What They Didn’t Tell You in Hippie School

Free Samples- the search for bliss.

Photo by Heidi Singfield

From my first Eastern Religious Studies class at UC Santa Barbara, I knew that was what I wanted to study. The professor wisely brought in all kinds of Eastern Art including Tibetan wall hangings and Hindu yantras made from hundreds of butterfly wings. This was a little hard to square with my vegetarianism at that point, but it WAS gorgeous. In those years, the trail to the bliss of enlightenment seemed to be everywhere! Transcendental Meditation- I’m in! The est training- everyone should do it! And all kinds of drugs, but especially LSD, were restructuring the collective so we would soon all live in blissful peace. Most of you either lived or know this story.

Somehow bliss never seemed to arrive; but I did have glimpses. Rock climbing in Western Mexico on peyote, coming to a perfect pool with a coiled rattlesnake, a golden eagle flying overhead. Note to my grand children if you ever read this- do not try this unsupervised. Scares the heck out of me even thinking about it now! Several out of body experiences, again drug induced. Luckily I always came back.

This seeking continued for most of my adult life. Through a circuitous route, beginning when my neighbor gifted me a copy of I Am That by Nisargadatta Maharaj and ending in a retreat with the Advaita teacher, Wayne Liquorman; I finally realized I had found my spiritual home in this lineage. I felt a huge resonance with Wayne and the Advaita Teachings and spent as much time as I could with him for more than a decade.

On to what they didn’t tell you in Hippie School. Wayne’s teacher Ramesh Balsekar had a way of talking about temporary bliss- he called it a free sample. The truth of free samples, whether they last a moment or months or longer, is that they are an experience which will fade or change. As Wayne has said (paraphrasing here) “you bought a return ticket.”

I have expanded my own definition of free samples in the Forest Dweller years to darker, or let’s just say less blissful incidents. One example happened a few years ago when I stopped at a red light and then unconsciously pulled through the red light into oncoming traffic, ending up inches from a pickup truck with a horrified couple staring down at me. This and a few other similar experiences led me to more clarity; not so much an intellectual understanding, but as a physical and intuitive seeing that I have no control.

Seeing yourself as out of control is not an entirely popular idea, but in the Forest Dweller years I am finding it soothing! The things I struggled to control, while KNOWING somewhere it was impossible for me to do so, are dropping off my “lines”- whatever I used to think those were!

Missing from Hippie School for me was this: Both the blissful and the darker experiences are just that, experiences. The Peace that passeth all understanding is a Peace that does not come and go, regardless of the circumstances.

I am curious what your free samples look like and what you are learning from them. Thanks for reading, liking and commenting!