Sam Sara.

october 22nd, 2013.

I went to a spiritual dance party on Saturday. It was cool to be in a space where I could reasonably assume that most of the people I interacted with were on drugs, and that they reasonably assumed the same of me, though I was in fact a sober cypher. Meant that it felt ok to interact with strangers, dance wildly, laugh madly, and draw lions autistically by myself in the easy chair in the corner, which is what I was doing when Not-Neal approached.

“Hello,” he said.

I beamed. “Hello Neeee ... oh! You're not Neal. I thought you were Neal, from corporate.”

“What would I get if I were Neal? A kiss?”

Talked some more with Not-Neal about our day jobs. He inquired about trading his spiritual healing services in exchange for web design and offered a healing preview as proof of concept.

“You said you're in therapy because you're looking for spiritual growth. Let me tell you something: just be the joy, and the love, and the spirit. You don't have to look for it, because it's already inside you.”

“Fuck you!” I thought, and did not say.

What I said was, “this speech: do you find it usually goes over better?”

That passed right through Not-Neal. He repeated his ruby slippers insight. The woman beside us said, “amen to that!”

“I'd rather not bring Amen-ra into it,” said Not-Neal, and he smiled, and backed off. I made a note. This was the correct line of code to break the program. Amen. Awomen.

There's something ... thin and gruelish about Buddhism, and you just *will* yourself to perceive it as the richest food. And then it becomes the richest food, and then you're Enlightened. Buddhism is like a Magic Eye poster, and you stare at it and stare at it and the person next to you is not trying to be smug, but, “you see it? you get it? you see it?”

I believe that I will one day come to know that the love and the peace were always inside me, and Not-Neal was right, and I will be Enlightened and laugh with the joy of it. And Buddha will say, “don't you see? You were always Enlightened! Ha ha! Slap my belly!” and I would be annoyed, except I'm Enlightened, and I oblige him happily. Later, we eat ice cream by the sea and careen over hills in a van with no seatbelts. We visit France and stay with friends we met on the Internet, and correspond with authors of mystery novels.