“White Tantric Yoga is an ancient group meditative practice that works on clearing out the deepest corridors of the subconscious mind.” –3HO
I found myself, for the third time in my life, cloaked in white, sitting shoulder to shoulder with other people in white who sat next to others in white, all of us across from partners in white—the lines of us stacked like layers of stone, sprung from an ancient civilization. In this setting, fossils of group-conscious tribal think rise to the surface through the chanting and the holding up of the arms. In one such 62-minute meditation, we sat spine to spine with our partner and I pictured that iconic image of the inner children reaching toward each other while the grown-ups fester, hurt and angry. My girlfriend, Biliana, was my partner in this and all such meditations and we were fresh off a fight from the day before in which I accused her of not being a team with me and she was defensive and offended. We considered leaving the yoga camp in the wake of it, but we decided to sit through at least the first day of White Tantric and see what happened.
Back to back with her, our inner children held each other and we held each of them, hands over heart, and I visited the time when I was dying. Not even a year ago, after being hit by a sport utility vehicle while riding my motorcycle, I lay on its hood bleeding fast. I lifted my right arm to see why it hurt so much and what I saw burned an image in my mind that will always be there: Splintered bone and blood jutting out through skin; my right hand hanging off by soft tissue. Between that sight and the blood I felt coursing out from between my legs (the front of my pelvis had shattered and a bone fragment had cut out from the inside through my groin, severing a major artery and nerve), I quickly did the math: I’m dying right now, right here.
I hyperventilated and screamed. It was the first legitimate panic attack of my life. And in the meditation, watching myself there on the hood panicking and dying, I conversed with myself about it. I held my inner child, so small and snuggly and warm in my bones, and said, “I thought of you while I was dying.” A voice asked, “What else did you do?”
“I panicked.” This disappointed me. I don’t want to die having a panic attack. I believe the quality of death is important. This goal of dying sober, it’s the main motivator that keeps me from relapse. But then to die sober and panicking? That’s not what I had in mind for quality.
“And what else did you do?” The voice prodded. I turned my attention back to my dying, bleeding self on the hood and listened: god please help me god please help me god please help me…
“I called out to God.”
“That’s right.”
And so I saw: Even in the midst of panic, I believed there was help. I called out for it, and there was help. First, a man came to me and said he was a doctor. He calmed me down and tied off my arm with my boot laces. He slowed my blood loss enough to allow me to stay alive until the ambulance arrived. Next, the ambulance had compatible blood on board and gave me two units immediately on the way to the hospital. Next, I received more blood transfusions and nine hours of emergency surgery where 14 different surgeons painstakingly pieced me back together. A plastic surgeon closed my left thigh, which was torn open down to the bone. I also had an orthopedic surgeon or two, a gynecological surgeon or two, and vascular surgeons who pieced together all my veins and tendons to attach my right hand back to my arm. A few days later, I underwent another eight hours of orthopedic surgery by the best pelvis guy in the country, maybe the world. People come from all over the planet to have their broken pelvises rebuilt by him. He threw in my arms while he was at it and, reinforced with titanium steel and bone graft, I was made whole.
In the meditation, I moved from the time I was dying into the vast, multi-chambered recesses of the ancient tribal consciousness and saw other lifetimes, other worlds. A herd of feathered fish swimming in a stream, craned necks of colorful birds sleeping, droves of trotting mules with low-hanging bellies and antlers sticking strait up like antennae—an animal form that cannot have lived in the world, even in the Paleolithic age. From their pregnant bellies they transmitted insights about parenting: your children are outward manifestations of your own inner children. You parent yourselves through parenting them, and this is backwards. You fall short. Wounds are repeated. Cycles continue like round sentences. The way to short the circuit is to be the best, most loving set of parents to your own inner child. The ripples from this care will wash over everything and everyone.
In another meditation where we had to hold our arms straight out in front of us, I saw what I imagined were past lives I’ve lived with Biliana. In one, we were young and beautiful and living in Paris. I was a woman and she was a man and we were crazy in love. We died young and it was my fault; I was an alcoholic and I accidentally killed us somehow. In another life, I was a man and she was a woman and we were old and we had lived together for decades and we were poor and starving. We made love and then I went to a public square to burn myself alive in protest of something. I saw us as two men, two women, male and female, every configuration flashed before me and each life we lived as lovers wrapped around the one before it like arias in an old oak tree trunk. We’re in our final handful now, and the roots are deep. In the last five minutes of the 62-minute meditation, my body felt on fire with pain. Every muscle was screaming. That’s when I saw it: what we really are and what happens when we die.
Biliana turned translucent and inside her I could see tiny lights like flashlights at each chakra. From each emanated fluid-like ripples that came together and expanded out. When we die, the lights collapse into one and eject from the body and it feels like coming out of a 62-minute arms up meditation and lying down. Lightness and relief and ecstasy and bliss.
It’s tremendously liberating because it’s hard to be in a body. They’re dense and spongy and heavy and painful. They absorb everything around them, which is why it’s so important to move and stretch, to literally wring the body out every day. And sleep is very important—it’s the time where this fluid-like light being we really are can recharge by going back to wherever we came from and gather the strength to be in this body another day. The forces at play on our bodies every moment are so much pressure. To begin to fathom this, imagine the earth spinning as it hurdles through space around the sun. The surface of the planet is moving at approximately 1,000 miles per hour. That spin, combined with the orbital thrust and the whole solar system moving as a unit—all that speed and motion and force—it’s a lot.
Releasing from that arms-up meditation was like the light-fluid releasing from the body. It’s what I came close to experiencing on the hood of that car nearly a year ago. But it’s not the whole story. At first, I thought what I was shown gave me the gift I’ve been waiting for: to understand death. But since that day, I’ve had vivid dreams every night and now I know there’s so much more. What I was shown scratched the surface, yes. But even the surface is deep. And all the rest is beyond fathom.
Now, the Gregorian calendar cycle is closing and beginning again, and although my own cycles follow the phases of the moon more closely, and although time and space are difficult forces to contend with, this is the rhythm of humanity and I embrace it. Time, this most valuable currency, is to be spent wisely. 2018 had a lot to offer, from excruciating to ecstatic and all stops in between. That motorcycle accident wasn’t the first time I’ve cheated death, but it was the most painful and dramatic and it brought me the most gifts. The most valuable gift it and the White Tantric Yoga experience brought me is this: To love yourself—in an unconditional, fierce, active, sustained way—is the most important thing you can do with this life. See yourself and care for yourself the way you would your own precious child, the flesh of your flesh. Do it with that same transcendent love. Then, filled with love, vibrating love, you will attract love and connection easily and readily and in abundance.
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