{"id":120,"date":"2013-01-27T15:15:42","date_gmt":"2013-01-27T21:15:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=120"},"modified":"2013-02-12T13:10:58","modified_gmt":"2013-02-12T19:10:58","slug":"confirmations","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=120","title":{"rendered":"ch 1. h    Confirmations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"ch. 1.g    Something New\" href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=83\">&lt; previous\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <a title=\"ch 2.a    I Change Directions\" href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=186\">\u00a0 next &gt;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Prefer to listen?\u00a0 Click here:<\/em><br \/>\n<div id=\"mp3jWrap_0\" class=\"mjp-s-wrapper s-graphic unsel-mjp  verdana-mjp\" style=\"font-size:14px;\"><span id=\"playpause_wrap_mp3j_0\" class=\"wrap_inline_mp3j\" style=\"font-weight:700;\"><span class=\"gfxbutton_mp3j play-mjp\" id=\"playpause_mp3j_0\" style=\"font-size:14px;\">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/span>&nbsp;<span class=\"group_wrap\"><span class=\"bars_mp3j\"><span class=\"loadB_mp3j\" id=\"load_mp3j_0\"><\/span><span class=\"posbarB_mp3j\" id=\"posbar_mp3j_0\"><\/span><\/span><span class=\"T_mp3j\" id=\"T_mp3j_0\" style=\"font-size:14px;\">1. Chapter-1-h<\/span><span class=\"indi_mp3j\" style=\"font-size:9.8px;\" id=\"statusMI_0\"><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div><span class=\"s-nosolution\" id=\"mp3j_nosolution_0\" style=\"display:none;\"><\/span><script>\nMP3jPLAYLISTS.inline_0 = [\n\t{ name: \"1. Chapter-1-h\", formats: [\"mp3\"], mp3: \"aHR0cHM6Ly9oYW5pbGl2ZXMuY29tL3dwLWNvbnRlbnQvdXBsb2Fkcy9IUy1OZXctY2gtMS1oLm1wMw==\", counterpart:\"\", artist: \"\", image: \"\", imgurl: \"\" }\n];\n<\/script>\n\n<script>MP3jPLAYERS[0] = { list: MP3jPLAYLISTS.inline_0, tr:0, type:'single', lstate:'', loop:false, play_txt:'&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;', pause_txt:'&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;', pp_title:'', autoplay:false, download:false, vol:100, height:'' };<\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-85\" alt=\"photo\" src=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo3-150x200.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo3-150x200.jpg 150w, https:\/\/hanilives.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo3-225x300.jpg 225w, https:\/\/hanilives.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo3-768x1024.jpg 768w, https:\/\/hanilives.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo3.jpg 1224w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a>So I\u2019m sitting in a hotel meeting room with a group of about 200 people, all waiting for the guru to make his appearance, surely no one more on edge than I.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, I seemed to be the only one on edge.\u00a0 The other people in the room were milling around, chatting, laughing, greeting each other with warmth and easy smiles.<\/p>\n<p>I was really scoping everyone out.\u00a0 I desperately needed to know this wasn\u2019t a group of freaks or cultic zombies.\u00a0 Patty herself had passed muster.\u00a0 I\u2019d spent time getting to know her lately, as we talked intently about what I was reading.\u00a0 I\u2019d never been around anyone like that.\u00a0 What I\u2019d labeled so certainly as a fa\u00e7ade really wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 She was simply a damned fine human being.\u00a0 Once I let myself see her with unprejudiced eyes, I found that she somehow tapped into a joy in her everyday life that I knew I wanted but had never tasted before.<\/p>\n<p>As Patty greeted friends before we went into the lecture, I began to observe that there weren\u2019t any space cadets here, no stoners.\u00a0 People looked\u2026 <i>normal<\/i>.\u00a0 Acted normal.\u00a0 And yet the range of people was kind of astounding.\u00a0 There was a black woman in dreadlocks, a number of old people who looked like I might have met them back home in the Baptist churches of my youth.\u00a0 There were organic types, young men and women full of life and energy.\u00a0 Some were dressed flamboyantly, others in jeans and t-shirts.\u00a0 There were all shapes, all colors, men and women, gay, straight.\u00a0 A few on crutches.\u00a0 A blind man.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t begin to make any assumptions about this group.<\/p>\n<p>Except, as Patty introduced me to different ones, friends of hers, they looked me in the eye with such <i>love<\/i>, like they were genuinely excited for me, but in a way that wasn\u2019t some creepy now-you\u2019re-one-of-us thing.\u00a0 It was more the way they laughed as if we now shared some delightful secret, as if we shared some view of life as a Grand Adventure.\u00a0 Yes, that\u2019s what I wanted all along, that\u2019s what I felt like I\u2019d stumbled into.\u00a0 Like being alive was a wondrous gift, the promise of infinite possibility.<\/p>\n<p>Like a screw-up such as myself might actually be able to find redemption.<\/p>\n<p>The podium was set up with an easel and flip chart, looking like any corporate conference, except for a simple floral arrangement on a table nearby.\u00a0 Other than the fact that we were asked to close our eyes and chant a simple syllable as we readied ourselves for the teacher\u2019s entrance, there were no bells or gongs or incense or anything.\u00a0 I was kind of hoping this guy would levitate, or descend in clouds of glory or something.<\/p>\n<p>And, yeah, I peeked while we were chanting.\u00a0 And saw what you could only call a pretty normal guy walking up the aisle like a regular human being, dressed in casual slacks and sweater that looked like he might shop at J.C. Penney\u2019s.\u00a0 No Armani, here, no overfed, overblown pretense.\u00a0 Just a clean-cut all-American guy who mounted the two steps to the stage and stood smiling, looking for all the world like the Buddha himself, radiant and joyful.\u00a0 Again, I was peeking.<\/p>\n<p>I was half waiting, too, for lightning to strike me for that little defiance.<\/p>\n<p>He started to talk, simply, and with gentle, sometimes corny, humor.\u00a0 Hearing him discuss the themes I\u2019d been reading about was somehow thrilling, and yet, too, as if he was pulling profundity down to a level where even someone like me could climb aboard.<\/p>\n<p>He made it clear that \u201cit\u201d was not about him at all, but about the Truth.\u00a0 The Truth that\u2019s always existed.\u00a0 The Truth that everyone is searching for, except few are really ready enough, hungry enough, to make this final leg of the journey to consciousness, a journey that we\u2019ve all been on for uncountable lifetimes, whether we\u2019re ready to realize it or not.\u00a0 Most people just live their ordinary lives that\u2019s all they want, and that\u2019s just fine.\u00a0 No evangelizing, no proselytizing.\u00a0 I felt a huge wave of relief, remembering the evangelical disasters of my childhood.<\/p>\n<p>But, he went on, for those who are ready for more, the Call is imperative.\u00a0 <i>When the student is ready, the teacher appears<\/i>.\u00a0 I always wanted that to be true.\u00a0 And now, for this student anyway, it was.<\/p>\n<p>Oh, yeah.\u00a0 This was it.\u00a0 For me, at least.\u00a0 I knew it.\u00a0 Completely, even if I still had so little idea what it was all about.<\/p>\n<p>At the end of the lecture I felt so full, I thought I couldn\u2019t get any more buzzed.\u00a0 I expected everyone would head for the door, but Patty touched my arm and whispered to me.\u00a0 The teacher was going to give <i>darshan<\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know what that was.\u00a0 To me, at first glance, it was a lot like when the congregation would file out of the church, greeting the preacher as they left after the sermon, on their way home to the pot roast in the oven.<\/p>\n<p>It was so much more than that.\u00a0 <i>Darshan<\/i> is a Sanskrit word, and roughly refers to being in the presence, or receiving the gaze, of a holy person or a saint.\u00a0 Needless to say, I didn\u2019t have a real conceptual framework for anything like that.\u00a0 I did note how everyone in line stood silently and respectfully, as if each person was in his own meditative state.\u00a0 No one pushed or elbowed their way in.<\/p>\n<p>The line progressed in fits and starts.\u00a0 Sometimes the teacher would simply take someone\u2019s hand and smile as they filed by.\u00a0 Other times, he would step forward and embrace someone, or whisper something privately.\u00a0 The closer I got, the more nervous I was.\u00a0 How would he greet me; me, this loser coming out of nowhere?\u00a0 Would he see that I didn\u2019t deserve to be here?\u00a0 That I didn\u2019t know what I was doing?<\/p>\n<p>I tried to still my thoughts.\u00a0 All I could think was that I wanted, more than anything in the world at that moment, to feel the love that was almost physically emanating from him.\u00a0 I inched my way forward, and then there I was.\u00a0 He took my hands in his.\u00a0 His grip was strong, like someone who\u2019d done manual labor; these weren\u2019t soft office hands.\u00a0 His eyes, up close, twinkled and sparkled as if lit from within, and radiated such understanding and compassion I felt tears sting my own eyes.\u00a0 I would have kept moving along, not remotely considering that I might be worthy of special attention, but he held me there in front of him, his weathered face in an expression of love, almost a loving amusement.\u00a0 Even, I thought, a hint of surprise as he studied my face so briefly.\u00a0 \u201cWelcome,\u201d he said with a grin.\u00a0 \u201cWelcome to your perfect path.\u00a0 You\u2019re going to go places you could never dream of.\u00a0 It\u2019s all within you.\u00a0 My love is always within you.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Somehow, I nodded with a rapturous grin and moved on out, floating on some cloud of astonished bliss.\u00a0 What <i>was<\/i> that?\u00a0 What had I just experienced, that made my little glimpse of cosmic consciousness, from only weeks ago, look like a trip to the Piggly Wiggly?\u00a0 I didn\u2019t know.\u00a0 But one thing I did know.\u00a0 It was real, and baby, you could count me in.<\/p>\n<p>I felt myself begin to heal.\u00a0 Not overnight; one thing that rang true to me in all this was that the road to whatever\u2026 wholeness, consciousness\u2026 was vast and ever-deepening.\u00a0 If I wanted the quick fix, I could have bought that with a donation to the TV evangelists.<\/p>\n<p>I began to see that I actually had earned my way into this, through all that I\u2019d experienced, began to see myself not as a loser, but as someone who was just burning through a hell of a lot of karma in this lifetime.\u00a0 I began to see that there was a way out, even if my feeble brain couldn\u2019t quite stretch to accommodate all the astounding insights that started bombarding me.<\/p>\n<p>I began to see that when you view from a broader or deeper or higher perspective, things that seemed overwhelming from ground level just evaporate, or else solutions just come to you, almost laughably clear.<\/p>\n<p>Even at that, I had no clue, in the beginning, just how big Truth really is, or the worlds it\u2019s holding on store, patiently waiting for us to catch on, and catch up.\u00a0\u00a0 When you think about it, it\u2019s kind of a law of physics, isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 When you find yourself running really fast, find life speeding up like crazy, it either means you\u2019re going to get where you\u2019re headed really quick, or else it means the Grand Adventure you\u2019ve so blindly but emphatically signed on to is <i><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">way<\/span><\/i> bigger than you bargained for.<\/p>\n<p>Six months later I met Bob.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"ch. 1.g    Something New\" href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=83\">&lt; previous\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <a title=\"ch 2.a    I Change Directions\" href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=186\">next &gt;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &lt; previous\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 next &gt; &nbsp; Prefer to listen?\u00a0 Click here: &nbsp; So I\u2019m sitting in a hotel meeting room with a group of about 200 people, all waiting for the guru to make his appearance, surely &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=120\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-120","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":387,"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/120\/revisions\/387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}