Conversations with Avant-garde Sages - The Wizard LLC

Conversations with Avant-garde Sages
So I was very happy seeing him, and we became close, and he
became my first mentor. Shall I go on?
WIZARD: You're doing well.
EM BE: Okay. So shortly after that, I don't know, a few months
after meeting John Connor and spending time with him, I was in
one evening talking with some friends, we went to this house in
Troy, and I was talking with friends and hanging out, listening to
music and talking. And I got talking about what I was looking at,
basically that the self is not real, that what thought says I am is not
what I am. I don't know how I was talking about it, but I thought I
had some understanding, and I was talking to my friends about
what I thought I was understanding. And as I was talking they
were really puzzled, but they were curious, they were with me. It's
as if we were like riding together. They were stimulating the
questions and the looking, so we're looking together. Then, it felt
like the structure collapsed, and I was in a place of Self dimension,
a space-less, very, very joyous, very free, happy and clear, and the
words came flowing out of my mouth about what no self means. I
was overflowing with energy, and joy, and clarity. But I felt very
quickly that my two friends were getting alienated, and anxious
about… like I was in a place, and they were in a different place. I
sensed that and took my leave.
So I brought this realization to John Connor, my mentor at the
time, and he acknowledged something, I don't know what he
acknowledged [Laughs], being acknowledged as being. And very
shortly after he told me about a Zen meditation place in Sharon
Springs, and it was like maybe 30 miles away from the university.
And I started attending that place at Sharon Springs; it was an
affiliate center of Rochester Zen Center at the time. It didn't
matter really what it was, to be sitting with people quietly in
silence, Zen practice is a lot of silence, is non verbal, and just to be
sitting, whatever you can call it, meditating. There was a big draw
to do that, and so I did that for many years.
TRIP: So 20 years… Oh, you want to say something?
149