Sometimes I forget how absurd it sounded when I first heard it. Adele came to me and said, "Our friend, R., went to this guy. He gave her a word. She repeats it silently to herself and it makes her happy." 

"Huh." Non-committal response from me.

"He's coming back to town. We should go see him."

"Let me know how that works out for you." I wasn't going to waste my time. I'd already been to India, twice. I'd studied with a couple of orange-robed guys. I'd learned meditation from them, and yoga with them before there were yoga studios everywhere. Everybody, it seemed, had an agenda. Everyone had an angle. All they wanted was to separate me from my money. Maybe I was miserable, but I wasn't going to be a sap along with it.

And of course Adele talked me into going to the talk.

Actually, we went to the apartment where the talk was to take place, in West Hollywood. We were greeted, we sat down. I looked around at the people there, at the photos of holy men arrayed around the room, and I said something to the effect of, "Sorry. I can't hang. I'll pick you up in an hour." No, I'll go with you said Adele, and we went back out the door while others were still coming in, before the guy even came out to give his talk. And later that week another friend of ours called and said, "I saw the guy. He gave me a word. I repeat it inside and it makes me happy."

Okay. Fine. I give up. Let me know when he comes back.

So a month later, we went back to the place in West Hollywood. We took another couple with us. We sat through the talk. It was really quite good. The teacher was charming, funny, informative, very well-spoken--splitting no infinitives, dangling no participles. I thoroughly enjoyed it, right up until the man who'd come with us heckled the speaker during the question and answer section of the program, from a religious bias (I never have seen this happen since), at which point the teacher said he thought that it would be good to stop there and left us there with his assistant to sign up to learn the meditation, or not.

The four of us left, none of us signing up. We went up the street to an Indian restaurant and discussed why we weren't going to do it.

When we got home, R. called us and asked if we were going to learn. No, said Adele. Jeff doesn't want to. R. got me on the phone and took me to task a bit, heard the issues I had, then gave me a number to call. It was nearly midnight, but at R.'s insistence, I called. It was the teacher from the talk that evening. He remembered me because of my smiling and nodding during his talk, relating to what he was saying, but perhaps even more so because he saw I'd come with the heckler. Embarrassing.

"What are your issues," he asked.

"Well, the fact that I have to pay for it," I said. "I've always thought you weren't supposed to have to pay for spiritual knowledge."

"You can't possibly pay for the practice itself," replied the teacher. "The practice is beyond value. What you're paying for is my availability as a teacher, and for my expertise. You paying for my time allows me to continue coming to L.A. and teaching, rather than having to get a job in a hardware store in Topeka." (I'm not sure why he chose Topeka. I think he just liked the idea of his having to go all the way to Kansas to make a living, which would be much too far for me to go to learn meditation.) "Also," he continued, "in order for transformation to take place in consciousness, there must be an exchange of energy and information. From your side, you're bringing your time, your commitment and your attention, along with your course fee; and from mine, I am bringing to you my 35 years of teaching experience, my expertise and my availability to you as a teacher, not just for this week, but on into the future, whenever you need my help."

"Okay. I guess that makes sense."

"And what was your other concern?"

"Oh. Yeah, "I said. "The fact that I don't know if it's going to work or not. The fact that I don't want to be played for a fool. It all sounds good, but maybe too good to be true. I don't want to be Jack, going to town and trading our cow for magic beans. You know? There's no way I can know what I'm getting into until I do the course. And I have to commit to the course before I can get the practice and know anything about what I'm getting into."

"I understand," he said. 

"It's hard to trust people in this area. I've been burned before."

He replied, "And what I would tell you is to trust your experience."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Trust your experience. As you were listening to me at the intro talk tonight, how did it feel? Did it feel somehow right, or did it feel like you were being sold a bill of goods? Did you find yourself having to stop and question whether something felt true or not, or did you find yourself able to relax and enjoy my talk? That's it," he finished. "Trust your experience."

"Oh."

"So? How did it feel?"

"I... It felt good, I guess. I enjoyed it. It felt right, yeah, and like it was familiar. It sounded like the way I'd always thought things should work."

"So then trust your experience."

"Damn," I said. "I guess that means I have to learn?"

He laughed. "Yes, I guess it does. What time do you want to come in tomorrow?"

So the next day I took my fruit and my flowers and the all-too-exorbitant course fee, based upon a week's earnings, back to the apartment in West Hollywood. I gave my check to the money man. I watched the teacher make a ceremony with the fruit and the flowers, singing the Sanskrit words of the puja. When it came my turn, I went into a side room with him and he gave me my word. Then we all sat together and he showed me how to repeat the word, silently, inside. 

And of course, it made me happy. I think I might even have wept with relief. 

The universe operates on a fairly simple and simple to understand basis. When we have had the experience of getting in touch with a part of self that is other than the ego, i.e. when we have contacted the field of pure being within, we then begin to trust some inner compass as to what we should or should not do on a moment to moment basis. It is the simplest system imaginable, and it works like this: if something feels right, it's probably right. If something feels wrong, it's probably wrong. That which feels 'right' simply feels better, more pleasurable than that which feels wrong. 

This is trusting our experience. Getting a nudge from charm, a nudge from the universe that says 'go here,' and then just going, rather than thinking it to death trying to prove or disprove the wisdom of following the nudge we felt. We go. Life tells us to leap, and we leap. Before we know where we're going to land. And if we don't like where we land, then we simply leap again.

Leaping into that first day of meditation felt huge. Felt dangerous and scary and exciting. Like maybe I was betting the farm. But the farm is safe, and the payoff has been unimaginable. There is the life I had before I learned to meditate, and there is the life I have since learning. I can't begin to tell you the differences. Suffice it to say that they are utterly different experiences, utterly different lives. As if I'd had a nearly complete formula for transformation, primed and ready to be put into action, and this meditation was the final, missing ingredient. The recipe is complete.

Today I will trust my experience and do something that feels right, even though it may not make perfect sense to me.

Dancers on Side of Building, Mission District, San Francisco, CA