{"id":76,"date":"2013-01-22T16:07:08","date_gmt":"2013-01-22T22:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=76"},"modified":"2013-02-12T11:09:51","modified_gmt":"2013-02-12T17:09:51","slug":"ch-1-e-a-brush-with-the-numinous","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=76","title":{"rendered":"ch. 1.e     A Brush With the Numinous"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"ch. 1. d.     Surviving\" href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=67\">&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 \u00a0 \u00a0 <a title=\"ch. 1. f.   Crisis\" href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=80\">next &gt;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Prefer to listen?\u00a0 Click here:<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-e<\/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-e\", formats: [\"mp3\"], mp3: \"aHR0cHM6Ly9oYW5pbGl2ZXMuY29tL3dwLWNvbnRlbnQvdXBsb2Fkcy9IUy1OZXctY2gtMS1lLm1wMw==\", 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\/300px-The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-29\" alt=\"300px-The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17\" src=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/300px-The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17-150x150.jpg\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/300px-The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/hanilives.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/300px-The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a>I was walking home from work, shortly after coming back from Dad\u2019s funeral, which was not surprisingly an excruciating affair.\u00a0 Aside from all the details and official stuff, Mom was acting very weird, disoriented and unfocused.\u00a0 That freaked me out almost more than dealing with Dad\u2019s passing.\u00a0 As much as we\u2019d mostly been at arm\u2019s length to each other all our lives, she suddenly seemed older than her years, her trademark confidence sapped, her actions hesitant and awkward.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019d never been close like some families, and she seemed almost insultingly relieved that the divorce had never been finalized, so that she inherited Dad\u2019s money; she would be independent of me.\u00a0 Not that I wanted her to be dependent, but I still felt the chill as she dismissively sent me back to California.\u00a0 I\u2019d lost my father, and my mother had pulled back even further into her cocoon of self-absorption.\u00a0 Who was there left for me to turn to in this world?<\/p>\n<p>I found myself thinking almost constantly about life and death and all that, thinking about cosmic consciousness, from whatever book I\u2019d been reading lately.\u00a0 I read them all, believe me, everything from past lives to time travel, Buddhism, Krishna, you name it.\u00a0 From the weird, the flaky, the scientific, the historical, the erudite, to what I could only classify as the \u201cwoo woo\u201d stuff.\u00a0 I wanted something to make sense, something to explain all the pain and suffering &#8211; the world\u2019s, yes, and much more specifically, my own.<\/p>\n<p>I could hardly sit still for the platitudes the preacher spoke at Dad\u2019s funeral.\u00a0 One thing had become clear to me in my reading, and that was that we <i>must<\/i> keep recycling around, life after life.\u00a0 Simply from a logical point of view \u2013 at least my own logic \u2013 I found all the other belief systems eventually brought me up against a wall.\u00a0 Like you just had to accept that life was \u201c\u2026solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short\u2026\u201d,\u00a0 As Thomas Hobbes so depressingly put it.\u00a0 The idea of people getting only one shot, when so many obviously are born into a world where they have no shot at all, made me want to blow my brains out.<\/p>\n<p>But that wasn\u2019t for me, either.\u00a0 I\u2019d tasted, too fleetingly, but too many times, that \u201cmore\u201d, and it drove me crazy that I couldn\u2019t get it back on demand, like premium cable.\u00a0 Maybe I was just too normal.\u00a0 Maybe the divine wasn\u2019t interested in someone like me, good intentions, occasionally foul mouthed, wearing my doubt like some cloak of invincibility against getting screwed yet again.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019d lived in Boulder, Colorado, which was chock full of weirdos, space cadets, aging hippies, all kinds of people who claimed to know the meaning of life.\u00a0 I was (more or less) from Texas and the conservative South, and it always grated on me, that dreamy, far-out fa\u00e7ade I saw people wearing there.\u00a0 Just like I always found myself really annoyed by the implications that Truth could only be had by going somewhere else, preferably somewhere exotic; India, maybe, wearing weird clothes and spouting quotes from some guru who solved all your problems with a few platitudes.<\/p>\n<p>I was annoyed.<\/p>\n<p>And envious.<\/p>\n<p>I wanted Truth, in the worst way, but I no more saw it coming at me in orange robes, than in a slick suit and pompadour hairstyle on the Christian TV channels.\u00a0 Through it all, part of me kept believing there had to be another way, had to be something real and true, something that made sense in a way that a regular person could grasp.\u00a0 Something that I\u2019d just know was right.\u00a0 But damned if I\u2019d been able to find it.\u00a0 Or it, me.<\/p>\n<p>But then, there I was, walking home from work that evening.\u00a0 It was cold and foggy, as usual.\u00a0 The street was oddly quiet; the few other people on the sidewalk made no sound, like phantoms moving through the mist.<\/p>\n<p>And suddenly, all around me, just like that, I ..<i>saw it all<\/i>.\u00a0 I looked and I was <i>seeing<\/i> how everything and everyone was \u2026respirating to that singular cosmic breath, in and out, in and out, the whole planet, or maybe the whole universe, expanding and contracting and everything and everyone in it as ONE, rising and falling with one overarching breath.\u00a0 And even within that, I could see the cycles within cycles, like the mechanics of the universe, the in-and-out breath of each human, the living respiration of me and every other pedestrian walking this fog-bound street, we all moved as ONE, the mist itself pulsing with that cosmic rhythm.<\/p>\n<p>And, even more oddly, this didn\u2019t strike me as odd.\u00a0 Not odd that I was experiencing the kind of deeply mystical moment I secretly always wanted to have.\u00a0 No, I simply walked through this altered reality and knew this \u2026<i>way of seeing<\/i>\u2026 was natural to me.<\/p>\n<p>Like the fog itself, this awareness lingered in little wisps, all the way home.\u00a0 I wandered around my kitchen, in a kind of giddy state of wonder, finally popped open a beer, unwrapped the sub sandwich I\u2019d bought earlier, and just sat smiling to myself.\u00a0\u00a0 I felt\u2026 happy.\u00a0 Content.\u00a0 Like I hadn\u2019t in so long I couldn\u2019t even remember.\u00a0 Like I\u2019d seen that all was right with the world after all.<\/p>\n<p>It was all in your angle of view.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"ch. 1. d.     Surviving\" href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=67\">&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 \u00a0 \u00a0 <a title=\"ch. 1. f.   Crisis\" href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=80\">next &gt;<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/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 \u00a0 next &gt; &nbsp; Prefer to listen?\u00a0 Click here: &nbsp; I was walking home from work, shortly after coming back from Dad\u2019s funeral, which was not surprisingly an excruciating affair.\u00a0 Aside from all the details &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/?page_id=76\">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-76","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/76","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=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/76\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":373,"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/76\/revisions\/373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hanilives.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}