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Journey to Mystical Union Through the Sacred and the Profane

John Hunt Publishing Ltd.

Contents

Kindred Spirits

Back to the beginning ...

It was a rare hot day in Bellingham, Washington, the day I met Jake in the summer of 1981. I pulled into the parking lot of my apartment relieved to be home. The weekend had been hectic as the younger 17year-old brother of a friend had contacted me and asked if I'd take him and his buddies on a tour of the university and town. I had spent the last half-day driving them around in a loud, old, non-air-conditioned Mustang, with the music blaring. I dripped with sweat and felt cranky after having been stuffed between two immature, boisterous teenage boys in the back seat — uggh. I was happy to have done my duty and to be home. They pulled up and I clambered out clumsily from the low-slung vehicle, hailing a goodbye to them as they peeled out laughing and singing, barely noticing I had left.

I readjusted my bikini top, which was somewhat askew after my escape from the teen-boy-mobile, finger combed my thick, wavy, shoulder-length brown hair, then looked up and saw another car in the parking lot. My friend, Debbie, who lived in the same apartment complex as me, was standing by the car and motioned to me to come over. I walked to the car, saw her parents in the front seat, and hailed a warm greeting. Debbie introduced me to her brother, Jake, sitting in the back, and I found myself falling into the most beautiful blue eyes in the world, set in a tanned face surrounded by tight blond curls. I forgot Debbie had mentioned to me that her brother — someone she briefly described as "a 4.0 engineering-frat-boy from UCLA" — was going to be visiting that summer. I had written him off before meeting him, thinking he was out of my league and never imagining that I could be attracted to a frat boy. His compelling presence took me by surprise. I would find out later he wasn't at all what his sister's description implied with the frat boy label — neither overly preppy, nor overly Animal House rambunctious. No, he chose his fraternity for practical reasons: it was located close to the university and he was able to barter dishwashing services in exchange for room and board — an important consideration while putting himself through college. Years later, wondering if it was love at first sight for him too, I asked him what he'd thought when he first saw me that day.

"Ha!" he said chuckling. "When I saw you climb out of that car full of guys that day, half falling out of your bikini, I thought you were either taken ... or a hussy!"

I was flabbergasted, but also secretly pleased. At the time, although not a virgin, I was rather naive and self-conscious, and identified more with being a dedicated student and outdoor adventure type than a party girl. Actually, I worried about being five pounds too heavy to be considered "sexy." Thus, despite the fact that I was wearing a bikini top (as were all the college girls that hot July day), it never occurred to me that I could come off that way.

Thankfully, I had another chance to make a better impression a few days later, when he and his parents came to eat at the restaurant where his sister and I worked. That night I was dressed up to be hostess for the evening and had the chance to escort them to their table. His sister and I had just come up with the idea of going dancing in Vancouver, British Columbia, and we invited him along as an escort.

A few days later, on a crowded dance floor, Jake and I gazed into one another's eyes while we danced for hours and the rest of the world slipped away, leaving only each other at the center. At last, I inwardly sighed, a guy who likes to dance. I was so sick of hanging out with guys who didn't like to do anything except sit around drinking, smoking, and listening to music.

A little over a month later, now officially dating, we lay on our backs on sleeping bags set on the cool grass in his parents' backyard on Lummi Island. The embers of our bonfire were still burning, as though ready to ignite our new friendship into something more. We gazed together into the endless, dark, night sky, exclaiming with wonder and delight at a multitude of shooting stars — courtesy of the Perseid meteor shower. Staring into infinity with him, I remembered being a small child, looking up into the sky and seeing my first rainbow, spell-struck by the unexpected mystery and beauty of that sight.

"Let's travel together," Jake whispered to me under the stars.

"Okay. Where should we go?" I whispered back, giggling.

"How about Mexico? Let's drive to the Yucatan."

My heart leapt out of my chest. I loved the idea.

"Really? Is that possible?"

"Sure, why not?"

"You mean now? This summer?"

"Well, we might not make it that far this summer," he said with a twinkle in his eye, "but we can get to Mexico, for sure. And we can drive and camp through Yosemite and the Grand Canyon on the way."

"Oh Jake. I would sooooo love to do that." My 20-year-old bohemian pixie self was tickled with the thought that I might have found a smart, dancing, adventuring, kindred soul to play with. I felt an opening in my tremulous heart. Maybe this was the man for me ...

The next day we decided to take a long walk with his sister down the western shore of Lummi. The beach was strewn with rocks, driftwood, and kelp; tiny bits of sea glass peppered the walk along with miscellaneous flotsam and jetsam. The frigid Puget Sound quietly lapped the shore; on the cliffs above, tall evergreen trees stood sentinel the whole way. Occasionally we would hear the chattering cries of a couple of bald eagles who frequented the area.

The three of us walked for miles down the beach, happy and unconcerned. At the far end a gathering of tiny islands called "Lummi Rocks" rested a half-mile offshore.

Jake looked longingly over at them. "I've always wanted to go out there," he said.

He stood looking out to sea for a moment, and then turned his attention back to the beach.

"Hey, I know," he said. "Let's build a raft. Right here. Right now. We can have our picnic out there." He pointed to the little island and his eyes sparkled with fun and delight at the prospect.

"A raft?" I said. "How are we going to build a raft?"

I looked around at the deserted stretch of coast and mentally considered what we had brought along in our daypack that might help ... a knife, a fork?

"We'll have to gather big pieces of driftwood," he said slowly, and then added enthusiastically, "and we can tie them together with pieces of bull kelp."

Make a raft out of driftwood and kelp? How exciting! What fun!

"I don't want to do that," his sister said, a look of terror passing over her face. My heart fell for a minute. "But you two go ahead. I'll wait here," she added quickly. It seemed sort of mean to leave her out, but I couldn't resist the thrill of it. She smiled and encouraged us. "It's better this way in case you need someone back on shore to rescue you."

Jake and I began searching for just the right pieces, leaving behind all thoughts of the dangers and foolhardiness of trying to build a raft seaworthy enough to cross the expanse of water to Lummi Rocks. I mean anyone who lives in Washington State learns to appreciate the potential for hypothermia if you swim unprotected in the Puget Sound for more than 20 minutes or so. What if the raft fell apart half way? But that was not our focus. Instead Jake and I were on the same wavelength: little kids playing, exploring, about to embark on an uncharted adventure. Westward Ho!

We hauled the biggest logs we could find and lined them up in rows, tying them together, as Jake had suggested, with pieces of kelp. We put two strong brace logs crosswise underneath and tied those on too.

Jake tested the knots. They held. We pushed our contraption to the water's edge.

"Okay," Jake said gamely. "Let's set sail."

"Wait," I cried, running up the beach. I came back triumphantly carrying two additional pieces of wood. "Our paddles," I said, grinning, climbing on board.

We felt our raft begin to float and we began paddling away from shore, our legs straddled over the logs, dangling in the water.

Midway across, it got pretty scary. The current pulled us along, and eddies haphazardly circled our raft. I felt a little nervous and could see Jake's furrowed brows as he appraised the situation.

"We have to paddle harder," he said. "We need to make sure we stay in the lee of the island. We don't want to get swept around the corner of Lummi Rocks into the open Sound."

"Should we turn back?" I asked Jake.

"We could," he said. "What do you think?"

I paused, considering. "Let's see if we can make it."

We kept on, now paddling harder, and began to make headway again; the tiny island grew closer. We selected a landing spot and just as we were making our way in, a large wave came and threw us hard onto the rocks. I managed to grab our backpack, just as it came untied and began sliding off the raft. We heard something shatter.

"Oh! Our wine!" we cried together.

We pulled our rickety, though still intact craft up onto a rock as best we could and awkwardly clambered ashore, unable to walk properly at first because our legs were so numb from the freezing water.

Standing on our conquered shore, we waved back at his sister, turned and grinned gleefully at each other, "We made it."

In that moment with that man, it seemed anything might be possible. Life stretched before us as one grand adventure and I sensed that we might have found in each other a companion to share the way, however foolhardy and rough it got.

At the end of that summer Jake had to return to LA where he was at school. We talked on the phone and sent cards and letters to one another that fall, then I flew down to be with him for Christmas. Jake picked me up at the airport in an old, red Triumph sports car that he had spent months getting to run. It was super-cute and romantic, but what I remember most about the drive back to his place was the silence. Even at the time I noted it was unusual that, although we barely knew each other, the silence between us was comfortable rather than awkward. Within a month, I had moved to Los Angeles and changed schools.

Four years after we met, we got married in a small glass church called "The Wayfarer's Chapel," perched high on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Rancho Palos Verde, California — still the hero and pixie of our own fairytale. We continued to fill our life with adventure: backpacking through Europe on a shoestring, walking 450 miles from San Francisco to the Oregon border, and yes, as promised, eventually driving to the Yucatan and back in an old, mustard yellow pickup truck with a bright orange wood canopy. Five years later, we embarked on an adventure of a different kind, when we decided to have children. We moved back to Washington State, where our parents lived, and were blessed with two tow-headed, sweet girls.

Still, we made time for one another. One night when we'd been contemplating the meaning of life and love, Jake whispered to me in the darkness, "It's easy to overlook the obvious. After twelve years you still excite me. I lust after you. You turn me on. That is something rare and real — a foundation to grow on — even if it goes against the grain to think of life in terms of sex."

I turned that thought over in my mind, wondering about all the things I had read about sex not having to be the basis of marriage. But I reflected on all the closeness we had felt and concluded that if there was one thing I couldn't bear to live without, it was our hot steamy nights — our unbridled passion, his eagerness always — the dark, rich passages we had traveled together in heated, wild moments of ecstasy.

Some would say — I would say — that we lived a dream life and a juicy one at that. Nevertheless, there was a growing feeling within me that one day the other shoe would drop. I realized that our love had never been tested. Fear began to grow inside me insidiously. I feared death. I feared the unknown. Mostly, I feared losing Jake. I felt like we had a precious thing and I wanted desperately to control our destiny — to keep our fairytale life intact. I didn't know the source of my fear, although I had begun to realize that Jake suffered from bouts of depression, probably genetic and certainly compounded by the gray Pacific Northwest weather.

In the fall of 1994, the other shoe did begin to slip, slowly at first, with my dawning awareness that Jake was stuck in a deep, mostly work-related depression. He stopped responding to my efforts to cheer him up, leaving me feeling powerless and scared. I should be able to help him. Where is he? I need him!

I missed him terribly during his bouts of depression. My sense of being alone and helpless compounded my fear, which grew and started to present itself as anxiety attacks.

I hated to let Jake out of my sight, to be apart from him. I recognized I wasn't like the other wives, who welcomed a day off from their guy. I wanted to be with him every moment. I wanted to hold him back, to keep him home, to keep him safe. Also, truthfully, I wanted my hero to be available to protect me — from what I wasn't sure. I only knew that I felt secure in his arms.

A growing series of "what ifs?" began to control me. What if something happened to Jake? What if he died?

In less than a year, we were in a tailspin careening toward a crisis — a crisis that tested our love and forced me to face "what ifs" I had never before considered: What if Jake falls into a depression and doesn't come out? What if Jake doesn't want to be with me? What if we are broken? What if I am not enough?

Soon, we would desperately need something more.

Dreams

In rare cases a dream with an exceptionally strong archetypal content can itself precipitate an abrupt shift from worldly to spiritual seeking ...

~ Joel Morwood

It turns out "more" was on the horizon — just not the more I had imagined. It all started in October 1994 when an article I had written for Woman's Day about Jake and me having "dancing dates" caught the attention of a Seattle morning news television program director. She contacted me about a piece she wanted to do on us that featured our dancing life along with a live interview. I was thrilled. I talked to Jake about it; he seemed a little nervous, but tentatively agreed. It turns out this was his idea of hell, and the stress of anticipating being on TV precipitated an anxiety attack that actually landed him in the hospital a few days before the event. We almost canceled. At the last moment, probably because the director told me I could come on the show alone, Jake got better and decided to come along.

In the dressing room of the television station the following morning, we were telling the makeup lady how he had been in the hospital the day before. She explained that she used to get nervous like that before she took up Zen Buddhism and started to meditate. She recommended a book to us titled Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki.

It's funny how you never realize the moment when someone unwittingly launches you on a trajectory that will change your life. This small, but definitive moment was the beginning of a journey ultimately beset with dreams, coincidences, and signposts guiding us out of the dark. But not before things got much darker.

Jake's depression worsened that winter and I felt more and more helpless. Nothing I did seemed to cheer him up. Finally, I decided that we should take an extended family vacation to La Paz, Baja California. Baja had been the source of great fun and adventure for us when we were first married. While we had plenty of family activities in mind, and I hoped to write a travel article out of our trip, we also planned to carve out some time for each other. The hotel we were staying at had babysitters available. We planned to get away for a mini-adventure of climbing a local mountain at sunrise one day, and then thought we'd try to steal away for a night dancing with each other. I was looking forward to it all and hoped the getaway would be good for Jake.

Unfortunately, the trip started out a little rocky. As the plane took off, my heart began beating wildly and I was terrified. I grabbed Jake's hand, squeezing it until it was blue, trying not to shake in front of the children, who were seated next to us. Inwardly, I began to pay hyper-attention to every little sound the plane was making, and kept glancing out the window at the wings and engines, convinced something was wrong. I became acutely aware of my lack of control over the destiny of that flight; it caused me great anxiety. I couldn't help but think how ironic it was that just as I was becoming successful as a travel writer, my fear of flying was growing worse.

One night while we were on vacation in La Paz, I struck up a conversation in the hotel bar with a man named Mark. During margaritas on the rocks and a "Lion King" sunset, Mark told me he saw life as a series of patterns and that it was important to pay attention to coincidences or synchronicities, because they could guide you. He also told me he was a Buddhist, which caught my attention because of the interaction with the makeup lady. He said he did not fear death — that he saw it only as a transition. That intrigued me. I told him I was afraid of dying, or of someone close to me dying, and that I'd developed an almost paralyzing fear of flying.