Before actually arriving at Point Reyes, I decided to stop at a nearby Giant Redwood grove and go for a hike. The wind was so strong at this point that I was having a difficult time keeping my truck on the road. I thought I would take shelter in the giant Redwoods for a few hours before continuing on.

I was covered in a rubber suit from head to toe, ready to battle the elements, even though I looked like a yellow rubber ducky. I never saw so much rain coming down! The wind was whipping around so much that, at one moment, I could see the rain falling up from the ground, not the sky! Ganesha looked at me like I was crazy to be out in this storm. I giggled madly, like a child, and ran around, pretending I was an airplane battling a hurricane. The rain washed away all my worries. Childhood innocence is liberation!

Once we arrived at the large canopy of giant Redwood trees, we entered a tranquil, magic world of glowing red bark and green hues of ferns. The massive winds couldn’t seem to penetrate the forest floor where we took refuge, though we could hear what seemed like dragons ripping through the tops of our tree guardians over a hundred feet above. I felt so safe there that I decided to meditate. I plopped my butt on a stump, and began meditating.

I started with my navel chakra. I focused deeply on this spot until I could feel energy being released. The kundalini energy shot up quickly and effortlessly, due to this being one of the most powerful days of the year to meditate and the fact that I’d obviously found a power place. The warm light moved up into my heart—the place of love and balance. The heart chakra is my favorite chakra to focus on, and it is considered the safest one to meditate on for long periods of time. Bliss pushed away mind and time. The energy was intoxicating and thick like honey. Timeless moments later, I focused on my third-eye chakra, which is located between the brows of one’s eyes. This chakra is the portal for seeing psychically. The power of my meditation was surreal. I usually have an excellent meditation once a month, but this surpassed all of them by far. The pressure in my head was almost painful, but I didn’t want to stop. The ecstasy was so extraordinary. After spending two hours in deep bliss, I slowly came out of my union with God.

Opening my eyes, I saw a brand new forest! It was multi-dimensional. Sparkly whirlpools of light were swimming everywhere around me. I felt like I’d transcended California and was instead in Rivendell, the magic world where the Elves live, in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. It was all so amazingly ethereal, I started to cry with joy.

Suddenly, a large orb of misty white light appeared fifteen feet in front of me. The sphere grew to about twenty feet in diameter while the light became thicker, and less of a mist. Rubbing my eyes in disbelief, I became a bit frightened. I reminded myself to surrender, and that this phenomenon wouldn’t hurt me. Frozen where I was, the orb was between Ganesha and me. I called to her. Unable to see her from the other side, I knew she was approaching, because I could hear the clinking of the tags on her collar. She passed right through the globe of light, grinning as though there was nothing there! Thinking for some reason that she might slip into a wormhole of some sort, I reached down to hug her. I peeked up from my dog’s furry face to see that the orb was beginning to fade. The more my mind raced to try and analyze the event, the more the orb dissipated. Unable to stop myself, I was brought back to the mundane California woods, the orb gone as though it had never appeared.

Walking back to my truck, huge limbs blocked my path, ripped from the trees. “This is a wicked storm!” I thought to myself. Drenched to the bone, my pooch and I sat in the truck. Part of me was thinking, “Well, that’s enough spirituality for one day. Let’s go home and grab a hot cocoa.” But I was reminded of my inner direction to go out to the sea by Point Reyes and fulfill my promise. So my battered pooch and I set our sails for the seashore.

Upon reaching Point Reyes, I chose to meditate on a high cliff during this incredibly energetic period, and in the midst of the incredible storm. But that wasn’t the only storm happening. The other was a tempest raging within me. “Why am I feeling this?” I thought. “Only an half a hour ago I was in deep bliss.” I decided to not to push these negative feelings away but instead to attempt to go deeply into them.

I found I was experiencing incredible resentment towards all my teachers. I railed against them all. In fact, I started to blame God for me being born gay and having to live through so much grief. Why did I have to become addicted to alcohol? Why is life so hard? I’d tried so hard all my life to become enlightened, yet I still wasn’t. Why?

My anger kept building. I became resentful toward Jesus, my beloved first teacher, and towards Rama, Kundalini, Anandi Ma, and all the other teachers with whom I’d studied. My mind started to swirl into a whirlpool of anger and confusion about all of them. They didn’t know me. They didn’t know how hard I’d tried for so many years to achieve what they wanted me to achieve.

I was fuming with anger, which is the first time I realized I could get mad at God. I could actually be pissed off at my creator. And I said, “If you don’t give me enlightenment in this lifetime, then why should I go on living? What do you want me to do? Maybe I should just give up and not be chasing enlightenment anymore. Would you like that, God? OKAY, GIVE ME ENLIGHTENMENT OR GIVE ME DEATH!”

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