The Sounds of Silence

Landmark. What the hell is Landmark anyway, right? That's what I was thinking...for two years. Two years of various people in my life that I loved and respected saying, "You should check it out." And two years of basically ignoring it. Taking a fleeting interest, only to find many reasons and excuses why I couldn't do it. Not enough money. The timing wasn't right. I wasn't ready. I mentioned it to Steph months and months ago. Immediately, it was "Let's sign up now!", she said, "I'll pay for it!" And then..."well, if you can't go, I'm going anyway." But that didn't work. I wanted to do it together. More introspection. Landmark. What is this mysterious thing that takes up an entire weekend. Why on earth would they keep you there from 9am to midnight three days straight? A cult? Brainwashing? Hypnosis? Underground stuff that "graduates" just don't speak of? Group therapy? Counseling? Time and time again, they told me, no, it's none of those things. Imagine that there is a circle, like a pie-chart if you will...this circle represents all of human knowledge, indeed it could represent all knowledge in the universe. A tiny sliver of the circle emerges, zoom in to find its tiny label. This is "What You Know You Know". Another tiny sliver, just adjacent to the "YKYK" piece...this is "What You Know You Don't Know". And then there's the rest of the circle. Everything else in the universe. "What You Don't Know You Don't Know". Well that seemed a little daunting. Was this a thinly veiled course in enlightenment? No, not really. But kind of. Imagine "living a life you love" and "living a powerful life". Sounded like inspirational mumbo-jumbo. As MJ would say, "Woo-stuff". But MJ had gone to Landmark...many times...the advanced courses...the whole curriculum...add-on seminars...things with titles like "Dealing Powerfully with Breakdowns" and "Embracing the Miraculous" (or something like that). And the one nagging thought that poked at my sensibility for two years: These people that want to SHARE this with me, that want me to experience it for myself...they're not salespeople...they're not trying to get me into a cult. They care about me. They want me to be empowered. They love me...truly. Why wouldn't I trust that? And so it goes. Steph started her new job a few months back. We had talked a little about Landmark before that. Turns out...her new boss, head of a company she started herself and grew into a multi-million dollar entity in little time, who lived a happy life and was a powerful yet humble person...turns out...she's been doing Landmark for years...since before it was Landmark. Over twenty years. Ok. So she was living a life she loved. She was living a powerful life. And the underlying similarity between her and MJ and everyone else that spoke of it: they were happy. Pretty much all the time. And if they weren't, they could step aside from their issues, look at them, and move on...and be happy again. Shiny happy people holding hands, eh? Turns out...she offered to pay for Steph to go to Landmark...it was that important...for her life, for her job, that her boss would pay for it. And it turns out...she would pay for me too.

And so it goes...and so we went.

45 hours of sitting in very uncomfortable chairs, elbow-to-elbow with 100 complete strangers.
Three days straight of "distinctions", "definitions", and a very long "conversation" with 100 acquaintances.
One weekend out of life, going through a life-transforming breakthrough with 100 friends.

I had to get straight with my inauthenticity. That was forboding. Daunting. Revealing.
When confronted with the idea that all humans walk around being inauthentic - what does that mean? In trying to explain it to my step-mother, I got "Does that mean you're not being honest with us? What haven't you told the truth about?"...no, that's not the point.
The point...is being authentic in one's inauthenticity. Everyone is inauthentic. Mostly with themselves, moreso than with everyone else in their lives...
Everyone...has stories.
Everyone...has a front.

And Landmark was there to make us notice it.
Not get rid of it.
Just notice. Acknowledge. Let it be.

"If you walk in a jerk, you'll walk out a jerk. But at least you'll KNOW you're a jerk."

Ha ha.

It's true.

In fact one guy really was a jerk. When he left, he was still not that great of a person in my judgemental assessment of him...but the thing is, he KNEW what he was when he left.



Dwell in possibility. That sounded familiar.

We learned a new language for our minds to wrap around...
That's it. Just new definitions for old terms. New distinctions for processing information...mostly for the information that has been running on loop in our heads as we've plodded through life.

The stories. The vicious circles. The rackets. The strong suits and the things that caused them.
Our persistent complaints...our fixed ways of being due to them. Finding evidence for our stories.

And what it comes down to every time: What happened. What really happened? No stories. No emotional attachment. Just the facts, m'am.

Being authentic with inauthenticity.

DAY THREE:
I sat there fuming...I was sure I wasn't going to "pop", as she said. "Everyone pops, some are just late poppers."
I was sure I was going to be a burnt kernel...not a late popper. Just burnt to a crisp, surrounded in black and the smell of apathy.

Three days, 40-something hours of sitting in a chair that was killing my back. Breaking down in front of 100 wackos. Who signed up for this stuff anyway? All walks of life...sure...starving artists, students, 80 year old men trying to find themselves, salemen and business women, company owners, blacks, whites, Koreans, Middle Easterns...well, I guess it was a pretty good cross-section of the nation...and in the 52 centers around the world, even more diversity. Everyone who couldn't afford it somehow figured it out. Those opposed to it, or pressured into it, somehow wound up being there of their own will.
The one woman who felt pressured by her family...she was the voice of resistance for the whole group the whole time...and here before me, she was getting it.

Why wasn't I getting it? I wasn't going to pop.
Yes, I was inventing the possibilility for myself and my life of being healthy.
I was inventing the possibility of being in abundance.
The possibility of being happy.
The possibility of being creative, an artist, an inspiration to others, a pillar of support, a catalyst for openness and communication and community.
The possibility of being vulnerable.

A lot of possibility. Of being. This or that.

My back hurt. My neck hurt. My shoulders hurt. I know, we're not supposed to stand up or take breaks for ourselves unless it's at the appointed break time.
I still hurt. I still got up. Moved around. Created a distraction.
Sat down again.
I'm not getting it. I wonder if Steph popped. Did the girl next to me pop? The guy in front? That kid over there?

And then.
Silence.
Clarity.
A chasm of pure light opened up, crisp, refreshing, winter biting cold, the scent of rain, a shockwave of focus shot out, spreading slow at first and then rapidly outward from my forehead...
Like every trite sci-fi movie where something explodes in space and a slow-then-fast shockwave is sent out, a blast of light, spreading to the edges of infinity. And further still.

The focus was enhanced in my vision. Every detail in the room was more clear. Like a thin layer of gauze, a bank of fog, had been removed from between my point of being and the rest of reality.
I was looking through a lens of my eyes, I was further back in my head, detached from my subtle body, my physical self was just a container - I was looking out from within, but wasn't actually IN anything... Almost like an ultra-clear tunnel-vision...like a zoomed view of my world, expanded out to contain everything. A paradox of telephoto and wide-angle simultaneously. Funny the photographer's curse wasn't lifted in this moment, but enhanced.

I sat up. My pain was gone. Completely. My neck and back and shoulders...was it muscle tension, a symptom of ten years of out-of-alignment problems from an old injury?...or was it all in my head? And now that my head wasn't in my head...now that I wasn't in my head...it was gone.
Completely.
Walking on air, sitting in my seat. I tried tuning into that muscle, the one that was knotted up and tight and tense and hurting moments before...I found it, pinpointed it, and yet...no pain. Gone.
I focused into my memory, to that moment when everything changed...that moment that made me alone and afraid and depressed for the better part of my life since my memories began at age 8...I tried feeling fear...feeling sadness...feeling loneliness. I tried touching that pain that haunted me always in the depths of my consciousness. The stuff that made me lose it in front of 100 strangers.
I saw it. I felt it. And I acknowledged it for being there. Looked at it from a few different perspectives. And moved on.
It's still there. I can still poke it and make it react if I want. But it's just there. Just is. The story. It still rolls around in there...the story. What happened? What really happened - the actual facts and events of the occurence that story was built around?

I looked up. I got it.
I became quite thankful for life. For everyone in it. Authentic in my inauthenticity. I walked in a relatively good person, with just as many flaws and fears as everyone else...they were as scared of me as I was of them at the heart of thought. I walked out the same. But I knew it. I knew what was there, for real, the actual existence of it, and could see it from outside of its story.

Monday morning after the Forum. Toweling off as I stepped out of the shower.
I thought - what if I didn't get it? What if that was it, and now it's gone?
I invented the possibility of being healthy. But when I step in front of the mirror, I'm still going to be fat and unattractive. I'm still going to have bad skin and worse hair and be overweight forever and ugly...
I finished toweling off and beating myself up. I stepped outside of that story and in front of the mirror.
The fat was gone. It literally wasn't there. At least I couldn't see it. I stuck my gut out and turned to the side. Nothing. I was healthy. I was happy. I was handsome and cute and pretty damn sexy.
I bounded out to the living room. "I'm cute!" I shouted...startling Steph and the cats.
"I've been telling you that since we met." She deadpanned.
"But now I know it for myself..." I responded.

We all tell stories about ourselves. About everyone we know. Friends. Family. Lovers. Enemies.
It's nice to be able to see those stories, and not be playing a part in them. Or at the very least, to step off the stage for a moment, toss the script, and become the director of my own vision.

Letting go. Coming clean.

I don't know where to begin...
I'll just start by being everything I was always "going" to do...
Being now.

I am what I am and that's all that I am. Right? No more being tied to looking good in my head...just being in being.
You are who you are, whoever you are. That's it. That's all there is to it. What does it mean? Nothing at all. What does it mean that it doesn't mean anything? Nothing. Precisely.

The sound of silence is so much clearer now. I can sense it, tuned to my being, riding the waves on the same frequency.

Thank you. Everyone. For being who you are so well.