I just finished what I call a ‘biblical session’ on the gongs. It was one for the ages. Just beyond gorgeous. It was as close to expressing 100% of what I wanted to express as I have perhaps ever achieved. As I write this, I have this tingling on the edge of my lips, pushing those cheeks up into a silly smile that won’t quit. It was THAT kind of session.
But there is one thing I wish to say about this session. I wish to let you know that it was the first time I have played in over a week. The first complete gong bath I have played in 7 days!
Why haven’t I played? Because I have been sicker than a dog! Luckily not Corona, but a darn good impersonation of it. I have had a big headache, super weak, ugly fluids coming out, bed ridden, you get the picture.
And then out of the blue this gorgeous biblical gong bath session. How does that happen? How does it happen that I can lay in bed, a shadow of myself and then emerge and play so powerfully?
It’s a good question, but not a question that is really easily answered. In life we often take so called good experiences, like this gong session, and separate them from so called negative experiences, like the sickness. Then we compare these different types of experiences and try to avoid one type and attract more of the other. But it doesn’t work that way. Not as far as I know.
To illustrate what I mean, let me share a snippet of a conversation I had yesterday with my friend Julien. I was telling him about an enlightening encounter with a stranger named Leonard. This was an utterly powerful moment, more full of joy and wisdom than any I had ever experienced. It was an experience that is better than winning the Lotto for billion dollars.
But that isn’t what fascinated me as I related this story to Julien.
As I told him the story, an aspect of this story became clear to me that I had never considered in all the years I have shared this story. It had to do with what occurred just before I met Leonard. If meeting Leonard was a view into heaven, what came before was pretty much a taste of hell.
I always just took those two events, the Leonard event and the event before Leonard as just two intense moments happening back to back, but suddenly, yesterday, while talking to Julien, it occurred to me that without that hellish experience, very likely I would not have been prepared to meet Leonard and the experience would have gone right by me. Then I realized, the hellish experience and the Leonard experience were actually one single fact. Take away the hell part of the fact and the heaven part ceases to exist.
That brings me to today’s gong bath session. The sickness, the holding back from playing the gongs, the meditating into a non-stop headache for hours and hours at a time, all this culminated in the gong bath session of just now; all that is one single fact. If one part of that fact is missing, very likely you don’t get any of the fact. You don’t get the gorgeous gong bath session without the sickness!
Of course, I am not saying to look for negative experience. You don’t have to. Negative experience will certainly find you by itself 🙂 Rather I am suggesting that, when it comes, to keep your eyes open for the rest of the fact.
Your’s in Presence,
Alan