THE EVENT HORIZON
Reflections About Our Journey as Spiritual
Beings Living in a Sacred World |
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The Event Horizon Vol.
1 No. 2
By Adam Sokolow
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The Gates
In my last article, I spoke about the importance
of integrating the physical, energetic and mental aspects of our
being, and the positive effect this can have on our world. The truth
of this integrative principle was thrown into stark relief for me
a little over a year ago, when I experienced a heart attack that
left me hovering at the boundary between life and death. That I
survived remains a source of constant reflection—for it annealed
my conviction that we are all spiritual beings living in a sacred
world. Let me share with you what the world looks like to someone
who’s been given a second chance.
It takes 60 years for Saturn to go twice around
the sun; I am 59, and it is time for my “Double Saturn Return.”
Wizards know that Saturn is the abode of the impersonal Lords of
Karma. It is where our personal stories are recorded, not the story
we imagine about ourselves but the real story of who we really are.
All debts are owed and must be paid to these keepers of the truth.
Double Saturn Return is a powerful and magical
time; the deeds of the past, which have formed into latent karmic
seeds, are planted again to ripen in the fields of present circumstances.
If life is a symphony, Saturn return is the recapitulation, a condensed
restatement of the major themes, a summation of all that has happened.
While the symphony may end, life continues so the spiritual tasks
are quite clear: Honor your lessons and move on, or refuse to learn
and get thrown back for another go-around. I have earned the right
to tell this story because I am in a state of grace; I have passed
by the guardians and through the gates.
I knew there was something very wrong when
I awoke on January 4, 2005, at 7:30 in the morning, with an unfamiliar
pain in my chest. By 9 a.m., I was in the catheterization lab in
St. Luke's Hospital joking with my cardiac surgeon, Dr. Leber, about
what one of the medical team called my EKG profile: a tombstone,
a lethal 100% blockage of the coronary artery. I declined morphine;
there was a lot going on, and I wanted to be present. The room was
kept cold, the proper temperature for all the high-tech computerized
equipment, and I was shivering as I watched the same four monitors
that Dr. Leber was watching as he skillfully manipulated the high-tech
catheterization instruments, working to save my life.
While all this was going on, I was strangely
detached from the gravity of my situation. I was reflecting on my
kind Buddhist master, Namkhi Norbu Rinpoche, and I felt held in
his presence. What follows is difficult to convey so I'll just tell
it the way it was. I started to lean into the possibility of dying
when I heard praying voices in my head. “You do not have my
permission to die,” said my brother, “I love you, and
you must not die. We still have so very much to do, and I need you
to do it with me.” I heard many other voices, too, saying
“it is not time, we love you, and you must not go.”
I was startled when I heard this, and reflexively I asked myself,
do I care about what they want? Then, I saw my parents’ concerned
faces, and I felt tangible waves of their love. I was sure that
everyone was being honest with me, but then I asked myself, “Do
I feel love for them?” Then, my whole being filled with love
for everyone in contact with me; and I remember thinking, that's
the answer, the whole thing turns on caring, on love. I really do
want to live.
At this moment, Dr. Leber asked me if the pain
was starting to diminish. He had successfully put two stints in
my upper left coronary artery, and he pointed them out to me on
the monitors. He pressed a button and said, “Here take these
pictures and put them on your refrigerator”—he placed
the before and after pictures in my hand. I said, “Thank you
very much. I guess the only technical glitch in this whole process
is that I peed all over myself.” He told me “not to
worry”—the nurses would take care of everything, the
operation was a success, and I was going to be OK.
I didn't break down and cry until I saw the
sunlight as I walked out of the hospital. I turned west toward Riverside
Park and headed home.
I spent the next three weeks visiting my parents
in Florida, staying with my brother in New Jersey, doing spiritual
practices in my Upper West Side apartment, and walking in Central
Park. I kept thinking about the movie, Jacob's Ladder,
a story about someone who actually did die but didn't know it—just
yet. He thought he had gone back to his normal life except that
strange things kept happening with increasing frequency. Eventually,
he figured out the truth. The joy I felt now was tempered by my
watchfulness for those strange occurrences that might tell me that
I, too, really hadn’t made it.
I always go to Nature to heal myself, so in
those first few weeks I spent a lot of time in Central Park. I saw
the very beginnings of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s installation
of The Gates, although at the time I didn't know that's what they
were called. I marveled at the scale of the project and its industrial
precision. The first thing I noticed were these ingots of steel
placed on almost every pathway throughout the park. Later on there
appeared pallets of saffron-colored 18-foot-long plastic extruded
tubes and pallets of saffron fabric.
On February 12, I was in Sheep's Meadow at
8:30 a.m. to watch the unfurling of the first fabric. By the end
of the day, I had walked the entire park again, but this day, the
park was filled with people. They were all smiling and talking to
each other—I have never seen so many New Yorkers let down
their guard.
Until this day, I had been walking around in
my own protected space, and with each passing day, I had become
more convinced that I actually was alive. The opening of The Gates
in Central Park became a party celebrating my life. I experienced
the whole thing very personally. I heard that Christo and Jeanne-Claude
had spent $21 million of their own money to throw me this party.
They brought all these people together in the park in midwinter;
they caused all these people to be happy and to smile. They had
brought me the saffron symbols of life and renewal that I needed.
They were my Gates, and with each one I walked through, I took another
breath of life. More than any single gate, there were endless patterns
to be enjoyed; with a slight turn of the head, I could make them
dance.
The Gates were not meant to be permanent; everything
was to be recycled and nothing sold. I quickly found out a secret,
however. Volunteers were walking around the park with long sticks
to disentangle the windblown fabrics; if I asked them for a memento,
they would hand me a 2-inch square of the very same saffron cloth.
Within a week or so of walking in the park, I had collected the
pieces that were to be my gifts to those people who were in my thoughts
and had touched my heart during this time of healing.
I have passed by the guardians and through
the gates.
In my next article, we will began to explore
the Chinese wisdom symbols of Yin and Yang, then drift back to the
furthest reaches of time, to the moment when God said, “Let
there be light,” and existence exploded out of the primordial
emptiness.
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