[Madjag]

“Life, what a fucking mystery”. My youngest daughter, #2, is quite the Oracle. She has some intense awareness at levels she is not aware of yet. I marvel sometimes when she speaks about heart matters or world politics. She’s usually right on…and with gusto.

She became a helicopter pilot on her own, no military training or Iraqi war subsidization. She took out a student loan and went for it. Now she is one of maybe 150 women that have their CFII which means she can not only teach private pilot for helicopter but she can also teach instrument rating as well. Rare.

When she turned 16 she borrowed her older sister’s new car, a tricked out California VW with a big engine, tinted in the glass windows, front lowered and raked chassis, wide tires, and a totally clean white Emron aircraft paint job with chrome mini bumpers. It was a classy car built by my friend and air-cooled only VW mechanic BB. I paid him 5K cash under the living room table for that artwork. Heads always turned when it cruised by. Her older sister had just gotten it for her 18th birthday from me and her mom so it wasn’t even christened. Younger daughter borrowed it and rolled it 3 times behind her high school while zooming around an S-curve on the gravel encrusted pavement there. Gravel won.

Life gives us messages and signs whether we recognize them or not. Wise folk are those that when needed can and do something, anything, to change the path they are headed down. The Chinese have a saying, actually many sayings but this is one of the more memorable thoughts of theirs, “If we are not careful we will end up where we are headed”. If only we could. My second favorite Chinese aphorism is, “Money can by you a clock, but not time”. Indeed.

I know you can relate. If you’re growing weed then you’ve felt the heat. It comes from going beyond the norm and searching for something personal. Green gardening, surfing, motocross, extreme skiing, skydiving, base jumping, knife throwing, stamp collecting whatever. If you’ve crossed the line you can never go back.

I recall some hippies who lived in a classic yellow school bus and sold hash, Peyote, and weed to the multitudes in my quiet little town in the Verde Valley back in the early 1970’s. They had a pack of kids and rarely got a shower being on the road so much. They dropped anchor in my little central Arizona town one day and began plying their trade in earnest. Busted came next and the family was in a tizzy. Changes abounded and soon they were Born Agains, selling you know who. My VW mechanic mastermind, BB, said it best when he described them, “Anyone who used to sell Peyote and switched to selling Jesus is totally fucked up”. That’s what can happen if you don’t hear the vibe and make changes. And I know they certainly had warnings.

How does one know when to make a change? And I mean a significant life-altering move. When the messages rain down sufficiently, so much that we can’t live in denial any longer, how do we change? My view is that most of us, at such a momentous tipping point in our life, unconsciously allow the Universe to choose for us. The result is not always fun, easy, or what we may have wanted had we made the choice ourselves, but it sure is clear. It’s when in that instant moment in time that you think to yourself, “If only I had…..”.

Fill in the spaces, they’re all the same. You know what I mean. It’s so much better to be self-correcting in response to the feedback all around you. It’s definitely less costly if you make the changes yourself rather than have changes made to you. Ken Kesey said, “Always stay in your own movie”. If you don’t then someone else is the director.

Daughter #2 became a careful and excellent driver after that incident. That day she kicked out the windshield so her friend and she could escape, climbed out of her sister’s totaled car, and while in shock had a revelation that no parent could have provided no matter how hard they tried. Reality is the best, though not the kindest, teacher. Awakenings aren’t always inexpensive. Now she wears night-vision goggles when she flies in the pitch dark out to remote spots on the interstate and lands to meet paramedics. The casualty, sometimes just a lifeless body, lies next to her as she returns to an emergency room, stretched out awkwardly, as they boogie through the sky toward hope.

Some messages take repeating. In every grower’s life comes a point when they should have walked away from a deal, a remote growsite, a new contact, or their overused rental home. Rock stars have bad concerts but they still get paid; lawyers, even if they lose a case, still walk out with a hefty fee. Everyday people involved in illegal acts rarely get the prize, though, and often get the hammer instead.

What goes around comes around. My good friend Peter and I were down on our luck. Our Colombo connection had moved into coke and we resisted. We were herbmen and though we powdered our noses whenever it was free, we didn’t want the Karma of becoming “Coke Dealers”. Just the name made straight people hate you back then even though the in-crowd loved a man with a pile of powder, oh how they loved them. During the Disco Days it seemed like everyone we knew had been hypnotized and started moving white powder. What the hell, the ladies sure responded. Who doesn’t remember, if you were witness to those days, the split when weed people were left behind in favor of the powder?

I was loading trucks at a warehouse depot in Phoenix for lack of a better livelihood. I had with two little girls and I didn’t want to become a dealer like so many of my pals. The work was not that hard, driving electric carts and forklifts, and the days shot past quickly. I was planning my second shot at guerilla growing, this time on my own and without my previous partner, so I knew it was just a matter of time before my day in the sun (literally) would come. In the meantime I was working the docks, biding my time.

John the driver was one of the truckers that came by weekly and picked up or dropped off loads. We became good friends in the sense that we liked to talk about interesting subjects, not the usual sports team mumbo jumbo that consumed most of the other dock loaders and truckers. I could care less and so did he. Our talks rambled toward the forbidden realms.

One fine day John showed up to drop a heavily loaded trailer and began talking about his weekend. Little did I know how skilled he was in so many ways. John, it turns out, could fly airplanes, even larger twin engines, as well as helicopters. 16-wheelers were child’s play, because he also operated heavy equipment like D-9 Cats and had run a few road graders in Nam as well. If it could be driven or flown, John was at home.

I imagine you think you know where I’m going with this line of thinking. You’re partly right and partly wrong. John was excited that day because on his weekend he had been flying over the Barry Goldwater Bombing Range west of Ajo at the edge of Organ Pipe National Monument and had seen a large fuel tank nose down in the dirt. He theorized that it might be filled with weed and was thinking of driving out to check on it. His question for me was, “If I find it and bring back several hundred pounds of marijuana, could you sell it?”

Actually I was quite taken aback. How did he know that I could possibly sell it in the first place. I had cut my waist-length hair when I entered the job market and went to work at the warehouse. I never talked smack about weed or drugs with anyone at work, let alone him. So what gave me away?

I didn’t ask him and merely said yes. He smiled and went on with his day, moving out once his truck was picked clean by the fleet of hungry forklifts swarming the docks that day. I went home with a renewed sense of hope and dreamt of colas packed tightly in a jettisoned fuel tank. I was excited because it could just be the way out that I needed for my next big move back into herb cultivation. Peter was revved up as well and could use the excitement more than the pay in the interim between his own familia’s next shipment. Any cash I made would free me for better things. It was my 26 year-old mind hallucinating big time, but I didn’t know it was.

Weeks passed without a visit to the docks by John. I began getting paranoid. What if he was merely testing me, what if he was undercover, what if he was a snitch setting me up, blah blah blah… My mind ran over the details and came up with the conclusion that John was what he appeared to be. He was skilled at piloting and driving but he was not clever, sneaky, or conniving. With him, what you saw was what you got. I felt relieved as I still anticipated him showing up with good news one day soon.

John did finally show up but he wasn’t smiling. He told me how he had driven way out into the bombing range, illegally of course, with his 3 kids and a far-fetched alibi just in case he got nabbed off-road in the forbidden zone. Once, long ago at night, I drove next to this same area as I traveled north from Ajo toward Gila Bend. I was coming back from a quick recon of the Pinacates, the psychedelic volcanic crater zone just north of Rocky Point. I was totally transfixed by the endless bursts of light and loud explosions way out in the desert that hot July night. I never saw one of the jets but I heard them as they pushed back and forth across the target zone. I was witnessing a night-time war scene, like one of those dark moments in Apocalypse Now. So cool, man. And we were high.

John had found the jettisoned fuel tank, but that was exactly all it was, an empty fuel tank smashed into the dirt. At that moment our weed dreams disappeared into thin air. But something occurred to me just then when I was about to say, “Oh well” and let it all go. I had found the ultimate pilot and driver. I had an expert who wanted to get involved in the shadow economy. John was ready for an assignment. His name rose to the top of my Rolodex for future tasks. Why, we could have him pick up our harvest, already boxed of course, and fly it out of our remote canyon; it could save the many round-trip hikes necessary by 4 or 5 people carrying big frame packs loaded with harvest herb if we were as successful as I hoped that year, and it could…. dreamer, dreamer, come back, come back!

Over the next few months I saw John regularly but we only made small talk. Why talk about paradise lost? Then, near the last quarter of the year, around harvest time south of the border, John showed up at the docks with a big dog smile and laid it on me. Some Mexican friends had finally contacted him and wanted him to fly down to the Guadalajara area and pick up a load. Though John had never even seen a joint let alone smoked one, his motors were already on an imaginary runway taking off to mota land and flying back the prize. As if! Here he was, like me, hallucinating without any experience in a field that was fraught with agents, snitches, guns, wiretaps, and true life-or-death danger. this was big time.

Not far from his initial thoughts, a few weeks later he actually was sippin’ a margarita in motaville. Just a slight twist was injected into this cozy vision though; John did fly down to Guadalajara but in a stolen twin-engine Cessna that the cartel wanted real bad. It was his initiation and he jumped at the opportunity. One day a straight trucker, the next day a full-on drug pilot transporting stolen goods across international lines. I was floored and laughed in his face. Composing myself I asked him what he would be doing from then on and he replied that he would only have to wait for loads to come to him. it seems that the brothers in Mexico had bigger plans for John and didn’t want to waste him on weed runs. He bluffed and had told them that he had friends who could easily move weight. You can probably guess where this went. Though none of knew, all of us suspected.

I grew up loving James Bond movies and had read The Craft of Intelligence, an autographed copy in fact signed for me personally by the author Allen Dulles, head of the CIA. Whether it was Michael Caine in the groundbreaking spy movie “The Ipcress File” or reading more history of spies in WWII and the Cold War, I admired their tradecraft. I knew it was probably not as glorious as it appeared in the movies but being a young guy I still was hooked. I began my collection of spy tool catalogs, eavesdropping equipment catalogs, and every book on spies I could find in print when I was 16. I was certifiable. That knowledge helped immensely once I walked the path of weed.

Months passed with no contact from John. Slowly but surely I continued my life and forgot about him. I was planning my next guerilla grow and had been on several recons in a likely canyon-filled area. One of those exploratory trips became the deciding factor in my herb’s brand name, Madjag, and I wrote about that mountain lion experience earlier on this thread. Visions of loads flying in had retreated to the back of my mind.

Ring-ring, ring-ring. I grabbed the proverbial kitchen phone (an A.T.&T. Princess phone!) and there he was, John, mumbling quickly and unable to focus his words. It didn’t take nut a second to decipher his message, though: not only had he delivered the Cessna, he had also escorted a nice Bell Ranger helicopter south as well. My oh my, what would be next? A jet? All kinds of thoughts melted and mixed in my mind as he continued to rant excitedly. “The load is going to be here next week, are you ready?,” is what I incredulously thought he said. “They need an airstrip for the drop and will be on the ground only long enough to toss out the bales, 500 kilos.” We were in for it.

Thanks to my earlier training in the secretive arts as well as in reconnaissance, the plan evolved lightning fast. My team was assembled and it was their first time in action. Everyone was mighty fidgety as we spent the night camped in the field, preparing for military-grade timing and a smooth execution of our plan. I was the only real spy in the group so I had been the driving force in the plan’s design. My friends were more than willing once they heard the pay, 2500 each for two days work as well as cost on any herb they wanted to buy later. Damn, for poor growers and small-time dealers this was a landfall.

Only one problem, where the hell were we going to sell 1200 pounds? Each one of us had a friend who had a friend that knew a guy who could move weight, but none of us had ever entered that world or knew exactly what it would take to do so. It turned out to be easy, though, and we all left that week with fond memories and a fat wallet. Later loads would prove even easier once we had all of our ducks in a row. John was our new hero and though we didn’t move in the same world that he did we still met once in awhile to discuss the next time.

We met John in the next phase of our relationship at a groovy bar in Scotthe thieving con-man's placeale, one of those nouveau trendy places. The restaurant and bar, Dr. Munchies, was about as nouveau as you could find in the desert back then. The maitre’d wore a full-length tuxedo and had wild black hair down to his waist. The place had great food and was always packed from 10pm on. Sometimes there was actually a line of hipsters waiting to get in, something hitherto not seen before those days of wine and roses. Our short string of drop loads had come to an end and at that point my partner and I were thinking about next year’s serious canyon time. John showed up at the bar with a brand new look. Instead of John the everyday trucker he was now sporting a big cowboy fedora, several gold necklaces, and a fancy western-look outfit including some flashy boots. He also had one of the first mobile phones I had ever seen up close, the type they used in Miami Vice that were the size of a quart bottle. He was driving a brand-new Camaro and had a girlfriend 20 years younger than him.

It was a sign. The Universe was talking and luckily we had no problem listening. We were not happy. John had gone from 0 – 60 in like five seconds and had not been able to keep track of where the road was leading. Money came so large and fast that he had forgotten what a day’s work actually paid on Planet Earth and had become used to his new found wealth. Still a redneck at heart, John worked hard to fit his new image. Still, his path diverged from ours the moment he said the word “coke”. We were herb men and heeded the signs. The few loads we pulled off at that little public airstrip funded our next year as we delved into our canyon growing season. Our families were covered and the only work we had to do for the next 12 months was to prepare, grow, harvest, and sell. It was still all good after we cut ties with our friend. We didn’t have to deliberate long in order to give him our answer. It had all been in the name of supporting our passion for growing the weed so we never looked back.

We heard through the grapevine and later on in the local news that John had become fabulously wealthy. He also caught the flu in a big way and had to spend 10 years getting well. I never forgot my friend John, though unfortunately I did forget some of the lessons of his story. I too let fast money go to my head and one day got sick myself. I had to spend a couple of years at the monastery because I didn’t remember to heed the signs that were coming from all directions in a multitude of forms. It took me about 10, perhaps even 15 years to fully recover to where I had left off. Looking back I realized that the signs were so plain and obvious that I had definitely been suffering from a case of denial. I had wanted something so deeply that I couldn’t see the messages telling me to take a break and reconsider what it was that I truly wanted.

It’s rarely money or power we want. They just make it seemingly easier to get what we think we want. Once you deeply examine your passion and know that you can follow that path forever if you don’t stray, you become tuned into signs in a whole new way. It becomes second nature to question. You “sleep” on it more often, allowing time to pass before you make a major decision. You find that many things turn out to be equal in value and only a few shine above the rest. Those that do are usually free for the taking, and giving, if you learn to see.

As Castaneda’s teacher Don Juan said, “ The trick is in what one emphasizes. One either makes oneself strong or one makes oneself miserable. The amount of work is the same.” Most people will disagree. It seems so much easier to be unhappy or unfulfilled. It’s an attitude of gratitude, though, that can make the difference in understanding this little parable. Signs are everywhere. We’re all sent them. Do you see them? Do you pay attention and at least allow your body to feel their message? Like the ensuing high that comes from a toke, signs come in many forms and flavors but always can be felt on some level. Take your time to know what you truly want, stay aware, and you’re home free.

Peace.

[wolfhoundaddy]

Morning all.
Great job catching the moods, nuances of our young lives, back in the day. Nam, LSD,public consciousness, karma, war machine,herb vs blow,one day in the jungle next day on the streets of San Francisco...man on the moon!
I moved to Prescott in "74 and personally am part of the weave of life that you have been describing so eloquently. I had a friend back then that was getting us some excellent homegrown, not a huge supply for us but came trinkling over to us from the Verde Valley. One day she showed up with some little clear plastic jewelery boxes filled with crystal spears. Said her friends had distilled the peyote buttons down to their essence. I wet my finger and had a taste. Still remember it to this day.
We also felt the dichotomy of the blow vs smoke and made a conscious decision to stay with herb. No guns for us,no mid night banging on the door,no drama. And money was part of it but not adored.
Some of us made it, we lost many.
Wouldn't trade those days.
Still keepin on.

[Madjag]

Originally Posted by wolfhoundaddy

Great job catching the moods, nuances of our young lives, back in the day.

I moved to Prescott in "74 and personally am part of the weave of life that you have been describing so eloquently.

Thanks for your comment my friend. If you were in Prescott in 74 you definitely saw the many, many changes over the next 35 years that I have seen, too, as well as some of the other AZ brothers on ICMag who shared those changes like Mofeta and Motaco. All of these towns were so small and had a beautiful personality mix that included the newly-invading hippies as well as the local westerners.

If it's allright with you I woulkd like to borrow your phrase, "The Weave of Life", for my next installment in my series.

Peace,
MJ

[azez]

I was born and raise here and have seen all the tiny towns blow up
prescott has remained relatively small
but none the less change has come
peace
ez

[wolfhoundaddy]

MJ. it would be my honor, use that phrase.

[Madjag]

I’m sorry. My life’s story is only one of 6 billion, yet it is the only one I can call my own. I have heard so many, many great tales over the years and I could easily make them my own, but I don't. My stories are vivid and burn in my memory so deeply that I have no use for borrowing others. Selah.

Some of my friends question how it was that my life crossed paths with so many other players that were instrumental in fueling the foundations of the drug world. All I can say is that……I moved to Arizona.

What is it about this strange desert state? As I flew in on my exit flight from Denver, Colorado back in 1972 I was stunned by the massive terrain rising up beneath the jet’s path. I had always thought of Arizona as flat, useless desert, looking much like the rolling sand dunes that surround Yuma and southeastern California. My picture was so off. The scent of creosote in the open desert or the orange blossoms of Phoenix in the early spring were almost overwhelming to my high-mountain nose once I had landed and moved about. WTF? I thought it was supposed to be barren sand and dirt.

Days later my good friend George took me on a 7 day flash introduction to Arizona that culminated with an insanely stoned jump off the 25 foot cliffs at Ginseng Rock on Haigler Creek near Fisherman’s Point. We revitalized ourselves for the drive to his home in central Phoenix with more smoke and jammed to the sounds of Little Feet and The Doors as we sped along the winding dirt road connecting Young Arizona with Roosevelt Lake in Geo’s old Ford station wagon. It was hippie bliss in its fullest and we had no idea how good it truly was because we were living inside the dream itself without any windows. You could say we were stuck as well as freed by our consciousness back then and you’d be correct. In fact, you and I, right now, are in the same boat. We’re both bound and liberated by our beliefs.

“We are what we think, having become what we thought.” - Buddha

What makes a miracle in your view? Most folk’s definition might include descriptors like “impossible” or “totally incomprehensible”. For my part miracles have always held great promise for me. Influential stories that I had read in my early teen years portraying powerful martial artists like Gogen Yamaguchi, “The Cat”, and Morihei Uyeshiba, the founder and spiritual guide of Aikido, fueled my belief in what could not be explained, yet was possible, so I was already on the other side of the line when it came time to choose whether I believed in miracles or not.

The Cat had been forced to fight a Siberian tiger in a cage as the amusement of his captors during the Russia-Japan War in Manchuria in 1945. As he moved into the cage he immediately attacked the tiger with a bashing front kick to its nose and then leaped onto the stunned cat’s back. He put the tiger into a crushing throat choke with both arms deeply interlocked around its neck and simultaneously yelled loudly into its ears. His yells were the sounds of pure energetic survival focus and that scream, combined with his amazing chokeout, had the ability to paralyze the cat from any effective defensive move. The tiger died and the Cat himself was transferred to solitary confinement until the war ended and he returned home. As a young 12 year-old, the story of this miracle signified what a man could do that was beyond typical explanation. I wanted to believe that the impossible was possible. A small paperback book that I had found on the rack at my local grocery store, Zen Combat, by Jay Gluck (Ballantine Books, 1962) had inspiring tales about Gogen and other martial artists and set me on that path. I read it breathlessly.

Years later, at 20, when I moved to San Francisco to study Aikido at the San Francisco Aiki Kai, I learned more about another man who had performed seeming miracles throughout his life. Morihei Uyeshiba was a master of aiki-jutsu, kendo, and judo and it was his knowledge of the sword particularly that lead him to create a weaponless martial art that exemplified spiritual balance, peace, and love. He was a hippie before his time. Who knows? Whatever his inner leanings were, he showed that a person could overcome any attacker because the mere fact that they were an attacker meant that they were not in alignment with the Universe’s deepest principles and were off balance from the start of their aggressive moves. His Aiki-Do, “The Way of Harmonious Spirit”, provided a way to neutralize aggression without demolishing the aggressor…unless you had to, and then you could without difficulty. Utilizing the opponent’s energy and turning it effortlessly back upon that attacker harnessed the unlimited power of love to neutralize hate. Uyeshiba’s miraculous moves seemed impossible, especially after he passed the age of 70 years old and admitted that he could no longer just use his raw physical power to defeat his youthful attackers. Much like Bruce Lee’s “One Inch Punch”, Uyeshiba had moved beyond conventional understanding and into the realm of miracles. Some of you know of these men and can certainly agree.

My early interest in martial arts lead to a study and appreciation of eastern philosophy which in turn guided me to yoga. It was a natural progression that just recently I discovered The Cat had followed, too. Yogis are certainly deeply trained like martial artists; however their avoidance of drama and strife as a discipline propels them into a much different space. They concentrate on attaining peacefulness and emptiness while maintaining bare attention and supreme awareness. If the martial artist could perform miracles in combat, the yogi could perform the miracle of overcoming combat altogether. With no enemy, the yogi could move to the next level and allow the Universal energy to express itself through them as siddhis or powers. These miraculous powers were not to be cultivated or desired and were merely signs of the yogi’s progress on the path. Uyeshiba was in a sense a yogi in a hakama, a man who had stepped into the spiritual realm of martial arts and created a form that was true to the higher principles he had realized. Like The Cat, he had had visions and moments of total, mystical revelation that changed his path forever.

I have always been fascinated by the ability to go far beyond the normal, to pass through the veil of limitation to a place where anything is possible. Belief is a powerful tool as well as a captor.

Many years back during the Peyote revival days of the early 1970’s, a small, crazy group of hippies would gather in Sycamore Canyon and have, for lack of a better description, Peyote parties. The watercress-covered area near the first springs, about ½ mile in on the trail, was the placid center of this informal gathering. Cool, clear water bubbles out of the earth here and there are plenty of places to set up a tent or even better, build a little wikieup. A sweat lodge graced this area for awhile as well though eventually new regulations restricted camping (too much human shit accumulating and wood-gathering impact) to the area beyond the 4 mile mark in on the trail, the exact spot the permanent water stops. Such sacred springs like these in the high desert, bubbling up in a narrow geological layer cake canyon of white limestone cliffs topped by Red Supai sandstone, creates a marvelous oasis of sycamores and cottonwoods, with lush shrubs in sturdy mesquite glades.

Scents of Yerba Santa, Yerba Mansa, and watercress filled the dry yet moistened air here. I had never seen or thought of such a place until I became a frequent flyer here. The swimming holes were legendary.

The continued years of the hippie homesteaders lead to the unfortunate overuse and under-caring of such incredible local places in my home region, thus the new laws. A good thing, too, because once the mass of “normal” hikers, day-trippers, and tourists hit such spots 10 years later, the land would have been as wasted as we were during those days.

The Peyote parties involved anywhere from 30 to 50 people and consisted of non-ritual Peyote consumption…..on an extreme level. For example, my good friend Peter and another compadre would take a couple hundred buttons, boil them down for 2-3 days, and allowed the concentrate to dry enough to fill a small cookie sheet. I have never seen anything like it since then, partly because Peyote is not as prevalent as it was in those days and partly because it requires a lot of buttons to make this “Peyote Hash” recipe.

Peter and friends would roll up a marble-sized piece of the extracted Peyote, eat it, and be good for more than a day. Based upon the number of buttons they used for the whole recipe he figured that each round chunk was about 10 buttons worth. A couple of Peyote Hash balls and you were in another reality, traveling through the Sycamore canyon oasis with new eyes and ears, receiving input from all your senses at a vastly amplified level. Some of the kids went plain crazy I tell ya. Like my close friend who used to shoot LSD and speed and then drive a taxi all night in Denver, I have always wondered what kind of life these kids had later. His re-entry into earth orbit took 2 years of vegetarian food, no drugs or plant powers, no alcohol, and a lot of gumption. After 2 years he could finally finish a sentence or thought.

During one of the all-night parties Peter and Rico from Chino Valley wandered off to check out the stars. They climbed up the east side of the lower cliffs to a level that was maybe 150 feet above the floor of the canyon. To put this into perspective, the canyon walls in lower Sycamore Canyon varied from 300 to 800 feet tall with little or no safe way of climbing up higher except to go level by level on protruding horizontal ledges that lined the walls every 10-25 feet or so. it was free-climbing on crumbly limestone on the lower levels and free-falling on sketchy sandstone above that.

As Rico sat with Peter and smoked herb on top of their second week of daily Peyote Hash marbles, something they later called a miracle took place before their eyes. What we figured out afterwards was that a meteorite zoomed into the earth’s atmosphere, as they frequently do (“falling stars”) and came hurtling down inside of the canyon. It didn’t vaporize until it was maybe 500 feet above the canyon floor. Both stoners were blinded for many seconds as their gaze was fixed upon it and it totally disappeared in a flash. Ozone clipped through the air, they could definitely remember it later, adding a burnt, crispy edge to the moment.

In the minutes that followed, as they sat speechless and paralyzed from any movement, both dudes had their own personal revelation of sorts. Peter told me many years after that he realized that they both could have been missing persons, without a trace, as many people go missing, had the meteorite gone a bit deeper, or had been a bit bigger, or veered a bit more towards them. After all, what difference would an extra 1,000 meters or bouncing off a cliff make to a meteorite after coming millions of miles across the Milky Way? Pure Miracle.

Speaking of….though it’s probably anecdotal as well as apocryphal, there was a nice little miracle story circulating back in 1974 when Peyote was on the scene bigtime. It seems that some young hippies had become friends with a medicine man on the Navajo Res and were going back to Jerome and then Prescott after their score of some big bags of buttons. They were a bit concerned about the long haul and not being able to hide such a large amount other than stuff the trunk. If they were pulled over and searched, a fairly common occurrence back then, it would be obvious as hell when the trunk opened. The Road Chief intuited this from their energy at the moment asked for a ride to somewhere that direction, too. He said that he could help them in their journey. Reluctantly they agreed, thinking that having an old Navajo on board would totally cinch a negative profile on top of everything else.

The story goes that as they approached Flagstaff from the north late at night, the elder told them in a very serious tone that they must keep driving the whole way, no stopping for red lights or for any other reason. The kids just about flipped out hearing this and got all tweaky and started rambling on with one another. What the hell were they going to do? As they approached the first stoplight near Switzer Boulevard the driver got crazed and just kept going, driving right through a yellow-to-quick red. Soon after that light the next one was straight-on red and the Road Chief kept saying, “Go, go, go” interspersed with intense words echoing in his native tongue like a madman chanting down Babylon. They cruised through the red light and kept driving at a normal pace, eventually running several more red lights and heading on down 89A into Oak Creek Canyon on their way to Jerome and Prescott.

Perhaps a miracle? No crash, no cops, and the Medicine reached the hands and stomachs (!) of the many. Sacred inner journeys continued thanks to the intrepid hippies who went beyond the beyond.

[spiralofeyes]

Dude....incredible.

[billycw]

Such a truely personal yet familiar story told with perfect bits of thought! Simply Amazing Madjag... cant wait for the next installment.

[waveguide]

thanks for the crazy story mj too many people are too comfortable with the idea that nothing unusual ever happens, and the universe Will Only Ever Be the way some guy in a lab coat says it is.

too many people replace their eyes and ears with televisions and radios instead of the mysterious creation.

some day, i'd like to have the ability to mention my own experiences without simultaneously discretising myself as a pariah.

[Madjag]

Think about it and I'm sure you could summon up at least 3-4 miracles that have happened to you at one time or another. Real miracles, I mean the kind that blow your mind, are not commonplace by any means, however I find it valuable, as a part of an Attitude of Gratitude, to pay careful attention to those moments that at least come close to qualifying even if they don’t totally transform your life in all of their magnificence like Jesus walking on water or Moses with the parting of the Red Sea.

Pay attention and you’ll not only see more, you’ll attract more. Seen.

My good friends Michael and Rukmini made their historic, once-in-a-lifetime journey to India back in 1970. They took the overland route, from London to Delhi, with their friend Kabir at the suggestion of Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, with whom they had been granted a private audience after attending one of his seminars. Based on their interests he said, “Go to India” and they did. It took many months of driving, camping in funky hostels and dingy hotels, and the trip (literally) offered a view into the 3rd world that they still recall as life-changing in a good way. They spent considerable time in Afghanistan along the way, perhaps around the time that Sam Skunkman was trekking all over the landscape discovering the best landrace weed and hashish specimens and beginning his journey toward becoming one of the founding fathers of the Weed Era to come.

Eventually they landed in India and somehow made their way to the Kainchi ashram of Neem Karoli Baba, AKA, Neeb Karori Baba, NKB, or Maharaji. There they met Ram Dass (Dr. Richard Alpert of LSD fame), Hari Dass Baba, Dada Mukerji, and all the rest of the ashram gang. About a decade later in 1979 a beautiful book was published, Miracle of Love, consisting of a wonderfully diverse collection of “miracle” stories narrated by Ram Dass. It exposed the many miracles, some kept secret for decades because Neeb Karori Baba had sworn the person or witness to secrecy, that had been experienced by numerous devotees, Indian, European, and American.

When M and R returned to Arizona they shared their tales with their closest friends, inspiring some of them to make the journey to India to visit the Maharaji ashrams and see for themselves what the two of them could only hint at in words. As an herb smoker and inner space explorer you might imagine, and can well testify for, the fact that you just have to experience certain things personally. Other people’s explanations or comparisons or well intentioned words fall short by a million, zillion miles. It’s just that way in life and experience isn’t it? How do you explain what “getting high” is?

One of the young seekers that did make the journey was a Harvard undergrad student named David who had come out to Arizona to visit friends who in turn knew M and R. He was a somewhat serious fellow who had studied many different spiritual paths and was willing to go all the way to India in order to see for himself what the big deal was about Maharaji. He was skeptical for sure and it was big of him to put out the dollars and time to go in person instead of just writing it all off as speculation or exaggeration. Also, like many devotees-to-be, something drew him there, something unexplainable at the time, though totally recognizable and perfectly clear later.

When David arrived at the ashram, Maharaji was sitting on his tucket, a wooden bench that was large enough for him to stretch out on when needed, in the middle of a crowd of noisy devotees. They were busy talking, laughing, and eating while Maharaji did the same. That total happy sound was almost like chanting in the way that hearing a foreign language is sometimes more like music than talk. The spicy smoke of incense and rare perfume permeated the entire courtyard as well, making those present even more mindful that it was always a special place and a special time to be in NKB’s presence. David leaned against the wall of the doorway where he had entered and remembered what Meher Baba, his sort-of Indian guru, had said in his early writings: that at any time on earth there are only 5 Avatars, 5 true saints. The remainder of wise spiritual beings are just that, wise, learned, yet still bound by the laws of Karma in the way that we all are. The Avatars are not bound in the same way, if at all.

As David stared at Maharaji across the courtyard, perhaps 75-100 feet away, Maharaji lifted his head and stared right at him over the crowd of seated devotees. Maharaji lifted one hand and by slowly lifting each finger and his thumb one at a time, counted out 1-2-3-4-5. He then dropped his hand, kept David in a final, brief, locked stare, and then turned back to those immediately surrounding him, chatting happily with those devotees at his feet. He never looked at David again during that satsang. Needless to say David felt that his mind had been read; he had been thinking about 5 Avatars, saw Maharaji single him out with a stare, count out 5 fingers, and then look away. Like Ram Dass had done several years earlier when he had experienced a similar jolt into another realm, David began trying to figure out what had really happened. How did NKB do it? Was it a trick? Blah, blah, blah….his mind began short-circuiting and talking in circles to itself.

Heavy stuff that makes the grade, eh? Or do you have to see for yourself, too?

My Miracle list continues to grow, like my plants, over the years. By being tuned into that channel I have definitely felt the manifestation of energies moving behind the scene of daily life. Even at the instant of a single event there are quantum implications by the trillions and usually we cannot see them until they have become a “reality”. Some folks, though, tap into that stream and know everything in every moment without limits. They serve as doorways and make new energy available from the Universe, like the flowers of the sacred herb can provide, or meditation, or physical challenges.

It’s always there, just every person has to discover their own passageway for getting to that place. What’s yours?