not flying. Just standing there, lit up. That powerful. Possibly that good. I basked, taking it all in.

Then it faded, the way these things do, and I was back on the floor with the mantra I’d started with. I am here.

What that morning taught me, beyond the obvious lesson that the deep end is deeper than advertised, is how I receive.

Because look at what actually happened, sense by sense. There were images, detailed ones, but they lived in the mind’s eye, the same screen where memory plays. There was touch, and the touch was not in the mind’s eye at all. My hands were doing things. The tears were real and wet. And there was language, arriving rather than composed. I didn’t decide to change my mantra. It changed, and I noticed.

I’d been asking how a person perceives a world she can’t see, and the answer, at least for me, turned out to be: with everything. Inner sight for the pictures. The body for the energy. Some quiet channel underneath language for the words. Your equipment may be tuned differently. Some people get sound. Some get color. Some get nothing visual at all, just a feeling that arrives with more authority. The only way to find out what you’ve got is to lie down, turn it on, and pay attention.

Was any of it real? That probably depends on your definition of real. But I can tell you that I remember that morning the way I remember things that happened. Not like a dream, which is gone by lunch. Like an event. My hands still remember the weight of the light.

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I was also deep into a podcast about the medium Edgar Cayce, and one episode covered angels, faeries, and the unseen forces around us. The host said we all have the ability to see these beings in other dimensions. We just have to be open to it, at the right consciousness. I was totally into that, but really? From the journal, January 20th: “It will be a sign I’m in the right direction if I see one of these unseen forces like a faerie or brownie. Hopefully I will realize it when it happens!!”

Two exclamation points. It was kind of a joke, but secretly, I wanted that sign.

The same day, I hung a whiteboard in my home office. My wife informed me I couldn’t leave it blank, that a whiteboard needs something written on it. Fine. I wrote my job description: Sell wine. And underneath, my loftiest professional goal: DRC.

If you don’t sell wine for a living: DRC is Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, the most exalted producer in Burgundy. And the most expensive…like $5000 a bottle expensive. The kind of wine that gets allocated, fought over, and locked in cages. Nobody needs to be “sold” DRC. Writing it on a whiteboard was pure aspiration.

That afternoon, my phone rang. In wine sales these days, the phone does not ring. New clients do not call you; you chase them, charm them, buy them lunch. But there he was, a brand new client, out of nowhere. He wanted DRC. He bought everything I had, asked what else I could get, and wanted other high-end wines while I was at it.

His name was Jason Angel.

I ask to see an angel. Within a day, an Angel calls me on the telephone and buys the exact wine written on my whiteboard. Not a shimmering being of light. A client. With a purchase order.

From the journal, January 21st: “Is it a sign? I have to say yes on that one. Obviously I have not raised my vibration enough to see an angel but I think I’m on the right track.”

I told you in my first post that the universe is very literal. This was the first time I caught it in the act, filling an order exactly as written, down to the name. It would not be the last. (There’s still that phone call involving a 401K and seventy-seven thousand dollars. Soon.)

I still have the whiteboard. I’m a little more careful what I write on it now.

TR

Have you had a moment of total synchronicity? I’d love to hear about it…

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January 3rd, 2021. Twenty-three days after I wrote This journal is dedicated to my spiritual journey in that blank black notebook, I finally sat down to meditate.

I know. I know. I was already worried the procrastination thing was surfacing once again. But I had promised myself no rules, no pressure, no schedule. The only commitment was to show up when it felt right. January 3rd, it felt right.

I set up in the spare room, the same little bench, the same blue blanket that I’ve already described, and opened the Insight Timer app. Then I nearly talked myself out of it. The meditation app kept glitching. I switched to Google music only to find it had been cancelled. Looking back, I honestly think it was a test. I could have easily called it a technical failure and gone to make coffee. I almost did. But something made me stay. I went back to Insight, found some piano music that reminded me of George Winston’s December album, hit play, and hallelujah, it worked. I sat there with my hands on my knees, wondering what exactly I thought I was doing.

What I was expecting: transcendence. A sign. Some immediate confirmation that I was on the right track.

What I got: a sore back, a very busy mind, and a to-do list I couldn’t stop writing in my head.

Here is what nobody tells you about meditation when you’re starting out: it is almost entirely an exercise in noticing how little control you have over your own thoughts. I spent the first several minutes of that first session composing what I was going to write in my journal afterward. I was performing for a future audience…and I knew it was happening! I was meditating about meditating. If that isn’t an <insert roll eyes>, I don’t know what is.

But somewhere around the ten minute mark, something shifted. Slowed down. I started to forget my hands. Then I’d remember them. Then forget again. I slipped, briefly, into something that felt almost like the edge of sleep, that hypnagogic state where the body gets a little twitchy and the mind loosens its grip. I came back. I tried again. I kept going.

When I opened my eyes, I sat for a minute before I wrote anything down. And what I wrote surprised me.

Focus on the process, not the results.

I hadn’t planned it. It arrived the way things arrive in that loosened state…not quite a thought, more like a knowing. I wasn’t sure if it was my own voice or something else. I’m still not sure. But I wrote it down and I kept going.

January 6th. My second meditation. I woke up early and went straight to it, which felt virtuous. I chose a drumming track with “energy” in the title. And then…I had back pain. My neck kept drooping. I kept trying to bring my attention back to my breath and losing it again almost immediately. I asked the universe to raise my vibration, a sentence I could not have conceived writing five years ago, yet tried to imagine the top of my head opening to receive whatever was being offered.

Nothing profound happened. I wrote in my journal: Nothing profound today.

January 8th, morning. Fifteen minutes of guided meditation. Very monkey mind. An itch on my eyebrow derailed me for a full minute. I noted that my back hurt again, that I’d had to readjust and shake it out mid-session, and that I kept drifting to thoughts about whether meditation could literally strengthen the brain (I’d read a study) which was itself a fairly impressive act of monkey mind, turning a meditation about stillness into a research project.

I gave the track four out of five stars anyway.

January 8th, evening, was different.

I hadn’t wanted to meditate. I was attempting sober January and after five days of no alcohol, I was definitely not feeling the benefits. No bounding energy, and my face, still puffy. I’d weighed myself that morning and the number hadn’t moved (not even water weight!), and I couldn’t quite shake the sour mood. I reasoned with myself the way I used to about karate: even when I felt at my worst going in, I always felt better after class. So I sat down and found a track called Deep Cleansing and Healing with Archangel Michael by Sofia Light Jewel, which is exactly the kind of title that would have made me roll my eyes six months earlier. Today I chose it without hesitation.

The guide led me through surrounding myself with light, inviting Archangel Michael in to clear away negativity with what she described as a sword of blue light, moving through each chakra. I tried to imagine each part of the body, but heck if I knew what root or sacral meant. When she reached the eyes (I know where those are!), “opening the veils”, she said something about who we are and who we have been, about leaving behind the negativity from past lives and sending what doesn’t belong in this life back to source. Something resonated.

And then inside me, I felt I am Giuseppi repeat and repeat.

Giuseppi is the World War II submariner I encountered in a past life regression years ago — a man who died carrying the weight of a failure he could never release. It wasn’t just that Giuseppe felt failure, but that he thought he let everyone down - crewmates, family, country. I had spent years trying to figure out what my current relationship with him was. I certainly knew that weight of failure, and of letting people down. Was that Giuseppi or was that me? Was I carrying something that didn’t belong to me?

What the guide said next felt directed right at me: accept and forgive yourself. I let it sink in for a moment, and I started to cry a little. I felt, for the first time, that I was accepting Giuseppi as part of me with no judgement…not a past mistake to be corrected.

I wrote in my journal: I felt love surround me, starting inward at my core and moving outward. Quite overwhelming.

Eight days in. I was not expecting any of that.

January 9th. I sat with no backrest and cupped hands, karate-style, and got emotional again, though this time more gently. I found a peaceful place in my mind that reminded me of Janet’s void from The Good Place…a room of one’s own inside the silence, alone but not lonely. I noted that when I woke up that morning, I had thought about writing, about this project, about the daunting task I had set myself across more than one lifetime, apparently, and for the first time I didn’t feel the familiar undertow of dread. The weight of the thing was still there. The dread wasn’t.

I wasn’t sure what to make of that. I wrote it down anyway.

January 10th. Five sessions in. I put on a guided track — Om Shanti Ananda, finding the stillness in silence. The teacher said something early on that I underlined in my mind: find the space between words, between thoughts, between breaths. That extra moment of stillness. Respond, don’t react.

Then we were instructed to chant Om Shanti Ananda, and to return to the chant whenever we wandered.

And as I got started, my inner critic, right on schedule, said: you’re not doing it right.

I almost laughed. Ten days into a meditation practice and the committee in my head had already convened to evaluate my performance. I stayed with it for a moment — the critic, the chant, the slight absurdity of the whole situation — and then something came through, the same thing that had come through on day one:

It’s the process, not the result.

There it was again. Process, not results. Not a mantra I had chosen. One that seemed to have chosen me.

Five sessions. Two visits from the same message. Maybe there is something to pay attention to here.

I’m trying to be honest about what those first ten days looked like from the outside, because I think it matters for anyone considering their own experiment. There was no dramatic awakening. There was back pain and monkey mind and a track I abandoned after three minutes because I couldn’t stand the production quality. There was a morning I nearly skipped because my meditation app crashed. There was an evening I meditated specifically to improve my mood about a number on a scale, which is not exactly the stuff of spiritual enlightenment.

Yet inside all of that, between the itch and the to-do list and the inner critic and the drooping neck: something was building. A signal I was learning to recognize. A phrase that kept returning. A tearful moment I hadn’t seen coming. A morning without dread.

Process, not results.

I was beginning, slowly, to believe it.

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In December 2020, something was pulling at me with a seriousness I couldn’t really put my finger on. Not a crisis exactly. More like a deadline I couldn’t figure out. I found a blank notebook and wrote on the first page: This journal is dedicated to my spiritual journey.

And then I procrastinated for another month before I did the first meditation.

I had no religious training to speak of — a Catholic mother, a Jewish father and no real tradition to draw from. Baptized, a few catechism classes, saying grace at Grandma’s house and decorating a “Hanukkah bush” at Christmastime was the extent of it. No guidance or education in any real sense. When I was seven I went to church with a friend and came home excitedly talking about how the angels were falling from the clouds because I accepted Jesus as my savior. I wasn’t allowed to play with that friend anymore.

In sixth grade, I discovered C.S. Lewis, read and reread in the Buffalo Grove Public Library until I understood, somewhere around age thirteen, that Aslan had another name. The seeds of my spirituality were planted by a children’s fantasy series about a lion and a wardrobe. Maybe embarrassing or maybe kind of perfect depending on how you look at it.

What I wanted, in this mid-life moment, was to stop looking for the door through other people. Psychics, past life regression sessions, Edgar Cayce, Sylvia Browne — I had spent decades asking other people to tell me what I already suspected: that we are eternal beings having a physical experience, that consciousness survives the body, that the energy of the universe is available to anyone who learns how to be quiet long enough to receive it. I wanted to find out for myself.

So I became the experiment. The rules I set were simple: meditate, write about it. Don’t read instruction manuals. No Google. Find my own way in, and document whatever I found there.

What I found, in the first week, was that my hands buzzed.

It sounds ridiculous. I know it sounds ridiculous. But somewhere between five and fifteen minutes into most sessions, the palms of my hands would begin to feel electric, almost uncomfortably warm, and that sensation became my signal…something is here. Something is happening. Whether the something was neurological or spiritual, I couldn’t say. I still can’t. What I can say is that the feeling became reliable, and reliability, in matters of faith, is not nothing.

And that buzzing energy brought me back to another long past karate class. Whether I hated meditation or not, I had to attend class to graduate to the next level. Was this meditation stuff for real? This time I went with a plan. I sat on the mat, hands in the traditional hokkai-join with right hand cupped in the left, thumbs lightly touching. Eyes half closed, the candle flame in the center of the circle dancing and blurring as Sensei recited the lesson, her voice drifting away as I put my question to the universe. Why am I here?

Yes, that is the question I asked. Why am I here? Why shouldn’t I start with the most ancient existential query?

I repeated and repeated that simple phrase, definitely not expecting an answer. I felt like Natalie Wood in The Miracle of 34th Street, swinging her legs as she recited, “I believe, I believe, it’s silly, but I believe.”

Minute after minute I kept my mantra going, blocking out Sensei, the candle, the singing bowl. Filling my mind with those four words. And then it started. The buzzing. First in my thumbs, a tingle, then in my hands, a wave. A wave emanating up and around and out into the rest of my body. And all I can say is I felt love. And not just any love, the kind of love that makes your eyes well up. The kind of love that is all the things. Supportive, unconditional, overwhelming.

Like a six year old bursting into tears when Mommy forgives her for jumping on the bed and breaking the lamp. Or a 49 year old bursting into tears when all her friends yell Surprise! for that almost milestone birthday. This feeling of being seen, of being accepted, that I will be carried gently through this life whether I know it or not. I was cracked open with every vulnerability exposed, yet I was being held in a cocoon of love. I could feel it. I was overwhelmed by it, and tears streamed down my face as I vibrated to this truth that our true essence is love, that, and I know this sounds super woo, that is what we are, have been and shall be unto eternity. Question answered.

That was twenty years ago. I filed it away and spent the next two decades looking everywhere else. But tarot cards and psychic readings can be vague as hell. Even a very vivid past life regression where I came up as a World War II submariner named Giuseppi who died carrying the weight of failure didn’t convince me 100%.

I was looking everywhere except the one place the proof actually lived, which was in twenty minutes of silence with my eyes closed and my hands on my knees, buzzing.

When that buzzing came back, I recognized the signal. I finally had a destination. The question became, could I get there intentionally? Not once upon a time sitting on a training mat twenty years ago, but reliably, repeatedly on an ordinary Tuesday morning in a Napa apartment with my wife sleeping across the hall.

Turns out you can.

Ask for five minutes. Listen for fifteen

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So I sat down on the little bench at the foot of the bed in the spare room, blue blanket over my legs, headphones on, and opened one of those blank books. I wrote: This journal is dedicated to my spiritual journey. I had no idea what that meant yet.

Here’s who you’re dealing with: not a pastor, not a therapist, not a yoga teacher. A wine sales rep. A band geek. A pickleball enthusiast. Gay, married (spoiler: not now), no real religious upbringing to speak of...a Catholic mom who lost her church, a Jewish dad who wore a yarmulke at the cemetery and otherwise kept his faith quietly to himself. What filled that gap was C.S. Lewis and a children’s library card, and later, in junior year English class, Emerson’s “The Over-Soul”... the idea that we are all connected, that there is a universal energy we can tap into for support, for answers, for something.

The seed got planted and, well, kind of just sat there. Over the decades I visited psychics, explored past life regression, read the Celestine Prophecy and Edgar Cayce, collected the idea that there are no coincidences. I believe in spirit guides and the energy of the universe. I also have strong opinions about Burgundy vintages and WNBA draft picks. These facts coexist without apology.

Basically, I watered that seed of universal energy for thirty years with everything but the one thing that would get me there: stillness. It was time to find out.

I’ve long been a fan of the “I did this for a year” memoir, so I decided to run my own experiment. Simple and specific: every day, meditate. Write down what happened. Repeat. No classes, no guru, no certification required. Just, find my own way in and document whatever I find there.

One question underneath it all: can a regular person with no credentials, no lineage, no religious authority, access this invisible world directly? My hypothesis — yes. Everyone can. The door is always open. We just keep closing it.

Four notebooks and hundreds of meditations later, I can tell you a few things. First, there’s a method here, and it’s simpler than you think. Ask for five minutes. Then listen for fifteen. That’s most of it. Second, the universe, it turns out, is very literal. And apparently keeps excellent records. There’s a story involving a phone call, a 401K, and seventy-seven thousand dollars that I’ll get to soon. It still makes me shake my head. Third, sometimes the universe answers a question you didn’t know you were asking. My niece Kaitlyn died in early 2021. The grief was real and piercing. However, what followed deepened everything.

This Substack is where I put it all out. Essays about what I found. Practical how-to posts drawn from actual journal entries. Guided meditations built from my own process. Shorter reflections when something comes up that can’t wait for a full essay. My Spirituality Experiment is my accountability to all those stutter starts with writing: comedy, The Moth, so many orphaned journals, a career in copywriting instead of creative writing. (And maybe I’ll tell you about how the psychic told me I need to get started by age 53.)

But here’s what this is not: a conversion project. I’m not asking you to believe what I believe or adopt my framework or follow any particular path. I’m asking something much simpler. Get quiet for a few minutes a day and see what happens.

I’m not the guru. I’m the experiment. There’s a difference, and it matters. I can still see myself on the bench. Blue blanket. Headphones. Staring at that blank notebook.

I’ve been seeking the punchline my whole life, but the joke might just be on me. I had no idea what was coming. But that’s the only way any experiment works.

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— TR