I Wonder

I went from doubting my intuition to recognizing and following it to success and happiness one strange night. 

Often in the middle of the night I wake up, and when I can’t go back to sleep, I sit up and meditate. I used to think meditation was just for monks and hippies and people who wear crystals and beads and sandals. Now, it’s easy to see everyone meditates on something. Mostly, people meditate on how much money they have in the bank and how they’re going to spend it, or on what to wear to look attractive, or on what they’re going to be eating, or what they’d rather be doing at any given time. 

When they’re not meditating on those things they let others meditate for them by watching streams, listening to podcasts, or scrolling through feeds. I know this because I do all of these things, occasionally. All things in moderation, you know. 

Anyway, on nights when I wake up and can’t fall back to sleep, I try to stop all thoughts with meditation. I use a secret mantra I learned from my meditation teacher. Yes, I have a meditation teacher — people do crazy things when they can’t sleep. 

My teacher is great. He wears dress shoes and collared shirts and glasses. He’s a retired medical school librarian and studied ancient medical texts and discovered this meditation technique that taps me into the source, I like to say. He calls the source intuition.

The meditation he teaches uses a special mantra. The mantra is a sound he taught me to quietly say or sing to myself without moving my mouth or tongue. The goal is to have the mantra going over and over again without having to think about it, so that you end up thinking of nothing. This is hard to do, because it’s hard to give up thinking your thoughts.

Some nights I say the mantra and I still can’t stop thinking. The mantra is there, but thoughts race on. There are desire thoughts like, “I want a new car. I need a vacation. I wish it was the weekend.” And, fear thoughts like, “what if the news is right and the economy is doomed? What if there’s a war? Did I lock my car?” There’s the random memory thoughts from out of nowhere and I’m thinking about something someone said to me that made me sad or happy or angry or whatever. And, sometimes it’s just little thoughts like, “I wonder where I’ll eat lunch tomorrow?”

Other times, I say the mantra, stop thinking quickly, grow tired, and fall back asleep. 

But, the night I figured it all out, in a dark room with my eyes closed, when my thoughts stopped, I started to see a blurry, white light. This was not the first time I’ve seen a light while meditating, but the night I made the discovery, I paid attention to the light. Close attention. I focused intently on the light.

The light started out blurry around the edges, and with my eyes still closed, I focused my “internal vision,” if that’s even a thing, on the light. The light grew clearer and seemed to move up in my “view” just above my eyes in the center of my forehead. Then, as I said the mantra, the light started to flow towards me, making it appear like I was moving forward into the light. 

When I see this light and it starts to flow, I usually allow myself a little internal dialogue. I keep the mantra going and simultaneously in a state of no thought with my mind clear, I say to myself, “now what?” I say that because I’ve seen the light many times and I enjoy it. It feels good and it seems like the beginning of something. But, before that night, nothing ever came from it. 

The night I found a path. I asked, “now what,” and I waited with the mantra going and no other thoughts. I just waited and waited and nothing happened. I stayed focused on the light with my mantra going and then “Taos….Record Krishna Das,” came into my mind.

And, it wasn’t a normal thought. Not an analysis type thought where I’m analyzing something, not a desire, not an emotion thought, not a strategic thought, it’s like it came from a different place in my mind. But, it was in my voice. Following intuition would be easier if these thoughts sounded unique. For me, it’s not like that. It’s just in my voice.

So, I think to myself, “well, that’s something. That came out of nowhere.” But, I could see how my subconscious could pull it together and into my mind from sources that I had recently been interested in. I was  trying to be reasonable about all of this. “Is this me,” I asked myself, “is this my subconscious, or is this coming from another place, because it feels like it’s coming from out of nowhere.”

I was sitting there, the mantra was running and I thought to myself, “if this is what I’m supposed to do, if I’m supposed to go to Taos, then I’m going to need a sign. And, we have the whole 11:11 thing, so we know how to do that.” And, I figured since it was the middle of the night, that I’d go back to sleep and wake up and wait for the sign in the coming days or weeks. 

So, I went back to my meditation and I saw the light was still flowing, and then I heard my phone vibrate. I thought, “who is texting me at three in the morning?” I tried to forget about it and continue meditating, and then my phone vibrated again. At that point I lost the light, so I opened my eyes and picked up my phone to silence it, so it would stop vibrating and not wake my wife. When I picked up my phone, I checked the texts and it was my friend Cory. Cory and I are longtime friends. He knows all about the 11:11 thing.

Cory was working in Europe while his wife visited her mother. Cory and I had been talking about a new project I had been working on called Bootleg, so he was texting a follow-up to the phone call we had the day before. During the call I told him about a constraint the project had. He texted me, saying I didn’t need to fear the constraint, because we could give gig work to music lovers and they would be called Bootleggers. I thought it was a great idea and Bootlegger was the perfect name for a gig worker. I could see a team of passionate people proud to help musicians, proud to help fans relive peak moments in their lives, and proud to be called a Bootlegger. I got excited and I sent him a text back and we started a text conversation. 

We were hashing out a few different concepts around the idea and then he says, “by the way, what are you doing awake at 3:30 in the morning, is everything alright?”

“I was meditating, trying not to think about Bootleg,” I replied.

“I ruined that!”

“No, the universe wanted us to talk.”

“Exactly!” he responded.

“I had just asked the light in my meditation what I should do next.”

“👀,” he replied.

“If you want to get far out with me,” I said, “I had an intuition about Taos and Krishna Das, and you sent a text right after. I think a spirit/saint/guru is behind this, not gonna lie, keep this between you and me (obviously), could be psychosis, as well, 😂.”

“Hehehe. Both worthy of respect.”

“I’ve followed the rabbit so far, what seems normal to me now is out there. I’m definitely manic.”

“Mania vs depression. Your awareness of status and state is enormously valuable. That may be close to enlightenment,” Cory replied.

“That’s nice of you to say, but if this is enlightenment, there’s still a lot of suffering…maybe it’s a step on a path. It would be nice to be able to control state, like turn on mania during the day and turn it off to sleep. As it is, I get manic, don’t sleep for a few days, then cross into mild depression.”

“Yeah, controlling it would just be a form of self-manipulation, which would be strange and delirious. But…mild depression ain’t no joke. I assume and hope you go play with your kids in those moments and it brings you back somewhat.”

“Depression is too strong of a word. I just get a little down. I never see you depressed, that’s one of the reasons you’re so inspiring,” I said to Cory.

“You’re a rockstar. These things are struggles you go through but similar to rockstars, it enables you to give and create. Consider it your sacrifice to the world for being talented, loved and creative,” he texted. “And determined. That’s a super power I left out.”

“Thank you. I’ll accept determined. I have nothing to be depressed about ever. I’m blessed with amazing friends. Blessed beyond belief.”

“Yeah man…no doubt and then some.”

“Let me try to settle back in. What are you doing in 8 hours?”

“Yes…I’ll be around. Will also start making notes to formalize our ideas. Rest well.”

“I love that you are in Europe, btw. I have someone to talk with at night!”

I closed my messages and opened the notes app on my phone. Not wanting to forget, I started a new note with the title, “Signs.” Just as I typed, “Taos….. Record Krishna Das,” my phone vibrated. I closed the note and saw a new text message. I opened my message app and Cory had texted:

“By the way, it’s 11:11 here…..”

I checked the time on the phone and it was 4:11. I felt an emotion I don’t feel often from my stomach up to my heart. I’ll call it the emotion of wonder. I smiled to myself, never considering that I could get the 11:11 sign so soon. It all seems to make sense now.

“Mind blowing,” I replied. “🤯.”

“I guess we know why I’m in Hungary…..”