Woof! Woof!

Interesting comments have been coming my way, this one from friend Colleen, who lives in Floyd. She is one of a small band who loyally follows my blog, and she responds with some frequency. This particular comment arrived in relation to my last post about giving up hope.

"A Lao Tzu passage I've been using in meditation says: Success is as dangerous as failure. Hope is as empty as fear. Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of self."

Colleen says she wants Virgil as her guru. Virgil, overwhelmed with happiness when he heard this, turned and went "Woof! Woof!" not doglike so much as tigerlike--powerful, scary, and utterly suited to the situation. "Would you like to be baptized or would you like a prayer rug?" he wanted to know. "Or maybe you'd just like a cookie?"

Then I heard this song on the radio, called "I Don't Do Sadness." Wow, I thought, there it is: I Don't Do Hope. And I'm getting quite used to the idea. So that's how my work is going, if you care to know. I'm about in the middle of the channel now. Maybe the time will come soon when I won't do fear either. Stay tuned.

I was driving to Roanoke on Saturday morning with my friend Eileen, when she told me about her weekend in New York, attending a days-long yoga workshop with a master who was extraordinarily sweet and unassuming. At the close of the final session, everyone meditated together with their eyes closed. While that was going on, white plastic bowls filled with salad were quietly placed in front of each person. Meditation over, they all ate their salads in silent communion. Then the teacher declared he had something to show them. He held his empty white salad bowl in his hands, lifting it up like a prayer offering. As the students watched, the bowl, as if of its own accord, slowly levitated several inches up into the air and hung there, suspended, for several seconds.

"It's like a magician doing magic tricks," I said. "Pulling a live rabbit out of his hat."
"This wasn't a trick," said Eileen, somewhat tersely. "It was real."

The line-up of magic continues, according to Colleen. I sent her a copy of this blog via email before posting it on line. Hard to believe, but here is what she wrote me back: "Woof Woof is the perfect response. My dad used to call me "woof woof." I know it sounds bizarre but he made up strange nicknames for everyone. Mine was Colly Wolly Wolf, which led to Woof and Woof Woof. I wonder if it was derived from the fact that my older brother called me Colly Dog when he wanted to tease me?"

Things like this defy the element of chance. The only explanation I could find for such extraordinary synchronicity--do you suppose Virgil is in cahoots with Eileen's yogi?