Chapter 4
When I am in of need clearing my head, and I don’t want to drive all the way to Plano, I can sometimes be found at a small park in Irving, off Macarthur, near Los Colinas, which I had been calling the Indian park way before they established a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi. Sometimes I walk. Sometime I watch a cricket game unfold. The seriousness of the play is certainly not “Lagaan” level, but it can be amusing, and slower than baseball to unfold. And so, I found myself at said park, at the closing of a reasonably pleasant October. I was alone, unless you count the ducks, geese, pigeons, and several nutria skirting the edges of the water. Oh, and turtles warming themselves on the dam, some stacked on top of others. So, today alone meant no games of cricket or basketball were ensuing, and the few joggers that were completing circuits were so far removed from me they were as inconsequential as passing clouds. Even the joggers that were closer in proximity, preparing to pass, they would be moving too fast to engage me, would be immersed in their own soundtrack, and so focused on their own world as to make me invisible. Not complaining, mind you, the world is not about me and I don’t expect others to slow down just because I am feeling lonely. Sometimes I wonder if my feelings of loneliness translates into a true ‘invisible’ quality, and I tempted to push boundaries to see what point I become visible. But I never do. I just float, a ghost in the machine so to speak,
Not that I was lonely. Can I even continue to feel lonely when clearly I am not? I was amused by Loxy’s interest in the nutria. The nutria dived into the water as she approached it and I almost wondered if it could see her. I would have to find a friend that had cats so I could watch how the cats reacted to Loxy, if at all. The way that she ran on ahead of me was so childlike. “What’s that?! Oh, and over here, look Jon!” Her enthusiasm was enchanting and I wondered why it took me Herculean efforts to echo such joy. She returned to my side and hugged me.
“We should do some Tai Chi,” Loxy offered.
“Um, no,” I said.
“Oh, come on,” Loxy said. “When’s the last time you practiced?”
“That’s not the point,” I said.
“I’ll do it with you. I will help you remember,” Loxy insisted. “There is never a more perfect time than now to get out of your head and practice courage. Look, it’s the perfect sun to catch.” She demonstrated by sweeping her arms up and over head to encircle the sun.
I allowed her to position me. I was too caught up in the presence of her to worry about people watching. The memory of having learned Tai Chi took a moment to access, but it was easier with Loxy as a guide. We moved, slowly, and got midway through the routine before I got the sense others had joined us. I was so focused on Loxy that I hadn’t noticed the others until I did an arm stretch lunge, into warrior stance. When I came around again, there were several more people. One of them was the jogger, perhaps winding down after too many circuits. Someone bumped me. I felt annoyance, adjusted my stance, and continued. I was bumped again. I turned a scowl upon the intruder.
“Oh, so sorry,” he said.
I acknowledged his apology with the most minimum of nods, shifted over again, so that I was outside the perceived perimeter of about six people who had joined in the activity. Not only was I bumped again, but I fell.
“Oh, so sorry,” he said, offering a hand up.
I was so angry I didn’t accept the help up, but pushed up and started to walk off. The man pursued.
“No, please, come back,” he said, and tripped me.
I was so surprised by falling that I wasn’t sure if the trip had been deliberate or accident. Still, I rolled, came up, raising my hand in an ‘I surrender’ gesture.’ “Back off,” I said.
He mirrored my gesture. “I am sorry,” he said.
He reached out as if to shake hands but I blocked as if it were a punch, kind of a half-baked ‘pak sau,’ which he accepted, and drew me into a hand lock. “Oh, so sorry.”
“What the heck?” I asked.
“Habit,” he said. He released me from the hold, but held onto my wrist with one hand so he could shake my hand with the other. “Well met. And nice form, but you’re coming at it all wrong.”
“I’m sorry?” I asked.
“Oh, no sorry. I’m sorry. If you want to channel more Chi, you must be more grounded,” he said, accentuating the bend in his knees and the wideness of his stance.
“Let go of my hand,” I said.
“Oh, of course,” he said, letting go, only to switch grips. “Oh, so sorry.”
I tried to extricate myself from his grip with the wrist grip release technique I had learned from a self-defense course. I learned this before working at the psychiatric hospital where using said grip is against the rules; at the hospital they employ a training called SAMA, which is supposed to minimize harm. I forgot all about the SAMA training, and went right for the pressure point in the joint lock. I broke free, but he spun me, and reengaged.
“Nice, but don’t hold your breath,” he instructed.
I again tried to extricate myself from this person’s hold and found myself free, but lying on my stomach, my hand locked behind my back.
“You fall a lot. We really should work on your technique. I am a master at falling,” he said.
“Would you stop touching me?” I asked.
“So sorry,” he said, letting go. He offered me a hand up.
Again, I didn’t take his hand.
It occurred to me that Loxy was still doing the Tai Chi routine, as were the others who had joined in. I was a little angry that no one seemed to notice that I was being attacked in broad day light. Loxy brought her ‘dance’ to an end and approached me. A jogger approached from a different direction than I was looking, slowed, took out her ear bud, and asked “You okay?”
I was mad at her for asking. Obviously I was not alright. Could she not see that this man was attacking me?
“Jon, she can’t see him,” Loxy told me.
I looked to Loxy. I looked to the man who had tripped me up. I am sure my mouth must have fallen open in realization that Jackie Chan was before me. He smiled, bowed Namaste hands.
“Um, yeah, I am fine,” I said.
The jogger nodded, replaced the ear bud, and continued with her run. Clearly, if a crazy man lying on the ground gives you indication that they’re responding to internal stimuli, you put your ear bud back in and jog away. Do not engage the crazy man.
“I don’t think she believe you,” Loxy said.
“You want me to use Tai Chi on her?” Chan asked.
“No,” I said to Chan. I sighed. “I mean, no, why would you want to do that?”
“I thought you’d appreciate my antics,” Chan said, sounding genuinely affected.
“Antics?” I asked.
“Antics. Banter. I am very funny,” Chan offered,
“You’re a comedian now?” I asked.
“Have you not watched my movies?” Chan asked. “Some call me the space cowboy? Some call me the jokester of love.”
“Gangster of love,” I corrected.
“You sing your version, I’ll sing mine,” Chan said.
“Oh, John,” Loxy said. “We are going to have so much fun together.”
I was not so sure. I was a little embarrassed. Here I was falling all over myself in the park, and mostly no one seemed to notice. In fact, the Thai Chi girls were still going strong. Sure, one person stopped to engage me, which was a kindness, right, but this was just bizarre. I looked at the girls doing Tai Chi and wondered if they were they real. There’s not a test for that, you know. You can’t just walk up to someone and touch them and ask if they’re for real.
My morning routine is fairly consistent. I get up an hour before work to spend time writing, or meditating, drink a cup or two, or three, of coffee and mostly prepare for my day. Sometimes my son wakes before I leave and joins me, which is a real joy to see his shining face, as he will come and say “I woke up,” carrying his curious George. But usually, I won’t see him till I get home from work. As I wrote this, he was in Thailand, and I was thinking about him and so I was preoccupied in thought as I proceeded to get into the car and drive to work without opening the door so that Loxy might get in. Yes, I have been doing that for her. Sometimes. She doesn’t get mad at me for forgetting her: I may walk with gods and goddesses, but sometimes, I go through my days just like everyone else, so caught up in my head that I forget about the sacred and merge into the mundane, the dreamtime of monotony. She understands that sometimes I am lost in thought, and usually, she just ‘beams’ herself into the shotgun position, and somewhere down the road I will finally tune into her and be like, oh, good morning, how careless of me. Carrying tulpas is a daily practice. Today was different only in that Loxy didn’t join me. In fact, I was so engaged in my thoughts that I wasn’t aware she wasn’t beside me until I ‘awoke’ midstream in a conversation with Carl Jung. Yes, I may have been mundanely asleep, but I was actually in an inner dialogue.
I paused in our conversation. I was now minimally aware of what I was doing. I was engaging what Jung refers to as ‘active imagination,’ which, is sort of the whole purpose of practicing the ‘invisible counselor technique.” The conversation with Carl Jung was interesting, to say the least, but maybe not in terms of immediately solving life challenges. As it was, an uncertain number of cars flying by either side of me brought me to the realization that I was moving much slower than surrounding traffic. This was not due to the activity itself, but to the very real fact that I was sharing the lane with a cement truck. My reduced speed was appropriate as well as the spacing between me and the truck. It wasn’t like the truck snuck up on me. Clearly I had responded to the truck accordingly, but now, faced with the reality of the truck, and witnessing people flying by, while searching for opportunities to skirt around said tuck, I found myself experiencing noticeable frustration. I was unwilling to jump out in front of the oncoming stream of traffic on either side of me because of my reduced speed and fear of collision. I blamed myself for being stuck, thinking ‘clearly had I been more focused or present, or specifically not otherwise engaged, I could have avoided this obstacle and been further along in my journey.
“I’m stuck,” I said.
Carl Jung advised me to sit with it.
“Why? Oh, is this a metaphor for my life?” I asked.
“No, no, no,” Jung said, the same way Yoda might express frustration with Luke. “If you’re going to practice active imagination, you never interpret the symbolic nature of the agents during engagement, but only after. During the commencement of the act, you simply must remain aware and present as you would in any conscious endeavor.”
“So, the truck is an agent?” I asked.
“It’s definitely a character to which you’re responding. Why don’t you ask it?” Jung asked.
“It’s that easy?”
“Not only do I advise asking all agents in your life their purpose, I also highly recommend expressing gratitude for its presence. You were asleep when you came upon it, but now you are awake and aware,” Jung said.
I considered this as I watched the barrel turning. “I’m not stuck,” I said. “I may be going slower, but I am moving, and it seems reasonable to speculate that the cement truck doesn’t necessarily mean stuck in its own right. It’s churning. My thoughts are churning. And with the proper mold, the contents might become a substantial structure for support.”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself,” Jung said.
At which point, the lane we were in allowed for egress off the freeway, which the cement truck took, allowing me to accelerate unimpeded. Interestingly enough, simultaneously with my ability to advance, traffic mysteriously cleared up on my left, so even if the truck had remained, I would have been able to escape around it. Could there have been any more synchronicity in life?
Life responded with a John Lennon song. “I’m just sitting here watching the wheels go round and round.” Jung joined in: “I really love to watch them roll,” bobbing his head. This game I have taken up, the ‘active imagination game,’ is simply bizarre. “I just had to let it go…” It occurred to me as I was listening to this song, again, very present, I have never really ‘heard’ this song before, but have only sung it while asleep. I was excited and scared at the same time. Life.
I express genuine gratitude to all the agents, past, present, and future, that have helped mold my life, and hope it is substantial enough to allow others to advance boldly, where I presently go but timidly.
About a week later, again while riding to work with Jung, I made a right turn into the Twilight Zone, and the bottom fell out of my car and I found myself free falling with a musical score, starting with the line, “His Boy Elroy…” Not sure why it started there, but it also ended there, and repeated. If I were to choose the phonological loop to be stuck in, I would imagine it would be “Daughter Judy,” or at least, “Jane, his wife!” (Cue notes reminiscent of Heart and Souls then explode into a jazz…)
You’re probably curious by now. Let me be clear. No, I don’t do drugs. I am not bipolar. I have never had a manic episode. I can’t tell you precisely how I fell into all of this. I mean, I didn’t sign up for this life. Well, I did. Especially the life with Loxy. I asked for that. I invited my cast of characters to play, and yes, they are definitely ‘characters’ in the playful sense of the word, but sentient and caring folks in their own right. I don’t even know where this is all going, and I suspect it’s the path up the volcano traversed by Joe (Tom Hanks) in Joe Versus the volcano, which suddenly explains my new mantra, “Lightening never takes a straight path.” (If you don’t understand that allusion, watched Joe Vrs the Volcano. The path he took to work every day, is the same path up the volcano. It’s the symbol on of his work logo. It’s appears in several other place, innocuously, like when the wall breaks in his apartment. It is even the lightening that sunk his boat. You may have dismissed Joe as just a silly movie, just like the critiques, but it is really a deeper movie than it appears.)
So, here I am, in the car, feeling joyful. Not happy. Joyful. I am also perturbed. What is this? Is this permissible? Does it have a reason? Does it need a reason? Can it be duplicated at will? Maybe it’s not a feeling but a place. Can I come back here? Now, we all have self-talk. Much of the time we are so engaged in self-talk that we aren’t even aware we are scaffolding in order to reinforce the mood we’re in, or to springboard us into an ‘expected mood.’ I say expected as opposed to desired, because we don’t always desire to be in a bad mood, but we can build lists to support why we ‘should’ be in such a mood. You would think Albert Ellis would enter at this point and discuss his theories on “shoulds’ and ‘expectations.’ But I didn’t invited him to play. I hear he was a pain in the ass to deal with in real life, so he is not one of the seven I chose. I initially went with ‘seven’ guests because that seemed more manageable. Of course, this turned out to be just my daily, core crew. There is also the Safe Haven folks, which puts me well above seven and it’s amazing I can track all of them and my seven. And then if you consider the fan fiction I have written, those folks are equally tangible when I go there. True, they didn’t follow me back, but I suppose they could now if I open that doorway, but I am trying to keep a lid on this. When you invite craziness into your head, it’s probably advisable to start small. I probably should have started with three, but my expectations for success in this endeavor was not high, so I inflated.
Again, Carl Jung is a character. No, really. He’s pretty funny. Sometimes he will push his spectacles up and allow the brightness of his eyes to shine as he concentrates on you. Sometimes he has that sly, subtle smile. This is the older Jung. Grandfatherly. He sometimes has a pipe. And a dinner jacket with the patches on the elbows. Thankfully, he speaks to me in English, but it comes with a German accent, so I suspect he is actually speaking German and I am just hearing English, in the same way the BBS show “A’lo, A’lo” characters were speaking their ‘native’ language but we heard it in English with the appropriate accent, but the characters only heard the native language, and so if they couldn’t speak said language, it required one of the characters to translate, which was a great set up for more comedy. Jung can be seriously thoughtful; hands folded together, fingers’ steepled,’ leaning forwards, you know when he is attending. But in the car, he is usually focused on the scenery, and if he is curious about a modern artifact of the Dallas Fort Worth commute, he will sometimes point at it with the pipe and inquire.
“You should try some gum,” he said.
“Sorry, what?” I asked.
He explained: when you get a song stuck in your head and you want to make it go away, you should chew gum. I was skeptical. He explained further, there is always, even if not discernable, a sub vocalization aspect to ‘phonological loops’ and chewing gum interrupts the pathways. It sounds plausible, I may give it a try in the future, but at the time, I was experiencing traffic on I30, near six flags. Traffic can be a list item for negative stress, but again, I was joyful, attending to traffic, and aware that there were some people not joyful, but most people were just there, driving. I wasn’t even annoyed by the fellow drivers who were clearly reading text while traffic slowed, and sometimes I allow myself to be bothered by this. Not today. I was just allowing things to be, joyfully. The millions of us all in our on worlds, tracking along side by side.
“I feel good,” I said.
“I know,” Carl said.
“How do you know?” I asked.
He looked at me, seriously, and took the pipe out of his mouth. “Seriously?”
“I’m confused,” I said.
“Me, too,” Carl said.
“Your ‘seriously’ sounded sarcastic and I was asking for clarity on how you knew I feel good,” I said.
“Oh, dear God, John,” Carl said, and sighed. “Besides being an artificial construct of your imagination to better explore the depths of your psyche, which consequently provides me a direct, all-pass access to your states of being and all levels of awareness, I am also a world renown psychiatrist and therapist, and can detect subtle clues of inner being as they are telegraphed though physical attributes. And then there is this whole collective unconscious thing, which means I have access to your mood through the ‘medium,’ but if that wasn’t enough, you keeping singing the theme from the Jetsons. Which, I would like to point out, is fairly intrusive, yet remarkably catchy.”
“Succinct,” I said. “I apologize for my confusion.”
“No apology necessary, my boy,” Carl said. “Still, I sense that you’re perturbed.”
“About being joyful for no reason, not by your level of insight,” I offered.
Carl nodded. “I would like to submit an argument for you to contemplate,” he said, using the word ‘argument’ appropriately. You would be surprised how many people I have argued with and used the word argument correctly only to be corrected, “I’m not arguing with you.” Well, you are, and your definitions are skewed, which makes for poor arguments.
“Proceed,” I said, forcing myself not to think about the word arguments and the past arguments about arguments. “A contradiction is not an argument. Yes it is it No it’s not...” Yes, this is how these conversations go. Typically. Both in my head, and, well, what’s deeper than in my head? There is so many levels! Focus…
“It requires the acceptance of a premise,” Carl began. “Whether you believe it or not, for the sake of the argument, I require the belief that all human being are hypnotizable.”
“I already believe that,” I said.
There was subtle smile that suggested disbelief without wanting to engage in an ‘argument,’ using the modern connotation of the word. He proceeded: “You’re at a comedy club. Contextually, just being at the comedy club is tantamount permission to feeling amused, and perhaps allowance for the opportunities of laughter. I use allowance because there are some individuals who attend in order to heckle, as opposed to seeking entertainment.” He mused for a moment. “Though, I can allow for a certain percentage of heckling as being part of the process, I don’t wish to pursue that atypical tangent. Back on point, we will entertain, further, that the next performer is a stage hypnotist. You’ve been chosen to go up on stage. You may have been chosen because you volunteered, which, again, increases you’re likelihood to participate in amusement. But, even if you were coerced to visit the comedy club by friends determined to cheer you up, and you were equally enticed further by said friends to go on stage and you committed out of social pressure or even the urgency to prove you can’t be hypnotized, just the act of going up on stage is setting you up for certain outcomes.”
“I am with you so far,” I said, but was actually thinking, just skip to the point, which meant I really wasn’t listening as much as trying to insert my reality function into the equation to override the incoming input.
“Very well,” Carl said, patiently. Did he know? Well, of course he did. All human beings block some level of input. “Using nothing more than language and the power of suggestion, the hypnotist can open up pathways of joys. If I were more crass, I could add that through the power of suggestion, you could be ‘made’ to have a physiological response that you normally associate as occurring only in the presence of physical stimulation, but only because you consistently fail to recognize your mind as the most essential feature of your being. I emphasize mind, not your brain, and definitely not your body, to which you’ve assigned all meaning. In a hypnotic state, I could tell you there is nothing but sunshine and puppies all around you, and you would believe it and experience it, on multiple and profound levels.”
“I assume you’re going somewhere with this,” I said.
“Patience, my dear Padawan. Your entire evolution has been entirely contrived through hypnosis,” Carl said.
“Expound, please,” I pushed.
“Seriously? I was hoping you would arrive without me spelling out the conclusion, which suggests you’re not listening to me,” Carl said. He sighed. “In your making of lists and in your metrics, you have had socially expected emotional outcomes, and in weighing those, you were telling yourself what to experience. Society has also been influencing you, through commercials and advertisements, and more directly, you were influenced by family and friends sharing their opinions and expectations. You have greatly diminished the outside noise level, over the last ten years, by cutting out television and limiting the radio to music only, but even all of that, programming! There is no way to be 100 percent isolated in this culture,” he said this while pointing at the hot female drinking a coke on the illuminated billboard we pass daily, the cycle of which last long enough me to get transfixed on the model’s eyes, but jumps to the next add before I am satisfied that I have had my fill of her, and I am surprised there aren’t more accidents right her by the billboard, “but by turning off society’s definition of ‘success’ and seeking a more personal way of measuring your life outcomes, you have discovered your own pathway to health. I dare say, ten years ago, definitely twenty years ago, not only would you have not entertained a conversation with an ‘invisible friend,’ but if it occurred naturally, you would have had yourself committed. That fear alone has no doubt blocked you from some truly extraordinarily capabilities. The fact that you are now risking ridicule by openly discussing your experiences derived from these exercises suggests greater sense of security in yourself than you have had in the past.”
I was quiet.
“I think it crucial to point out, though, no matter where you were in your life, you were always engaged in self-talk. Hypnosis. Even when actually engaging others, you were still more engaged in self-talk than true communication. On improving your ability to hear yourself, you’ve acquired the ability to listen better to others. You may be puzzled by this, but ask yourself, who is the one listening? Who were you talking to? Who were you trying to impress? Prior, your mind was too busy to hear others. You’re doing it again. Don’t make me quote Yoda. Pay attention to me, oh! and watch the road. Thank you. You rehearsed arguments, even before others finished speaking their piece. You lamented. You cried. You laughed. You marveled. You were appropriately sad and angry and happy at times, and inappropriately angry and sad and happy at others. Engaging others in the midst of your own voice is the equivalent of being in a nightclub with the music at full volume while ogling the dancers and simultaneously trying to hold a conversation with the person next to you. That, too, is being human, but I would suggest that that singular voice that persisted through your life was more ‘insane’ than your present voice that allows for the possibility that there are other voices, real, imagined, visible, and hidden in you. In order to hear them you first ask, then silently await a response. All voices should have air time, because whether you know it or not they are influencing you. The more you try to suppress the voices you don’t want to hear, the louder they become. And, as you know, I am an advocate for making the hidden manifest, exploring the shadows to better understand the light filtering through the canopy of leaves.
“One of the stipulations in extending me an invitation to participate in this ‘experiment’ with you was the caveat that in doing so it be beneficial to your overall wellbeing. It was a reasonable stipulation. Kind of like a hypnotic suggestion. You gave yourself permission to move towards health. More importantly, you have given yourself permission to understand why and have a context for it, even if there is no context for it, because the scaffolding alone establishes context.”
Still, I was silent. Actually listening.
“That, sir, is why you feel joy. You have given yourself permission. You have trusted that there is an inherent, inner wisdom and guiding voice that you, and everyone, has access to, and by engaging it, unveiled personal truth,” Carl said.
“I wish I had known you when I was younger,” I said.
“Lamenting again? Some old tapes persist longer than others,” Carl said. “I refer you to the Wizard of Oz. The reason Glenda had Dorothy do the journey is because Dorothy wouldn’t have believed the answer. You always had the answer, John, you just needed life experience to make the magic happen.”
Filtering through my love hate relationship with the Wizard of Oz, I found myself slipping from joy, ready to engage in a rant that requires its own post but not here; besides, Carl blocked me from my rant by singing:
“Meet George Jetson.”
Insert full orchestra and piano movement of eccentric jazz and the light of pure joy.