turning-point: 1986

The weather has turned cooler, clouded-over. I was awake by just after 4:00, rose before 5:30.

Morning notes: From Eden to Exile.

Yesterday I talked a bit more about the origin of this project. I have meant to do that along the way while writing this blog, but have got sidetracked. It might be partly for the reason I gave yesterday, of spilling too much before the work is actually created. But who knows.

A turning-point came in my life in 1986. Maybe several: it was a year of change for me, as had been the previous year. Two of the major events were:

• the decision to take up Buddhist meditation, somehow, somewhere--any which way I could


• reading Life After Life by Raymond Moody

Both were epochal experiences in my spiritual development. Moody's little book, a collection of anecdotes about people with near-death experiences (NDEs), with his conclusions, sent a shockwave through me. By the time I'd finished it I had no serious doubt that consciousness persists after death. I was convinced. And, that being the case, I realized my life would have to be reorganized around that fact (or belief). Just about every survivor of an NDE said the same thing: when you revive from clinical death, your perspective changes; you realize you are responsible for the other people in the world.

I'm pretty sure now that reading that book was a key factor in my decision to take up meditation--something I had pretty much abandoned back in 1980 because of what I assumed was the lack of authentic teachings nearby. As it turned out, that assumption was mistaken. By late November or early December 1986, I first attended an open house at what was then known as the Vancouver Dharmadhatu, a meditation center established as part of an international organization by the Tibetan guru Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, then in the last months of his life. I became a fellow traveler of the Buddhists there, all of whom were local Westerners, and eventually a member and then even a teacher at the center. It would be impossible to overstate the value of the teachings offered there, or the impact they have had on my life.

At that point, whatever lingering allegiance I may have still felt (not much) for my old would-be novel, More Things to Come, conceived in 1979, died. As late as October 1986 I was still thinking about trying to finish it, for part of a trip to Europe that Kimmie and I made that month featured research trips for that project (notably my excursion to CERN in Geneva). But by the end of the year, that project was dead and I dimly knew that I would have to have different projects to reflect my changing spiritual condition.

There have been twists and turns since then, but this work, The Mission, is partly the child or grandchild of the changes and thoughts that flowed from the decisions I made that year.