Forgiveness and the Maturation of the Heart 

My most confronting, nontraditional and challenging teacher during my year in California, however, was a man I met in a fruit bar in Berkeley. I was happily eating the cup of fruit I'd ordered and reading a flyer someone on the street had handed me when a large, gray-haired black man at a nearby table called over to me, 'You're not going to get enlightened by eating that."

I looked over at the man and noticed he was eating the same thing I was. so I laughed and tried to ignore him. He continued to talk to me saying I needed to love more, learn more, become more humble. I didn't respond.

Finally, I finished eating and got up to leave. "I'll see you again soon," he called to me.

"Maybe," I acknowledged as I left to go home.

The next day I went shopping. When I returned home late in the afternoon, found a note from Jeffrey asking me to call an Otis Lee Jefferson back. I had no idea who this Mr. Jefferson was, but called the number and asked to speak to him.

"You must be surprised about my calling you there," a vaguely familiar voice said with a chuckle.

"Do I know you?"

"We talked at the fruit bar on Telegraph Avenue yesterday, Doctor."

"How did you get this number? And how did you find out I was a doctor?"

The man on the other end of the line chuckled again. "You may place limits on your perceptions of who you are, but I know every-thing about you: your inner conflict, the way your energy flows. Our meeting isn't just a coincidence. Remember, there's something operating under everything you see.

"So what is it I need to learn from you, Mr. Jefferson'?" I asked, intrigued.

"In order to be a good doctor you must focus on more than the survival of yourself and your patients. First you need to learn how to clear the past so there's no part of yourself trying to control or dominate another part. Your emotional, physical, intellectual and spiritual sides must all operate together, you know, as one unit. If you don't do that you'll feel disconnected, out-of-touch with the source of all life."

"But how do you know so much about me?" I asked again.

"I can't answer that right now," he said. "You think about what I said Doc," and he hung up.

I put the phone down, turned to Jeffrey and asked him if he knew this Otis Lee Jefferson. He said he didn't, and he had no idea how the man could know I was staying at his apartment.

Two days later, a package arrived at Jeffrey's, addressed to me. In it was a book by a psychiatrist titled Love or Perish stapled to a long letter from the mysterious Mr. Jefferson. The letter began:

I can help you I worked for 30 years as an orderly in a psychiatric ward. Every doctor I saw there was missing his heart. You need to get cured of the pain inside you. I see in your eyes, your face, that your inner child, as well as that of your mom and dad, never grew up. Neither have you. You've got to grow up, or you will do more harm than good. How can you I fix somebody else's brain if yours is all screwed up?

The next day, I went to the post office to buy airmail stamps. When I came out, the seemingly ubiquitous Mr. Jefferson was standing on the sidewalk with a colorful, knit beret on his gray-frosted hair.

"Carl," he called to me. "I'd like to talk to you.

I heaved a heavy sigh and approached him. "What can I do for you, Mr. Jefferson?"

"Other than call me Otis." he replied. "I don't think there's a damn thing you can do for me. Well maybe there is just one. I would like you to come with me to my home over in Oakland, I'll make you lunch, maybe even give you a little concert. I think you might learn a thing or two. Besides, you don't have anything better to do with your time. now do you.

I looked at this man who was insinuating himself into my life. I didn't know a thing about him, I didn't know where he lived or what kind of man he was. All I knew for sure was that he had some knowledge he felt he needed to share with me. And in truth, I didn't have anything better to do.

"All right Otis, if it is that important to you, I'll come with you."

"Well Carl, it's not as important to me as it is to you. But follow along now, and try to keep up."

He led me to a bus stop and we caught a bus to Oakland. Otis pointed out all the sights to me as we passed by the Oakland Bay bridge. We transferred buses, and continued on into his neighborhood. As we moved closer to his apartment, I couldn't help noticing that the area was getting worse.

"This is our stop," Otis said to me as he pulled the bell cord. We were in the middle of the worst neighborhood I had seen in my entire stay in California. I could see prostitutes on street comers with their pimps, drug dealers pushing their wares, children that from the look and sound surely were suffering from tuberculosis.

"Don't let that little boy inside you get too scared Carl." Otis quietly said to me, seeing that I was somewhat disturbed by my surroundings. "Ain't nothing going to happen to you in my neighborhood. I'll make sure of that. My place is in this building over here."

We walked down the street to a brick building. Entering the building we ran right into a Pakistani man yelling at the top of his lungs as he evicted tenants from a ground floor apartment.

"My landlord," Otis said to me. "Hello Mr. Gupta. How are you today?"

The man stopped yelling at the cowering couple who were moving their possessions onto the curb. He turned to the two of us. smiled and said. ~'I am very fine today, Otis. How are you?"

"I'm always doing well Mr. Gupta, you should know that. I want you to meet a friend of mine. This here's Carl. You'll probably see him around a bit in the near future."

1 I shook Mr. Gupta's hand and said hello. As Otis and I made our way up the stairs I could hear Mr. Gupta begin berating his ex-tenants once again.

Otis unlocked the door to apartment 7G and we walked in. His apartment was in complete contrast to the neighborhood and the building it was a part of. It was clean and elegantly decorated. There were beautiful rugs on the hardwood floors and quality furniture placed with care about the place.

"Most of this furniture came from my parents or their parents or their parents' parents. It's one thing they passed on. This is another," he said as he walked me over near a window. In the corner of his living room stood a piano. Otis sat down and started playing, and I could not believe my ears. He was playing and singing a folk song I had heard my grandfather sing when I was a small child. When he was done with that he sang Eli Eli L'amen Sabachleiri (Father, Father Why Have You Forsaken Me), and followed that with a negro spiritual.

When he finished he closed the piano keyboard, spun around on the bench and said. "I want to talk to you about these people you've got inside you. You know about them?"

I thought back to the dialoguing work I had been doing at Esalen with my Inner Mother, my Inner Father and my Inner Child. "I think so." I replied.

"Seeing yourself just as a doctor and forgetting your humanness can be a disease," he postulated as he stood up and started walking around the room. "If you became a doctor because you wanted to help yourself that motivation comes from a place that we will call negative love. It's like a child who acts up just to get attention, even if it's negative You get this desire from your parents and it makes it very difficult to be a healer. If you became a doctor to be famous, to 'publish or perish,' then you're emotionally immature and that stops you from becoming a true healer. You need to heal yourself before you can really help others."

"I became a doctor because I truly wanted to help others." 1 said. "I was. and am, very sincere in my efforts. And my parents never.....

Otis interrupted, "Like I said, you get this need for negative emotion from your parents and, like them you pass it on to your kids. But when you become a doctor. you don't just give it to your kids, you give it to all your patients too.

"Humans compete for energy. In the name of helping other people, it is possible to harm them instead by unintentionally stealing their energy. We learn to do this in childhood by mimicking the first competitors for energy we know in life-our parents. I know you have seen these energy fields at work in your medical practice, even if you didn't realize what you were truly seeing. You need to understand these energy fields in which you function and become conscious of them. To accomplish this. I can guide you through a process of cleaning the attachments to your biographical past.

"This leads me to something else I noticed in you." he continued. "You don't have no compassion. I kept hearing all these doctors saying it was "publish or perish" in their business. It's like that book I sent you, though -'love or perish'. You've got to start feeling the love or you're emotionally dead."

"You don't think I'm compassionate?" I said, trying ,to humor him.

"Have you ever refused to see someone who was sick?" Otis asked.

I felt a twinge of guilt as I remembered times when I was tired or wanted to go home to bed, and there were other doctors available to see the patients. "In some cases." I admitted.

"Have you ever given up on one of your patients?" Otis asked.

"Only when I knew there was nothing more I could do," I countered.

"How do you know when that is'?" Otis said as he stopped walking and faced me. "How do you know the next thing you tried wouldn't cure that guy, if you'd been creative and not a quitter? I always say, 'If you can't. you must. and if you must. you will."'

"What do you mean by that?" I turned to face this stranger who kept on attacking me.

Otis sat back down on the piano bench and struck a pose looking down and slouching with drooping shoulders. 'This is 'I can't,"' he announced. "You ever notice that's what kids say all the time when you ask them to do something for themselves? Since parents figure they're there to teach and care for their kids. they trudge on over and do it for the kid. In their minds, they taught their kid how to do something for himself. But that's not what the kid learned. He learned that if you cry and whine enough, eventually someone else will do it for you.

Otis sat up, looked up and threw his shoulders back. "This is 'I must.' When you say 'I can't,' you're giving up your will. When you say 'I must,' you're just making a choice to take control of your life again. When you're in that space, you keep trying to succeed until you reach your goal. or you realize that you were doing the right thing but you were working on the wrong problem."

Otis stood up, looked up to the ceiling. and raised his arms above his head. "And this," he concluded. "is 'I will.' You have to get beyond the idea of trying. You need to get in a space where you're so damn sure you're going to succeed. there isn't any doubt left. Trying gets you started in the right direction. but knowing you will succeed is what gets you there."

Otis sat back down on the bench in his 'I must' posture and asked me. 'How many times have you prescribed a drug because it was the easiest thing to do?"

"I have no idea," I said with an exasperated sigh.

"Well, I have an idea," Otis said tapping his temple with his index finger. Otis continued to talk to me about my medical experiences. After an hour or so he served me a lunch of avocado and artichoke salad, bean soup and collard greens with oranges and bananas for dessert. I was convinced that he could teach me something useful, though I wasn't sure exactly what that might be. I agreed to meet with him once a week so he could share with me the technique he had learned.

On a visit soon after my initial meeting with Otis, he finished up another impromptu concert, this time playing classical pieces by Bach and Chopin, and turned to me. 'Get yourself over here. I'm gonna teach you how to survive and be productive in this world." Reluctantly, I joined him on the bench.

"Many doctors I've watched," Otis explained, "were like little children playing doctor. They never really grew up. They never learned how 'cause their parents never grew up. Look at all the negative habits your mother and father had. You are angry because out of negative love you adopted the same habits yourself. Now my parents were dead for 20 years when I figured that out, so I had to find some way to go back in time and fix my relationship with them so I could grow up right, even though I'm . . . How old you think I am?"

"You look like you're in your mid-forties" I said truthfully, "but you would have to be older than that to have worked at the hospital as long as you said you did."

"Sixty-eight," he announced proudly. "l retired three years ago, and that's when I met this Indian guy who taught me how to break the curse.

I waited for him to finish, but when he didn't, I asked, "What curse.

He grinned as if he had been waiting for me to ask that. Otis started laughing. "Not bad, Carl. You sometimes slip back into being like a little kid, see? The kid growing up has no idea of what's right or wrong, so he looks to his parents to check how he's doing. If they get mad and spank him, he figures he did something wrong. If they smile and give him a hug or a treat, he figures he did something right.

"Now, as the kid gets older, he sees other people doing something. He doesn't see any harm in doing it too, so he copies what he sees. It's like my little grandson. He has this problem with swearing now. His mother is hitting the roof because he breaks out in his cuss words when there's company over, and she gets all embarrassed, like it's her fault he's using those words. To him. though, he heard somebody using those words and nothing bad happened, so he thought he'd give it a try too. Alter all, he's never seen anybody cry out in pain or start bleeding over a word.

"This starts a tension going on in the kid." Otis continued. "Mom says what he's doing is bad, but it doesn't seem bad to him. Eventually, everybody rebels against their parents' wishes to some extent, but somewhere in the back of their adult minds, they can see Mom watching and judging their every word and movement.

"We have to move beyond this if we ever hope to become a true adult. The Indian guy told me to imagine my mom standing inside my heart. She probably looks a little sad and scared. Do this with me'. Close your eyes'."

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine my mother inside my heart.

"Then," Otis continued, 'you imagine yourself comforting her, making her feel better. Tell her everything's going to turn out just dandy. Then you have to imagine her parents standing behind her, and their parents behind them and on back through your whole family tree. Every generation not growing up and passing the curse on to the next generation."

I visualized myself comforting my mother. but I started feeling anger rising in me. Why was I wasting my time listening to this guy? I have other things I need to be doing, I thought to myself.

"Then you do the same with your father. Try to make him feel better and imagine all his ancestors standing behind him."

As I visualized my father and attempted to show him support, I had trouble concentrating. I felt this was a futile exercise. Why should I be showing him all this love and support when he always seemed okay? I was the one with the problems'.

"How are you feeling, Carl?"

"Very angry," I admitted.

"Good." he responded with a chuckle. "Now you've got to get over it.

"You're going to have to think about that until we meet again next week." At this Otis got up and showed me the door.

The next week I returned to Oakland. I had spent the week thinking about the anger I felt, trying to determine where it came from and how I could get over it. After another enjoyable concert, this time Tchaikovsky, Otis once again sat me down.

"Close your eyes. I want you to relax and go back to the place you were last week. Now do you remember the anger you were feeling the last time you were here?"

"Of course I remember," I said with a hint of sarcasm. "I've been thinking about it all week. I can't figure out a way to get over it now that you've brought it up" I opened my eyes and look straight at Otis. "I hope you know how to get rid of it."

"Close your eyes'. I said I was going to help you with this."

I closed my eyes and tried to relax and center myself again.

'Next," Otis continued, "you look inside your heart for this little kid whatever age you were when you first expected your parents to be there for you and they weren't. That little boy is probably crying and scared. And he's probably pissed that his parents left him all alone and didn't love him like they were supposed to."

I thought for a moment and then remembered a painful experience from my childhood. I visualized a time when I was seven years old and had decided to find out what was on the top of the bookshelf in our living room. Wanting to show everyone I was a big boy and could get to the top by myself. I began to climb up the bookshelf. There were a few obstacles in my way, various knickknacks and porcelain vases. Still, I was undeterred in my efforts. I reached the top, pulled out an interesting book and began my descent, awkwardly trying to hold on to the book. I could hear my mother in the kitchen and wanted to hurry down and show her what I had done all by myself. In my haste. my right foot slipped, hitting a beautiful antique porcelain vase that was one of my mother's prized possessions. It fell to the hardwood floor below and shattered into shards. I lost my grip and tumbled along with it. hitting the floor with a thud. I immediately burst into tears.

My mother came running from the kitchen and found me sitting in the pile of broken glass, the book at my side. My little legs were bleeding where the shards of the vase had poked my skin. Certainly Mama would fix me up and make me feel better. After all, I had climbed to the top of the bookshelf all by myself. She would be proud that I was becoming a grown-up.

But Mama didn't quite view my exploration as the big right-of-passage experience I had. 'Carlos!" she screamed, "What were you trying to do? Don't you know how dangerous it is for little boys to climb so high on something so unsteady? And look, you broke my favorite vase."

I looked desperately at her through tear-filled eyes. "But Mama," I wailed, "I'm a big boy!"

"No. You're still a little boy, Carlos. You must ask me if you need something," she said as she led me to the bathroom to pull out the pieces of glass that were stinging me like little needles. The calmness I was trying to maintain once again turned to anger. Because I was an only child and spent so much time with adults I had always thought I was an adult, just like my mother, father, aunts and uncles. But my parents often reminded me that I was a child, and didn't let this small adult come through.

"Let out all that anger that you're feeling," said Otis. I could feel my face grow warm and my jaw clench.

"Come on' Carl. Make some noise, man! Don't hold it in. You're gonna kill yourself if you do that. let's see that Latin fire!" he barked like a drill sergeant.

"I'm a big boy. Treat me like an adult," I yelled, slapping the bench with my palms. I could feel the veins in my neck popping to the surface. Anyone in a nearby apartment must have thought something truly strange was going on in Otis' place.

"I think we're starting to make some progress here, Carl. You're really showing some improvement. I want you to try something this week. Put yourself in your parents place. See if you can figure out what they were thinking during this time, what they were feeling."

Once again I left Otis' apartment with a homework assignment for the week. I looked forward to our weekly time together, and I could feel something inside me opening up. Though I couldn't put my finger on exactly what it was, I knew somehow that it was a part of me that I had somehow lost along the way.

I returned in a week, and we started where we left off the week before. Otis said in a tone that suggested tenderness, "You're back to Carlos the seven-year-old boy. Now you've got to see that little boy going up to the mom and dad inside you. He's asking why they didn't treat him like a big boy. What do they say back to him?'

I visualized the seven-year-old Carlos approaching his mother and father and asking why they didn't love him for who he was. "They're telling me they never learned how to love that way," I reported.

"You see all their parents and grandparents behind them?" I nodded. "If that little boy asks them the same question, they'll say the same thing. From one generation to the next, none of them figured out how to love their kids, and the curse of emotional deadness keeps going until you figure out how to be your own parent."

"How do I do that?" I asked. My interest in the process he was teaching was growing.

The old man got up from the bench and said, "You mean you haven't read that book I sent you yet? Read it! And then meet me at the post office tomorrow. I only gave you the first three steps-aware-ness. anger. and understanding. You've got four more to go.

When I got home, I finished some letters I had been writing and dug the book Otis had sent me out of my suitcase. 'Love or Perish," I read aloud to myself as I looked at the front cover. I meditated on the significance of the title for a while and then began reading it. Later in the afternoon, Jeffrey came home. I looked up from reading and said hello to him. "You decided to read that book?" Jeffrey asked as he peered at the cover.

"I was ordered to read it." I chuckled. "I went to the post office this afternoon, and Mr. Jefferson was lying in wait for me."

Jeffrey took the book from my hand. "So is it any good?"

"I've been studying directly with teachers and masters for so long, I'd forgotten that books were capable of transmuting wisdom as well. Yes. It's pretty good."

Jeffrey started paging through the little paperback. "What's it about?"

"It talks about the importance of love," I explained, "and how to get past obstacles to it. Some fear or hurt from our past usually blocks our experience of love and connection. The first step is awareness. What was the event that started the fear or sadness?"

"Uh-huh," Jeffrey grunted as he continued to scan through the book.

"Second," I continued, "we have to let the anger out. It may be anger toward someone who hurt or neglected us. It may be anger about all the time and happiness we lost by not facing the issue sooner.

"Third, we have to come to an intellectual understanding of why the event occurred. For example, we have to understand our parents didn't mean to hurt or neglect us. They were doing the best they could, even if that wasn't enough. We have to see what happened to us as a logical result of all the events that happened before.'

I watched Jeffrey read through more of the book for a few seconds. "Oh." he said suddenly, "what is the next step?"

"I was hoping to find that out too," I said. I held out my hand, and Jeffrey gave the book back with a sheepish grin.

I managed to read all but the last chapter by the time of our next session. When I arrived at Otis's place he sat on the piano bench. Without looking up, he called to me as I approached, "Don't dawdle, Carl. Get over here."

I walked over and sat down.

"You ready for your next lesson?" Otis said.

"Yes," I replied. "The next step has to do with empathy?"

"I remember where we left off," he snapped. "Lean back and close your eyes. I'm going to lead you through this.

"I want you to go back inside yourself. Look in your heart. Your mama and papa are standing there in front of your seven-year-old self.

Behind them are their parents and grandparents and all your ancestors before them. They're telling the little boy that they never learned how to love unconditionally. Now you may understand that and still feel angry, right?"

"Yes."

"Now you've got to stop identifying with that little boy and try to see things from that woman's perspective. She had a hard childhood. too. Nobody seemed to love her like she wanted. Nobody really understood her. She was left alone a lot. Your mother grew up and met your dad, and she felt the same kind of love her parents had for each other, so she married him. And they had lots of problems getting to know each other. And they had a little boy who they didn't seem to understand. He would spend hours alone by himself, and he seemed to enjoy it."

I thought back to the times I had gotten in trouble on purpose so I would be sent to my room. I would sit on my bed or in my chair and dream of angels and people from other planets. A couple of times, my mother or my aunts were disturbed to find I had locked myself in my room.

"And look at your father in there," Otis continued. "Look at things from his perspective. He had to deal with crazy. demanding parents who didn't seem to understand or love him like he needed to be loved either. They wouldn't let him play. His parents made him study, and when he wasn't studying, they made him work hard. He also never grew up. When your dad became a man, he tried to do things to make his parents proud of him. He met your mom, and though his parents were nice to her, they didn't really approve of him marrying her. And he and your mother had disagreements. And he had a little boy. He tried to show that boy he cared, but his son just went off in his own world. He couldn't understand him."

As I tried looking out through my mother's and father's eyes, thinking back on what their lives might have been like as children, my anger faded. Tears welled up in my eyes.

"Now you can't blame yourself here," Otis went on. "You were just a little boy. You couldn't know what they expected you to be. You had to just be what you were. You have to forgive yourself for not being a better son. You were doing the best you knew how."

I opened my eyes and looked at Otis. "I can't blame my parents for not understanding me either." "close your eyes!" Otis said. "That's right. You can't blame your parents either. You've got to forgive them too. They never were parents before. This was all new to them. They were doing the best they could."

A feeling of compassion emerged. I saw the presence of my spiritual inner guide, the angel who had been in the corner of my room, showering me with the ability to understand my parents and myself. At the same time that I felt compassion for their predicament, I also felt deep compassion for my inner child and for all inner children in humanity.

Then I felt this compassion being transformed into strength. A determination to voice the inner dialogue between my inner child and my understanding aspect and bring it to fruition grew within me. I resolved not to blame parents or others, not even myself for my destiny, but to develop instead a firm resolve to change to leave infantile modes and shift to the maturation of the heart.

"This is as far as I got in the book," I admitted, making sure I kept my eyes closed. "The author was talking about forgiveness and compassion toward yourself and others. I feel that now, but I don't know what comes next."

"Well, then, you're going to be kept in suspense until you finish that book. When I give you an assignment it's something you need to learn, and I expect you'll do what I tell you. Now go home and read the rest of that book."

I left Otis' and went home and finished Love or Perish. When I returned the next week Otis sat me down and said, "I'm not going to keep you in suspense any longer, Carl. The last thing to do is go back as an adult and be the kind of parent the child in you needed all those years. You've got to help that child grow up. We don't want any children running around inside the hearts of adults. That's what's made us so screwed up in the first place. We must stop blaming the inner child for the integrated spiritual responsibility that is missing from our adult lives."

Otis began drumming a steady beat with his hands on the bench. The vibrations traveled up my spine. "How old are you now?"

"I'm 26," I replied.

"Imagine yourself at 26 coming up to that seven-year-old you. You give the boy a hug and tell him it's time for him to grow up. He starts getting older and bigger. He's eight now. And you're there to help him with all the challenges of being eight. And when he becomes nine, you watch him live his life as a nine-year-old, and you're there to comfort him and teach him when he needs it. And as he turns ten, eleven, and twelve, the twenty-six-year-old is there to show him how much you care and how fully you accept him for what he is.. And you give him a big hug and tell him you love him as he's growing through his teenage years. And eventually, the boy is gone. He has grown up and become you. And now you can look back at your childhood and remember that the adult you went back in time to help you through."

The tapping stopped. I sat in silence, taking in the feeling of wholeness Otis's meditation had brought to me. Slowly, I opened my eyes and looked around. The room, the street outside the window, the people on the sidewalks below, the buildings, the trees, everything I saw seemed brighter. I looked over at Otis and asked, "Did the sun come out in the last few minutes?"

"No," Otis said with a grin. "It's still pretty cloudy out." He got up from his piano bench. "Today's lesson is over. Here are some books I want you to read. I'll see you around Carl." He walked me to the door, and quietly closed it after me.

I thought about my childhood on my way back to Berkeley. I had always believed it was a fairly normal one. I knew my parents cared about me. I was punished when I broke the rules, but I was never beaten. I always thought I had a close relationship with my mother and father. I tried to account for the anger my child-self had felt, but I finally gave up. The meditation had taught me at the very least that every child is the complex integration of two complex parents1 and it was wasted effort trying to distill all the child's fears and motivations into one idea. The relationship between myself and my parents didn't need improvement. I just needed to recognize and accept it for what it was, in all its complexity.

The thoughts of forgiveness made me remember the prayer my grandfather taught me, the prayer of radical forgiveness. "I hereby forgive all. May no one be punished on my account," I recited. The link between two seemingly disparate people Otis, a straight-talking stranger I had just met in California. and my grandfather reminded me of the interconnectedness of all things.

A few weeks later, I was walking down Telegraph Avenue after another session with Otis. I passed by the Shambhala bookstore Jeffrey had guided me to when I first arrived. Looking through the window and seeing the bookshelves overflowing with wonderful works. I decided to go in and browse. The store had a large selection of books on the world's religions, so I often looked through the books on yoga and Sufism to see if there were any new ones to add to my collection. I was paging through a book in the section on Sufism. a collection of meditations, when I heard a loud thud on the floor behind me. A copy of the Koran. the holy book of Islam. was lying on the floor a foot away. Just beyond it down the aisle was an older man in blue jeans with reddish-brown hair and a mustache. He was holding a book in one hand and looking down at the Koran on the floor. He looked up at me as we both reached for the book.

"The remembrance of God, blessed be He," the man said with a smile. "is not limited to a moment. a period of time or a definite place. We must learn to remember Him in all places. in all times. in all moments. without any restrictions."

The man had a Scottish accent and spoke slowly. in a deep bass voice. He picked up the copy of the Koran and put it back on the shelf. "Of course," he continued. "there are some places that are much better than others for practicing that remembrance."

I wondered if he thought the book's fall was such a reminder of God's presence. "Are you also interested in Sufism?" I asked.

"You could say that." the man said. "Have you ever come across this book?" He pulled a volume off the shelf with the title The Book of Strangers.

I took the book from him and shook my head. "I think you might find it interesting." he told me as he turned and headed down the next aisle. I glanced at the book, noticed that it was yet more Sufi teaching stories and put it back on the shelf. I had many such books from the Sufi master Idries Shah, I thought. what do I need with another by some unknown writer named Ian Dallas?

When I got home from the bookstore, I brought the mail in. As usual, most of the mail was for Jeffrey. but there was a postcard addressed to me in very elegant handwriting. I had written to a group in London, England, about a teaching program specializing in Sufism, and this postcard invited me to tea at the Sufi center in Berkeley.

The next day. I took a bus to College Avenue and then walked down to the address on the postcard. There was a house at the address but no sign identifying it in any way. It looked very much like the other residences on the block. I checked the address again. Yes, this was the right place. I realized. I rang the doorbell. and the door opened to reveal a young Arab man in white turban and brown cotton robes. He stepped aside and motioned for me to enter.

The young man led me through a living room carpeted in Oriental rugs. with flags and banners adorned with Arabic writing hanging from the walls. Other men in turbans and the same kind of long cotton robes, which 1 later learned were called jalabas, were sitting down reading or engaging each other in animated discussions in a language I didn't recognize.

When we entered the dining room. the young man pulled out a chair from the dining room table and indicated that I should sit there. I eased into the chair, feeling somewhat out of place in my Western attire, and looked at the other faces around the table. They were all men in their twenties, thirties and forties. They sat drinking tea, seemingly waiting for the man at the head of the table to say something.

"You have made your way to a better place in which to remember God." the man at the head of the table said as he picked up his teacup. The reddish mustache and the Scottish accent made me look twice at this older man in the turban and black jalaba. I hadn't recognized him as the man from the bookstore until he spoke. I introduced myself and told him about the program I had applied to.

"You know that you must give up your worldly possessions and move to Morocco?" the Scottish man asked.

I was familiar with this stage in learning Sufism-giving up one's possessions-and the brochure I'd responded to mentioned the Sufi community itself was in Morocco. "Yes. I know. I've been studying Sufism under Idries Shah while in Chile."

"The community in Morocco is one of the best places in the world to practice the remembrance of God," the man who appeared to be the leader of this group said. 'And Sufism is one of the best scientific traditions for that awareness of God to take place. Most of the enduring religions of the world teach that there is one true God. Certain traditions, though, like those of the Hindus and the Greek philosophers, began to place God at so high, lofty and powerful a setting, they felt He was too great and overwhelming for the average worshiper to comprehend. Sufism believes each person should have direct access to God, unmediated by priests. It's an especially useful tradition at this period in the history of the world, one in which we are all called upon to become what your teacher Mr. Shah refers to as practical mystics.' Everyone must have their own relationship to the divine now. We need to develop our ability to function practically in the world, while experiencing the sacred in our own lives, not taking all our commitment to God from faith based on parables and stories."

He waved at one of the young men to go bring in some more tea. "Do you know what the zhikrs are?" he asked me.

"I learned a couple of them," I said. 'They are the 99 attributes of God."

And they are, therefore, the 99 attributes of humanity as well," the Scottish man continued. "The zhikrs, when you repeat them, help you to connect with that higher part of yourself we sometimes call the soul. They remind you of that consciousness all things spring from."

"Ian," one of the other men at the table said to the Scottish man, "we've been told that all creatures must unite with God. How then do the dog and the bird and the snake find this union if they cannot recite the zhikrs?"

"God is manifest," the leader answered. "He shows his presence and his attributes in nature constantly, in the process of creating new life, in the changing of the seasons. Even the insects can appreciate these things."

Over the course of the afternoon, I learned that Ian was Ian Dallas, the author of the book he had pointed to in the bookstore and that he, too had studied with Idries Shah for a time. He had been to the Sufi community his group ran in Meknes, Morocco, many times over the years, so he was able to answer all my questions about the lifestyle and teachings there. I became more and more enthusiastic about going, for it promised to provide still more experience in connecting with the vital identity and using it in healing work.

"Now, you must go clean up your things in South America," Ian said to me as I prepared to leave, "and then we'll meet you in Morocco. You are young and have left many loose ends. Your past ties you to the image that you have of yourself. You will introduce yourself to an ancient fire that will consume your past, but will not burn you. You will erase your personal history like a serpent lets go of its skin. This is what has happened to you over the past few years, you're letting go of your old skin to emerge in that which you will become.

When I returned to Jeffrey's apartment that night, I announced to my roommate that I was moving to Morocco.

"That's great," Jeffrey told me as he patted me on the shoulder. "When do you go?"

"I have to go back to Chile first and liquidate my assets.

"Liquidate your assets?"

"Give away everything I own."

"Are you becoming a monk," Jeffrey asked. "With the vow of poverty and chastity and all that?"

"Actually," I said with a smile, "I think I'm going to be a fakir. The poverty and chastity will be circumstantial, from what I've heard."

"What do you mean?"

Just then, the phone rang. I was close to it, so I answered it. "Hello?"

"Carl!" It was the unmistakable drawl of Otis Lee Jefferson. "Get over here. We've got to meet one more time before you take off."

I rolled my eyes at Jeffrey. "How do you know I'm leaving California, Otis?"

"I saw you walking down College Avenue tonight," Otis said. "Your mind and your body were thousands of miles apart, I could tell. Where are you moving?"

"Morocco."

"Meet me at the fruit bar tomorrow at noon. I've got one more thing I've got to teach you." At that, he hung up.

When I walked into the fruit bar where we had met, I saw Otis wearing one of his colorful berets and eating his fruit salad. "You're never going to get enlightened by eating that crap," I called to him.

He turned and smiled at me, and I sat down at his table. "I read to get enlightened. I eat so I don't keel over," Otis explained.

"You said you had something you wanted to tell me?"

"What are you going to do once you leave Berkeley?" Otis asked.

"I'm going to Morocco," I replied. "I already told you that."

"No. I mean after that. What are you going to do with your life? Do you have any clear goals for yourself, things you want in life?"

"I'm a good psychiatrist and I do have clear goals in life. I'm just being moved by a force that is more powerful than my ability to reason. This force is moving me along according to my plan. I feel like I'm being trained by different traditions so that I can put together the pieces of this puzzle that is my life. Then I can truly be of service to others."

"There's a maturity of the heart I'm trying to teach you, Carl. It's difficult to pay attention to what your higher self wants you to do if you got all this interference from these voices of your mom and dad, or anybody else you consider an authority figure. The child inside you has to grow up and be a separate person.

"I just want to make sure you understand the process completely and how important it is. Only then can you help others with it. The first thing you have to do is recognize the negative habits of your parents, and recognize your anger because you have developed these same habits. Then you must express your anger. Only after you have given expression to your anger can you recognize that, though your parents are guilty of passing down these habits to you. They are not to blame because their own parents passed the habits down to them. This pattern of passing down negative habits can be traced back generations.

"Once you recognize this you can feel compassion for your ancestors-from your parents backwards-and begin to heal. This also allows you to feel compassion for yourself. With this self-compassion comes taking responsibility for yourself and your own behavior, which in turn allows you to forgive that inner child that lies deep inside you. Then you can help your inner child heal and grow up. With this inner child grown, you can then forgive your parents, seeing them simply as the human beings they are. This allows you to integrate the aspects of your self, and then establish self and spiritual awareness. This is the path to maturation of the heart.

"There's another thing you should do. Now that you've forgiven and expressed your love to your parents in your heart, you need to do it in person. This is the only way you can complete your journey. Do you think you can do that, Carl?"

"I do have some time before I go to Morocco." I answered. "I must give away all my possessions before I go, and most of my possessions are in Chile with my parents. Yes, I can do this for them. and for me."

"Good. That's real good. Now then, you say you want to serve the world, right?"

"Yes, I do."

"In order to serve others. you have to relate to them in meaningful ways. but without getting all tied up in their problems or their lives. You have to be able to connect when you're interacting. and then you got to disconnect. There are too many people and many of them are doctors-running around this world carrying a half-dozen or more folks on their backs. There's a story that my Indian friend told me that will explain what I'm talking about.

"There were these two monks traveling across Asia. They had both taken vows of chastity, so they weren't supposed to talk to women. much less touch them. Well, when they got to a fairly deep mountain stream they noticed a beautiful woman looking out at the river and crying. She needed to cross the river. but she feared the current was too fast and she might drown. The older of the two monks told the woman to climb on his back, and he carried her across the stream. On the other side, she thanked the monk and went on her way. After the two monks had continued their journey another hour, the younger monk said. 'You have taken vows of chastity. How come "you carried that woman across the river?' The older monk replied, 'I set her down once we had crossed the river. Why are you still carrying her in your mind?"'

I laughed. "I see your point. I need to serve the world without feeling joined or fused to it."

"That is emotional freedom," Otis said. "When you achieve it, you're not angry, you re not feeling guilty and you're not all caught up in yourself. When you're really in touch with your deeper self you know who you are. You don't need to define yourself by what other people say about you, or how they react to you. And you know what the big payoff is, Carl?"

"What?"

"Strange as it may seem, once you disassociate yourself from the rest of the world, when you don't need anybody else to tell you what is right or wrong and just being yourself makes you feel good and whole, that's when somebody special will appear who knocks your socks off! See, it's this sort of paradox, Carl. When you no longer need someone else, that's when you're finally ready for intimate relationships. Then you can respect yourself and that other person as two whole and perfect beings who come together to learn more about themselves."

To safely order from our secure server

HOME | ABOUT | CALENDAR | EVENTS | NEWSLETTER | LINKS
WORLD HEALTH FOUNDATION | FAQ'S | CONTACT INFO