Category: Traveling in All Directions

There are fifty people sitting silently on poufy little pillows around the large hall. We are on a ten-day silent meditation retreat at Spirit Rock. Forty-five minutes of sitting meditation, forty-five minutes of walking meditation, all day long. Two sessions of qigong, morning and afternoon. Vegetarian meals, everything completely silent. We are surrounded by rolling…

I’m meditating… And Toto just pulled the curtain. I not only see the little man pulling the levers, I see that I AM the little man pulling the levers. And Toto. I’m Glinda the Good and the Wicked Witch of the West. I’m the munchkins and the winged monkeys and the Yellow Brick Road. I’m…

I dreamed of Kali. I know she has come to teach me something. Black skin all shiny with sweat, long black hair all tangled and snaky, nearly naked, a necklace of skulls, holding two long sharp knives, snarling, wild, joyful, blood all around. She terrifies me. She fascinates me. What is she teaching me? I…

Italy I: Perugia I’m ready for a new adventure. I ask myself the magical question: What would I really like to do? And what I answer myself is: Go to Italy. So here I am, studying Italian in Perugia, a medieval Umbrian hill town. Old stone buildings, red tile roofs, green shutters, and narrow winding…

It is a clear warm night in Costa Rica. There is a fire, and drums, and a big moon, and about 15 people watching a young man as he goes through an initiation ceremony. The shaman is tall, muscular, very powerful, a tenth-generation shaman. He goes for the jugular if he thinks you are being…