My delicious daughter, Leila, bought me a seat into Dr. Wayne Dyer's talk last night at the Jacob Javits Meeting Room. I went, took the F and then the A to Penn Station, got out on 8th Avenue and walked the three avenues to the Center. Passed a million, it seemed like, young people in line for a concert at the Hammerstein Ballroom. I'd forgotten how much black clothing teens wear. Gothic Gotham. I smelled whiffs of pot and smiled. And on it goes. The rebellion, the enthusiasm, the raw feelings I hope they will hold on to and not blow away like the smoke.
At the Javits Center, I walked up to the glassy-walled tall building remembering the weekend I'd spent here probably eight years ago when I took a gig at the NBA All Star event as a people counter for each specific attraction. I must have walked every inch of that enormous space 50 times for those three days. When I was done, I felt crippled. Walking on the shiny hard floor last night brought back the hobbling remembrance and I smiled, sort of.
I sat down, happy to be alone and to be able to absorb this wonderful evening of listening to Wayne Dyer speak about our connection to the Source. Tonight I would sit and physically be in the same room as him, and to be able to just listen. I knew I was supposed to rehear something from, "Change Your Thoughts, Change Your Life" a book of his essays after meditating to the 81 verses of the Tao Te Ching for an entire year.
A woman sat beside me and started up a conversation. She was from Pennyslvania, the Poconos, and I thought of Ronnie, a boyfriend from years ago who had a summer trailer in the Poconos. How beautiful the land was there but how wrong we were together. I associate the Poconos with Ronnie. I spoke with her but I really wanted to sit in silence and as soon as another woman sat on the other side of her she began to talk to her and I realized some people just need to connect with someone. Was I an oddball for loving the fact of sitting there - in the midst of 3,000 people - and glad to be alone? Once she stopped talking to me, though, I kind of missed it. By then the evening began.
I could tell he was tired. I had looked at his schedule before coming and we were his second to last talk on this tour. I could only imagine. Since teaching, I've realized the enormous energy that is consumed and even if it's a subject of passion, the physical body wanes.
His voice was deep and tired. His daughter appeared and talked to us about him and it gave him relief. I watched him rise up and suddenly the Wayne Dyer I had seen on PBS shows for years was back. The message saved him.
And here's what I needed to hear -- again.
* Allow the spirit to direct the physical.
* Be kind to the kind and to the unkind.
* Go with the flow.
* Know that I chose to be born for a reason and the more I allow the Tao to show me, to take me there, then the more at peace I will be.
* I am on the right track as bizarre and mad as it has seemed lately.
He spoke of the morning of our lives being ambition and the afternoon being meaning. My craving for freedom and for actualization is right on time. And never more have I wanted to do right for my daughters. My capacity for love is as tall and wide as the Jacob Javits Center.
The woman next to me cried when Amazing Grace was played on the speakers, sung by a singer named Cecilia accompanied (I kid you not) with the sounds of whales. The woman next to me wiped away tears and more came. She did it silently and without expression to both of us beside her. It was a moment for her and during the break I watched her go off by herself and when she returned, she sat down, spoke to the woman on the other side, and when the program resumed and she wanted to take notes but could not find a pen, I offered her one of mine, and she looked me in the eyes and said thank you.
She got it.
When the program was over and Dyer honored us as we honored him with a standing ovation as he said 'Namaste' (I recognize the God in you) to each direction of the crowd, I asked her if she wanted me to walk up the avenues with her to her parked car as she had mentioned we might do earlier? She looked at me. I could tell she wanted to be alone or I think so. I realize now she was free from that fear of being alone. But she agreed because I had extended the invitation to her in friendship and perhaps she thought I might be afraid. It didn't bother me in the least to walk back to Sixth Avenue to take the F train. But we did and we walked past the hundreds of teens exiting the concert. We laughed when we realized we looked like oldsters who couldn't let it go and had crashed the concert. But I suspected more we looked like the parents nervously drinking Starbucks coffee and trying to look cool behind the guardrails, watching for their black hoodied babies.
She said good-bye to me at Eighth Avenue and we exchanged email addresses and warmly smiled at each other. From the Poconos to Brooklyn, we reconnected to the source of love. She was going home to her boyfriend and I to Russell, the black and white cat. I see him right now, sleeping as he was last night. It is rainy and windy and the trees outside my fire escape are golden and their rhythm reminds me to allow, again.
Amazing grace.
Thank you, Leila.
P.S. Just finished reading (for the umpteenth time) Deepak Chopra's "Seven Spiritual Laws of Success" and finally I get it! Get me! It is in these times of getting to a place where your path may be sitting under an avalanche of rocks, that is when clarity comes. I asked for a miracle this morning and just now, in reading the summary to Seven Spiritual...I realized that NOTHING happens without the law of giving. Everything is contingent on giving! Now while I consider myself a giver, I realize, too, there is MUCH more I can do and that means to look into the dark crannies of me and bring light.
This I know now.
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