Where Peace is Power, Prayer is Sovereign

I share this very very rarely with anyone, normally where it's applicable to present a living metaphor. But it's no metaphor, I'm telling this as always, as it happened, to the letter and without any further embellishment, as the events in my life, when they occur like this, stand on their own as living metaphors in actual literal expression:

It was in my earliest period in Berlin, maybe '89. I lived on a barracks installation which had once been Adolf's own private HQ and installation, complete with private 'Praetorian Guard'. There where I massaged as a side occupation, Gestapo had onced ripped bones from flesh. There where our dental facility was were the bullet holes still left from the 'Night of the Long Knives' when Adolf purged his SA command. I rejoiced in the irony of being part of the Allied Occupation which now raised its stars and stripes every morning where this motherfucker once ruled from. A Jewboy from Colorado-in-America.

Every morning (sometimes I even had the honor of this duty) the flag would go up with the manner of ceremony which I've only ever known among us Americans, dismayed that not even the Brits did this half as well with theirs. Now the "German-national" guards employed by us manned the gate, and they put on the recorded 'Reveille' on the raising and lowering of that flag. On the minute. That meant mornings exactly at 0600 hours, x7, rain or shine. You could hear that recorded Reveille for a span of blocks. Now to what happened.

The windows in my humble quarters, the room I shared with friend Brad, faced in the direction of that gate and that parking lot where the flag went up, blocked from view only by the next barracks which stood between us. Every morning, without fail, I was up early enough to do my set, whatever form that took, before the 'Army-world' even woke up – to the sound of its 'Reveille'... Normally I had finished my breath practices, my 'morning set' of Sufi prayers, and would sit in the lovely morning stillness until I was finished or until that 6:00 Reveille broke out.

On this particular morning I had neglected to notice the time, and on this particular morning, a Saturday where everyone slept-in anyway, like my roommate Brad snoring through this entire episode - on this particular Saturday at one minute to six, sitting on my prayer mat, facing that window (because it was a window, the direction being of no consequence), I was in a particularly intimate feeling, having nearly completed my set and just sitting there with The Beloved, continuing my concentration. It was that soft-morning-light-after-having-just made-love feeling: intimate, close. Not to be disturbed. I'd forgotten to register that my timing was off, that Reveille would blow before I was finished, with a thoroughly obnoxious interruption. It did.

The problem was not merely that it made a bumptious and crude interruption, it was the fact that I was just in the middle of completing my prostrations, toward that window which happened to overlook the area int he actual direction of the recorded military-national music blaring its guts and the raising of the flag which under any other circumstances would be okay, just – not – this – circumstance. That was too much.

Without 'thinking' but with a colossal mega-wrath pointedly directed at that flag and trumpeting, there went a vector of thought energy, literally a command out of my third eye, wordless and nano-second swift, yet robust and vulgar, that is, if I were to put it into words, which it nearly was but nano-second time: 'Shut the fuck up – right now!!! Now!!! I am prostrating to God and never to you!!! Now you shut...the-fuck...up!!!' Like a finger pointing, this went out from my third eye not as a wish but an order. Exactly seconds after that occurred, the music went haywire: obviously, in the physical world, the recorder was eating the tape in the cassette, could happen any time, I knew this.

Only this time it happened now, on command, I knew this as well. I found it later remarkable that I was not for a second the least bit surprised at what was happening, it felt very very natural. And I knew that since a tape had just gotten eaten, they'd be scrambling for a reserve one, find it, slip it in and start over. Until then the flag itself had to wait. And this would take at least a good couple of minutes, which were all I needed. And as I sat there those next seconds, the next wrath-command-thought shot out of my third eye – never once did I think 'wow, gee, didja get that?' - sovereign, one-minded, exactly as follows, 'pointing': '...And you'll stay the-fuck shut-up until I'm finished...until I'm finished!!!' And it did. As I was really finished and satisfied, I sat there erect, at peace, and only then it cranked up anew. And that was okay.

Right after it all happened, and I was sitting there, having "made" the US military tradition and custom "bow" to my morning practice, so to speak, and quietly remarking to myself, "So. ... So be it" - and I could hear my Teacher all the way from the West Coast clearly laughing in my skull between my ears, bellowing with characteristic humor and irony:  "SO!  NOW WE KNOW THAT GOD IS GREATER THAN THE ARMY!"

Now being methodic and scientific, I went out to check whether I'd dreamed the whole thing up. Only I needed to know objectively what had happened with me, no one else, but I needed to corroborate with the outside whether what had happened 'out there' was objective fact or merely subjective on my part. Brad had slept through it, the compound was all in slumber, those who'd raised the colors had long since gone, but there were the guards, they had duty. I asked them casually if anything odd had happened. They confirmed the entire occurence, down to the minute, down to the detail. I kept my side of it to myself, they'd had enough excitement for one morning.