Angel on Highway

I was recently on a trip to Boulder, Colorado, from my home in Southern Utah, driving on Highway 70, headed east, perhaps 100 miles from Denver. I was in a deep meditative space while I was driving, which I am able to do now on long trips because of my years of binaurally enhanced meditation. Pam, my wife, was seated next to me and she was meditating. I was just about to pass an 18-wheeler on the left, when a pickup truck behind the 18-wheeler suddenly swerved violently in front of me, missing a collision with my car by what seemed like 6 inches. I had to break and swerve violently away myself to avoid collision. I was immediately filled with rage and tapped Pam’s knee and said, “Did you see that!?” Pam came out of her meditation and calmly said something snarky, which I interpreted as, it was your fault, you idiot, learn how to drive. And that REALLY pissed me off, even more. I quickly pulled up parallel to the offending pickup truck and gave the driver a one-fingered sign that, no, was not the middle finger, but was actually my index finger with the thumb out, which could be interpreted as an “L” for love, but with the upward pointing energy I gave it, the finger could understandably be interpreted as something else besides love. I passed the pickup and got in the right lane and he moved very close to my bumper and began flashing his lights.

At this point, I was still feeling anger and rage, even pure rage, the rage of a warrior or a berserker going into battle. What I wanted to do was pull off the road, hoping that he would pull off with me, at which point I could beat the crap out of him. A short while thereafter, he got off my bumper and pulled off at a rest stop and I never saw him again. I was amazed at the purity of the violent anger I was feeling and thought of my Scotch Irish ancestry on my mother’s side, who seemed to really like to fight a lot. In fact, according to Senator James Webb, and his new book on the Scotch Irish, there are several things that really appealed to these folks, my ancestors: independence, God, fighting, music, and whiskey. (It kind of sums up my life, but that is for another time.)

Pam asked me if I was okay. Luckily, because she had been meditating, she had missed the whole bumper incident, which probably would have upset her greatly. I said something short and unkind, and said I was meditating. I sat completely open to this rage I was feeling, amazed that after so many years of meditating daily, I could tap into the old Viking Saxon Scotch Irish part of myself who wanted nothing more than a good brawl. I just sat with the feelings in my body, my heart, and my gut as I continued to drive. As with all feelings that are fully accepted and approached with mindfulness, the rage and anger dissipated.

The next evening, we were at a talk by Cynthia Borgeault at Boulder Integral, titled Conscious Love. I was in a very open and spiritual state, and I realized that the incident on the highway the day before had really deepened me and opened me up in a way that was allowing me to be very present to the transmission of Cynthia’s teachings.  At that moment, I realized that the asshole in the pickup truck had actually been an angel who had brought me an opportunity for realizing and working with my own rage, which felt very ancient and ancestral. I said a prayer for him in my heart and blessed him.

This was a good example to me of the capacities that I have developed over the last few years of Integral practice, and especially the binaurally entrained meditation I have been practicing for 5 years and 9 months now (currently the Profound Meditation Program). The understanding is that emotions are just emotions, and states are just states. They come and go. They do not have to be fixed, reformed, or judged, but just allowed to express themselves fully in our consciousness and our bodily sensations. When we do that, they always bring with them, as they release, a deeper state of awareness and ultimately a connection to that which is beyond all states, our own pure awareness, or the ground of our being. And it is in relationship to that ground that our individual and collective journey becomes more truly translucent and ever deeper and more beautiful. But to contact that ground, it seems an essential knowledge and practice is that we have to deal with the guardian dragons of our own emotions, states, and feelings. And the more powerful and often painful they are, the bigger the treasure they guard, that is to be ours as we learn to tame our dragons with skillfulness and wisdom.

I would encourage all of us, and I deeply realize that when I am pointing a finger at you, three are coming back at me, that we fully accept, nay, invite the powerful emotions and feelings that will arise in us, triggered by the events, calamities, and tragedies of our lives, as teachers of tremendous power that hold the keys within them to our own deepest and most blissful true Self. So, with practice, awareness, dumb luck, and or grace, our dragons, or the assholes in the pickups, can truly become the angels of our awakening.

Love and blessings,

John