Venice Beach

It was time to close our eyes now and settle into meditation. I took a deep breath, let my shoulders fall, and focused on the space between my eyebrows. The candlelight danced behind my eyelids and a small resentment immediately crept up for whoever decided to leave the windows and blinds open. The teacher’s voice quickly becomes a distant mumbling that fades in, out, and between the soundscapes of Venice Boulevard. A homeless or drunk person mumbles and shuffles, a fight, an old Americana song approaches from the left and fades out the right, car horns, and motorcycle engines, images and a story similar to the fitful, disturbing, and almost real dreams you have after sleeping for too long begin to appear in my mind. It was a surprisingly full meditation class, a rarity in Miami, but common in places like this, places where people want to feel free and at the same time want everything.

I found myself wandering up the Venice boardwalk one evening, only to stop as if pulled by the hair in front of a man who was quietly painting, his art was on display all around him, for all to see and hopefully purchase. Little human figures stood before vast deep blue voids, other’s leapt off high cliffs and sprouted wings, and two souls found each other again and again, from canvas to canvas, throughout various moments in Eternity. I felt my energy rise and a smile spread across my face as I gazed at his work. He glanced up from behind his easel and said hello to me. I stood in silence just smiling at him because I was suddenly so unexplainably high “I dont know what it is about this very spot and your art but it feels just fantastic.” I said to him, he laughed and replied “Oh it’s working for you?” I grinned, “Yes!” He told me that where I stood right now was “The very cutting edge of Western Civilization.” Not California, Venice Beach itself. He went on to explain to me that this is where all the tech people have decided to create their headquarters and continue their plan of progressing our civilization into a new era of advanced technological integration.

His name was David Alexander English. After this initial meeting, I would often ride a borrowed bike over to him to watch sunsets, sit quietly while he painted, and observe the contrasting magical realism and sobering reality of life on the Venice Boardwalk. Although we mostly sat in silence and kind of chuckled about nothing at all when our eyes happened to meet, when he did speak, he told me stories. One time he saved a man from finishing the job of killing himself with a dull piece of glass at a Rainbow Gathering. He always marveled after the fact at how incredibly determined that man was to end his life, and how difficult it was to wrestle this piece of glass out of his hand. He told me how every night he defied the limitations of his physical body in his dream state through the practice of astral projection. He soared and flew everywhere. He felt most of us harbored this dream deep in our hearts, to know what it feels like to fly.

Every sunset, he stopped whatever he was doing and turned to stare at the sun. “Never lose your connection with that.” he said to me one evening, pointing at the sun. “that is everything.” Some days he spent entirely in meditation and contemplation. He was unimpressed and bored by the fearful conformity most people had resigned themselves to, his contempt for the normies was palpable when they stumbled across his art and didn’t understand anything at all, took his picture like he was a zoo animal, and walked away. At the same time he wanted to be seen by them and help the ones ready to remember what they truly are: Eternity. He attempted this by self-publishing books, movies, and recordings and by painting prolifically, producing something new immediately after completing his last work. He seemed to live right where he stood, and confirmed this by pointing at the center of my chest one day, declaring “This is your home.”

One day David explained to me that he saw the energetic war happening on this planet - The war over Consciousness. There are non-human beings that are very interested in suppressing human consciousness, energetically feeding off our fear and ignorance, he said. They watch us and manipulate our world to harvest our energy for their own purposes. This was a theme I would go on to hear about often over the years from those identifying with many “New Age” ideas and interestingly also from those coming from a religious background - a belief in evil. I never heard it mentioned in this way from Yogic teacher’s and traditions, instead of an external war they spoke of an inner war and the need to conquer and rise above those inner enemies we all harbor - Lust, Greed, Hatred, Envy, Jealousy. There are many forks in the road when it comes to spiritual beliefs, I would go on to find this particular split often on various spiritual paths, another topic that splits the herd right in half is the question of whether we all have free-will to create our destiny, or is this the perfect movie created by a writer, director, producer, and actor who are actually one and the same, yet appearing as many through the artistic trickery of a cosmic Hollywood?

After each sunset together I would ride my bike back to the hostel where I lived while David packed his materials into his Volkswagon Van, he slept on a couple of yoga mats right there next to his art. After driving to a tried-and-true location where his body could rest undisturbed, he would settle in for the night, and begin to soar. I asked him once about the hypnotizing question, Who am I? and what he thought of diving into this question as a spiritual practice to remember who we really are, he replied, “What if who you really is just like that feeling you had as a little kid when you were all snuggled up in bed ready to sleep, staring at the ceiling in wonder, feeling like everything, feeling peace.”