Popcorn, Wine, & Meditation
Every week a group of us hold a meditation at my home, which we irreverently call, “Popcorn, Wine, & Meditation.” We meditate for 25 minutes, enjoy some popcorn, watch different teachers on YouTube and share our experience.
Over the years it has become a small, but loyal group of friends coming together in truth. Tonight there are only four of us. Barry is on the Big Island swimming with dolphins, Manuela is in Rishikesh, India, at a Mooji retreat, her husband Daniel is in Switzerland, Darri is on the other side of the island, and Martin is at a Waldorf School board meeting.
Together, the nine of us must clock up some 200 years of spiritual work. We’ve all been around the block, attended countless retreats with countless teachers. We’re mature in wisdom and young in spirit.
Pamela shows up early tonight, and we have a glass of wine and chat about writing, our ashram days, and our lives. Pamela is an attractive woman, who can sometimes appear very correct when she has her hair up in a bun. For me, she’s great fun whether her hair is up or down. What a remarkable woman. For sixteen years she was intimately involved with Yogi Bhajan’s 3HO Foundation, where she was known as Premka. She played a central role in 3HO’s growth from a small yoga community to a huge organization. For many of those years she was Secretary General, traveling the world with Yogi Bhajan, meeting the Dalai Lama, Indira Gandhi, two sequential Popes, and various other leaders. She’s just written a book exposing some of the deceit and corruption that has until now been kept secret. I can imagine how formidable she must have been in her traditional Sikh dress and turban.
At 6:00 Jasmyne and Katharine walk in the door. Pamela and I burst out laughing when we see them. They’re both dressed up for subzero weather and are shivering. The temperature on Maui has plummeted to 62 degrees and everyone is complaining. Jasmyne, who is always dressed very casual chic, arrives wearing UGG boots, a heavy white fleece, and a scarf around her neck. Katharine is wearing a red hat, a sweater, a scarf, sweat pants, and pink socks, yet she’s still cold! I loan her my burgundy mohair shawl, which she wraps around herself.
We all dive into the popcorn while catching up on recent events (such as this cold snap). Jasmyne, one of my dearest friends, is a writing coach and the author of What If the Problem’s Not the Problem? Katharine, an artist and a very lovable soul, is one of my swim friends. In her younger days (she’s my exact same age), she traveled internationally, performing as a world tower diving champion. Now, despite having painful rheumatoid arthritis, she swims almost daily out in the open ocean. She is such a courageous woman.
When we finally sit down to meditate, I feel giddy, overwhelmed with joy at us all being together. We all start laughing when Katharine brings over a big bowl of popcorn and sits in the stressless chair.
“Swami Popcorn-ananda!” Pamela quips.
“The popcorn guru!” Jasmyne adds.
Katharine bows down to the popcorn. We’re all laughing, and Katharine is playing the role to the hilt.
“Ok, settle down, settle down,” I say, in a vain effort to calm the group. “We’re now five minutes into the meditation and no one is meditating!”
“That’s five minutes where we could have become enlightened,” Jasmyne laughs.
That only brings on more laughter. Anyone reading this is sure to say, “This can’t be a serious meditation group? What a joke!” True, we aren’t serious about the external form of meditation, but we are deadly serious about the deeper purpose of meditation: to awaken to Presence!
Eventually we do settle down and become silent. Despite my best efforts to remain calm, I feel this uncontrollable laughter welling up, and start laughing hysterically. Tears start streaming down my face. It becomes contagious. We’re soon all cracking up. Every time we become silent, someone else starts laughing. I guess you had to be there.
After this joyful release, we drop into a deep mediation. We all recognize that everything that arises, whether it is laughter, tears, a cell phone ringing, or simple silence, it’s all part of the meditation. Sitting on a meditation cushion for hours on end while facing a wall, may be one form of meditation. Our focus is on letting everything be as it is, not needing anything to be different, accepting everything, rejecting nothing. There’s nowhere we’re trying to get to. Just sitting in awareness, letting life happen.
As I drop into deeper silence I notice how soothing the tears are to my tired eyes. I begin to sense the sounds around me: the sound of someone breathing, the hum of the refrigerator, the chirp of a gecko, the wind in the tall Norfolk pines. Soon there is nothing but silence.
Twenty-five minutes later I ring the gong to end of the meditation. Everyone stocks up on popcorn, while I turn on the TV, and find You Tube. Usually we find teachers in the nondual tradition, such as Adyashanti, Gangaji, or Mooji. Tonight we’re onto someone new. I click on a video called “Mystic in the Marketplace,” a talk given by the contemporary spiritual teacher Thomas Hübl, a strikingly handsome young guy (every woman swoons when they see his picture). As I start the video, I see that he has long greyish-brown hair tied back in a ponytail, a light beard and mustache, and a tall, lanky body. He’s dressed simply in loafers, jeans, and a plain white shirt, open at the collar. No pretentions here.
Thomas was born in Vienna, and on his way to becoming a doctor when, at the age of 26, he opted out of the conventional world, and went on a four-year retreat in the Czech Republic. A fundamental change took place, a radical shift, which some would call awakening. When he returned, he began speaking to one or two people, and then began leading workshops for larger and larger groups.
Now he teaches and gives retreats around the world, but primarily in Berlin and Israel. He has a refreshing new approach to spirituality, which he calls, “Sharing the Presence.” It is about bringing spirituality into the real world. He’s saying that we don’t do practices just for ourselves, but to help bring about a global consciousness. It’s powerful stuff.
As we watch the video, the moderator asks him a question: “I turn on the news and there’s an atrocity. I see real, real suffering. Tell me something about what it means to relate to that.”
Thomas answers, “Our deepest humanity is our highest possibility. If I put on the television and I see there was a terrorist attack, I feel affected by this. This is the moment when we need the gift of our practice the most. If my spiritual practice doesn’t enhance my ability to respond, something isn’t working.”
His expressive hands underline what he is saying: “Spiritual practices train me to live a responsible life. Sometimes, when we see negative news, it’s overwhelming. It’s too much. But I need to relate to it as a full human being, with all my capacity. If I dissociate, I’m missing it.”
We stop the video and discuss how this can be applied to today’s news, with Donald Trump running for president. How do we respond when we see him? Do we disassociate? Do we get angry? Or do we stay open to the experience and see deeper? Can we stay in touch with our interconnectedness, our not-twoness?
“What an invitation it is for me not to immediately become judgmental,” I say.
“But he’s dangerous!” Pamela says. “We can’t sit around passively and not do anything!”
“Oh my God,” groans Katharine. “That man’s showing us the darkest underbelly of who we are.”
“But he’s also teaching us something important,” Jasmyne puts in.
“You’re right,” I add. “There’s some of Trump in all of us. He’s helped me to see my own shadow side. Sometimes I wish I could be more like him!”
“Well, I don’t want to become the hate that he’s perpetrating,” Pamela says.
“If I understand what Thomas is saying in the video, we can allow all our feelings to be present when we see Trump on TV,” I say, groping for the right words. “We can see him from a fresh perspective, as someone not separate from us.”
“We don’t have to agree or like what he stands for,” Jasmyne says.
“You’re right there!” says Katherine.
This is why we come together, I think to myself – to remember, to remember our interconnectedness, to remember that there is no separation, no matter how grim things may look, whether it be Trump, terrorism, or tidal waves.
A quote from my dear friend Ram Dass pops to mind: “Treat everyone you meet as God in drag.”
I’ll think of this the next time I see Trump on TV!