Who cares about the waxing and waning Moon?
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| When they open, strap your seatbelt and hold on. |
Well, once upon a time in East Hollywood at Dharma Punx on Melrose Avenue, across from Los Angeles City College, I met a beautiful meditator. Let's call her Vanity Lycan. This is her saga, about how she traveled to India and had an experience of enlightenment, sort of.
We became friends, and she so trusted me that she asked me if I wanted to accompany her to India. She was going, among other places, to Dharamshala (the Dalai Lama's abode in the Himalayas).
Heavens yes, I thought as I said, "Hells yeah!" Sadly, this being LA, something came up that could not be put off, and she could not change her round-the-world ticket. So we vowed to stay in touch online so I could guide her from on high. There might be pitfalls along the way for a Western gal on a solo-travel adventure that she didn't think of but that I could solve.
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| Oh, Moonglow, elfin magic |
I hadn't noticed. I had forgotten even to wonder what had happened to her since it had been so long. There she was a few feet away on a cushion, crying. No one much listened to what she was trying to say.
But I thought I understood -- a lone girl wandering around at night in a strange country with strangers and men being what they are (though they didn't used to be like that in most of India in the times that I was there, which was a big surprise). She kept telling me that I didn't understand. Something had happened to her on the trip. I really thought that for once I did get. I didn't need it spelled out. I should have been there to prevent it.
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| What does one who knows say? |
She confessed she had become "enlightened." Of course, it's not real Buddhist enlightenment (bodhi, liberating insight, thorough comprehension of the Four Ennobling Truths, touching nirvana, comprehending anicca, dukkha, and anatta by direct experience of the ultimate truth). It was nothing like that at all.
What was her "enlightenment," not having a better word for the spiritual, psychological, entheogenic madness that was now going on? Her chakras had spontaneously opened, and with that come the powers of each chakra. It is not the real thing but that thing that happens to many Western travelers every year.
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| Was Wicca wise to the ways of the Moon? |
The most amazing thing she talked to me about, holding Western meds forced on her before she was thrown out of India into the arms of her family (who if they had not taken her out she would have been institutionalized, forcibly drugged with Thorazine or similar antipsychotics, warehoused, and forgotten there, she claimed) was how much the opalescent MOON now governed her moods, actions, and future. She had become "unmanageable" by consulate rules, so she had to be neutralized or sent back to the USA.
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| Triple moon symbol as gold charm |
She feared it. She knew it even if she were to never see it again. I asked what she meant. She explained that the Moon has a profound effect on us on this planet, governing things (estrus, the ability to awaken, as with Siddhartha awakening on the evening of the full moon). It is more than Earth's calendar, making the months and seasons, not reflecting golden sunlight as we are told but emanating its own different kind of silvery light. The Zetetic scientists of the past proved this beyond on a doubt with demonstrable, reproducible, experimental published research.
She was not clear if the Moon was only a goddess, a sentient entity with powers, or a hollow world with beings in it directing their surveillance and energies at us from it. But when it waxed and rose, she was altered. She might dance naked like Shiva Nataraj with a message for the world embedded in postures and mudras, possessed as she would become by that spirit of Shiva, which she claimed was a real, literal being (blue extraterrestrial), not simply some historical or mythological figure.
I said to her at some point that "I want this." She said, "No, you don't! It's painful, it's horrible, it's unmanageable." "Yes, well, I'd manage it better with Ashtanga Yoga" (the "Eight Limbs of Union" with the holy spirit, prana, or subtle breath). "You think you would, but you can't. It's not to be managed. You think I want to take pharmaceuticals?" "No." "Well, I would rather take them than undergo what will happen to me without [chemical tranquilization]."
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| Oriental MS Indic beta, Wellcome |
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| You don't want sudden chakra openings |
"He didn't attack me. We talked, and I left, wanting to be alone. Then it happened. And I was aware of the Moon as it happened, and I knew the Moon was [or the beings in it were] aware of me [like a panopticon]." "And by Himalaya do you mean Mt. Everest or K2 or Kailash or Mt. Meru? Is there a special place for this one might go to?" I asked full of hope.
"No, you don't want this to happen to you." Foolishly, and I knew it was foolish, I kind of still did.
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