The Burn Zone Read online

  “How are you feeling?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I responded. “A bit shaky.”

  “You should eat a cookie,” he said, walking me over to the table that held cookies and brownies.

  “The sugar will help ground you.”

  He handed me one, and I took a bite. Sugar was the last thing I wanted, but, surprisingly, it did help.

  “She’s pretty intense, isn’t she?” he said.

  “Oh my God,” I answered. “Yes.”

  I thanked him and walked back into the seminar, I took Lakshmi’s advice and sat toward the back. She was right; the energy was much less intense in the back of the room.

  I didn’t want it to end. I was hooked. I had to know more. I would find a way to stay with her forever. The way I felt in her presence was magical. All my doubt was gone. All my questions were gone. I felt as if everything in life was perfect and always had been and always would be. Nothing mattered. Everything was fine. I had never, ever, in my life felt this much peace.

  On my way back to the car, I stood outside for a minute. I was dazed and utterly transformed. The trees. They were so alive, so green, pulsing with life. I could smell them. I could feel them singing to me. The sky was so dark, the stars so bright. The contrast filled me with ecstasy. The feel of the wind on my skin was so soft and gentle and rich and full of love. I’d only had a hint of this feeling of hypersensitivity once before. I was seventeen tripping on psychedelic mushrooms my brother had pulled from the dirt in a Costa Rican cow field as we walked back from an early morning surf. But this was even more intense, richer. The world was new. I was a child of the universe and everything around me was positively singing with life, with love.

  Lakshmi had said, jokingly, before she ended the seminar, “Make sure you get in your car before you drive home.”

  She knew we were leaving in altered states of mind.

  I simply could not wait to return the following night.

  Kate joined me the next night. Our friends Bruno and Emily came along, as well. We sat toward the back of the room. I was so excited for them to experience this with me; Kate, after all, was the reason I was here. When Lakshmi walked onto the stage, my heart began to pound. She wore dark jeans with a thigh-length black jacket cinched at the waist and black high-heeled boots. Her breasts were huge and were much more noticeable in this outfit. She really was beautiful—powerful and feminine.

  “Most people think you meditate to relax or unwind,” Lakshmi said. “If you want to relax, get a massage; if you want to unwind, go drink a beer and get a blow job. I am going to teach you how to sharpen your mind. It is the hardest thing there is to do.”

  She went on to explain how meditation focuses the mind to the point that one can actually squeeze a muscle and shut off all thought. She said that once you can work with 100 percent of your focus on the task at hand, your ability becomes close to unlimited.

  “This,” she said, “is what makes monks so powerful. Imagine being able to walk through this world not affected by anything, not needing anything to change. Imagine having a mind so strong that you simply cannot be knocked off balance by the events going on around you.”

  As Lakshmi spoke, she held command of the room. I could tell she loved teaching. She used her hands expressively, often holding the wire connected to her microphone.

  “In the East,” she said, “people have strong spiritual practices but have a difficult time making money. They live in poverty. In the West, people excel at their careers but have minimal to no spiritual practice. They become consumed with work and money. They neglect their families, their health, and their own peace of mind.”

  Gesturing with the right hand, she said, “People in the East are spiritual and poor.”

  Gesturing with the left, she said, “People in the West are wealthy and soul-sick.”

  She let that hang there for a moment, allowing it to sink in.

  “We can use meditation to sharpen our minds, use our sharpened minds to excel in our work, get promoted, make more money, and use that money to create a life that allows us to meditate better and to give back to the world through philanthropy. This is what I teach.”

  She sat back down and continued: “There is more . . .”

  We waited.

  “Mindfulness is as important as meditation. Most of us spend eight or more hours a day at work. It’s great if we take the time to meditate in the morning or at night, but what about all those hours in between? What happens then? You meditate in the morning. You feel close to God. Your mind gets calm. You feel centered and at peace. And then you get in your car and someone cuts you off in traffic or you spill coffee all over your suit and suddenly you’re an asshole all day long? That’s not spiritual. This is where mindfulness comes in. You must learn to monitor your thoughts. It’s not easy. You need to stop the bullshit in your mind. And then you need to be focused and awake in your actions. Your entire day becomes your place of worship, your offering to the Divine. This world is dark, and it needs more light. When you meditate, you tap into All That Is, and you shine brighter. When you give the best of yourself in each moment, you tap into All That Is, and you shine brighter. And when you dedicate your work to God or Source or anything higher and larger than yourself and your own measly paycheck, you begin to truly enjoy what you are doing, and . . . you shine brighter.”

  She looked at the crowd. Again, she scanned the eyes of everyone facing her. Her look was fierce. Chills ran up my spine.

  Work as spiritual practice—I loved it. I had always felt an innate love for and trust in God, but I resisted the word God, and I resisted people who talked about God, mostly because my mother had forced me to go to Sunday school every week, where I witnessed the hypocrisy of the church. It never made sense to me how God could create all of us, yet fill us with desires that were sinful and damn us and judge us and smite us for acting on them. If we believed that God created all of us, then it only made sense to me to believe that God loved us as we were, that we are all His/Her children. Even when I was a child it seemed very closed-minded to me to believe there was only one way to find God, only one path to follow, and that anyone that walked a different path was damned. I noticed that when Lakshmi said God, I didn’t find myself resisting. I found myself intuitively understanding God as the intense love and light and peace I experienced in Lakshmi’s presence. I loved her irreverence. And I loved that she talked about making money and having a great job and sharpening your mind as a way to walk a spiritual path.

  She wasn’t saying, Give up everything and live in an ashram. She wasn’t saying, Stop having sex and stop eating meat and go get a job as a massage therapist or Reiki practitioner. She was simply saying, Use this method to tap into quiet, to sharpen your mind, and use the extra energy and clarity you get from it to rock your career.

  I wanted to be like her. Everything about her was so polished. She was just the mentor I needed. A big sister. A guide. A teacher. I just had to figure out how to become her student.

  As I walked through my front door later that evening, my phone rang. It was my Tuesday-night meditation teacher.

  “What did you think?” she asked.

  “I loved it!” I exclaimed. “I love her.”

  “I had a feeling you would,” she replied. “She’s looking for volunteers to help with next month’s event. Would you like to volunteer?”

  I immediately agreed.

  “Her partner will get in touch with you. His name is Vishnu,” she said.

  Vishnu called from a private number a few days later. I was driving and quickly rolled up the windows so I could hear him clearly. He was very serious. He explained that Lakshmi was an Enlightened Being and that she did not need anything from anybody. He said that my volunteering to help her would really be her helping me. And he said it was an immense honor to do anything for an Enlightened Being.

  Well, that explains all the light in the room, I thought. In my years of searching I had read books about saints and E
nlightened Masters and learned about “selfless service to the guru,” so I immediately accepted this as Truth and was utterly thrilled to “serve,” ecstatic that I had actually found an “Enlightened Master” the day after I began looking for one. The old adage When the student is ready, the teacher will appear popped into my head. I couldn’t wait to hear what my service would be.

  “Your job will be front-door greeter and ticket gatherer,” Vishnu said. “You will need to arrive to the events half an hour early.”

  He gave me the address of the next event and told me to contact my Tuesday-night meditation teacher if I had any questions. Emily had decided to volunteer as well and got assigned the same role.

  At the next event, Emily and I arrived early and got into our positions on either side of a large double door.

  I turned to her and said, “I don’t know why, but I am so nervous.” I was wearing a form-fitting turquoise V-neck T-shirt, a really pretty chocolate-brown, turquoise, and tan skirt, and sandals. It was July, and the weather was extremely warm. We were stationed outside a large hotel ballroom and the air-conditioning did not seem strong enough to cool the large space. I lifted my arms and showed her sweat marks that ran from my armpits to my waist. We both broke out in peals of laughter. I kept my arms up, clasping my hands around my elbows on top of my head, hoping that maybe my T-shirt would dry a little.

  “I’m nervous, too,” Emily said. “She scares me. Her energy is so intense. I feel like she can see right through me.”

  Just then, Lakshmi walked up, and I slammed my arms back down to my sides. She had materialized out of nowhere. Emily and I held our breath. My heart began to pound.

  “Hello,” she said to Emily.

  Emily replied nervously, through gritted teeth, stiff like a statue.

  Lakshmi turned her gaze to me. Her presence was mesmerizing. She smiled.

  “Hello,” she said to me in a different tone. “It’s nice to see you again.”

  My eyes welled up with tears. She saw me. She recognized me. She wasn’t referring to knowing me from the event the month before. She was referring to knowing me from past lives. I could sense this. I could see it in her eyes. It was as if her gaze alone was communicating more than words ever could.

  I had never ever fit in. Anywhere. I had never been like anyone else. I had always been different. As a child I was more sensitive than other children. When someone said something mean to me I felt the energy of the words stab me in the heart. When they made fun of other kids, I could feel the other kids’ sadness well up inside my own chest and pour out of my own eyes. If I made eye contact with anyone, I immediately felt inside my body whatever that person was feeling inside theirs. Noises were too loud. Lights were too bright. Adults hugged me too hard. I had a very high moral compass and would not disobey my parents’ rules even when they were not around to enforce them. I had hidden these differences because I discovered in childhood that they made me “weird.” And being “weird” caused me to be bullied, beaten up, and ostracized. I hated it so I learned to be tough. I learned to bully. I learned quickly how to blend, but I still never fit in. Deep down I had always hoped someone would see my difference and would understand it, that she would tell me I was not “weird” but, in fact, “special.”

  A few times, in my late teens and twenties, I had gone to see traveling monks or healers and had hoped they would recognize something in me, but it had never happened. Yet here it was, finally. Happening before me. With her. Reaffirming that I was, at last, truly Home.

  Lakshmi walked through the door and into the event room. Quietly, she walked down the rows and touched the back of every single chair. When she got to the one that held my sweater, she paused and touched it with both hands, lingering much longer than she did on any other chair. She then calmly continued touching the backs of the remaining chairs. At least ten of the other chairs, those reserved by the other volunteers, had sweaters draped over the back. How could she have known which chair was mine? I felt so protected, so loved. I felt like she saw the full, complete me, like she knew how sensitive I was, and like she was somehow energetically protecting my chair, my space, me. Finally, after a very long time, I was not all alone.

  Through the three-night seminar, I soaked up every word she said. She talked about religion. She spoke about saints. She explained how important a good career was. But, mostly, we practiced meditation. She insisted that we had to learn to still our minds. We had to create space for the Divine to guide us. Meditation, she promised, was The Way.

  On the last night, Vishnu invited the volunteers to stay for a quick “surprise” at the end. We stood in a circle in the empty event room, nervously awaiting Lakshmi’s arrival. Escorted by Vishnu, she walked in holding a bottle of expensive champagne. Vishnu held a stack of plastic cups beside her. We made space for them in our circle and Vishnu handed each of us a cup. Lakshmi raised the bottle and said, with her charming smile, “Here is to a job well-done,” as she opened the bottle with a loud POP! Next, she walked within the circle and poured a little champagne into each volunteer’s cup, looking each person in the eyes and thanking each one of us sincerely.

  When she got to me, she kept pouring until my cup was full. She looked into my eyes and whispered, “You need this.”

  I turned red. She smiled. I smiled back. There was a palpable current of love between us, like big sister and little sister reunited after lifetimes apart. And then she moved on to the next volunteer.

  All the way home, I was glowing. I couldn’t stop wondering what she could have meant. Finally I decided it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that Lakshmi had singled me out as different. She had confirmed something I had always known. And she was clearly telling me what I needed so desperately to hear: that my “different” was indeed “special.”

  Emily and I volunteered to help with the August seminar. In the meantime, I bought Lakshmi’s book and read it immediately. I bought and listened to all of her CDs. I began meditating in the morning. I did everything I could to act as if I already was her student. And when the seminar finally came, I hung, again, on every word. On the final night my wish came true: Lakshmi handed out applications to become her personal students.

  Perhaps sixty of us remained in our seats to apply as the rest of the audience filed out. I could not believe my luck. Now that her summer seminars were complete, she would be leaving California, and I was dreading having to say good-bye. But if she accepted me as her student I would not have to. I would have her by my side, possibly indefinitely, to guide me. I would never have to be alone and “weird” again. I filled out my application quickly and dropped it in a pile on the stage, my heart pounding with joy.

  On my way out, Vishnu approached me and whispered, “Are you sure you know what you are doing?”

  I looked at him, shocked. “Yes,” I replied firmly. I had never been more sure of anything in my life.

  He smiled. “Nicely done,” he said.

  I got home and called Emily. “I didn’t see you in the room,” I said.

  “I didn’t stay,” she replied.

  “You didn’t fill out an application?” I asked.

  “No.”

  I was incredulous. “Why not?”

  “Because I was afraid, “she answered.

  “Afraid of what?” I asked.

  “Afraid she’d kick my ass and break me into a million tiny little pieces.”

  “Oh,” I responded. I paused, then added, “I think that may be exactly what I’m hoping for.”

  Chapter 2 Childhood

  The sharks were swimming by, getting closer with each pass. Nurse sharks. They were “only” nurse sharks. But, still, they were bigger than I was. And I was tiny—ten years old and all alone, standing on an inverted bucket, with the tide rising steadily by the minute. My brother, Gary, had dropped me off to collect seashells. He was supposed to come back. But that was over two hours ago, and I was beginning to think he forgot.

  The year was 1983, and I was on a s
andbar in the Bahamas. Well, two hours ago it had been a sandbar. Now it was just water. With nurse sharks all around. Swimming by me in the creepy powerful prehistoric way that they swim: rib cage swinging side to side, tail undulating as a result, dorsal fins rising above the surface of the water and sinking again just as fast, huge heads full of teeth . . . I was scared.

  But more than scared, I was pissed off. Where was my brother? This was just like Gary to forget about me, to get so wrapped up in fishing he simply forgot. Right now, I had two choices: stand on the bucket and wait for him, hoping he’d arrive before the tide covered it, or swim across the shark-filled water to a bank of mosquito-infested mangroves, then start walking barefoot over hot, spiky lava rock until I found my way to the main island. The swimming would be bad, but the walking would be worse. It would take me a few hours at least, in blazing Bahamian sun, and I had no idea exactly how to get back to the boat we called home.

  He’ll come back, I thought. He’ll come get me. He will run out of bait.

  I was always waiting for him to run out of bait, only to be terribly disappointed when the “final” fish he caught got turned into bait, and our fishing expeditions were suddenly extended again until he ran out of bait. I hated being stuck on the boat fishing with him, baking in the sun, rolling back and forth in the waves, watching the fish die, smelling the fishy smell, somehow always ending up covered in fish guts and blood, and usually with a fishhook embedded in my skin when one of his casts went awry.

  This, in fact, is how I ended up on a sandbar. On this sandbar. Which was definitely now not a sandbar . . . but water with sharks.

  We were twins, and we were very close. Gary loved me. And I loved him. But at times like this, I wanted to kill him. I held tightly onto my bag full of shells, I squeezed my feet closer together on top of the plastic white bucket, I swatted at the horseflies buzzing around my ears, and then I heard it—the faint sound of a boat engine. Slowly, it got louder. A small white Boston Whaler came around the point and slid rapidly into view, and two minutes later, my brother, sunburned and smelling like fish, pulled our dinghy up to my bucket, stuck out a dark brown hand, and helped me into the boat.