One early morning I was sitting on a couch in a cabin, looking out windows that stretched nearly floor to ceiling. The cabin was situated in a valley between two mountains, one in front and one behind the property. At least two feet of snow covered the mountainsides. The majestic trees before me must have been fifty feet tall. I was facing east, and the sun was beginning to rise above the towering, tree-lined mountain. The weather forecast called for more snow later in the day and a temperature of about twenty degrees Fahrenheit. The view, the energy, and the peacefulness were breathtaking.
The cabin was a four-bedroom, three-bath cottage that Jessica and I had all to ourselves for four days. It was my birthday weekend, and each year at this time Jessica and I would take a trip somewhere special. (Anywhere is special when we are together—we could be sitting in a cardboard box with a candle for light and I would still consider it heaven if Jessica were near me). She was still sleeping in the master bedroom. I had placed a cup of coffee at her bedside and come upstairs to meditate in this beautiful, breathtaking environment and see the sunrise. You might be wondering why two people would pay for a cottage that sleeps eight? The answer is that the Dalai Lama once stayed in this cottage, which they have since nicknamed “Little Tibet.”
I remember that upon entering the cottage I noticed a picture on the wall of the Dalai Lama standing on the front balcony, shaking hands in a crowd of what appeared to be hundreds of people. I went through each bedroom and stopped at the top floor corner room. “This is it,” I told Jessica.
“Say what?”
“This was his room.”
“How do you know?”
“It’s kind of what I do.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said.
It wasn’t the nicest bedroom by far, but I could tell it was the one. We did not sleep in it nor do anything else there for that matter. (Get your mind out of the gutter, people.)
There are many cottages of all sizes you can rent at this site, but if given the option, why not choose this one? As you can probably imagine by its nickname, there are no televisions or clocks, and no cellular service in “Little Tibet.” In an emergency, or if you simply can’t take being unplugged from the world, Wi-Fi is available, but we tried to limit our usage.
The idea of a retreat like this is to do nothing, to just allow yourself to be. If you are new to this type of thing, then it is about finding yourself. Jessica came upstairs to find me sitting on the couch, smiling and staring out the window.
“Good morning, Baby. What are you doing?”
“Good morning, my love,” I said. “I am doing nothing. I am just being.” With that she sat beside me, and we both looked out the window; just being present and in the moment, we forgot about life and all that goes with it for a while. A long while. Both of us passed in and out of meditative states and went deeper and deeper into ourselves. There was absolutely no unnatural outside stimulation. We had a beautiful view of nature and one persistent ladybug which had found Jessica and would not leave her. Even when Jessica switched places in the room, the ladybug followed. Ladybugs usually aren’t around in the winter: a time when they go into some form of hibernation. We were not experts on this topic, but we knew that mid-February up in the mountains was no time or place for a ladybug to be out and about.
There is no greater feeling than getting to the point of not needing any external stimuli to make me happy. I often say to Jessica, “I don’t need anything from the outside world to make me happy because I’m happy inside and I can visit myself inside my consciousness anytime, any day, anywhere.” I know this sounds nuts, and at one time I would have been the first to say so, but now I’m of a different mind. I am still trying to figure out how it all happened so quickly. How the heck did I go from an angry, depressive materialist, to happily sitting like a monk in complete silence in the middle of nowhere. And not only happy but feeling extraordinary! I’ll admit that Jessica and I visited the local spa for Tibetan massages once, and that experience was incredibly euphoric, but other than that we had barely left the cottage other than to go for walks in the luminous natural beauty. Is this what they mean by inner peace? Had I achieved that treasured state? Another level up in my quest for enlightenment, I thought.
I would like to share this with you. I wish I were able to reach through the pages of this book and give you this feeling that’s inside me of true inner peace, where there is everything and nothing at the same time. I am having difficulty finding the words to describe it. Perhaps that is why we can’t easily teach one another how to get here. It takes time and effort. There simply isn’t a direct way to explain it. We each have a slightly different path that we must take, but we can all end up eventually in the same place. It’s similar to how you set up GPS in your car, I suppose. You can choose the fastest route, or the shortest route, or the route without paying tolls, the way that uses less fuel, or even shut off the GPS and just drive. They will all eventually get you here—if here is where you really want to be.
Jessica and I had made this trip to celebrate my birthday, but it was also about something much more than that. It was once again soul-searching time for me, and some big decisions had to be made. Was I going to leave my day job and devote the rest of my life to helping others? If so, what was the best way for me to do that? What about our children, who need us to supply them with just about everything, including their educations? We were by no means in a place where we could stop making money. However, I also had to do what I was being called on to do.
This was a huge decision for me, and admittedly a scary one as well. Jessica wanted me to take the plunge, but she would support my decision either way.
These next few paragraphs are from my first book, The Atheist and The Afterlife. I have abbreviated this excerpt somewhat for our purposes here:
In January of 2020, I arranged a meeting with my teacher Medium Bonnie. She was extremely busy with other projects, so she hadn’t come to our area in quite some time. I was very excited that she was going to be in my area, and I took the opportunity to have face-to-face time with her.
We then discussed the release of the book and my apprehensions about doing so. I didn’t tell her I was apprehensive, mind you, she just knew. She asked me if it was because I was still doubting my abilities and I said, “Yes, absolutely.” She said I had to stop doubting myself. She told me that I was advancing in months what it takes most, many years to develop.
There was a brief silence in the room while she looked at me. I could tell she was receiving a message due to the pause in our conversation.
She returned to me and then said, “You must let yourself die, Ray.”
“WHAT? What do you mean?” I responded, shocked and very confused.
“You won’t publish the book because you know that once you do your life as you know it will no longer exist and you will become someone else. Just like in death, we transform into someone or something else. You must let yourself die,” she said again, quite emphatically. “Do it now, or you may lose your opportunity. Just let yourself die.”
I understood exactly what she was saying to me, but this was still scary as hell. What would happen if I released this information to the world? What would my new life be like?
Up in the valley of the mountains, I sat and meditated in our cabin for hours, asking the universe for an answer I really needed. And then it began. The movie screen in my mind opened for a very short while; but in that moment, I saw something. I saw myself writing this book. Only this time I was writing in my brand-new office. And then eventually I saw people come into my office, one at a time, and I would sit with them individually and help guide them. I sat with this for as long as I could, but like I said, overall, this experience was brief.
Later on, in the evening more of the same vision came through, and more still the next morning. There was no mistaking the message now. I often must “see” things more than once to verify them. I told Jessica, “It’s that time again. As nervous as I am, I have to let myself die.”
I came home from the mountains, and that same week I had a meeting with the president of my firm and explained that I was giving three months’ notice. I recall him saying, “I did not see that coming.” I replied, “Neither did I; believe me, neither did I.”
Oh, and as for which room the Dalai Lama had stayed in: around May 21, 2021, Jessica found a photo online of His Holiness in a meditative state sitting atop the bed in the exact room I had thought was his.
Until next time, … I thank you for reading. … RC
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