Light Club

You probably don’t know this but…

…back in the late-nineties, while I was off on my travels investigating the world and myself, I became a member of a secret society called ‘Light Club.’ I guess the idea was we were something like a less violent version of Brad Pitt’s ‘Fight Club’. We were going to change the world, but in a nice way. We were 24 guys n gals, all in our twenties, all on similar paths of exploration. Incredibly, once we were all together, we realised we’d formed a group made up of one of each gender for each sign of the zodiac. There was no planning in that; it just happened ‘coincidentally’.

Of course, we all knew “there are no coincidences.” This was divine plan. This was “meant to be.”

The group was started, I guess, by old Bob. He was a spiritual teacher. A wise man. A guy who had spent his entire life gathering knowledge, experience, taking journeys in mystical realms, burrowing his way to the heart of the matter, the source of all things, the transcendent reality so few get to taste, let alone know about or believe in. We were drawn to him from far and wide, converging on his little place in the mountains down in Spain. Americans, Australians, people from all over Europe. I was among the third wave. There were about a dozen of us by then. The rest we found on our own individual journeys once he had dispersed us in little packs back into the world.

Magic times there with old Bob! Learning meditation and martial arts, and secret, long-forgotten occult practices giving one mastery over physical objects and even the weather. One time we did a rain dance right in the middle of the long drought of 2001, and, whaddya know, the bloody thing worked. Whatever Bob said would happen, did. He told us we’d all soon take a trip to that mystical, transcendent realm, if we stuck at it. When it happened for me, it was a billion times better than anything I’d ever known. My life was set: this was the course I was now on. This was the happiness I’d always been searching for.

Old Bob died, but it didn’t stop the Light Club. We found our remaining members. We were one big happy soul family. Everybody glowed. Everybody beamed, all the time. When we were together, it was a non-stop festival of hugs and smiles and love. Affirmations and support. Wild experiences and realisations and growth. And wherever we went, strangers were drawn to us, not knowing why, but constantly exclaiming their surprise and puzzlement at the peace, the joy, the exuberance they felt in our presence.

We were yogis and shaman. Meditators and seers. Foragers and farmers. Herbalists and healers. Story tellers and counsellors. Channelers and prophets. Mystics and dreamers. Manifesters and miracle workers. We had all bases covered. We were fearless and devout. And when the time came – when the prophesied world changes arrived and the people of the planet were forced to turn away from their materialism and look towards something completely different – we were ready;. We would lead the frightened masses out of the darkness and into the light. And the world would enter a glorious new phase of spirituality, connection to nature, and love.

Of course, as we all know now, it didn’t quite work out like that. It didn’t work out that way for the world – there was no great financial meltdown, no tilting of the Earth on its axis, no universal shift in human consciousness, no mass dismantling of our technology, or visitation from aliens, or any of the other drastic changes we hoped for and expected – and it didn’t work out that way for the Light Club either. For, one by one, our happy band of spiritual travellers fell by the wayside.

I guess what we took to be a permanent state of bliss and enlightenment – that taste of the transcendent we had all come to experience through Bob’s tutelage and presence – wasn’t quite what it seemed. So many times we’d say, “this is like being on drugs, but without the come down, we just keep getting higher and higher.” But what we didn’t realise was it was exactly like being on drugs, only far longer lasting. For most of us, it took at least two years before the come down began. And when it did, things got messy.

Number one, we didn’t want to come down. We’d spent years getting high, and getting higher and higher, and there was no way we were going to let go of it. And so we struggled in vain to deny the inevitable, to find some way to cling to our bliss and so-called ‘enlightenment’. To keep at bay the approaching ‘return to Earth’. But nothing we tried would work.

And, number two, with this come down, with this ‘return to Earth’, there was a reassertion of all the pesky ‘human tendencies’ we’d believed our elevated states had freed us of for good. Emotional issues, familial relationships, problems with sex, money, work, ambition, insecurity. It was all there – always there – hiding beneath our temporary vacation from Earthly existence. We’d become disembodied spirits, hanging out in bliss. We were like trees who had grown mighty and beautiful and tall, but who had neglected to sink any roots into the ground. Of course, many had told us that growth worked both ways, but we laughed at them, dismissed them, figured they were just trying to ‘bring us down’, out of jealousy and envy. In truth, they were messengers from Life. And when Life grew tired of playing it subtle, Life sent a storm, and each and every one of those glorious tall trees came crashing to the ground with a bang.

(to be continued…)