Meditation, halos, entropy, art and your happy place

A lock tender in Oswego, New York, on the south shore of Lake Ontario, asked where we were headed.

“Lake Ontario and the Thousand Islands,” I said.

The Thousand Islands region interfaces Lake Ontario at its eastern end and the St. Lawrence River. That’s been our destination, via the Erie and other canals in upstate New York, since we trailered Nellie Peach out of Lewes two weeks back and launched in the Hudson River near Albany.

“It’s beautiful there,” he said. “You’ll like it. Go to Sackett’s Harbor. A restaurant called Tin Pan Galley. Real nice place.”

“We’re also looking to stop in at Clayton. We hear that’s nice.”

The tender leaned on the yellow-painted metal railing along the lock where we floated. We chatted as he readied to open the valves to let the water out of the lock and lower us one step closer toward the level of the lake.

“Clayton,” he said, reflecting. “That’s a nice town. I ride my motorcycle up there a lot, look at the river. I have lots of extra days now. My wife passed last December. Up there, looking at the river, that’s my happy place.” He smiled gently.

The conversation reminded me of how much we need each other, how much we enjoy connecting with each other, and how much the coronavirus has disrupted that natural human inclination. We’re social creatures. Very few of us are hermits.

We have to work harder at healing our sick planet, make it stronger environmentally to resist viruses like COVID-19, so we can get back to cultivating the connections among us.

That’s where halos, artists and entropy – which I mentioned a few weeks back – come into play. It’s very complicated and very simple at the same time. Halos are a physical manifestation of enlightenment, the human ability to understand and feel connection to the great mysterious spirit, the great oversoul, God. Halos physically manifest God and love.

Meher Baba says, “Pour your drop into my ocean and become the ocean which in reality you are.” Baba’s ocean of love is the great oversoul. “Don’t worry, be happy.”

My friend Tom scoffs when I start talking about the oversoul. He’d rather drink vodka, smoke a cigarette and sing “The Old Rugged Cross.”

Russian writer and philosopher Leo Tolstoy says art succeeds as art to the extent to which it enhances the sense of brotherhood among all of us. Art can have the binding quality of love.

Read Michael Pollan’s excellent reporting in his New Yorker article titled The Trip Treatment and his related book “How To Change Your Mind.” He reports extensively on research showing the connections between what happens in our brains when we’re in deep meditative states or under the influence of mind-expanding drugs.

Scientists studying brain waves of people in those states can see energy moving from a place in the brain that has been labeled the default mode network. That network manages our ego – all the electrical systems in our bodies that help us survive as separate physical beings. But when, in those mind-expanded states, energy moves from the default mode network to other parts of the brain, we feel more selfless, less separated from others, more creative, and back to our original condition as connected beings.

That movement of energy from one state to another, as I understand it, is a form of entropy. Pollan reports that researchers at Johns Hopkins and other medical institutions are finding the use of mind-expanding drugs by terminally ill patients can calm their fears about death through the realization that their souls will remain connected even after the physical body ceases to exist.

Now for the big drum roll: My theory is the movement of electrical energy from the ego center of the brain to other, outer reaches of the brain is so intense in enlightened individuals like saints and prophets and messiahs that it creates an actual aura – a halo – barely there, but nonetheless perceptible to our keenest observers: artists. They have portrayed that physical spirit in holy paintings and sculpture for thousands of years.

It needs a lot of work, but that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

If it’s just too much to ponder, try heading off to look at a flowing river and connect with the ones you love. Find your happy place, and you just might develop your own aura.