Inside the Mind of an Enlightened Master 2: An Enlightened Master's Mind On Intoxicants

Here I am in the eternal 'now' again, pleasantly baked on a joint. So rare that I can get to smoke any cannabis around the centre, but with so many of the Enlightened Masters and the lesser monks and nuns away on Christmas leave, and the few still on site meditating in their rooms or dorms next to their full blast turned up radiators, I've been able to get a bit of privacy and sneak this hit in the snowy male walking area. And man, does it hit when having lost all tolerance for the stuff in the weeks since I last had any - wow. Since this 'apparent' I last had any, I mean. Or what this apparent I means, rather. Who am I really? I regularly ponder. A conclusion often reaching in my meditation, and that this cannabis now is reinforcing, is that I am all that ever was or ever will be, just the same as you are also, dear imagined reader.
     Who is imagining you if you are indeed there reading this, reader, me or you?   
     Baha at the thought of actually sharing any of these stoned thoughts, or any of my real thoughts, with any reader or 'other'. While I continue to make out to the world of others that I am this Holy man, that just can't be done. No, these thoughts are for my personal amusement only while I go about my Holy day. Holy day, holi-day, tis pretty much a holiday all year round being one of the chief Enlightened Master higher ups at this 'Order Of One' tradition's spiritual centre / monastery. I hear footsteps approaching on the gravel leading to the walking area and quickly stub out the bifter, slipping it into my robe's pocket.
     "Oh, Master, good morning," comes the voice of one of the latest batch of new monk wannabe disciples, Clive or Alex or John, I think, the kid clasping his hands together to give me a little bow.
     I say nothing back - the privilege of being a Holy Enlightened Master, man - but return the obligatory namaste bow. The divine in me bows to the divine in you, and all that jazz.
     "Isn't it a beautiful morning," this kid continues. He should know better than to be making this idle chitchat, but is caught off guard surprised I think to find me here, and perhaps smelling the dank sensimilia still in the air and on my robes.
     "Crisp," he adds.
     I give him a closer study to see if he is offering me a potato crisp, but realise he is describing the December morning. Damn, I wish he'd had crisps. Despite only having managed to have a few puffs before this interruption, I've already got the munchies. He looks to me, giving me the opportunity to speak, but I maintain my silence. I look him straight in the eyes though - looking for any signs that he might have caught me smoking my illicit intoxicant spliff. But if he has done, he's not letting on that he has - or visually responding like I would expect if having noticed any pupil dilation in mine. All I can detect from him is a mix of the usual awe at being in the presence of an Enlightened Master combined with the discomfort at not knowing what to say in this situation, nor how to be quiet the way all are encouraged to be here, speaking only when absolutely necessary. I just want him to buzz off so I can get on with smoking my spliff. Bloody pest, shoo.
     After what seems like several minutes, to my stoned mind anyway, of eyeballs to eyeballs showdown, the kid finally gets the message that no idle chitchat from me, an Enlightened Master, will be forthcoming, and, in this satori moment for him, bows again, this time in sincere apology. His formerly beaming face is now a crumpled wreck from my telepathically conveyed message having gotten through to him that his engaging in conversation had been an improper decision. I can see he is itching to vocalise a great big "Sorry" also, but his brain manages to stop him, judging, correctly, that any further speech from here on will only make matters worse. Just clear off already, vamoose, I do my utmost to telepathically convey to him also, keeping this to noble language, no swear words. It seems he gets this as well, keeping his hands clasped in a bow, retreating, and then when a few backwards paces away, turning around back in the direction from which he had come and walking, slowly and mindfully, away. I know I should just let him leave in this manner, but my stoned sense of humour kicks in, and, after letting him depart to at least fifteen steps away, I can't help myself from shouting after him, in a pretend offended tone, "Don't say goodbye then!!"
     "Oh I'm so sorry Master," the poor kid splutters, turning around and heading back towards me, all the while bowing like no tomorrow. I try not to smirk. Oh man, I'm so mean. Bad karma for this probably. But maybe Enlightened Masters, and monks and nuns and the lower level disciples, should all enlighten up - not be so serious. Maybe this was a better enlightenment and lighter way of life to teach.
     "I'm only kidding, kid," I laugh. I know I shouldn't speak to a disciple in this way, but I'm too high to care. My mask is dropped - for now I feel compelled to be my true self, or who I reckon might be my true self behind this 'apparent I'. In actuality, this has been shown on multiple occasions to be another imaginary mask and likewise only another apparent I, another layer in endless layers of babushka Russian doll-like imagined personalities - the anatta and atman non self pretending - kidding - to be selves. Yet this is the one I as a non I, no thing really, most identify with, even when suppressing it beneath the Enlighened Master role. So, my truest self would be a better word for it, I guess - the self that feels most true to... who?
     "Do you smoke the herb?" I now find this self asking Clive, Alex or John. He looks at me stunned, maybe thinking its another joke, or that he is being tested. Who knows, this time I have no read at all on what he is thinking, just his general confusion at this certainly not normal Enlightened Master behaviour. I know I, an Enlightened Master, shouldn't be offering him, a disciple, drugs, and especially not in a place where mind altering substances are prohibited in order to focus on clear mind and the spiritual path, but to me I've never seen ganja to be drugs - just a plant innit, the herb. Like anything on this planet, of course it can be abused, but if used medicinally, creatively, spiritually, I've always seen it to be a Holy herb. So, producing the remainder of the spliff and my lighter from my robe's pocket, I proffer these both towards him. Unfortunately, rather than being chill with this, the kid is visibly horrified, his hands breaking free from their glued bow to frantically wave this spliff and lighter away. His Holy image of me now having a crack in it.
     "I'm only kidding kid," I act quickly to try and repair the damage, "I know these aren't yours but I have just found them here on the meditation campus grounds. Very disappointing that someone should sneak intoxicants into an 'Order Of One' centre and by the looks of things be using them on site. This will have to be publicly addressed after the midday meditation sitting."
     I make a fixed eye contact again, but this time he is studying my eyes far more intently than he had done before - this time he is seeing the dilatedness of my pupils that, when never having expected any possibility of such before, he had been blind to - and beyond those into the windows of my soul - seeing that I am blatantly stoned out of my gourd and also full of crap with that story I'd been trying to sell him.
     "Well there you go, enlightenment in disillusionment, you're welcome," I say to him, or maybe I just think it, as he turns away from me once more and scurries off at a much faster pace, leaving blurry meditation sandalprints behind him in the snow.
     The snow reminds me of the wrap sitting in my robe's pocket. Once this Clive, Alex or John kid is out of view and I can no longer hear his feet trudging away on the gravel, I take it out and rack up a line on the notebook I've brought out with me mainly for this purpose but also to jot down any notes for the evening discourse. The hope that this might give me a bit of inspiration for doing the latter. Yeah I know I can't really justify cocaine as a non drug or intoxicant, and I ain't gonna try to suggest that its a Holy drug or spiritual, but it's Christmas, hey. While the others at the centre might choose not to be acknowledging the festive season, its always been a special time for me. Even the Chrimbos spent at Her Majesty's Pleasure, always these traditionally been done with a spliff and sniff. I wonder what this disciple kid's going to do, as I roll my ten pound note, but by the time the powder has been snorted through it, I cannot care less. I sink down to a meditation posture on the snowy grass and spontaneously close my eyes, drifting into meditation. Melting into light, Oneness, warmth. The 'there' zone - here - that I have also visited - vacating small I to join the bigger I - through sustained hours and days of deep meditation on its own, but this time propelled here quicktime by the coke.
     Next thing I know I am being shaken by two of the other Enlightened Masters - "Bob, Sanjay," I acknowledge them by their regular, not their Enlightened Master, names, "What's going on?"
     "You've passed out in minus ten degrees weather," Sanjay informs me, "We need to get you into the warm. Also Barry Edwards has come to the main office claiming that you have been using intoxicants out here, but we can talk about that once we get you inside."
     Barry. I could have sworn he was a Clive, Alex or John. What a pathetic snitch anyway. Snitches would get stitches in my pre Enlightened Master, or spiritual path treading, days. Now though, instead of harbouring angry, resentful or all out blood thirsty violent thoughts, I focus on my breathing, and then check in on my sensations, and notice that I have successfully removed myself from a negative energy situation that wasn't benefitting anyone. At the same time, I've snapped myself out of apparently having briefly drifted off.
     "I was just resting my eyes," I say, "meditating and having a think about what to speak about in this evening's discourse."
     "So what's all this that Barry Edwards is chatting about you doing drugs?" Bob asks, "What you got?"
     I study him closely to see if he is being serious, but I can't be sure. I turn to have a look at Sanjay's response to this, but his face is equally deadpan. I've never really chatted with either of them, or any of the other Enlightened Masters, before. No one ever really chats here.
It's gamble time again. I go with truth and tell them, "Bit of weed and a bit of coke.
     "Oh duude, sort us out a snort," begs Sanjay, "It's been yeeears!"
     "And while you're sorting out three cheeky lines," says Bob, "could I possibly do the honours and roll one please?"
     "Sure," I say, handing him the tobacco, papers and bag of weed out of my robe's pocket and taking the notebook and wrap out of there again as well. While I'm preparing the lines I ask, "What are we going to do about this Barry kid having busted me using intoxicants?"
     "Kill him?" suggests Bob, deadpan.
     Sanjay laughs at this, and punches me playfully on the robed shoulder.
     "Don't worry, man," he reassures me, "we'll sort something out, but first let's get stoned."