REINS OF WILD HORSES, Part 1
 
The one truth is pointed to by a hundred terms.
This is the essential nature taught by a hundred signs.
This is the wondrous practice guided by a hundred methods.
Though you travel by a hundred paths, you arrive at just this,
This jewel of mind which dwells within.
       --  Khacho Wangpo
 
It has now been nearly seven years since I experienced an extreme mental
state. Before 1986 I used to crack up regularly, sometimes as often as once a
year. It was not pretty, at least when viewed from the outside. My friends
tell me that I became a different person -- someone angry and wild,
impossible to reach, ugly and even violent. I would shut myself up in my
apartment, turn on my stereo, and play every record in my collection at top
volume. Inevitably I would get in trouble with my neighbors, who found it
difficult to cope with rock and roll blaring at 3:00 a.m. Sooner or later,
somebody would turn me in, and the police would arrive. I would then fight
with the police, refusing to open my door and sometimes throwing ashtrays and
books through the window panes. At the emergency room the psychiatrist would
pronounce me manic and force me to take a drug to control my mental state.
This drug was usually Thorazine, and it usually worked. 
 
That, in a nutshell, is what happened to me on a regular basis for nearly 25
years. At least, that is what it looked like from the outside. To those who
viewed my behavior, I was transformed into something like a werewolf or a Mr.
Hyde. It must have seemed that I was possessed by something unnatural,
frightening, and even dangerous. What my friends and psychiatrists did not
know was that there was a lot more happening on the inside than appeared
outwardly. When I became manic, I entered another world. It was a world of
several dimensions that included myth, magic, and spirit.
 
My extreme mental states started at the age of 20, the age when a young
person makes the transition from dependence on parents to full adulthood. It
is the time one seeks to become a person in one's own right, to pick up the
mantel of authority from the previous generation.
 
Ovid, the great Roman poet, tells the myth of the young man Phaethon. Like
most people nearing adulthood, Phaethon is eager to take his place in the
world. Yet, unsure of who he really is, he wants to test himself. He has a
lot to live up to. His father is Phoebus, another name for Apollo, god of
light, music, prophecy, and healing. Every day Phoebus drives his golden
chariot across the heavens, wearing the fiery crown of the sun. Phaethon
wants to prove that he is his father's son, and he begs Phoebus to let him
take the reins. "O let me clean my spirit of all doubt," he says. "Give me
the signature of what I am. Give me your chariot to drive sun's wild winged
horses through a day."
 
Phoebus gives his permission, but immediately he regrets it, and warns
Phaethon of the dangers of his journey:
 
            Can you ride counter to the whirling axis
            Of space, of sky, and yet ride clear? Perhaps
            You dream unearthly forests on your path: 
            Cities of gods, and temples pouring gifts, 
            Yet all the way is filled with hidden terror.
 
When I was 20, like Phaethon I too wanted to clean my spirit of doubt and to
find my identity. I was a junior in college, approaching graduation filled
with doubts about who I was and what I believed. Long ago I had made writing
my vocation. Now the time was approaching when I would have to earn a living,
and I was painfully aware that I did not understand life well enough to write
about it. I did not feel like I was a part of the world I was about to enter.
At the same time I yearned to explore my consciousness. I believed that by
seeking inner truth I would find God.
 
Creating an altered mental state was very easy for me. From some years I had
practiced an informal meditation that opened me to spirit, to the silence of
the inner mind. Recently I had found that rapid drinking relaxed mental
barriers. Now I used whiskey, music, and concentrated effort to turn my
awareness inward. Sitting all alone in my dormitory room, I gave myself over
to whatever would come. Lo and behold, as I sat there, a new world unfolded,
a domain of brilliant light and color.
 
I felt I had traveled back in time to ancient levels of meaning. The present
became a moment of eternity. The room seemed to grow ever brighter, and my
red bedspread, along with the blue, and green, and orange covers of my books
-- and even the greens and browns of my braided rug -- all glowed sharp and
distinct. I looked through my books of poems and myths, and their words
assumed multiple layers of meaning. All were messages directed to me
personally. 
 
I was at the still point that I had found before in meditation. Yet now I was
simultaneously at the center and the circumference of the universe.
Exhilaration replaced the vacancy in my heart. Yes! This was it! This was the
leap of faith in which time present and time past came together in the truth
of a moment! It was a dance, a dance of perceptions that easily flowed to
harmony. Each new sensation was beautiful and precious beyond description. My
journey across the sky was begun, and my mind rushed onward with an almost
sexual impetus. Without a second thought, I rode into the unknown. This was
not the peace of meditation. This was a light whose quality was joy. It was
luminosity, a radiance that contained its own silence.
 
Long after midnight, I was still listening to records. I allowed the music to
bypass my ears altogether, to permeate my body as I remained for hours at the
still point. I was utterly happy. This joy was clear and sharp, something not
to be doubted. My body responded as if blood had been replaced by the empty
vastness of space. My body was transfigured -- although still the same in
appearance -- and I felt weightless, yet imbued with power. Every cell of my
body was a instant of truth, converging as one moment, and I embraced as
truth everything on either side of that point -- which was everything. As I
picked up and examined several mundane objects, I discovered that I could
work as easily with my left hand as with my right. I stroked and studied an
empty water glass, a piece of clothing, a mystery novel. Each was, for me,
filled with wonder, with pure elemental color, and with hidden archetypes.
Each expressed the glory of the universe within its singularity. By morning
my body was beyond physical pain or discomfort of any kind. I found my mind
peering into time future, while still balancing on the still point that was
the essence of the universe.
 
I embraced all viewpoints. From the standpoint of the miraculous, I found
truth everywhere, in all phenomena, whether trivial or momentous. Instead of
finding out what is true and what is not true, I had discovered, to my
delight, the joke of existence -- that any statement, any action, any belief
is, in a secret way, an expression of ultimate Truth. My body had learned
magic, and my world had become myth.
 
Each new revelation was marvelously funny, yet not absurd. The joke was that
the wildest dualities were equally valid, and equally good. Truth encompassed
all particulars, and each particular revealed Truth. I was eager to share
this realization with a friend who had recently returned from a long visit in
India. She had brought back with her a seven-foot-long Tibetan horn, used for
Buddhist rituals. I persuaded her to let me take the horn out into the hall,
where I lay down full length with it and blew vigorously. A mournful,
devotional tone echoed throughout the dorm and beyond to the winter campus.
 
I knew little of Buddhism, yet felt instinctively that my present experience
had some connection with it. Although I considered myself a Christian, I
recognized that my altered state and its revelations had little relevance to
the Christian religion as I knew it. After all, I was under no illusion that
I had found "God." What I was experiencing had more to do with the nature of
reality than it did to some cosmic personality. To my friends, I explained
that I regarded all phenomena as expressions of God, but these were merely
words to label the ineffable. What I actually perceived was a bright energy,
like the light of the sun. It was not a white light., for it was clear and
transparent. It was a light that illuminated all reality. All questions were
answered, all dichotomies resolved.
 
Although I did not know it, this was the apex of my journey. Giddy with the
beauty of my spectacular perceptions, I rode my chariot of light, and urged
my winged horses forward. Had I listened to the voice of inner silence, it
might have said, like Phoebus: 
 
            Hear these plain words, my son: forget the whip, 
            But hold the reins with all your strength; these horses
            Race at their will; the difficult art is
            To control their speed.
 
In the plane where I found myself, it was annoying that my college friends
could not understand the truths that to me were obvious, even self-evident.
My good humor began to evaporate, and I felt a twinge of panic.
 
Passionately I wanted to continue my journey. Like an explorer discovering a
new world, I rushed headlong into the unknown. Its secrets were turning out
to be so familiar that the "unknown" was really nothing more nor less than
the "already known." I did not, and really could not, stop to appreciate that
this wonderful new territory was really a chasm of danger as well as delight.
It was the abyss of the open sky, and I did not have the skills to traverse
it. Nevertheless, I pressed on, determined to capture Truth. 
 
I sat cross-legged on my bed, and began playing an Al Jolson album. His
lyrics were laden with the icons of popular American culture. Songs such as
"Mammy" and "Swanee River" spoke to me of my Southern childhood and the black
servants who had taken care of me when I was very young. As I listened to
these songs, I realized the tragedy of the American conscience. Our greatest
cultural achievements came, I noted, came from Negro spirituality and from
Jews such as Gershwin and Goldwin who translated this American sensibility
into motion pictures and popular culture. What we Americans adulate is the
creative expression of those we privately revile. Years later I came to
understand that this same stigma applies to madness, and to those who
experience it.
 
Awareness of this paradox filled me with my own pain, and with a greater
grief. For years I was witness to constant and bitter squabbles among my
family. Although I loved them intensely, I could do nothing to resolve their
conflicts. All I could do was to continue loving them, even when my love for
one person wounded the other, even while I struggled to forgive them both for
hurting me. Now I realized that, among all this discord, my family aspired to
the same ideal of goodness. Because they themselves denied their shared
beliefs, they remained at odds with each other. I loved this goodness in my
family, and now I loved it in the American culture that I understood for the
first time. Our shared and hidden faith co-exists with our fear.
 
In my heightened state of awareness, I heard and appreciated nuances of sound
and lyrics I never had before. Every note was clear, every word significant.
As I listened, I realized that these songs of the American unconscious
foreshadowed America's future. In these archetypes of an inner world, I
foresaw specific events. 
 
At this time in 1962 the Civil Rights Movement had not expanded beyond the
black community in the South. But I had been well aware of the implications
of the Brown Decision of 1954 when I was in junior high school. And now,
listening to American music, I realized the importance of civil rights, not
just for African Americans but for all of us. Freedom would mean the
fulfillment of our common dreams that are now unacknowledged except in music
and in movies. The final liberation would evolve from an entirely new form of
spirituality, one somehow connected with the wisdom of the "blues." This
spirituality acknowledges suffering but adds to it an energy of hope and
power. I could hear its wisdom in contemporary jazz artists. Music would be
the key to a coming revolution.
 
Much popular American music is not about romantic love at all, but instead
expresses a spiritual appreciation of American women. The songs that I heard
seemed to foretell the importance of a certain kind of woman, one who did not
conform to standard definitions of femininity but who stood for a kind of
friendship. I thought here especially of the song "My Gal Sal." These
perceptions frightened me, because I suddenly felt singled out as the "new
woman" invoked in the music. Was I the "Sal" that appeared so frequently in
the old songs? And what did that mean? Was I the Christ? 
 
I did not like this notion at all. At the thought of such a responsibility,
my clarity dissipated, replaced by a dark fear. Had I come this far only to
be saddled with the incredible and impossible burden of the whole world? It
was a monstrous thought. It was, in fact, ludicrous. How could I be the
Christ? If I were Christ, I would heal people, and I had never done that. If
I were the Messiah, I would be talking to God, yet my current experience
scarcely included the idea of God at all. 
 
The revelations that I was experiencing came easily; they seemed simple, even
obvious. Yet I had already discovered that the insights so clear to me eluded
my friends completely. Did this mean that I would be called upon to teach
other people? I panicked. For a few sober moments, I turned off the
phonograph and sat in silence. I looked around my room. Silence was saying to
me, like Phoebus: 
 
            Your wish is a dangerous one
            That asks too much, too far beyond your strength, 
            Or anyone's. Your destiny is mortal; 
            What you would do, or ignorantly try 
            To do, only divine skill, power, art can hope to do. 
 
 
 
                                                                   (continued
. . . )
 
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 *****   Sharewrite 1994 Sally Clay  * <sallyclay@aol.com>   *****
Permission is granted for personal or electronic distribution of
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