TIME FOLLOWS ME

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO CIRCLE PODS AND ESCTATIC LOVE BOMB

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CIRCLE PODS AND ESCTATIC LOVE BOMB

My eyes, ears, and heart were open. We met after breakfast each day in circles, called pods, and talked about spiritual questions from the previous nights lecture.

It was cooler in the mornings but still very hot and dry. By mid-summer in California this year, there was not a green blade of grass as far as the eye could see. At night the stars hung so close to the ground, you could almost touch them. I identified easily the constellations I knew, The Big Dipper, The Little Dipper and holding the end of the handle the Northern Star. I had looked into this deep black corner of sky with its protruding bobbles from the hill back on the farm in Duntroon. It looked the same here except there seemed to be more sky. I stayed still looking up. Mentally I pointed my arm saying to myself, "Duntroon is just o'er there."

Nothing can get you going more in a group than a friendly game of Dodge Ball. We met in a field one mid-afternoon for a game they called "Love Ball." The idea was the same as dodge ball. You try not to get hit by the ball thrown into the centre from the outside of the circle of seekers. The leader encouraged the group and screamed, "Love Ball, Love Ball, Bomb with Love."

With about thirty or forty people divided on the outside of the circle and inside, we ended up with a few people in the middle and the frenzied crowd shouting, "Bomb with Love, Bomb with Love". I kept dodging the ball. Finally, I was the last one in the center and the ball was coming fast and furious. I was jumping up and down in my bare feet, sprinting side to side, tumbling sometimes to avoid the ball. I was sweaty from all the exertion in the one-hundred-ten degree heat. Finally a ball hit me and I fell to the ground exhausted. It felt great to be, "Love Bombed."

This fun diversion seemed to bond the group and we all gave an enormous cheer. I felt like I could celebrate being the last one out.

There were a few dissenters in the group and whenever I tried to speak to one of them, I was steered away by my constant companion Bob, to stay with the newer group. The older followers seemed to be somewhat mute, or just tired all the time, with a fixed smile on their faces like they were constantly meditating, or just wiped out from working. I heard they went into San Francisco selling flowers on the street to bring back money to the farm. I had heard from one of the guys at the St. Francis Hotel that they would try to "brainwash me." I rather doubted that, but I had been warned and this warning made more and more sense the longer I stayed. I heard that the food we were eating had very little protein so that our bodies were rapidly burning away all the fat we had left, by running around at "Love Ball" and working in the fields.

I asked Rebecca about these things and she didn't deny them, but said, "Why don't you stay and see what you can learn?" I said "Well, I need to go back to school and see my family at some point." I had been here just over a week. The couple that arrived together was under constant observation because they used to sneak off and sleep in their car just to be alone together. Later, I learned that it was the family that chose your marriage partner and that anything you did before you arrived was like a past life, you needed to drop. Your new family would take care of everything. This included your birth family that they told us were there just to hold you up, and stop your spiritual growth.

I wrote an ecstatic letter at this time to my girlfriend in Ottawa Mary Jane, telling her all that was happening on this trip. I heard later that she really appreciated the letter as a friend of hers had just died. I felt confused a bit by Mary Jane. She seemed to have polar opposite opinions about things like music and life, like she lived in another universe. She worked as a bank teller, so she wasn't exactly free. More like a caged bird. She was a little older than me, complicated, and way more experienced. She was passionate and feisty, a rocker chic. We listened to "Crime of The Century" Dreamer, by Supertramp a lot.

"Dreamer, you know you are a dreamer

Put your hand in your head

Oh, no!

Dreamer, you know you are a dreamer."

Great song! At times I felt close to her, and other times, just an awkward farm boy. She had a fiery nature, and passion with the body of Venus de Milos from the Louvre, only with arms that squeezed me close to her. We made each other better than we were during the few times I hitchhiked to Ottawa to see her.

It was 'round this time I was asked to attend an advanced lecture where I was told I would meet some powerful folks. I heard that there were lawyers and doctors who had joined the commune and even University of California Professors, giving a serious tone to the upcoming lecture. What struck me the hardest was a talk by a young woman dressed in a hand made white cotton blouse with flower embroidery around the neck, a fairly plain earth brown skirt, and a pair of sandals on her small feet. She told us about her path here, her search for a church. She attended many and had to leave, until she was convinced that this was her home and the message here was the most compelling. I listened to her with every fiber of my body. She was very slender, petite with long black hair and had the face of an angel.