I’ll tell you the secret of how not to get Alzheimer’s, or senility, or whatever-you-call-it: You have to lose your mind when you’re young and stay that way. God has to get you out of your mind somehow in order for any kind of spirituality or inspiration or even normal everyday human competence in any endeavor, and you either go voluntarily or involuntarily. Since fighting is a kind of madness, if you fight madness it inevitably wins.
They should really call it Involuntary Alzheimer’s. If you don’t lose your mind early enough and stay in practice, God pries you loose from your mind in the end, and if you’re not used to it you think something’s wrong and you freak out. If you lose your mind, and stay in shape by exercising your non-mental Spirit, then when you get older and your brain starts to wear out you already know how to function in that state. And nobody knows that your brain is wearing out because they say, “Well, he’s always been like that.”
These trips are an exercise in early senility. We’re given a set of impossible-to-remember instructions that change daily. We’re in six different color groups to facilitate entry into museums, palaces, etc., but sometimes the color groups themselves split up or combine. On one day we even had a number in addition to the color groups. The color groups gather at the same time in the morning to call in the light and get logistics, but then they leave the hotel at different times. (And in Florence there are two different hotels.)
Each day these times change, the combinations of color groups change, and then if we get on a bus there are two buses, each with different combinations of color groups on different days. Then there are different radio channels to listen to our guides, and these change daily and then change again as color groups meet, disperse and dissolve like random thoughts when you’re trying to meditate.
You can’t possibly comprehend all of it and follow it with the mind, but if you let go things just sort of work out. Our assistants are so organized and dedicated, and they’ve got a monumental task because each site has restrictions on the number of people in a group, and that number continually varies, so our sub-groups have to be combined and re-combined with mathematical precision.
If you’re a voluntary Alzheimer’s case like me, out of 80 or so people someone is usually around who knows what group you’re in and what channel you’re on and what bus you’re on and when you’re supposed to depart or arrive. The process is not unlike keeping track of my girlfriends who accompany me on different trips in different years, which is why I refer to them in these essays as “the Girlfriend.”
The color groups are much easier to keep track of than the girlfriends. The trip organizers have figured it out brilliantly. There are bus signs with the color groups displayed. They have flags on poles with the different colors, and if you just follow the flag you know where to go. Just turn off your mind and follow the flag. It’s called living in grace. If you go with the flow and accept what J-R calls “divine unknowing” it’s actually quite easy, and it all works out, which is what I tell the girlfriends.
Luckily the Girlfriend on this trip is also head of the blue color group, so she usually knows what’s going on. And our hardworking tour coordinator is Sherie Wylie Markova— a Color Group Master (she studied in the Himalayas for several years) and keeper of all this arcane info, in addition to being one of six Presidents of MSIA. Plus she’s my ex-girlfriend (as I recall), which is a backup for me, although I’m not sure if it creates more or less complication. (The current Girlfriend and Sherie both got Minister of the Year awards this year, so if you want to be Minister of the Year it’s advisable that you get to know me, if you can find me. Ask Sherie which color group I’m in and where I’m at on any given day. Don’t ask the current Girlfriend because it could create friction. Sherie is far enough in the past that all the memories have faded and she won’t care.)
Today, after our group meeting and calling in the Light with John, we visited the Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens, grand home of one of the supremely wealthy Florentines who both competed and cooperated with the Medici in the rivalries, backstabbing, dealmaking and constantly shifting alliances of that time. (This was before the invention of color groups.) The Pitti Palace is part museum, with a huge collection that has been built up over the years by its prosperous and powerful inhabitants. There are many great works there by Botticelli, Rafael and Titian, etc., hung on 30-foot walls with masses of paintings jumbled together, sometimes stacked four or five high. I saw a Botticelli I never knew about up so high that I had to crane my neck to study it. Great power leads to over-creation which leads to excessive complexity which leads to the attempt at organization which leads to even greater complexity which leads to the collapse of organization and the final victory of the bliss of forgetting.
The rest of the day is free time, and time to pack for our departure tomorrow for Assisi, home of one of the masters of early senility who used simplicity as a way of navigating this complex world in a state of divine unknowing.
Um. This was a hilarious and completely brilliant essay, David. One of your best, although, it’s been so long since I’ve read any I may have divinely forgotten.