"Some people feel that when things like this happen, it is not just a coincidence, but a manifestation of some higher power or order where all things, including our thoughts, come together. 'Ridiculous!' say others. 'That's all superstition!' Perhaps--but let's take a further look before we jump to conclusions.
We all know that some things exist even though we cannot see them with our own eyes: electricity, love, pain, the sun on a cloudy day."
- Exploring English 6 by Tim Harris and Allan Rowe
We read that in the first class today right before time was up. One of the themes of the chapter is Love, Faith and Miracles. Then I went to the next class, where we had the final exam. Beforehand my supervisor gave them a speech about their next class and what to expect, and how they're going to have a different instructor because it's good for them to get experience listening to a variety of accents. Then we had the test, which was forty minutes. I didn't have anything to do, but I happened to have this Deepak Chopra book I'd bought in Japan a few years ago. As the students answered questions about the present perfect, past perfect and future perfect tenses, I cracked open The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence:
"The fifth stage is called cosmic consciousness because you have two qualities to your awareness, local and non-local, at the same time. In this fifth state, when you sense your connection to non-local intelligence, synchronicity really starts to manifest. In this state, you realize that part of you is localized and part of you, being non-local, is connected to everything. You fully live your inseparability to all that exists. Your intuition increases. Your creativity increases. Your insight increases.
The sixth state of consciousness is called divine consciousness. In this state, the witness becomes more and more awake. You not only feel the presence of spirit in yourself, but you start to feel that spirit in all beings. You see the presence of spirit in plants. Ultimately you feel the presence of spirit in rocks. You recognize that the animating force of life expresses itself in all objects of the universe, in both the observer and the observed, in both the seer and the scenery. This divine consciousness allows us to see the presence of God in all things. This is not a constant state of consciousness for most people. You move in and out of it.
The seventh and last stage of consciousness, the ultimate goal, is called unity consciousness. This may also be called enlightenment. In unity consciousness, the spirit in the perceiver and the spirit in that which is perceived merge and become one. When this happens, you see the whole world as an extension of your own being. You not only identify with your personal consciousness, but you see that the whole world is a projection of your own self. In this stage, miracles are commonplace, but they are not even necessary because the infinite realm of possibility is available at every moment. (Chopra 258)
After the test the students had a pot luck party and I scrambled to grade their tests by the end of the class. Meanwhile, they insisted I eat some of the food they brought, and then as time ran down, they kept bringing more and more leftover food to this tiny table I had transformed into a desk and insisting I eat that too. I didn't get many proper good bye's, but I got a lot of pizza, cupcakes, orange juice, fruit and napkins.
I was very late to the next class, but they didn't mind because I brought leftover pizza with me. Then we learned about the song "Lean on Me" by Bill Withers. Everybody needs help sometimes, and everybody can help other people at times. Unity. You can't be helped if you have too much pride to admit you need help. That story took up most of the class time. Bill was raised in a coal mining town in West Virginia. Coal mining is one of the hardest and most dangerous jobs on Earth. It was a good reminder that despite sleeplessness, at least I was able to talk about music and stories instead of working in a coal mine.
This is just how my mind works: upon seeing the word "miner" I thought of an Abraham Lincoln quote I gave as a writing assignment to my class in California:
We all know that some things exist even though we cannot see them with our own eyes: electricity, love, pain, the sun on a cloudy day."
- Exploring English 6 by Tim Harris and Allan Rowe
We read that in the first class today right before time was up. One of the themes of the chapter is Love, Faith and Miracles. Then I went to the next class, where we had the final exam. Beforehand my supervisor gave them a speech about their next class and what to expect, and how they're going to have a different instructor because it's good for them to get experience listening to a variety of accents. Then we had the test, which was forty minutes. I didn't have anything to do, but I happened to have this Deepak Chopra book I'd bought in Japan a few years ago. As the students answered questions about the present perfect, past perfect and future perfect tenses, I cracked open The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence:
"The fifth stage is called cosmic consciousness because you have two qualities to your awareness, local and non-local, at the same time. In this fifth state, when you sense your connection to non-local intelligence, synchronicity really starts to manifest. In this state, you realize that part of you is localized and part of you, being non-local, is connected to everything. You fully live your inseparability to all that exists. Your intuition increases. Your creativity increases. Your insight increases.
The sixth state of consciousness is called divine consciousness. In this state, the witness becomes more and more awake. You not only feel the presence of spirit in yourself, but you start to feel that spirit in all beings. You see the presence of spirit in plants. Ultimately you feel the presence of spirit in rocks. You recognize that the animating force of life expresses itself in all objects of the universe, in both the observer and the observed, in both the seer and the scenery. This divine consciousness allows us to see the presence of God in all things. This is not a constant state of consciousness for most people. You move in and out of it.
The seventh and last stage of consciousness, the ultimate goal, is called unity consciousness. This may also be called enlightenment. In unity consciousness, the spirit in the perceiver and the spirit in that which is perceived merge and become one. When this happens, you see the whole world as an extension of your own being. You not only identify with your personal consciousness, but you see that the whole world is a projection of your own self. In this stage, miracles are commonplace, but they are not even necessary because the infinite realm of possibility is available at every moment. (Chopra 258)
After the test the students had a pot luck party and I scrambled to grade their tests by the end of the class. Meanwhile, they insisted I eat some of the food they brought, and then as time ran down, they kept bringing more and more leftover food to this tiny table I had transformed into a desk and insisting I eat that too. I didn't get many proper good bye's, but I got a lot of pizza, cupcakes, orange juice, fruit and napkins.
I was very late to the next class, but they didn't mind because I brought leftover pizza with me. Then we learned about the song "Lean on Me" by Bill Withers. Everybody needs help sometimes, and everybody can help other people at times. Unity. You can't be helped if you have too much pride to admit you need help. That story took up most of the class time. Bill was raised in a coal mining town in West Virginia. Coal mining is one of the hardest and most dangerous jobs on Earth. It was a good reminder that despite sleeplessness, at least I was able to talk about music and stories instead of working in a coal mine.
This is just how my mind works: upon seeing the word "miner" I thought of an Abraham Lincoln quote I gave as a writing assignment to my class in California:
"All creation is a mine, and every man,
a miner.
The whole earth, and all within it,
upon it, and round about it, including himself, in his physical, moral, and
intellectual nature, and his susceptibilities, are the infinitely various
“leads” from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny.
In the beginning the mine was
unopened, and the miner stood naked, and knowledgeless, upon it.
Man is not the only animal who labors;
but he is the only one who improves his workmanship. This improvement, he effects by Discoveries,
and Inventions…"
-President Abraham Lincoln
-President Abraham Lincoln
What distinguishes human beings in
regard to the creation of a civilization, Lincoln emphasizes, is their capacity
to apply cerebral power to observation and remediation, to invent techniques
and devices that raise the quality of human life.
-Gabe Kaplan, Lincoln: Biography of a Writer
This class definitely couldn't handle something like that though. Even so, I like to think that every day I am mining the cosmic unified divine consciousness for some inspiration to help me appreciate the constant miracle of creation. The next song didn't appear to help though. As per the rules I created, I let a student play a song and distribute lyrics to everyone. It was a song called "Impossible." It was all about impossible love, or something like that. Really intense whiny emotional lyrics with pop orchestras and so forth. Apparently he won a reality talent show with it. It really brought me down at the end of a long week, but we had just enough time for one more song, so I improvised with another Bill Withers tune. Although Withers sang it, Grover Washington, Jr. is credited with the track because it's on his album.
I don't recall mining my experience living in the East Bay for much gold during the month of July, but on Independence Day one of my roommates kept playing the song "Just the Two of Us" again and again. (6:41 pm) I became addicted to the song, and it was the first song I played when I was reunited with my car in August after visiting home and couch surfing for a few days. It's also the first song I played when I took that same old 190,000 mile car in dire need of new shocks and struts on a journey across the US. Today we closed the class with it.
Maybe just the two of us is impossible. Maybe it would take a miracle. Then again, everybody needs someone to lean on, and most people need more than one person. We need a community of humans to help us through the journey of life, whether or not we reach unity consciousness.
After class my supervisor told me that I will actually be getting most of the same students in my 10:00 class next week, even though she just told them in front of me that they would have a different teacher. We will have less focus on grammar and more focus on speaking and vocabulary.
As I was leaving, my only Japanese student explained she had been late because the 4 train didn't come for some reason. I asked which direction she had come from, and she said downtown, so I figured I would be fine heading that way instead of coming from that direction. I don't know why. I could have just taken the D train and been fine. Instead I walked to the 4 and stood the whole time because I'd heard Sly and the Family Stone's "Stand" on the way to work and I was in a generous mood any time a seat opened up and someone else appeared to want to take it. While standing I experienced another coincidence relating to something I had mined from my experience in the East Bay in July: a man next to me was wearing a t-shirt with Kermit the Frog, Fozzie Bear, Gonzo and Animal crossing the street in the style of The Beatles' final album, Abbey Road. I had only seen that shirt once before, in the kitchen of my sublet in the East Bay, on July 24th. Their smiling faces, especially Kermit's, reminded me that I was in the right place. It may have been a cloudy day, but the rainbow was flowing every which way.
Once we reached 138th street (we started at 188th street), the train stalled for over five minutes. Then we finally moseyed into 125th street when they informed us every train was experiencing delays and running locally to 59th street. So I switched to the 6 train where I found a seat and thanked God for making me appreciate it more, having stood the whole way to work in the morning and most of the way back. But of course we were stalled for over ten minutes, and then again at 110th street. We must have waited for over 15 minutes there, and then stalled again at 103rd street. Apparently there had been an incident at 33rd street earlier in the day which had caused all the 456 trains to run on the same track and become congested. I was listening to "Hotel" by Broken Social Scene and then "Better Things" by The Kinks when I realized I could rest my head by propping my hoodie up on my lap, atop some bananas one of my students from Ghana had bought for me as a present. Then the guy next to me got up and left, so I had the corner to myself.
It was then that I began thinking about divinity unleashed all around me and every little annoyance currently bothering me and everyone I could see being part of some sort of planned synchronicity. The next song was "Hey Jude," which always reminds me of the magical rewards of patience, and I realized then that I could use my hoodie as a pillow. I stretched out comfortably in the corner and dozed as we stalled at every station. Once we were stopped in between stations and they cut the power, so the lights dimmed and there was no sound, and it was very eerie. But I had the synchronicity in mind. I didn't understand the timing or where it was taking me, but it was taking me where I would be happy to be, supposedly.
Once we reached 138th street (we started at 188th street), the train stalled for over five minutes. Then we finally moseyed into 125th street when they informed us every train was experiencing delays and running locally to 59th street. So I switched to the 6 train where I found a seat and thanked God for making me appreciate it more, having stood the whole way to work in the morning and most of the way back. But of course we were stalled for over ten minutes, and then again at 110th street. We must have waited for over 15 minutes there, and then stalled again at 103rd street. Apparently there had been an incident at 33rd street earlier in the day which had caused all the 456 trains to run on the same track and become congested. I was listening to "Hotel" by Broken Social Scene and then "Better Things" by The Kinks when I realized I could rest my head by propping my hoodie up on my lap, atop some bananas one of my students from Ghana had bought for me as a present. Then the guy next to me got up and left, so I had the corner to myself.
It was then that I began thinking about divinity unleashed all around me and every little annoyance currently bothering me and everyone I could see being part of some sort of planned synchronicity. The next song was "Hey Jude," which always reminds me of the magical rewards of patience, and I realized then that I could use my hoodie as a pillow. I stretched out comfortably in the corner and dozed as we stalled at every station. Once we were stopped in between stations and they cut the power, so the lights dimmed and there was no sound, and it was very eerie. But I had the synchronicity in mind. I didn't understand the timing or where it was taking me, but it was taking me where I would be happy to be, supposedly.
By the time I emerged into the open air in Queens, I had been underground for 2 hours. It was cloudy, but I felt like I had just emerged from a day of work in the coal mine. The sky had never been so beautiful. I couldn't see the sun, but I knew it was there.
Later we were having a few beers at a bar with live music. We had a great time, but at one point one brief subject of the conversations sparked a momentary but terrifying feeling that all of my dreams were for naught and that I would just grow up to be sad and bored with unfulfilled hopes. Yes, I know: irrelevant, irrational, and unlikely if I continue to work hard and believe. But still, it very momentarily got to me and I was starting to feel unhappy... but then the band started playing a zydeco version of "Wagon Wheel." It was the first time I had heard it live since I'd lived in New York City years ago.
Later we were having a few beers at a bar with live music. We had a great time, but at one point one brief subject of the conversations sparked a momentary but terrifying feeling that all of my dreams were for naught and that I would just grow up to be sad and bored with unfulfilled hopes. Yes, I know: irrelevant, irrational, and unlikely if I continue to work hard and believe. But still, it very momentarily got to me and I was starting to feel unhappy... but then the band started playing a zydeco version of "Wagon Wheel." It was the first time I had heard it live since I'd lived in New York City years ago.
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