I had, for most of my life from preschool to high school graduation, many feelings of pride for being smart. I was a really good student. When I was in third grade I took a special test to get into a special school for smart kids. I got in. So for fourth and fifth grade I went to a magnet school in Los Angeles which basically meant a school for higly gifted children. After graduation my parents moved me, my twin sister, and my older brother to a peaceful town called Calabasas. It was safer there and their public school district was very highly regarded. The summer before entering middle school, I took another test to get into the higher learning classes. I scored in the 99+ percentile of the test. So I got into honors classes. In high school I was in accelerated math classes and by senior year I was in five AP classes and passed tests to accelerate past having to take some college courses. I didn’t have to do deal with a lot of high school drama because the main focus for most of my peers in my classes was to succeed academically and not to just be “popular.”
I grew up in a family and culture that valued education highly so I felt proud of very myself and built my sense of confidence on my grades often. Even though I knew this wasn’t totally fulfilling for everything I wanted to do in my life, I didn’t see it as an option to have lower standards for school achievement.
I got good grades but when it was time to enroll in university they weren’t good enough to get me into the top schools. I didn’t even apply to schools like Stanford, Harvard or Yale. My reach was more towards the University of California system. UC Berkeley was rated the highest. I didn’t get into there. I didn’t get into UCLA or UC San Diego either. I got into UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, UC Irvine, and UC Riverside. I also got into a school called Reed in Portland, Oregon which prided itself on having self selected students who enjoyed learning for the sake of learning and not because they were forced to. It was also $40,000 a year to go there, and I wanted to study philosophy. I’d have felt too guilty spending that much of my parents’ money, and did not want to go into debt to take aorta loan of my own. I decided not to go to any of them because I wanted the best one, UC Berkeley. The best way to get there would be 2 years of community college and then to transfer.
At the time I was also learning about philosophy, going to ecstatic dance, and getting into yoga. All of this and high school ending got me a little closer to the frustrating feelings had felt about school and the the school structure as well. I felt that I was being taught to be a learning robot rather than being taught to be an independent thinker. Getting good grades did not help me in the sphere of social ease, being a kinder person ( except to appease me parents), or the sense of independence I wanted. After the structure of high school ended, and was no longer my structure, I felt a little bit afloat. I was also in love with my yoga teacher at the time (who was sort of my boyfriend) and he went on this so I went too on a ten day, intense meditation retreat where we sat for at least ten hours straight and meditated on our sensations. When I came home my mom had thought I turned into a zombie and I thought I was more at peace because I had really enjoyed the silence.
I enrolled in community college with my twin sister and went to the classes. I got good grades. I was also a little bit depressed. The classes weren’t exciting. I wasn’t in an exciting atmosphere. We were still living at home. A year later I decided to do something wild. This was when the internet was first beginning to make headway and I looked up “yoga communities.” I found one in Northern California called the Mount Madonna Center where they centered the community around a sense of inner peace (supposedly). The main residents are devotees of a guru named Baba Hari Das who was briefly mentioned in Ram Das’s Book “Be Here Now.” He had taken a vow of lifelong celibacy and a vow of silence for over fifty years. Being young and spontaneous I called them, filled out the application form,and was accepted. I lived there for six months doing a work study. I basically did kitchen work, gardening, housekeeping, and tea service for retreat guests as it is part ashram/ part spiritual retreat center for visiting teachers. I got to meet many spiritual teachers and seekers including the now famous Adyashanti. It was an interesting six months. It was like traveling halfway between India and America. I tried out not speaking for five days, sometimes I would fast, some days I would meditate a lot. I tried many different spiritual techniques and realized that some people, instead of devoting themselves to the academic world, devoted themselves to seeking and living the truth within themselves. That is the kind of person I wanted to be. It was also very satisfying to be a food server to people on spiritual retreat because I got so much feedback about how special it was for them to have me be so present and loving in my food giving. That was a nice change from just feeling positive about getting good grades. That seemed like a worthwhile endeavor but I did see hypocrisy there as well. I wanted to move out of the center and find an apartment in Santa Cruz near the ashram but I didn’t have enough money and my mom thought I was being brainwashed. I also started thinking that if I really did want to become saintly I’d need to start with my family, like Mother Teresa quoted in one of the many books I read there. So I moved back home.
I moved back home with these new experiences and got back fairly depressed. I had learned about healthy mindful eating there but it was difficult to keep up at home and I sometimes reverted back in to junk food and watching television (the popular thing to do in my generation). This got me more depressed because I learned how toxic this could be. My mom recommended the Optimum Health Institute in San Diego. It is a raw food detox program where people go to get cured from diseases through clean eating. I went for two weeks learning about detox, eating raw, doing fasts, daily enemas, and colonics. I lost so much weight that I didn’t need to lose and it drilled in my head how everything I put in and on my body affects my whole being, including my mental state. Meanwhile my sister was traveling the world. I had some anxiety about traveling because I wanted to eat healthy and be at peace with where I was from and what I had, not run away from it. I also wanted to maintain a clean eating diet.
I finished the retreat, came back home again, and went in and out of healthy eating cycles. I also went religiously to wild dancing classes where I became animalistic and danced to my heart’s content in a group thatvalued self expression over the clubbing feel. I also started seeing a therapist to grow as a person and paid her with my birthday money. At that time as well it was popular amongst my new age friends to denounce their parents. I followed suit, which sadly made me antagonistic towards my hard working parents which i’ve since often apologized for. So I finished my college work to apply to UC Berkeley and UCLA. I had a waiting period of four months before I would know whether I got in or not. Meanwhile I had somehow found a book by a British man named Llewellyn Vaughaun Lee. I had a habit at the time of picking obscure spiritual literature as a form of book long divination. I, also, at the time, had wanted to understand more of the writing process and decided to meet this author. He held a meditation/dreamwork group in northern California so I decided to move there and learn with him. I found an apartment with a roommate, a job, and went to his weekly meetings. He turned out to be a loony jerk. He believed he talked talked to a deceased spiritual entity and he also would yell at me often just for being young. “Watch what you’re doing with your sexual energy” he would say to me frustratingly. Being 21 and attractive I took that very personally. I saw sexual energy as pure life force so i’m not sure what he meant. He was probably a 70 year old creep. I was just trying to be nice. Also, these weekly meetings were my main social life at the time because I knew I would be changing locations for school anyway. This type of social life wasn’t good for me. I had a lot of stress with living in a new place, working, having so many new things in my life, plus the stress of being told there was something wrong with me by an old british guy who other people in his little cult believed in. Instead of giving myself credit for being brave I put pressure on myself to get him to like me. This resulted in me having a nervous breakdown which deeply worried my parents and myself. Also since I was going through all this without supervision nobody understood why I had this breakdown, and it was difficult to explain at the time.
I got into UC berkley and all the other schools I applied to. That was a good thing but I felt the oncoming pressure of school starting and how much extra work that would be for me. I was more excited about learning to take care of myself and having a beautiful lifestyle like I saw my roommate do. She was a massage therapist with a lovely apartment and I admired what I saw a tranquil life. Nevertheless I enrolled in school, made new buddies, dd a lot of interesting things, but six months later dropped out because I was not enjoying the mental pressures or the cold. I moved back home at my parents’ request.
I had not finished college. That is something I had never expected. It was always expected of me to finish college, at the very least. Most likely with honors. Hopefully with an amazing job offer lined up afterwards. A part of me felt like a total failure. Though another part felt smug. It was hard to reconcile these two parts.
I am sitting in front my porch listening to the ocean waves one hundred feet away as I write this. I am listening to ebb and flow. The minor crashes of water on rock and sand soothingly inform me of my environment. I am seeing the blues that have captured so many artists’ perceptions. The magic of of the ocean is that it is not a 3 minute cd track, or even a night long, “Sleep well” ocean sound sleeping aid I can turn on with the man made superpower of electricity. It is a constantly present, perpetually “Here” sound because it is perpetually happening and will for a long time. Now, and now, and now. I am about to take a walk along the ocean and jump in. I will soon be moved with that flow (but stay on the shallow end this morning to keep safe). I will be moved and soothed, with the ocean rhythms always in this now. I will be cleansed emotionally as always happens when I fully immerse in the water. I will be okay and grateful for everything I have. I will be at peace with everything I don’t have or am yet to do. I love the ocean. I love the immersion of living near this sound. This sound that not only frees me of regrets but releases me to freedom in general. I love putting my whole body including my head in these warm waters and being rocked through and through, every organ of my body titrating with the ever present. Living, healing, rocking, and rhythmic rolling of the ocean waters. I love the feel, the sight, the smell, and the sounds of the greatest musician that ever was. With the ocean my needs are balanced with what I am able to acquire. The ocean is the best example of living its truth, and reminds me to fully live my truth - moment by moment, day by day, which is the only way living one’s truth can happen.
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