“Okay, Mr. Kill-Joy,” I imagined my little dog complaining.
UPLIFT is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
It’s ridiculous how we talk to our dogs.
And, I suppose God feels the same way — giving us all sorts of messages that we resist, for example, this business of “abandoning hope.” I decided that hope was either quaintly sentimental or the driving force of the universe. I’ve decided hope occupies both ends of that equation.
I restarted my podcast. Tom Hanks was talking about Cast Away, the 2000 film where he washes ashore after a plane crash in the Pacific. As a filmmaker, I love behind-the-scenes banter:
Tom Hanks adrift in Cast Away, 2000, 20th Century Fox and Dreamworks
“I wanted to reduce the guy to the point where he was not going to survive unless he had the five elements necessary for human life,” Tom Hanks recounted.
My ears perked up. Reduce the guy? Like a reduction sauce?
Hanks continued: “What happens if one of those planes goes down and three of the crew die, and there's only one left? To give us the third act, which is the redemption and the point of the whole movie, I wanted to reduce a guy down to someone who was not going to survive unless he had those five elements: food, water, fire, shelter…”1
I waited for number five.
“and COMPANY.”
“Holy shit, Miko. Did you hear that? Company! You’re the fifth element. YOU’RE KEEPING ME ALIVE!”
Hanks continued: “We could never land on what company really was until director Bob Zemeckis said, ‘I think Wilson's got to come out of your own blood.’”
“And I replied to Bob, ‘What if the character cuts his hand and then in frustration picks up the ball and throws it and then turns that into a little face?’”
Tom Hanks and “Wilson” in Cast Away
I live for the creative process, and Hanks channeled it. Wilson was flotsam cargo — a volleyball that became Hanks’ survival company. In the pivotal scene, Hanks struggled to light a fire, the stick broke, and blood gushed from his hand. He hurled the volleyball in a fit of rage, and Wilson was born.
I remembered the scene — the blood, despair, frustration, and redemption coalescing into a primal act, the power of Brujo.
Last month, when I wrote, “Instead of Bruce, I became Brujo” — something clicked. My friend Sherrill wrote, “Brujo, is WOW!”
Brujo is not a word I would ever use to describe myself, nor shaman, Sufi, dervish, sadhu, healer, or seer. My words are lover, writer, creative, fixer, and kvetcher. But Brujo took root.
The Brujo dictionary definition is a “magician or wizard drawing upon natural powers.” I prefer Brujo as someone who hits the right notes at the right time to love people into the present moment. A Brujo is authentic and spontaneous and lives and loves at a higher vibration.
That sounds wonderful, but the path is not. My years of meditation, whirling, study, and working with teachers were the easy part. Watching my hopes, expectations, and sense of identity go down the drain formed the actual path — yes, abandoning Hope. Rather than drain, I prefer the mythological Greek word katabasis — the inevitable sinking into the shadow self that’s part of every enterprise. Paradoxically, the sinking forces openings — what people call “spiritual experiences.”
That also sounds wonderful, but the process is always disconcerting. I use the Sufi terms fana and baka — fana describes the dissolving away of one’s sense of identity, and baka, the real self or Being that remains — like a reduction sauce.
Being remains like a reduction sauce.
Bhagwan described this process as an infiltration of a mysterious energy:
“This energy affects you intimately to bring about the awareness that this Being is yourself. Ordinarily, there is no awareness of Being. This mysterious energy infiltrates your body and becomes your Being.
“There are many forms but only one Being,” he continued. “This mysterious energy is your Being. It is beyond the universe. So are you, beyond the universe. You can’t answer that; you can’t think about it. But this is the truth — the truth of yourself, the truth of your Being.”
I learned to live with my fana experiences; some were freaky, and some benign. If I talked to Karen about them, she would cover her ears, la-la-la, “You need to get checked out.” If I shared them with Bhagwan, he would roll his eyes. From his point of view, discomfort is in the mind. With nowhere to turn, I self-diagnosed my state as “kundalini rising” — a phenomenon from the ancient Tantric yoga traditions. According to Yoga Journal:
Kundalini moves divine energy from the base of the spine up through the chakras in order for an individual to experience an expanded state of consciousness. A kundalini awakening is a remarkably powerful spiritual experience, one that yogis and practitioners spend years preparing for. The experience can happen intentionally through practices like meditation, pranayama, yoga, and prayer, or it can happen without warning. This type of awakening is considered to be fairly common in the spiritual world, but in our Western society, kundalini awakenings are considered rare.2
A 19-year-old college female presented to the ER with a week of unrelenting symptoms. “She was enchanted by knowing about the effect of yoga practices mentioned in books and the Internet… She started experiencing a form of energy at the base of the spine that was gradually heading toward the head.” In addition to hearing voices, “she would frequently get up at night and would often be found doing pranayama and meditation…. She was given 6 mg intravenous Lorazepam in divided doses for three days, on which improvement was seen in the catatonic symptoms.”
Groovy.
Don’t laugh. I dragged myself to the ER some years ago and quickly realized there’s no ICD-9 code for Kundalini rising. Realizing how the Kafkaesque chain of events ends with IV Lorazepam, I told the triage nurse I was dehydrated. After receiving a very expensive bag of salt water, I was released.
During the Covid pandemic, I suffered an event not found in any PubMed report. Amid the fever, I felt a big chunk of my identified self fall away like rusty armor. I suddenly became energized, flexible, and filled with a rush of “crown chakra” energy that hasn’t subsided — Kovid Kundalini.
This experience increased with Karen’s passing.
I would joke, “We both went through the death experience, but I got to keep my body.” I know it’s not funny, but it’s something Henny Youngman would say.
In addition to the painful lack of the fifth element company, my kundalini cranked up — not the up-the-spine kind, but Bhagwan’s infiltration of mysterious energy. I managed to accommodate the sensations with each new episode and carry on — until now.
I had been participating in a yoga challenge all month involving daily yoga classes and goofy yoga stunts — all to win a T-shirt.
Bruce tree-posing with yoga-challenge buddy Courtney
On a Monday, while in the middle of a tricky asana, my gravitational sense went poof, and kundalini infiltrated like a raging current. I collapsed, got scared, stayed in child’s pose, and faked it through the rest of class.
I should have gone straight home, but in typical Bruce fashion, I followed through on my original plan to head to a Walmart (to get a garment for a yoga stunt) and then to Whole Foods (I needed food). Even on a good day, Walmart blows my circuits with its chaotic merchandising, degradation of the planet, and shoddy labor practices. But here I was, pushing a cart through Sam Walton’s soul-sucking hell as pure consciousness infiltrated my being. I gripped the cart with both hands, connected my feet to the concrete, and used my Brujo powers to locate an athletic shirt and a curtain rod.
“I can’t believe this is happening!”
My homeostatic instinct propelled me to the Szechuan restaurant next door, where, without looking at a menu, I blurted, “Give me egg drop soup and garlic chicken.” While slurping soup, I noticed ten young people bubbling Bondo at the next table. Suddenly, the fifth commandment — company — triggered my painful aloneness. I finished the soup, scarfed a few bites, got a box, and high-tailed it out.
Bubbling Bondo at a neighboring table at Hai
That night as I lay in bed, a singleton terror emerged.
The article warned: “One hears stories of frustrating, sometimes desperate visits to doctors, healers, counselors, etc. who neither understood nor were able to help with the myriad pains and problems catalyzed by raging Kundalini.”
Yikes.
The symptoms include: “Energy rushes or immense electricity circulating the body; emotional outbursts; episodes of grief, fear, rage, depression, rapid mood shifts, an inner sound like a waterfall, bees buzzing, whooshing. psychic experiences, insight into one’s own essence, and a more expansive reality.”
Check-check-check.
Fortunately, a list of remedies followed: “Do some gardening” — yeah, mow the lawn at 10 pm. I went down the list to: “Sweet, heavy herbs, rich in earth mahabhuta may be helpful.” It suggested licorice.
The universe seems to plan ahead. Six months earlier, a well-meaning soul brought an offering of organic licorice to a dying Karen. At the time, I thought “Well, this is dumb,” but now I saw the genius. I ripped open the bag, savored my sudden fortune, invoked Mahabhuta, the god of licorice, and all was well.
If the human psyche evolves at a glacial pace, transformation unfolds like icebergs cracking into the sea.
The first kaaraack hits at age forty-two (the mid-life crisis). And then, kaaraack after kaaraack — we resist breaking apart to the bitter end. Joseph Campbell seemed remarkably sanguine about the whole affair when he wrote:
"The problem in middle life, when the body has reached its climax of power and begins to decline, is to identify yourself, not with the body, which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle… Am I the bulb that carries the light? Or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle?
“One of the psychological problems in growing old is the fear of death. People resist the door of death. But this body is a vehicle of consciousness, and if you can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this body go like an old car. There goes the fender, there goes the tire, one thing after another— but it’s predictable. And then, gradually, the whole thing drops off, and consciousness, rejoins consciousness."
~Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
Joseph Campbell, 1970s, by Joan Halifax
Clunker or not, the power of Brujo comes from consciousness.
Having jettisoned my fenders and a couple of flat tires, I feel indefatigable, more authentic, caring, and filled with that mysterious energy. On the flip side, I felt increasingly “shunned.” (My friend Penny called me out. “Stop already with the shunning business! That’s way off the mark!”)
It occurred to me that Penny might be channeling Henny Youngman — or, more likely, Joan Rivers, who once quipped:
"I think anyone who's perfectly happy isn't particularly funny."
I’ll take funny. And even if Henny, Penny, and Joan called me out, I’m allowed my perception. “I FEEL SHUNNED!” I imagined myself clad in a cloak of darkness, spooking people to keep a wide berth.
I remember seeing widows in Greece dressed in black who separated themselves from the lively world of bouzoukis, tavernas, and retsina.
Greek widows might wear black for the rest of their lives.
Dr. Georgia Rowley Panagiotopoulos, a researcher of bereavement in Greek culture, wrote about shunning:
“I will always remember the seemingly unrelenting darkness that enveloped the household and how [my grandfather’s] loss affected my yiayia [grandmother], who almost immediately cladded herself in black, banishing all colorful clothes from her home and brought herself and the rest of the family into mourning his loss for days, weeks, months, and years… Cemetery visits were ritualistic and occurred daily during these early years. Music, TV, parties – myriad things which held connotations of enjoyment and pleasure – were shunned. Celebratory family events like Easter and Christmas were clouded by mourning and lamentation… admitting that the fog of bereavement held such a tight grip for her family for what felt like decades after her pappou’s passing.”3
Company is the fifth element for survival.
Suddenly, I felt garbed in widower black — even while slurping Szechuan soup. More and more, I lean into Miko for telepathic conversation. He snuggles on the couch and dances a pirouette when I return home. We even have lovers' spats like an old couple, and he makes human utterances in his sleep, which can be unnerving.
The shunning business seems real.
My first major dose hit when I drove to Greenville, SC, to make up with Amanda — an intimate family friend for over 20 years. She was unhappy that I used her name in one of these chapters.
“Would you like some tea?” Amanda asked when I entered her cavernous loft.
“Yes, please.”
Amanda placed the tea bag in the cup and poured hot water.
“Milk?”
“Sure.”
I watched in disbelief as she poured ice-cold milk into the unbrewed tea.
“Here.”
And that was the end of that.
And this is the thing about grief — you live in a world people can’t see. Had I cloaked myself in black, perhaps Amanda would have put a metaphorical coin in my cup — or at least a teabag in hot water. But I get it. I walk past the homeless on my street, oblivious to their pain. A woman sitting in front of the Rec Center has been singing spirituals through the night for a year. I don’t want to know her story, and I don’t want to experience her pain; I have enough on my plate. Thank you.
And then there was Rose:
BRUCE: “Happy birthday, dear Rose. Would you like to get a meal this week?”
ROSE: “Lovely to get your message; however, no go this week. Leave town for a dance weekend. After that, I would love to get together for lunch.”
BRUCE: “Enjoy the dance. I’ll check back next week.”
THUMBS UP emoticon.
BRUCE (one week later): Hi Rose, I’m super attentive to following up. Want to get back on your social calendar. Let me know what looks good.”
ROSE: “Working on it. Will get back soon.”
BRUCE: “No rush. Just keeping my Rose connection from wholly disappearing into the ethers.”
And then there’s Mary:
I’ve always loved Mary’s lusty laugh and our shared careers. I wanted to talk, but nowadays, you have to prearrange phone calls via text:
April 1 — BRUCE: “Hi Mary. My monthly check-in. Have you landed in a good place after giving up your dog? Wanna talk?”
April 2 — MARY: “Hi Bruce, sorry it’s a busy weekend as I’m traveling! Staying busy. Trying to make my interior thoughts stay at a higher vibration to make a more beautiful emanation into the universe.”
BRUCE: “I don’t want you to slip into the file of people I used to know. It’s a thing.”
MARY: “I know, thank you. I hope you’re well and moving along your process. We’ll talk soon!”
Six weeks later, I tried again.
May 15 — BRUCE: “Hi Mary. Hope you are well. Are you up for a chat?”
MARY: “I’m working on a deadline, can we do tomorrow? I’m pretty open for the afternoon….
BRUCE: “Sounds good. Happy you have a deadline.”
MARIA: “I need to turn it around quickly. Talk soon.”
May 16 — MARY: “I feel like I fell into a field of Poppies like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz and am going to go take a nap. I have meetings tonight, so another day this week is better.”
BRUCE: “Okie doke, Dorothy. Sweet dreams.”
May 20 — BRUCE: “Hi Mary. This is the perennial Hello from that guy, Bruce. I am in the car for the next two hours. If you want to talk, I'm here. Hope you're well.”
MARY: “Hey Bruce, I’m on my way out for an overnight at my friend’s but should be around tomorrow afternoon. Maybe call me then???
BRUCE: “We can make it happen. Have a wonderful time. Hope to talk soon.”
Karen would have counseled, “People are busy.
They’ve got lives to live. You can’t expect them to jump at every text message.” I considered Karen’s counsel but weighed the loss of energy instead.
Thirty-five years ago, I was developing “Confidence Man,” a script written by my close friend Nick Saxton and produced by Giovanni Mazza, an Italian con man who in 1978 donated $27,700 to preserve the first “O” in the Hollywood sign.4 Imagine Danny Devito and Donald Trump rolled into one person — that was Giovanni. Karen and I lost $30,000 we didn’t have, but I got one good lesson out of the deal.
Here’s the scene:
SCENE: Nick (Alexander) faces Giovanni (Batista) empty-handed after failing to score money from his friends for the film.
NICK: "This is a trip over the mountains of madness," Nick beseeched, "and I don't want you to drop me off somewhere in the valley."
GIOVANNI: "You drop yourself off in the valley!” Giovanni thundered. “You give yourself away to everybody, and you lose the energy.”
NICK: "Half the time, I don't know if you're trying to help me come alive or kill me," Nick complained.
GIOVANNI: "I'm no gonna kill you," Giovanni explained softly. "But how gonna get the new man if the old man doesn't die?"
Thirty-five years later, the thought of “giving myself away to everybody” returned. A Brujo doesn’t give his energy away. He waits for openings to hit the right notes at the right time. Giovanni was right; I’d been blubbering my energy away, and my friends quite rightly disappeared.
I pictured Mary in my heart.
Can I drop her? Is that loyal, loving, or even legal?” So, guess what I did? I dropped Mary; I dropped them all. A psychic divorce. Yes, it was painful and disloyal, but strangely liberating. Having stepped out of the cocoon, the clinging need for connection had to stop. My endless wondering: “Is this the one?” had to stop.
When Karen died, she disappeared in an instant.
The hardest riddle to unravel in grief is: Where did she go? And now, Amanda, Mary, Lana, Toni, Rose, and my Grief Advisory Board disappeared too.
Friends disappear, species disappear, democracy disappears — does anyone notice?
How about butterflies? The western monarch population dropped by an estimated 99.9 percent over the past 40 years. Did you pin butterflies as a kid? Good luck with that.5
Frogs? An estimated 200 species of frogs have gone extinct since the 1970s. Did you dissect a frog in school? Have fun finding a frog.6
And my beloved summer symphony of insects? A 2017 study found flying insects plunged 75% over the past 27 years. The Guardian writes: “The insect apocalypse: ‘Our world will grind to a halt without them.”7
How about English majors? A recent survey found that only seven percent of Harvard freshmen planned to major in the humanities, down from nearly thirty percent during the 1970s.8
And Europe’s largest country? Putin’s declaration that “Ukraine does not exist” was more than a bluster. The invasion was operational at every level to disappear the country — disappearing the borders, passports, currency, cultural treasures, and 16,000 abducted children to be “re-educated” as Russians. At the time of the invasion, Russian operatives had been placed throughout the government, the Ukrainian elites had been bought off, and the Ukrainian state was set for non-existence in 72 hours.
In the face of so much disappearing, I have taken a stance; I exist.
Ramana Maharshi called it self-inquiry — placing your attention on the fact of your existence.
It’s not easy to live in the center — to move from seeker to sought. Living at the center of the universe is a lonely place — but that’s where the power is.
Once again, I was alone in my cabin.
This time, the image of an ice skater came to me. I saw her pulling her arms in like a tornado — spinning ever faster as she pulls her energy toward the center. The term in physics is the conservation of angular momentum. As the skater pulls in her arms, the total energy of her rotating system is conserved; it’s not thrown away. The energy moves toward her center and increases rotational speed.
My years as a whirling dervish confirmed this. You pull in your outstretched arms, cross them across your chest, come to a stop, cross your toes, and anchor that energy into the earth. The conserved energy has to go somewhere, or as Giovanni would say, “Don’t give your power away.”
The author practices the conservation of angular momentum.
Don Juan understood this, even if he was likely a fiction:
“You must cultivate the feeling that a warrior needs nothing. You have everything needed for the extravagant journey that is your life… What matters to a warrior is arriving at the totality of oneself.” ~ Carlos Castaneda, Tales of Power
Physicists understand this tale of power. But they fail to put into their formula that nothing exists at the center. And that empty center is the source of pure love.
"When your illusions drop, you’re in touch with reality at last [where] you will never be lonely again. Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality." ~ Anthony de Mello (20th century Indian Catholic mystic
UPLIFT is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Dear Bruce,
You pulled out all the stops by featuring the ultra cute Miko!