Creating Existence

Her legs are completely numb, yet she remains oblivious. Lost in a profound state of "no mind," Lorrain delves deeply into her meditation, seeking the intangible rewards that beckon her. Every day, as the world slumbers, she rises at 3 a.m. and glides silently to the meditation room. Seated cross-legged on her cushion, she slips effortlessly into a profound trance, a realm between sleep and wakefulness, where thoughts evaporate like morning mist.

She begins by placing her awareness at the base of her spine. Wrapped three and a half times around the coccyx, inside the hollow tube she calls the “Sushumna”, an electric impulse is guided slowly upward toward the center of the brain. “This practice,” she says,” is basically the same as giving your inner body a shower. The process is known for cleansing out accumulated negative energy. Why only shower on the outside?” She asks. “Isn't it just as important to stay clean on the inside?”

“You know it’s working because your spine actually heats up. Breath and light rubbing up and down inside the spine until negative thoughts have been burned away. Doesn’t that make sense?”

“Inside the Shushumna there are vibrating little wheels people call chakras. These energy centers can ring like a little bell on the inside causing your internal energies to come into alignment. So I use my breath to pull the energy up my spine, while stopping to ring the little bells along the way. Eventually my mind stops generating negative thoughts completely.”

To Lorrain, this isn't arduous labor nor rigid discipline; it's simply arriving at her true destination. As she closes her eyes, an ethereal tranquility envelops her, akin to the sun's first rays piercing through the stubborn clouds. Her mind empties, and with this emptiness, a golden emergence begins—a dawning suffused with a buttery warmth that transcends the mind and touches the soul. The only interruption is the tingling numbness in her legs after hours of stillness.

My envy is palpable. I implore her for guidance, yearning for a glimpse into her world. "It's just science," she says with a casual shrug. My curiosity piqued, I press for more. In response, she pulls out her iPhone, revealing a photograph of Albert Einstein alongside Rabindranath Tagore, a monk draped in orange robes, embodying wisdom from the Himalayan monasteries.

They stand side by side in the doorway of Einstein's home in Berlin. Two planetary intellects feeding each other on the nourishment of math and philosophy. According to Tagore; “It is a relative world depending for its relativity upon our consciousness.” He asserts that beauty and truth are dependent on humans observing them. No beauty without an admirer, no truth without a believer.

Einstein disagrees saying “the Pythagorean theorem in geometry states something that is approximately true is independent of the existence of man.”

Lorrain speaks of these monks as guardians of spirituality, their ancient Sanskrit records chronicling thousands of years of knowledge. "Just look it up," she suggests, referring to the enigmatic tales of Jesus' lost years learning Kriya Yoga, a practice binding breath to the spine. These revelations, she claims, are etched in palm-leaf manuscripts, located in the library of a Himalayan monestary.

In our little book called “Prayers Of The Cosmos” with the forward by Matthew Fox, she reminds me, are the Aramaic words that Jesus spoke in the beginning of the Beatitudes. “”Oh father-mother God, blessed are those who find their home in breathing…”

Her presence is magnetic. Tall and willowy, Lorrain's dirty blonde hair has a white streak. It cascades in soft waves to her shoulders, and her grey eyes pierce with an intensity that sees beyond the surface. Living together, our lives weave between unspoken assumptions and defined roles. She meditates while I go to work five days a week. She teaches on Thursday nights, her students filling our home with eager anticipation, her donation jar brimming with $20 dollar bills.

Lorrain's mirth is infectious, her laughter a constant companion. She quips, "There is no way to truth. Truth is the way," giggling as if at a private joke. Her reality feels crafted from her own world where love is the truth we understand to be the fundamental fabric of existence, akin to the sub-strata of all space.

Brimming with appreciation for her insights, each student seeks her approval, their eyes reflecting a shared reverence for the wisdom she imparts.

Yesterday, I found her twirling in our living room, like a moon shadow from an old Cat Stevens song. "I made a joke, I made a joke!" she sang, her joy infectious. "Why did the Yogi cross the road?" she beamed. "To make you THINK there was another side!" Her laughter filled the room, and she began to sing softly;

"Let new words grow new roots and thrive and glow. Look to the sky with care, my love, and speak the things you see...let new worlds take new roots and thrive and grow. In the dead of an empty silence, find the single eye of starlings...be the singing and the singer...until the raven calls you home."

Is this an ecstatic state or simply Lorrain reveling in life's simplicity? She paused, her gaze capturing me. "Words were created to share the pictures we carry in our hearts," she whispered. "Love, inform water, new forms! Life, inform love, new forms! Even my name explains it. Lor rain. The myth of rain. We do not exist if our form is nothing but vibrating atoms and molecules."

Her presence commanded the space, and I felt swept into her whimsical reality. As if on cue, we chanted together; "Love, inform life, new forms. Life, inform water, new forms..." Our movements mirrored a moon shadow's grace, filling the room with an unspoken harmony.

She was singing in a whisper now, her voice a gentle breeze stirring the still air. "Words were created to share the pictures we carry in our hearts. Love, inform water, new forms. Life, inform love, new forms. Water, inform life, new forms..."

In that moment, the boundaries of our world seemed to dissolve, leaving behind a space filled with endless possibilities, where love and life could continually reshape themselves in an eternal dance of creation.