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After Syreeta left, I drifted.
Gravity had let go.
Without the weight of a relationship—
something to orient around,
something that told me I was safe—
I just floated.
Not free.
Unmoored.
I don’t remember when I began meditating.
Sometime after the breakup.
Someone mentioned Transcendental Meditation,
and in the way lost people often reach for anything that softens the edges,
I paid for the training, learned my mantra,
and started walking down to the Botanical Garden in the afternoons.
I didn’t have language for it,
but something in me had begun to sit still.
Sometimes I wondered if I was imagining it—
the quiet around the leaves,
the subtle glow in the air,
the way the world seemed to hold itself differently
when my mind quieted its grip.
But even doubt couldn’t undo it.
A liminal space appeared—
a soft perimeter where the sense of “me” thinned.
The ache I’d been carrying didn’t disappear,
but it had started to point inward instead of scattering.
My business coach noticed.
Not the stillness—he didn’t have a name for that—
but the ache, the drift, the searching.
He suggested a weekend course called Avatar.
The founder had ties to Scientology,
and everything about it felt synthetic and dubious.
And yet… curiosity.
A faint pull.
Something in me whispered: try.
It was just a weekend course
at the home of a retired couple—
Jim and Eileen, in Pacific Palisades.
No robes. No doctrine.
Just a few simple attention practices
and two people who held a quiet, patient presence
I didn’t yet know how to name.
One of the exercises felt childish at first—
feel-its.
Place your attention on something in nature—
a rock, a twig, a leaf—
and feel it.
Not think about it.
Not imagine it.
Just feel.
So I wandered their tidy garden with mild embarrassment,
doing the exercise as instructed.
Rock.
Tree.
Grass blade.
Lamppost.
Every hour I checked in.
“Keep going,” Jim would say, gently.
It was dull. Mechanical.
Nothing mystical.
Nothing profound.
Until the rose.
After lunch, I stepped outside
and caught its scent mid-breath—
and time stopped.
The fragrance didn’t rise toward me.
It entered me.
Expanded through my chest
like a warm light uncoiling.
The moment thickened.
Presence took the place where “I” had been.
I didn’t disappear.
But something else appeared—
quiet, immediate, unmistakable.
That opening stayed with me.
Weeks later, late at night,
I felt drawn toward the ocean.
Not the thrill-seeking pull I once knew—
this was quieter, older,
like being remembered by something vast.
The moon was high when I reached the beach.
Blue light spilled across the sand,
the edges fading into purple and black.
I walked to the water’s edge.
Small summer waves lapped my feet.
I took off my clothes
and lay down in the shallow surf.
The water moved over me.
And something in me began to dissolve.
Body.
Breath.
Boundary.
The sky wasn’t dark.
It was dense—
black and purple,
like crushed velvet stretched across infinity.
The stars didn’t shine;
they punctured the fabric,
tiny fissures revealing a deeper light beneath.
Not metaphor.
Not imagination.
Just seeing.
The next night, the pull returned—
stronger, deeper.
Not from the sky this time.
From the root.
From below the ocean,
but moving through me.
Not reaching.
Calling.
Waiting.
I drove toward the cliffs above Black’s Beach—
quiet canyon-edge streets washed in moonlight.
I parked in the driveway of a modern house,
its white walls glowing like bone.
I folded my clothes.
Removed my watch.
Left the car keys on the seat.
I wasn’t planning to return.
Barefoot, naked,
I stepped into the canyon.
The sandstone gave way under my feet.
Chaparral clawed at my legs,
cactus standing silent in the dark.
The air was thick with sage and salt.
I didn’t look for a trail.
I wasn’t choosing a path.
I was being led.
The slope steepened.
Too loose to descend upright.
I slid—
on my back, my ribs, my thighs—
down the crumbling earth.
Pain registered distantly,
like sound heard from underwater.
The frequency rose—
not outside me,
through me.
A vibration.
A resonance.
No story.
No self.
Just experience,
raw and unfiltered.
I kept going—
crawling through brush,
over boulders,
around thorns.
Each movement was a negotiation
between will and surrender.
The earth hummed beneath me.
The ocean—still unseen—
held a presence that felt both vast and intimate.
And then, ahead of my outstretched hand—
nothing.
A void of air.
A cliff.
Fifty feet straight down.
I lowered myself onto my belly
and inched forward,
chest hanging over the edge,
sand crumbling beneath my ribs
and tumbling into darkness.
The pull was total.
Primal.
Ancient.
I held still.
Listening.
Not with ears—
with skin.
With everything.
The ocean shimmered.
And in the distance,
something stirred.
A presence.
Familiar.
Not imagined.
Met.
A knowing rose—
quiet, unmistakable:
Not yet.
Not a voice.
A resonance.
Then the moment broke.
My side ignited with pain.
My feet throbbed.
My breath returned.
I began to sob—
deep, full-bodied sobs—
not grief, not sadness,
but the sheer voltage of being alive.
I crawled back up the slope,
bleeding, shaking,
skin coated in dust and salt.
Found my clothes.
Pulled them on.
Got into the car,
half-dressed,
breath trembling.
As I wound out of the neighborhood
and merged onto the freeway,
I could feel myself returning—
self-structure knitting back together
like a forgotten skin.
And then the flood.
Blood down my side.
Sting of torn skin.
Ache in my thighs.
Then—
the feelings.
They didn’t come in sequence.
They rose all at once—
from belly to spine to skull—
bursting through me like wildfire.
Joy.
Despair.
Awe.
Rage.
Sorrow.
Wonder.
Crying and laughing at the same time—
existence overwhelming its container.
And then, beneath it all—
something softer.
Wholeness.
Not ecstasy.
Not peace.
A gathering.
A coherence.
As if the fractured parts of me
had drawn together
under a heat I didn’t understand.
For the first time,
I didn’t need more.
I never recovered the watch.
I didn’t tell anyone.
Not for years.
Two days later,
I was on a plane to Germany.
Many readers have told me they set aside time for each chapter, letting it echo into their own lives. If the bell rings in you, consider passing it on—someone else may be listening for the same tone. And if you’d like, leave your reflections below; your voice adds another note to the resonance.
Wow! There's a lot of sensations included in this chapter. You were in a transition for sure!
Not sure if I am more impressed by your memory or writing skills. Although, I should not be surprised because I know how meticulous you are now about details and wanting things done carefully and with thoughtful consideration.