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When I was a kid I had this strange obsession with my neck. I could not stand having it exposed. I never wore a shirt that didn't button straight up to the top. Turtlenecks comforted me. I liked wearing ties. Kids made fun of me.
I remember going in for school pictures and the photographer would try to force me to unbutton my top button. I refused to do it. You should see some of those early pictures. I look like a total nerd.
I also remember my parents forcing me to unbutton it as well. I would oblige them at home but then, on the way to school, I would button it up again.
At this point, my virginity was guaranteed for life. My dad caught me once, driving by on the way to work. He yelled from his work truck as he drove by.
"Unbutton that fucking shirt!"
I did.
Then, as the truck drove off into the distance, I buttoned it back up. Thank god this only lasted until I was about nine.
Fast forward to 2003. For the reader's sake, I will try to get through this section as quickly as possible. Some readers may decide at this point to opt out and move on to more sensible reading material. You are welcome to do so. For those who continue to read, I am going to get into some things that sound fantastical. But I know these things to be true.
It all started one day, after I had already been meditating for a number of years. I was at a Cirque Du Soleil show when I suddenly began chanting uncontrollably. My ex-wife did what she could to get me to stop, but I couldn't. I just kept chanting strange words, over and over again.
We rushed home, where she began to Google the words I had been repeating. The words came back as Sanskrit Bija Mantras. I had apparently been chanting ancient prayers in Sanskrit – prayers I had never heard in this life.
That's when I lost my shit completely.
There were a lot of other strange happenings that night – occurrences that went on for many years and still do, although to a much lesser degree. To explain all this in the detail it deserves is far beyond the scope of this book. If you're feeling up for it, however, an internet search for the term "Kundalini Awakening" should give you a better understanding of what I and many others have experienced. My ex thought I was nuts, completely nuts - until about nine months later she began going through the Kundalini experience as well. Apparently sex can trigger Kundalini outbreaks among sexual partners. Now we were both lunatics, and probably remain that way to some.
The unconscious mind is a funny thing. You psych majors out there may think you know all about your unconscious, but you don’t. I mean you really don't. After all, it's unconscious. What's to know? Nothing. Although there is plenty to experience. A Kundalini Awakening serves as a jump start to this process – this experience. The reason I bring it up is because as the big K purges one's unconscious of all the unhealthy crap they're unknowingly holding onto, past lives may pop up. And when I say "pop up," I'm just trying to sound cute. The reality is that when you get a real glimpse of a past life, you may actually re-experience it. Kind of like a Vision Quest, minus the sitting in a sweat lodge with a bunch of naked strangers in awkward silence.
So one day, I re-lived one of my past lives. To be clear, I only re-lived the last ten seconds of it. I was lying on my bed, falling asleep, when it hit me. I entered a place – the place between waking and sleep –a whole other spectrum of consciousness. I accessed this place a few times after, once following a surgery to remove what would be dead tumors from my lungs (a byproduct of my testicular cancer) years later. It is a real place, as real as your home. As real as Wal-Mart. Yet it doesn't exist in our five sense worldview. You just won't find it there. Sorry.
When I first entered this place, I was greeted by a strange alphabet. Although I'm not sure, I believe it was Sanskrit or Tibetan, maybe an angelic script of some kind. I really don’t know. The letters rolled across my eyes like a jackpot on a slot machine. Then suddenly, I was in a temple. I heard monks chanting.
Then I heard the monks screaming, and altars being knocked over.
At that point, I saw them. There were three of them. Asian men, wearing red scarves around their heads and holding knives. They tackled me, laughing, and proceeded to behead me, sawing through my neck with their blades.
That's when I woke up, if one can call it waking up. I'm not sure I was ever asleep. It might be tempting for some to dismiss this as just a dream, but I have had plenty of dreams. Nightmares as well. This was neither.
For days afterwards, as I would lie in bed before sleep, I would still suddenly feel my hair being pulled back as a knife was held to my neck. The sawing would begin... and then it would be over.
I now understood why I used to button my shirt to the top as a kid. My beheading in this past life had left a nasty imprint. Turtlenecks wouldn't "cut" it anymore – this trauma needed healing. It had carried over. It had even carried over to my sexuality. I've always had a fetish for scarves, women in collars, women wearing hats, anything head related (insert fellatio joke here).
This was quite an epiphany for me. I had received a big clue in the game of life and how it really works, that reincarnation does indeed exist. This opened up the door to a whole new level of understanding. However, dying like that can leave quite a mark on your soul. It stays with you until you let it go. And "letting it go" is hard work.
I realize that many do not believe in reincarnation, and it's not my place to ask them to. The concepts of fact and faith are pretty much inconsequential anyway, once one actually experiences what is beyond the five-sense framework. In my opinion religion and science are just tools, like weights at a gym. And the whole point in going to the gym is not just to lift weights and exercise, but to look good naked. Once you get a real glimpse of your naked existential self in the primordial mirror, you won't need a priest's or a scientist’s opinion on the matter. You’ll know the truth as it really is, unadulterated.
That’s how it’s supposed to work. Everything else is academic masturbation.
But I was still thoroughly freaked out, and I couldn't trust a lot of the new age flakes I went to for honest, objective answers. I needed experts. I found a couple. They weren't what I expected. Reality never is.
The first Guru I went to scared the crap out of me. The second one was a walking contradiction. I quickly learned that people who actually tell you the truth are rarely telling you what you want to hear. But these two saved my life and I honor them both. They are great healers, but their medicine is hard, like chemotherapy for the soul. Just as with cancer, I had to take it. But their medicine was very enlightening.
Even though my Kundalini experience is an integral part of my reality, it really won't be for anyone else unless they've had a similar experience. I hope that more skeptical readers will just play along and let this be a plot device worthy of some following. Whether one believes in reincarnation or not, it was a deciding factor in my traveling to Thailand. The five senses can all agree on that. And I have the airline miles to prove it.
