On Saturday I was talking to a friend about spiritual practice. She had been reading something that talked about single-mindedness as the way to enlightenment. I said I wasn’t interested in enlightenment, I wanted to live my life as well as possible and help heal the earth. I thought about how I had gotten where I am, and it certainly wasn’t through single-mindedness. Unless maybe my commitment to truth could be called singleminded. I saw that odd set of steps by which I had arrived at the expression of my vocation — seen now only in hindsight — and how I had met the right person here, was given the right information there . . . I could imagine God guiding me — now go this way, now go that way, here’s this person…. I looked at the improbable series of events that led to my book, circle dance, and Neskaya, and I saw how if one small thing hadn’t happened, I would never have arrived.
I’ve told part of the story in “How I Got to Stonehenge” and “How I Got to Stonehenge Again.” The whole story goes a lot farther back, and has a lot of essential pieces. One way to tell it is: If I hadn’t been told about Stonehenge by John Garber, I wouldn’t have gone. If I hadn’t taken Modern Architecture I wouldn’t have met John Garber. If my parents hadn’t had a friend with a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, I wouldn’t have met John Garber. If I hadn’t got tired of science I wouldn’t have been taking art courses in my Junior year. And so forth. There are a lot of little pieces in the puzzle of my life.
I’ve started writing down some details of this process and it’s a lot of fun. A totally unexpected result — I’ve been feeling happy! It started Saturday night, lasted all through Sunday, and is still going on Monday morning. How amazing! Thank you, all of you!