Transcendental Scream

My head was pulsating with excitement and my mind was rotating through multiple scenarios. Fantastic success stories in which I envisioned something greater than the possibilities presented hours earlier on the tenth floor of an office tower near the airport. A closed-door seminar with overwhelming information by an amazing speaker and his many associates. Each speaker delivered a captivating testimonial, complete with their breathtaking achievements. One of the speakers was a retired professional athlete, another gentleman gave up a prosperous legal practice, and the last person at the podium was a drug addict who had lived on the streets for over five years. They had all made the decision of a lifetime. They all placed their faith in one brilliant man. Long before the event came to an end, I had placed my full faith and trust in this man as well.

Now, I can’t wait to share the enlightenment bestowed upon me. I can’t wait to tell those in my family who are still on talking terms with me. I can’t wait to tell a few special and deserving friends of the incredibly wise and incredibly successful Mr. Stuart Carlisle. I can’t wait to awaken our collective and previously untapped spirit of building fabulous wealth through real estate. I will bring about this awakening within every last co-worker and even the mellow old couple who come through the office twice a month to water and prune the plants. I want to enlighten my fellow laborers in the Human Resources Orientation and Compliance Department and share my economically divine breakthrough with my boss and the executives beyond my boss.

I can’t wait to study every flyer, hand-out, pamphlet, booklet, and audio CD provided by Stuart Carlisle and his unique system. The cutting-edge information on his web site alone could serve as a new standard in educating those willing to open their minds to the true ways of real estate. The most prestigious colleges and private universities across the nation are blind to the systems and possibilities I discovered in a single seminar. I’m only at the beginning, but I feel like my mental passages are clear for the first time in many years. I can breathe, and my brain is intoxicated with Stuart’s fresh new thinking. I can smell it. I will dedicate every last hour in which I’m not sleeping, eating, bathing, or checking my email. I will learn the program. I will learn the system. I will become an expert in Stuart Carlisle’s Real Estate Activation Movement. Also known as, “SCREAM!”

Just like the end of the seminar. I’m screaming really loud in my apartment. I’m alone, but I can envision all of those wonderful people I spent twelve blissful hours with today. They’re screaming right beside me. We are chanting, and we are screaming:

We are the movement!
We are the movement!
We are active, and we are the movement!
Stuart Carlisle, Real Estate Activation Movement!
Then we scream in unison — really loud!!!

I’m exhausted and mentally depleted. I drop into my big TV chair and pop the top off my reward beer. This beer has been standing by in my refrigerator for the entire day. This beverage was practically alone, among a few edible friends and condiments, experiencing the chilliness of the top shelf within my refrigerator. This fermented liquid waited for me to arrive home and ingest her. I feel content and mentally satiated with grand possibilities opening fresh roads ahead. The alcohol dulls the reality of dismal pathways left behind.

Day one is bright, and I bounce out of bed and into the bathroom with anticipation for the amazing changes which are about to take hold. My morning rituals are a mere hallucination; floating in the backdrop of my commitment to be a part of the movement. To be a part of the real estate activation movement. I am a part of something vast and well beyond my current self. I am a part of SCREAM. I scream really loud, but it’s in my head this time.

After a brief call with Melanie, the assistant to my boss, I’ve secured the entire business day for myself. I’m using my last sick-day of the year to heal my soul and expand my mind. The central room of my apartment, which serves as den, dining room and living room, will be my launch point. Aside from my bedroom, this is the only other room that can hold more than two people. I’m alone, but I imagine everyone at yesterday’s seminar jammed in here with me. This room will be my ground zero for the future no one could ever see in me. No one except Stuart Carlisle, and that tall guy who offered-up half of the last plain bagel on the catering cart during the first seminar break. He had taken a small bite of the bagel. He was absorbed in his own little taste testing world and didn’t think anyone saw him take a peck. If he had placed it back in the faux bamboo bread basket, no one would have studied the bagel long enough to notice the missing nibble. This fellow attendee, who I never met before, he did the right thing. He tore off half of the uneaten portion of the bagel and held it out towards me. I’ll never forget his words. As I studied the torn bagel in his outstretched hand, to make certain he had not nibbled a bit of the piece he was now offering to me, he said, “You’re on your way man. We’re all blessed to be here.”

Now the meditation begins. I need to meditate exactly like the guest mediation leader from the seminar. He’s pictured on the cover of a pamphlet that was placed on each seat at the event. A modern looking man. Intensely well groomed. In the promotional cover photo, the meditation leader wears a peach colored silk suit with a bright, colorful necktie. He had introduced himself as Arjuna, our companion and guide. He would lead us through the meditation and clear our minds for the challenges and teachings to take place on the gilded road before us. I imagine his presence as I listen to the CD. The CD will take me through the two back-to-back meditations; each lasting about 10-minutes. This was critical to the entire learning process of the real estate seminar. It was essential to perform this meditation in order to experience the highest absorption of knowledge and details relating to Stuart’s activation movement.

My eyes are closed as Arjuna’s gentle voice fills the void of silence within the cave I call my home. My home is in a large apartment complex filled with the ambience of the other inhabitants. We occupy our sealed cubicles side-by-side and stacked three stories high. That ambience rises and dissipates with the exception of an occasional thud from the surrounding apartments adjacent to mine. The door of a kitchen cupboard swings shut in a unit next to mine. A basket of washed clothes drops to the floor in a unit above my head. In the darkness behind my eyelids, I focus on Arjuna’s voice and the image of a ladder he has placed before me. He asks me to ascend the ladder with detailed focus on each rung. Arjuna guides my hand to reach for the next rung on the ladder, and simultaneously, he coordinates my foot upward to the next level. I climb higher and higher. The rungs are firm. I can feel the depth of small horizontal grooves in each rung, which provide me with a confident grip. I grasp a rung. I release a rung. My body ascends as my arms and legs peddle higher and higher on Arjuna’s apparatus. The air is thin now, but my head is surrounded by a cloud of rich and pure oxygen to feed my thoughts. I do consider that pure oxygen could ignite and turn the breathable cloud into a raging ball of flames. I do my best to cancel-out these awful thoughts of my head on fire, and my scorched disfigured face after the flames are extinguished. I re-focus on Arjuna’s voice as he recommends a slow breathing. I continue to climb the ladder.

I pause for a moment while standing on the ladder and doing my best to feel weightless. I wonder how many minutes have gone by in the meditation. Am I approaching the ten-minute mark, near the end of this first meditation, or am I somewhere in the middle, which means I can stop climbing this ladder to nowhere? I’m all too aware that I still have a second meditation to go, and I’d really like to start reading about the key innovations and secrets within Stuart Carlisle’s literature. Arjuna beckons me to come back into my meditative state and continue climbing the ladder.

There is no beginning and no end to the ladder. There is no ascension point to reach and there is no concern for making my way back down. My vision from new plateaus is an additive process. I can see everything from a higher and greater vantage point. Simultaneously, I can hold a vision of my surroundings from each plateau and study details and events triggered by the sensory of my physical self, which is still sitting quietly in the central room of my apartment.

I feel a very light trickle of touch on my calf. It’s not strong enough for me to turn away from Arjuna’s voice and open my eyes. The small movement moves toward my knee and then backwards toward my ankle. Arjuna has asked me to slow my movement on the ladder and to slow my breathing. He has asked me to look around and associate my feelings with the connected forces overhead and below as I hover miles above my physical self and my large apartment complex.

I’m worried and slightly distracted by the whisper of crawling sensations moving along my calf. From my mental perch beyond earth’s atmosphere I’m able to zoom-in on the detail of ants crawling along the baseboards of my kitchen. The trail leads into the central room in which I sit static on the floor in a transcendental state. I’ve had these ants in the past. They usually come around in the springtime when it rains. Upon first sight of the trails and clusters of ants pouncing on food droppings, I’ve asked the superintendent of the complex to address the situation with the ants, but in the end, I’ve dealt with it on my own and sprayed off-the-shelf bug killer in all of the crevices. The place stinks afterward and I’m certain I’ve removed hours, if not days, from the back end of my time on earth.

With Arjuna’s help, I’m seeing for the first time where the ants are actually coming from and why they are here in my apartment unit to begin with. It’s not that the ants are coming from a nest within the walls of my large apartment complex, as I’ve always suspected, and it’s not a trail that has erupted from a subterranean ant mecca residing in the small park adjacent to my large apartment complex. The ants are coming from a fallen ant farm. It’s a plastic ant farm from a hobby store. A small boy gave this ant farm to his grandfather. The old man was too frail to manage a four-legged creature requiring walks, water and food. The little boy knew this but wanted to provide company for his lonely great grandparent, as he was only able to visit once a month with his mother. The elderly gent kept the ant farm gift in his kitchen. At first, it sat near his kitchen sink exposed to some natural light, which allowed him to view the micro-critter pets. Eventually, it got in the way of his dishes accumulating on the kitchen counter, and the ant farm was pushed further and further down. Down the tile kitchen counter. Until one day, the plastic hobby home of miniature pets fell to the floor. It fell to the black and white checkered linoleum hard surface between the end of the counter and a wall. A small space between the cluttered counter and a distant wall, where one might place old grocery bags, or a small trash can. This is where the grandson’s ant farm gift disappeared and came to rest out of sight. The old guy never read the instructions for how to maintain the ants and he never wanted the additional company in the first place. He didn’t miss the ant farm when it seemingly evaporated from existence.

This mediation stuff works. A wave of adrenaline ripples over my body like a futuristic instant space suit that starts at the top of my scalp and rolls-out to eventually wrap the bottom of my feet. Arjuna has allowed me to connect a sensation on my calf with the events of an ancient man who once lived in this very same space I now occupy. The fallen ant farm was surely removed years before I ever completed an application to reside here. It is here though. The ant farm is here. I can see the ants crawling out of the cracked plastic side and creeping along the baseboards of my unit. One of the ghostly ants has struggled through worn woolen carpeting to venture from the baseboard to the space between my calf and my pant leg. He takes up residence there on my calf. After numerous ventures from just above my ankle to my knee and back, the ant finally stops his movements to match my stillness.

I’m laughing aloud. It’s almost overwhelming to learn the truth behind the mystery of the spring ants. Arjuna is still pounding out instructions in his soft gentle voice. A cold spike moves through my core, as I extract myself from that hidden corner of the kitchen; back to the fulfillment of Arjuna’s meditation action plan. I feel as though I blacked-out on some key steps in the meditation process. I became so engrossed with the source of ants in my apartment. I need to firm-up my grip on Arjuna’s ladder and catch up on his words and guidance. I regain my focus. I am supposed to be locating a light source out on some galactic horizon. I’m still clinging to the ladder and looking around. I see a couple of dim lights around me, but the source is at least a million light years beyond my grasp.

Arjuna chimes-in to remind me that the light source I’m looking for could be just above my head. It’s there – I see it. It’s a cluster of lights shimmering about six feet above me. I can almost reach out and touch the lights, but I’m concerned I may fall off of the infinity ladder. I steady myself and slow my breathing. Arjuna suggests that I try to float into the lights to cleanse my spirit of negative energy and other emotional constraints, which may hinder my ability to become enlightened. I try to align all thoughts to the lights above me. One small thought hangs on the periphery of my other thoughts. It’s a slight distraction, but I still hear most of what Arjuna is saying on the CD back in my apartment. This small thought is thinking that the mediation may be coming to an end, and I really want the meditation to last a bit longer. I didn’t feel that way before I started. When I started I was just adhering to the regimen of meditation in order to recreate my experience from yesterday. The great experience I had at Stuart Carlisle’s seminar. I was taking this additional step in order to prime my mental intake for the good stuff covering real estate and realizing the fortune that awaits me and everyone I know. So much has changed within this ten-minute meditation. I need to know what happens when I go into the lights.

I believe that I am moving toward the lights and into the lights, but it could also be that the lights have descended upon me. I can see myself sitting in the central room of my apartment and the lights are decorative. The lights are conical shaped and rest within the small chrome chandelier of my room. Many guests have knocked their heads into this small chrome lighting fixture, as I have no dining room table beneath. Now, in a space well outside earth’s orbit, as I stand in the middle of a ladder with no base beginning and without a destination end, I am beneath the chrome chandelier of many lights. I am beneath the lights, and at once, I see outside of myself to view that individual who is me. That individual is looking up at the lights in his chandelier.

One of the lights in the chandelier is dark. I’m falling out of the meditation with a constant beating thought. The light is out, “I must replace the bulb.” The drum beats louder, “I must replace the bulb.” A faster pace now, “I must replace the bulb.” My life depends upon, “I must replace the bulb.” My mind wonders and locks-in on events not long ago, I’m balancing on the borderline of the entry-exit point of my mediation. I’m tipping back and forth between the low ceiling world of my apartment unit and a mystical subconscious time with Arjuna, which stretches through space for millions of light years in every direction. My reflection of events not long ago is the removal of the bulb that no longer burns. Just as I’m about to turn the dead bulb counter-clockwise to remove it, a flicker catches my attention. It may still have life. I reseat the bulb with a clockwise turn and it once again burns bright. How many times have I come across a seemingly dead bulb, only to realize that it’s still in good working order? How did the perfectly good bulb come to be dislocated from its socket?

My lapse into past events in which loose light bulbs pose as objects to be discarded is a controlled compartment within the depths of the meditation. As it turns out, Arjuna has taken me to this compartment of home maintenance memory and historical frustration in order to discover the truth behind the loose light bulbs.

Here’s the truth, as I see it from my roost up on this make-believe ladder. Waves of powerful gravitational forces emanate from the black hole depths at the center of our own galaxy. This center is somewhere far beyond me and my ladder. Reaching out through billions of solar systems, curved claws of gravitational forces pass through the stucco exterior of my apartment complex. Through the wood framing and drywall of the room in which I sit. These gravitational claws form an eddy around my chrome chandelier and remnants of energy wrap around the bulbs. The gravitational energy that started light years away in a massive black hole, gently turns some bulbs tighter and some bulbs looser. It happens over months and sometime years. I’m swapping out good light bulbs because a massive black hole is tricking me into believing they are bad. All of the light bulbs in my chrome chandelier are good.

I have not heard from Arjuna for quite some time. I feel a whisper of panic shoot across my body. I may have missed the instructions to descend back to my physical being and get down from my ladder. I feel my heart’s pace pick-up speed and there’s a hollow gurgling running vertically through my chest. I think I’m stuck. I’m really stuck in a transcendental meditative state. No escape button or emergency instructions. I’m just standing on my imaginary ladder way out in space. Where’s the second meditation session of the two-part, back-to-back meditations? At the seminar, we moved down the ladder with control and grace. We entered a new realm of endless possibilities with our descent.

I can hear the beginning of a laundry wash cycle. Water is injected into a cylindrical tub. My neighbor’s kitchen cupboard doors open with a high pitch squeal from the rusty hinges. Then the cupboard doors slam shut with a low bass thud. My audible sensory has extended outside the confines of my skull and it’s scanning my immediate environment for the usual neighborly disturbances. I’m becoming nauseous from the disconnect of mundane domestic sounds and a vertical view of Earth, some ten million miles below.

I’m screaming again. The screaming is real. It’s not the Stuart Carlisle Real Estate Activation Movement cry. I want to get off this ladder. I can’t see my legs, my torso, or even my hands, but I think my muscles are fatigued. I put the screaming on pause for a moment. What if I just let go of the ladder? Will I fall to Earth or just float around? I think I need to stick with the ladder. Without instruction or guidance, I climb. I forget about the Earth below and the lights above.

I’m alone with my movement upward to a destination without certainty. I have no choice but to move in a direction away from where I came from. As I pass through each rung on my imaginary ladder, my perception and understanding of the mysterious events of my recent past and the unsolved confusion faced each day become clear with explanations and answers. It’s this unique vantage point, which allows me to see the cause and effect of other’s actions, to see the best intentions in others, and to address the emotional miscalculations of my own outlook.

I’m moving faster now. My stepping is lighter, and my momentary grasp of the next rung is not as tight. I’m passing by planets and their respective moons. I’m not even sure if I’m in another solar system. The hum of a vacuum cleaner in the unit below my apartment serves as an audible umbilical cord. I see something ahead of me, which seems impossible on this linear ladder path upward. The ladder splits into two paths. Each ladder path is the same width as the current portion of ladder I’m climbing on. It’ll take me a while to get there, but I can see it up ahead. I’ll need to move to my left or right and take one of these new directions. There’s no reason for this occurrence. There’s no clue as to what benefits or danger might be associated with the direction of each new ladder path. Stopping at the split in the ladder does not seem to be an option. I’m compelled to continue climbing. Instincts take over and I climb upon the portion of new ladder to the left.

I’m on a new ladder path now. It’s all black space out there. I pick-up on an occasional planet in the distance. Flickers of tiny light sparkle all around me on the inner lining of a distant dome belonging to the universe I’m moving through. An elderly couple two doors down and across the hall argue over an expiration date on the creamer. His low-pitched muttering rides through the gaps beneath the doors of our respective units. Her high-pitched rebuttal ping-pongs off the walls from their dwelling to mine. I’m coming up on another split in the ladder and there’s more reliance on instinct and trust in myself. The choice seems easier this time and confidence is high. I move to my right.

The ladder becomes more complex. Splits in the ladder offer three and sometimes four pathways. My movements are fluid and my choices are deliberate. I don’t look back and I seem to be free of concern for what lies ahead. Arjuna, my original guide, has fallen to the wayside long ago. I’ve moved so far beyond the mission of preparing my mind for the enlightenment of someone else’s methodology for getting ahead. I’m euphoric as I’ve moved so far beyond being merely ahead. I’m on a journey through a universe that has no end or beginning, with the possibility of passing through systems of universes that run parallel to our own.

The electrical snaps and pops of a failing transformer at the corner of my apartment block builds in my mind. The rhythmic clicking gives me a beat and a pace to climb by. A confidence has been building in me to let go. I feel assured that I can float about and eventually find the ladder once again. It’s time for sleep. I’ll come back to this spot once again and transcend mind and space. Now it’s time to really let go and float back to the solar system of my origin. My journey back is long. I’ll make one last stop in space and sleep on the moon tonight. In the morning, I’ll wake up on planet earth and take hold of the world in which I live.