Peak spiritual experiences can be profound and life changing or just another experience. We assume that these will occur in 'spiritual' settings, but sometimes these can happen in the most mundane or unbefitting places. I've had some major breakthro...
For manypeople, psycho-spiritual growth is a slow, lifetime-long process, with infrequent peak experiences, which can lead to insights, realizations, transformations. Or simply another experience that comes and goes. The common assumption is that these would occur in some "spiritual" setting, such as interactions with a teacher, in "satsang" or in meditation.
But that is not always the case. In fact, sometimes profound events will occur when you least expect it. These have occurred to me in some unusual circumstances: in a bar, inebriated, at the movies.
Like most adults in the modern world, my experience with alcohol has been long, varied, both pleasurable and painful. These days I don't indulge at all – there is a joyful presence to existence that only gets dulled or blotted out by inebriation.
But that's not to say that Ol' Demon Alcohol wasn't a major catalyst in two significant spiritual events in my life. This seemingly oxymoronic coupling is so unusual that I thought I'd put it down on writing.
And of course, this is also not to say that I'm recommending going on a bender to fulfill some spiritual yearning – good luck to that! But in the spirit of Tantric practice, in which all sorts of dubious substances and activities can be used to promote spiritual advancement, such as drugs and sex, my experience in these events certainly promoted my personal evolution tremendously.
Jump Start, Spiritual Initiation In a Bar
The first experience at 18, literally my initiation into spiritual life, or rather the ignition of the thirst for spiritual freedom, happened in a bar in Buffalo, NY!
In 1972, I went to visit my buddy Alan at the University of Buffalo. Being a border city, Buffalo was rife with hashish and weed being brought in from Canada, so I hoped to pick up a bunch of grams of Lebanese or Nepali while there.
I remember meeting all of Alan's friends, partying with them, and in one evening we all hoofed it down to a local bar named "The Library" to take advantage of the dollar pitchers of beer (oh, how cheap the beer!). Now this bar had an unusual décor: it was lined with stack of books just like a library.
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After downing a few brewskis, I was getting bored with the conversation and checked out the books on the shelf behind me. One particular book stood out, and I don't know why. It was called "Here Lies the Heart", the autobiography of a Spanish artist in the 1930s, Mercedes D'Acosta, whose fame led her to hobnob with the rich and famous at the time. As I skimmed the pages, I noticed she seemed to know many famous people, which was neither here nor there. But she had something else: a spiritual thirst, which led her to drop everything at one point and head to India.
While there she met a number of yogis, sages and gurus, such as Meher Baba and Aurobindo. But none of these were what she was looking for.
Then she met the great sage Ramana Maharshi. That was it, she knew she found her guru. Ramana, at one point, tapped her on the right side of the chest and said, "Here lies the heart, the dynamic spiritual heart. Find the Self in the Heart". She was blown away and fully initiated.
