This Magic Moment

I'm so depressed. I just realized that I have been asleep for ten years. Thirty years of age, eight hours of sleep per day... How long have I been sitting in traffic?

Ahem.

In the last episode of "So It Goes," I ingested a tiny Buddha on my shoulder. Today, I will regurgitate him.

Being Americans, we're in a hurry. We eat fast food and consider the stop sign a suggestion. We don't have time to say goodbye, we're late, we're late, we're late. Our quality time goes to the computer, where we work till our eyes bleed pixels. The sun is that thing outside that makes us draw the blinds to keep the glare off the screen.

And that's why I'm so worked up: We must take time to honor the sun. Remember Ra from whose tears mankind was born? Ra! Ra! Ra!

I will tell you a secret but only if you promise to share it with others: You can meditate any time the sun is out. I meditate every day. But I don't do it like those junkies with their legs twisted into pretzels. I do it like this...

Whenever I find myself rushing from somewhere important to somewhere more important and the sun hits my head and I say "ah" because it feels nice, I stop. Right there in my tracks. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.

I close my eyes and turn to my old friend, Ra, and then I disappear.

Here's how you do it. Tune in to the smallest sounds around you. Hear the birds chirping on the telephone wire. Don't worry about what possessed them to meet there. Just grow conscious of their song.

The idea is to get lost in the moment the way a child does in a Fudgecicle. In fact, I think childhood ends when they take away your Fudgecicle and say, "Think about your future."

Listen to the dump truck in the distance. Not the most romantic image, but it's all we've got. Feel the world going about its day. You are no longer a bundle of burdens. You are a Silent Witness.

You feel a surge of peace. It may be awkward because your nerves have nothing to do. If you're compelled to run, picture yourself a hundred years from now. Pretty dark, isn't it? That's why we need to stop.

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. John Lennon didn't actually write that, but he did say, "Tomorrow may rain, so I'll follow the sun." I'm not sure what that means, but it must fit in here somewhere.

Allow the sun to penetrate you in a cellular, Deepak Chopra kind of way. Feel the vitamin D seeping into your skin; feel the warmth painting your bones. Now picture yourself on a subatomic level. We're talking quantum physics, baby, where nothing is concrete. Through the looking glass indeed.

You begin to disappear. Carlos Castaneda called it "disappearing in the eagle's breath," but he was high on peyote. You are simply a field of energy, and the you who was just paying bills and rushing the kids to practice is now a drop of water in the sea.

At this point, I like to think of Hubble's Hand of God, the star-forming cloud that is ten trillion miles in diameter (about how I feel after McDonalds). I don't know why the Hand of God. It just comes. That's what my haven looks like. It's where I turn when things go bad -- that is, daily.

Hold it longer. Concentrate. Okay. Now you're mind is wondering, and we have to come back.

I hate this part. Touchdown. I open my eyes and look about and slowly rejoin the program already in progress. Soon I'm surrounded by people running around like Chicken Littles with their heads cut off. They pull me into the illusion that we are separate and that their need will determine the fate of the universe.

The loan officer called. He wants a stool sample. The flower guy is here to discuss the snapdragons. Sugar Ray needs me to listen to Kiss FM every day for two weeks.

Although I no longer have time to hear m