Do you have times in your life when you run in a certain direction? At first, it’s just an interest. And then you get deeper and want more and more and… you go for it!

About 10 years ago, I found myself on an airplane headed to a silent retreat in Portugal. I wanted to see Mooji in person. A dear friend had found him compelling and I had started to listen to his satsang on my computer. Up until then, I would not have called myself a spiritual person, one likely to travel to hear a teacher.
But alone in my house in NH in the winter, I had plenty of time to get caught in my mind, and here was a person telling me, I wasn’t my mind. And that someday, if I could not only see that, I’d be free of all its agonies. Enlightenment was possible. A sense of perpetual wellbeing.

The retreat was in a beautiful area. Yes it was silent in that you didn’t socialize. But satsang was talk mostly. And the sessions went late into the night. Japanese, Indian, Russian, German, Polish, Scandinavian, French, Brazilian, Canadian, and more nationalities, all together. Mooji’s father was Jamaican (1/2 Chinese, 1/2 African descent) and his mother was from England. It felt extraordinary to be there.

And every day, I was TRYING to be mindless. Working hard. To let go of my running horse mind.

At the very end, within an hour of when all would close down and people would be headed to all parts of the globe again, Mooji asked: “Is there anyone here who didn’t get what they came for?” I don’t know how I had the gall in the crowd of 800 to raise my hand, and why he happened to call on me.

I walked up to the microphone and spoke to him, telling him how hard I had been trying and that my mind was very much in charge still. That I was stuck. Not enlightened.

He asked me one or two questions and I felt like the whole room shifted, that the sky opened up. I had this sense of peace I’d never felt before. And I walked back to my seat, walking like I’d been touched by an angel.

That sense of space lasted for – not sure – a few days? Little by little, it eroded. And I was back to myself as I’d been before. I couldn’t hold on to the transformation.

Yes, my horse mind came back. And yes, it does continue to run away with me. BUT…

I got something I deeply love in my art:

(I had this horse printed onto this large size carry-all)

Has this ever happened to you? You go for something and get something else. I was hoping to gain a quiet mind. In the end, I got

those horses.