ANGELS & BUDDHAS
One morning when I awoke, Bodhi was already up. Love was babbling happily in her little bed, so I picked her up and hugged her tight.
“Oh, Love,” I whispered, “your mother is loved.” Snuggling with my beloved daughter, I quietly savored the happiness of my new life. It seemed like my dreams of family were ¥nally coming true. At last I belonged to a circle of friends who took care of each other in a kind and friendly way.
A few minutes later, Bodhi came in, lit up with news. “Wheat scored some peyote. We’re going over to Starry’s and then to Malibu. It’ll be great to trip with you.”
Resistance surged within me. I thought I was through with chemical highs.
“I don’t know,” I answered reluctantly. “What about Love?”
“Magda’s offered to take care of her,” he announced, clearly proud of the support of his friends. “You don’t have to worry about a thing.”
“I’ve never taken peyote before,” I said, trying to ¥nd a way out.
“Hey, it’ll be beautiful,” he persuaded. “Come on. Let’s go.”
“Okay,” I agreed, ªowing with his excitement.
After a song-singing getting ready morning, we piled in Wheat’s car and took off. The energy of adventure captured us as we turned off Topanga Canyon and drove up into the hills. Sheltered in a meadow at the end of a long winding road, Starry’s cabin was remote. When we turned into her driveway, she waved her welcome with a radiant smile. We tumbled out of the car and ¥lled her rustic little cabin with the laughter and love of true friends.
Starry’s handmade quilts covered the rough log walls. Firewood was piled neatly by a stone ¥replace. Bricks and a sheet of plywood supported a mattress covered with multi-colored quilts and pillows and pictures of Christ, Kwan Yin, and Buddha hung above the bed. Starry and Angel’s clothes were folded neatly in wooden orange crates. The kitchen shelf held a metal washing bowl, a crockery pitcher, assorted dishes and utensils, and metal canisters of food, all neatly stacked and pristinely clean. Without running water or electricity, Starry lived a simple life so she could be free to take care of her son full-time. Her car was her one necessity and her friends chipped in to keep it going. Even though her material life was basic, she was rich in friends who helped her and her son, and who included her in their adventures.
My friends settled on rocking chairs and benches on the porch to clean the peyote. Their chattering faded as I walked into the crackling, dry, golden summer grass. Crickets ¥lled the air with their strident chirping as I breathed in the resinous scent of the towering eucalyptus trees. Birds ªitted through the leaves, perching momentarily to twitter their songs before ªying out their winged patterns. The sounds, the sun, and the smells were mesmerizing, full of the enchantment of nature moving toward ripe, harvest fullness. Sleepy, I lay down and put my arms under my head. Grasshoppers jumped on me and insects tickled my sun-warmed skin as I listened to seeds popping free of their pods.
I remained in my drowsy dreaming until footsteps rustled through the grass. Bodhi stood above me, a shadow against the sun.
“These are your buttons,” he offered graciously, holding out his right hand.
Rising, I shaped my hands like a cup to receive the sacrament. “Chew slowly. If you feel nauseous, stop chewing and concentrate your attention on the center of your forehead,” he advised. Then he pulled me to my feet and we formed a Soul Clan circle on the ripe, bursting grass, where we all chewed the peyote buttons under the mid-day summer sun.
The bitter taste activated swells of saliva, but there was no nausea. Enjoying the sensations, I lay down on the grass, the buttons ¥lling my mouth, feeling like a cow chewing her cud, giggling at the thought. Slowly, the trip came on. Relaxation deepened as time slowed. The good earth supported me. Eyes closed, I merged with the full, dry plants and the myriad lives they contained. Interconnectedness increased. Sounds sharpened, whispering grasses mingling with delicate insect rustlings, chirping birds, and ªuttering leaves.
When I opened my eyes and looked around the Soul Clan was scattered around the meadow. Wheat and Bodhi hunkered on boulders, chewing, talking low. Starry lay face down, chewing, hugging a crumbling log as she watched Angel play in the grass. Tree and Deva sheltered under the eucalyptus tree, leaning against the patterned bark, absorbed in each other, chewing. Wearing the same dress as me, Lola stood trans¥xed in the grass near me. She chewed and sucked her peyote slowly, her eyes like torches, a wide smile spreading across her face as her glorious, auburn hair curled wild and free. Each moment dropped like ripe fruit from a heavy bough. All the senses - sound, vision, taste, and touch - were palpable, visual. My happiness spread like butter toward Bodhi. Receiving it, he smiled shimmering iridescent ripples toward me. I had never seen living love before, but there it was, streaming, surging, singing. Bodhi walked slowly toward me, radiant as a god. Awed by his beauty, I couldn’t contain myself. “You’re as bright as the sun,” I said, admiring him.
“So are you,” he complimented in return.
We laughed together and love burst like stars around us. I would have loved to stay forever in Starry’s golden grasshopper and eucalyptus heaven, but Bodhi took my hand and pulled me to my feet. It was time to go to Malibu. Starry decided to stay and trip with her son. The rest of us snuggled down in Wheat’s car. As we curved slowly down the canyon, my senses worked overtime trying to take it all in. The invisible had become visible.
Suddenly, I sat up and leaned out the window. A magni¥cent man with long, waving honey-blonde hair stood on the side of the road. Dressed in a pure-white tunic trimmed with a purple and gold border and gathered by a silver cord, he held a shining, jeweled shepherd’s staff. “Who’s that?” I yelled, pointing to the man.
“Who? Where?” my friends asked, looking around. “Him!” I whispered in awe as we drew closer, overwhelmed by his shining, majestic beauty.
“I don’t see anyone,” Lola said, subtle annoyance in her voice.
“There!” I shouted, as if my shouting would make him more real. For an instant, I looked directly into his beati¥c glowing face, into eyes of glorious, loving light. As we moved past him, he followed me with his radiant gaze. As I turned, I saw that he was ªoating above the ground. Then we curved around the next bend and he passed out of view.
“Didn’t you see him?” I gasped, shaking, bursting with excitement. “No,” they answered, confused. I watched their expressions mirror my amazement as I described him.
“You saw an angel,” Wheat announced as if seeing an angel was an everyday event.
“Wow. Far out! An angel!” Lola enthused.
I immediately accepted that as the only possible explanation for my vision of such a magni¥cent being.
“Primo nectar!” Bodhi praised. “A gift from God.” I still saw the angel shining in my mind, but I was too shy to say I wanted to go back and be with him.
Trembling, I snuggled up to Bodhi, whispering rapturously, “He was so beautiful. He was so beautiful.”
When we came out of Topanga Canyon and turned onto PCH, the ocean winds blasted me into the present. The angel dissolved into the past. We parked south of Malibu Colony, where the Serra stream ªows into the beach lagoon, and crawled through the fence into the brambly marsh. The tide was high. The path was under water. I looked at the thorny brambles and then at my feet. I was barefoot.
“I must have left my sandals at Starry’s place,” I said.
Bodhi considered the situation.
“Take my shoes,” he offered as he knelt down to take them off. I shook my head, “No, thank you.” The thought of the thorns on his feet was worse than the thought of them on mine.
“I’ll carry you,” Wheat offered.
Intensely involved internally, I shook my head again. The problem wasn’t personal. It was symbolic. The increased awareness, created by the peyote, accentuated my feelings to such a degree that the thought of putting my tender feet on the thorns seemed unbearable. Yet, as I paced back and forth, the obstacle became a conªict of universal dimensions cleaving through my consciousness. Suddenly my mind opened and reverence erased my resistance. The face of my angel appeared before me, transparently layered over an image of Christ. There was no doubt in my mind what I needed to do.
“I will walk across the thorns,” I pronounced.
“Are you sure?” Bodhi asked, looking at me and then the thorns.
“Yes.”
Without hesitation, I stepped my right foot onto the thorns as though I was going to walk on water. I felt something under my feet, but there was no pain. I looked down and saw a leather sandal underneath my right foot, and where I was about to place my left foot was its match. The universe seemed to explode with surprised synchronicity. I wavered and almost fell, but Bodhi caught me.
“Are you hurt?” he asked with concern.
Prickles moved up and down my body like electric currents. “No. Look!” I said in amazement as I pointed to the soft, simple, brown leather sandals under my feet.
Silent shock waves expanded as my friends realized what had happened. “They are a gift for you,” Bodhi pronounced as he knelt down and took my right foot in his hands, kissed it gently and slipped on the sandal. Then he repeated the ritual with the other foot.
United in spirit, peyote singing in our cells, sisters and brothers of love, we walked over the thorns to the sea, moving beyond present time into primordial myth. The ocean waves rushed to meet us with sprays of mist, ¥ne sand, and wild sound. Every grain of sand, every wave, and every cloud revealed messages, as if nature were writing the truth of the universe in ancient calligraphy, and I was reading the primal language of creation. The information overload was so vast, I almost fainted from the expansion. Sinking to my knees, I wanted to bury myself in the sand and be consumed by this living, divine energy. I stretched out on the ground, reveling in the power and the truth.
So much was happening on so many levels. I was living wisdom, with my heart, mind, and senses wide open to the cosmos, welcoming the universe with every pore of my being. Drifting, blowing, moving, changing, rearranging, I felt as though I was ªoating on a moving mist of particles, a pulsing continuation of the waves of the sea. I felt as though I could fall through the space between the sand granules, but there was no fear. Bodhi, guardian of love, watched over me. Currents of love ªashed like ªames between our interior worlds. Ancient symbols of great meaning played within and around our auras. I read the messages with the thousands of eyes of my cells, but as quickly as I grasped them, they ªew away and new ones took their place.
“Who are you?” I called to Bodhi through the interchanging dance of the sea, sun, sand, and wind energies.
“Your Self,” he answered, laughing with love.
His words entered me with their truth, and then another truth ªashed. If he was a mirror, then Taz must also be a mirror. The thought shuddered through me as realization bubbles swelled and burst within my mind. Too much was happening to hold on to anything, so I let my thoughts ªy free and clung to the sand like ¥lings to a magnet, held in the grip of an awesome presence, unable to move. Knowing was in¥nite. I was supremely aware that this pure, pranic, cellular recognition was the universe scripting itself moment by moment in my consciousness. I was part of the script. I belonged! My body felt as though it was undulating with a cellular pulse of primal, elemental being. Messages of symbolic truth danced in love space-light ªuidity. I felt the power of an inarticulate longing within me, a core of pure being that felt like a seed that wanted to know and be known..
Bodhi’s eyes shone like an anchor of love, the center of a swirling vortex of energy spinning ultimate truth. My lighthouse of safety was the eternal love-truth recognition in his eyes.
Suddenly, Lola ran between us, wild and free, her long auburn hair curling in the wind. Mirror to myself, my soul sister wearing the same dress as me, she invited us to come play in the sea.
As soon as I left the earth behind, the wind captured me, and then the sea. As light as the sea mist and the twirling breezes, I entered the frothing, ªying foam and plunged into the surging breakers. Skipping and splashing with my friends, we teased the waves to catch us, and then falling, rolling onto the sand, we scattered onto land. The sun burned into us as our gasping breaths slowed, ¥lling us with light. Wheat’s voice rippled into my consciousness.
“Let’s get something to drink,” he said like a wise man recognizing truth.
I looked at the pier, the people, the cars, and Malibu. I’d forgotten they were there. Tasting the dry roughness of my tongue, wanting water, I felt like an aborigine on the edge of civilization.
“Having a good trip?” Bodhi asked.
I held his hand as we walked toward the pier.
“Oh, yes. I’m not afraid at all,” I said, surprised at my response.
“You don’t have to be afraid when you’re with me,” he reassured me. His heart words reached my shore and blossoming gratitude opened in response. Feeling his protective, guiding male force, I wanted to cleave to him and surround him with the ªowering of my love. Lola and Deva took my hands and we skipped ahead, three suntanned, happy California girls. Golden goddess Deva led our beach dance and Lola cavorted like a wild nature spirit. Sun-kissed, water-kissed, and ¥lled with love, I felt happy and proud to be with them. Then, as we neared the crowds on the beach, anxiety ªowed around me like winter mists, and my mind pedaled backward into old, rough patterns as shyness and fear overwhelmed me. “No. I can’t go there,” I said, digging my heels into the sand.
Deva and Lola stopped their dance.
“Hey, what’s up?” Bodhi said, catching up with us.
“I can’t walk by all those people,” I explained, trembling.
“Why? What are you afraid of?” Bodhi said, putting his arms around me.
Wheat, Deva and Lola circled around me tenderly. “I don’t know. When people look at me, I feel self-conscious. I’m shy, afraid. I don’t know what they’re thinking about me. It’s always been that way.”
“They look at you and think you’re beautiful and wish they were with you,” Bodhi said with con¥dence.
Uncertain, I heard his words but couldn’t believe them. “We’ll go back. We won’t go to the pier,” Bodhi decided. “Wheat can bring us something to drink.”
Lola agreed. “Yeah. Go back. We’ll go on our own. It’s cool.”
Lola ran off with Deva, both of them skipping, light and free.
Bodhi and I turned to walk back.
“Maybe its just another patch of thorns,” I whispered to Bodhi. “It would be good if I went, wouldn’t it?”
“You don’t have to,” he said gently.
“I want to,” I said with determination.
I turned and faced the crowded beach. Even though I knew shyness, self-consciousness and fear weren’t logical, I felt them just the same. My feelings and my body seemed to have an energetic life independent of common sense.
Bodhi took my hand and, as we walked toward the pier, I forced myself to look at the crowds. When we got closer, I saw that the crowd was made of individuals, most of them just doing their own thing. A few looked at us. Some smiled. A child waved. Instead of retreating before the minds of others, I found myself radiating. Suddenly, I was free. “I’m all right now,” I announced with pride.
“Of course you are,” Bodhi assured me, and kissed my cheek. As we walked out on the pier, I felt overwhelmed by the fragility of the man-made construction, as if the grimy, worn wood could barely resist the power of the pounding waves. Aware of my vulnerability, I realized that in the grand scheme of nature and time, our lives are insigni¥cant. Then, I remembered that the movement of one grain of sand could change the shape of an entire dune. We are all important, I decided. Everything makes a difference.
“Coming to the ladies’ room?” Lola’s smiled, her invitation bringing me back from my soaring thoughts.
“I guess so,” I responded reluctantly, not wanting to enter a public toilet. Feeling too shy to say no, I followed Deva and Lola inside. Assaulted by the odor, stunned by the ¥lth, I ran back outside.
“Hey, what’s the matter now?” Bodhi asked like a gentle father. “It’s dirty…smelly…ugly. I can’t stand it,” I explained, feeling ashamed.
I wanted the world to be bright, light, clean and loving. The toilet exposed everything I didn’t want to see.
“Public toilets are like that,” Bodhi reassured me as if I was a child. I closed my eyes and invited images into my mind - the face of the angel, clean sand, the pure wind, and the calligraphic messages of the divine, anything to wipe away the sensation of the smelly, dirty public toilet.
When Deva came out, she gave me a motherly hug. On one level, what was happening seemed silly and on another level, it felt cosmic. I must remember this when I’m with my children, I thought. Even small things reªect immense issues.
“Do you want to try again? Might be easier the second time,” Bodhi suggested with a loving smile, his eyes shining into mine. Embarrassed that I was freaking out on a peyote trip, I gathered my strength, thinking that I might as well face what I was always trying to run away from. Taking a deep breath, I opened the door and went in. Standing alone in the small, dank room, I felt the accumulation of the countless people that had been there before me. The room pulsed, overwhelming me with odors and ¥lth.
At ¥rst, I felt the neglect was my fault, and it was my responsibility to clean it up. Realistically I couldn’t do that, so I let the idea pass. Then, instead of reacting to the ¥lth and odors, I let the vibrations of those sensations ªow through me. Slowly, I relaxed into being there, until I was able to look at the room without resistance, and accept it as it was. I no longer identi¥ed with it or reacted against it. A few minutes later, stronger and surer, smiling triumphantly, I walked outside into Bodhi’s welcoming arms. By challenging my fear, I had discovered a way of moving beyond my resistance. Back on the beach with my friends, we formed a circle and joined hands, love surging through our connected soul currents. Closing my eyes, I felt my spirit merge with the winds, the sun, and the moist sea air. Even the sand beneath us pulsed with the elemental dance of life. Spontaneously, we lifted our joined hands and created a circular love ªower opening to the heavens. When it was time to go home, I put on my blessed miracle sandals.
“Bodhi, where did these sandals come from? Did the angel bring them? What do you think?” I asked as we drove through Topanga Canyon, looking and hoping my angel would be waiting for me by the side of the road. “We’ll never know for sure. Believe what you want, whatever feels right..
The important thing is the choice you made,” he explained.
“What choice?” I asked.
“When you chose to walk barefoot across the thorns, the universe gave you what you needed - the sandals,” he stated. “It’s as simple as that.” Back at the Soul Clan house, when the story of the sandals was told, Magda said quietly, “It’s a miracle.”
“Yes, I guess it is,” I replied, awed by the wonder of the day. Thankful that I was with people willing to accept the possibility of angels and miracles, I looked at my sandals and touched the soft leather straps, wondering who had worn them before they became mine. Calmed by Magda’s cool house, I wanted to be still. Sitting cross-legged on the living room carpet under one of Bodhi’s drawings, my back against the wall, I closed my eyes. The peyote was still swirling inside me like a song..
Tuning in, feeling a vast space inside my head, an inner pull focused my attention in the center of my forehead. Unexpectedly, a tunnel appeared and expanded in a spiraling movement that opened into soft, translucent rainbows suffused with illuminated ringing sounds. Then, light exploded into a greater brightness that was followed by spinning. Entranced, my mind raced into this swirling tunnel as if it knew where it was going. Spiraling, I saw myself birthing into life and dying into birth, being born into one body after another, alternating between male and female, revealing the continuum of birth, growth, maturity, aging, and death and the space between lives. There was a sensation of kaleidoscopic cultural costumes, body shapes, and personalities, but the speed gave me only a fractional glimpse of each incarnation before I traveled further inward. When the light expanded into soft diffusion, the spinning, spiraling lives dissolved.
As my body spontaneously shaped itself into a sacred posture, I became aware that I had merged into a Buddha reality. Centered in bliss, existing as compassion, I bathed in quiet ecstasy and in¥nite peace, the equilibrium uniting birth and death, inner and outer, high and low, male and female, dark and light. Like a magnetic anchor uniting duality, this endless loving peace contained everything, but it was also empty. Existing as mystery, I simply was my divine self.
An in¥nite time later, someone touched me on my arm. A familiar man’s voice called to me.
“Where are you?” it said.
I didn’t respond because I wanted to stay with the Buddha, but the voice and the touch tugged at me and I fell back into myself. As my head slowly turned toward the sound of the voice, a swell of annoyance accompanied my return to the world. I knew it was Bodhi calling me and touching me, but he seemed like a stranger. I looked at him from an indifferent distance. “Where are you?” Bodhi repeated with concern.
Traces of my journey poured out of my eyes and burned into him.
“I was with God. I was the Buddha.”
My voice felt deeply and strangely full, almost prophetic. Then, remembering the vague feeling of my body shaping itself into a posture, I noticed I was sitting in the full-lotus yoga meditation pose. The posture felt natural, comfortable. I didn’t want to move. Weighted, complete, I turned from Bodhi to the darkening room. All my friends, even the children, were sitting in front of me. I looked from one to the other, aware of their curiosity and concern, aware of light torching from my eyes into theirs. Love reached out her arms, inspiring a mixture of laughter and relief as her cherub dimples pulled at my heart. Wheat was golden, radiating, ªoating above the rest, burning bright. He nodded his head, acknowledging where I had been.
Sadness overwhelmed me. Tears ªowed down my cheeks. Before this inner journey, my children, Bodhi, this house, and these friends had been the greatest love I had ever known. Now they seemed like shadows compared with the light and the love of my interior world.
Trembling, weary, I leaned against Bodhi. A few minutes later, he led me to our room and I lay down on our bed. Bodhi held me in his arms and Love snuggled close, comforting me. When I looked into Love’s eyes, Buddha recognition ªared, soul-to-soul, as she smiled gently, knowingly, lovingly..
Oh, if only babies could talk, they could help us remember where we have come from, I cried in my heart.
“I wanted to stay inside forever. I didn’t want to come back,” I wept, as I clung to Love and Bodhi, sadness seeping from my heart. “I had to bring you back. I have to take care of you,” Bodhi explained gently.
As the Buddha bliss faded, the outer world returned with a bittersweet mingling of loss and love that was indescribably beautiful. Blessings showered with shared tears, laughter, and comforting touch as my mind blossomed into visions of knowing. The light shining within me had promised that one day I’d be able to love truly, deeply, equally. It revealed that God was love in action, and the key to becoming love was to ¥nd the love in every moment, no matter what was happening.
Next morning, when I came into the living room, Wheat was packing his gear.
“You’re leaving?” I asked, feeling immediately sad. “Going to Newport Beach and Laguna to check in with the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Wanna come?” he asked lightly.
Surprised by the invitation, but feeling awkward, I made excuses. “I can’t. I mean, I’d like to, but I’m with Bodhi.”
“Yeah, I understand,” he smiled easily.
“The Brotherhood of Eternal Love? What’s that?” “The Brotherhood provides the highest acid sacrament. We turn people on to their high vibrations. Those were Brotherhood buttons that took you on your trip yesterday.”
As Wheat stood before me, glowing, smiling, radiating, my heart expanded into his loving generosity.
“You were golden. You were the only one who knew where I’d been,” I shared, tears welling up in my eyes.
Wheat pulled me into a bear hug.
“I know you, sister,” he said softly in my ear.
Lola walked in carrying her bag. She was leaving too. “I’ll be back in a few days. Time for a change. Got friends to see,” she said with a toss of her head and a quick smile.
Together they hugged me and then they were gone.