An Ego Death at a Pool Party

Two Glizzies into Enlightenment

Every few months or so I decide I’m going to become a monk.

I’m not even sure if I know what that means for me, or if I mean it literally. I’ve yet to sell all my belongings and climb to a mountaintop monastery. Heck, I don’t even know what religion I’d go for, or if it matters. I grew up Protestant, became a Buddhist for about one minute in college as one does, read some Nietzsche and became agnostic for a while, dabbled in Paganism, and have landed in a warm liminal pantheist pool in my 30’s.

Regardless of who or what I do or do not pray to any given week, my spirit, or whatever is in there, is constantly itching for simplicity, solitude and silence in a world where I’m increasingly incentivized to reach for my smart phone as an emotional crutch, and to outsource my creativity to a machine. Somewhere along the line, I became so neurotic about the right timing of getting back to people. I often become paralyzed by infinite choices and instant gratification wheels at my fingertips. These aren’t personal failings. They’re the predictable result of being a human animal. And technology, as magical as it is, is advancing at a speed my brain can’t catch up with.

So it makes sense that I’m increasingly drawn to a more monastic way of living. I don’t want to completely opt out of life. I want to remain porous to awe without becoming porous to every demand on my attention. But given my natural inclination to black and white thinking, easing into a process is something I try skipping altogether. I want to be good at the thing the moment I try. So either I continue traversing this technological wasteland or I smash my iPhone in a dramatic show and only listen to what I can find on vinyl now. As much as I resist being in the middle, those are the spaces that increasingly call to me—the ones where I’m simply present instead of trying to figure out what’s next. To listen, not decide.

This Fourth of July weekend I made an attempt at easing in. On Friday morning I turned my phone off (reluctantly), sat in contemplative meditation, and finished a book. I can’t remember the last time that happened. On Saturday I went to a pool party, figuring I’d struck a reasonable balance between solitude and community. A few hours in I found myself as close as I could get to the earth for about two hours in a nearby meadow. I had been asking for a spiritual awakening. I did not expect it to hit me two glizzies in, and around 40+ people.

I had an ego death at a pool party

on the fourth of July

I sank into the earth, to face

the sublime expanse of the sky

I remembered love is infinite

but fear its undertow

I grip so tightly to this vessel

which pleads to overflow