The first time I saw Oneness was in the eyes of my friend Elliott. We were hanging out on his back porch when I looked across at him and experienced that the same being which spoke through his body also spoke through mine. Briefly, some veil had been lifted.

I don’t know why it happened that night. We were not chanting sacred mantra in a Taoist enclave or fasting in the foothills of Mount Zion. We were sipping beer in the poor end of town, looking out at a ragged scruff of dirt corralled by high fences.

It may simply have been my time; or the effect of that evening’s cosmic choreography; or, some sublime human synergy. It may have been the LSD.

Thich Nhat Hahn talks about enlightenment – or realizing one’s buddha nature – as akin to splitting bamboo: Once you’ve made the first split, the rest pulls away easily.

That evening with Elliott was the first split in my bamboo – though it would be five wild, often wretched years before I adjusted to my new sense of self.

Year One:

Around this time, Elliott and I were in a rap group called Ravish the Pack. We had just finished our first mini album and were about to go on tour down the east coast of Australia.

We’d spent months in the studio and wanted to reconnect with nature before the tour began. Some friends were at an ashram near Byron Bay; so on December 24th, 2011, we loaded up my brutish Ford Focus and drove north.

I guided the Ford through hard rain for three hours. We were zooming through the forest on a slight bend when the rain suddenly switched from heavy to oceanic. The car began to glide elegantly across the road, before violently whipping around and spinning off. We looked at each other in acknowledgment of the death which was surely coming. I remember gravel frothing up through the footwell and the gut-churning spin. Somehow we swirled back onto the road. I eased the Ford back up to cruising speed and not one word was said about it.

The Zen tradition has a lovely story depicting the stages of self-discovery called Ten Bulls (which I highly recommend checking out). The third stage is called ‘Perceiving the Bull’

On New Year’s Eve 2011 I again perceived the Bull – or saw ‘Oneness’ – only this time clearer, rooted deeper in my being and carrying a sense of purpose. Before this day, I had been dallying in meditation and self-discovery, treating them more like a hobby than a quest. Playing guitar, football, cooking, science, self-discovery… each was assigned a portion of my attention. New Year’s Eve 2011 shattered this completely.

Whatever this thing I saw in our eyes was, knowing it became my everything.

I had not yet heard the great Irish poet John O’Donohue:

“The light of modern consciousness is not gentle or reverent; it lacks graciousness in the presence of mystery; it wants to unriddle and control the unknown. Modern consciousness is similar to the harsh and brilliant white light of a hospital operating theatre. This neon light is too direct and clear to befriend the shadowed world of the soul”

(no-one had told me that, and even if they did I wasn’t one for changing)

I dropped everything in pursuit of this ‘thing’, the most real thing I had ever felt. Perception of the numinous opened in me the possibility that I might actually live a good, happy life, far from the desolation and inner scream of my 11-25yrs old experience.

I knew I had to stay at the ashram – no doubt. I left the band (Elliott never forgave me), my job as a fancy-pants high-school guitar teacher; left my house and my partner.

(I kept the Ford, only for my sister to total it, crashing down a jungle ravine. With me inside. While driving me back from hospital for a previous injury.)

Yet it was an easy decision to make. I had touched my core; there was no going back.

Year Two:

I settled into the ashram rhythm. Early 2012 was a lovely time for me – I call it my ‘peak human’ chapter. Though a drop of spirit-nectar danced on my tongue, I was still 99% in ordinary, body-and-thought identified awareness. I became lean and muscular on a diet of farm work, sunshine and clean food. Songs and poems poured out in gorgeous ferocity. Intimacy was felt with other people on a level I had considered impossible.

I was riding a wave of bliss, freedom and swagger but was about to be given a lesson in impermanence. After 5 months, I met a woman.

Svarga appeared to me as part buddha, part goddess, part child and part warrior.

Aware of subtlety and Oneness far beyond my perception, any seeking long since dissolved in simple living; ridiculously beautiful of form, with a physical geometry which catalyzed my passion and inspired creation; she lived with the clear innocence and suppleness of a child yet walked the path of a warrior.

Yup, I was smitten. (Actually I was woefully attached and infatuated, but you get the picture).

We started moving closer. I would write poems:

each move a dance

each word a kiss

each touch a salve

on unseen 

wounds

and climb through her window at night.

I was literally living my dreams.

We began living together; it was then that The Unravelling began. She was just too present, too authentic, too sensitive and too ferocious; my shadow, delusions, manipulations, games and strategies, all were seen (by her) and denied (by me).

My magnificence deserted me, my sun-rich power wilted. I became a little boy who wasn’t getting what he wanted – in this case, the surrender of a woman. She stood strong in truth, stronger than I can imagine even now. And I fought, but I had no strength, as I was fighting against truth. And I argued, but who can defeat love with rhetoric?

As the sublime Native American poet Lyla June Johnston writes in her poem ‘This Flower Alone’:

She accidentally wins every argument against her
just by being everything that she is…

I was going down, and I knew it. Months of depression, shame and isolation followed; though the memory of Oneness never left me, it became as a ghost.

When I came back to life several months later, everything had changed.