Rock Climbing Wall

Stopping Time

Six hundred feet straight down! Nothing to break the fall. I’ve got to switch channels. I don’t like my chances on this station. Infused with youthful caprice, I mused to myself about my predicament. Enjoying the intense body rush of imminent danger, I was torn between prolonging the joy-terror and searching for an escape from my imminent demise.

I’d been in similar dire situations before and I’d always evaded the worst. How did I get out of danger before? Quick, you idiot, think! You don’t have all day!

The impending disaster pumped my adrenaline—and my memory. I let go, I reminded myself. That’s what I did in past situations. I just let go of having to control the whole thing. I released my need to be right about how life operates. I allowed the picture to change. That’s when circumstances shifted and something unexpected, seemingly impossible, occurred. Let the channel switch, Keith! I coached myself into letting go into safety once again. Averting the most probable outcome, I robbed death of its prey yet another time.

Yes, rather unceremoniously, I was reminded of the natural malleability of the physical universe by a six-hundred-foot free fall straight down a sheer cliff. The threat of a perilous plunge into empty space re-impressed on my young mind the lessons I learned in similar predicaments: go with the slide on the ice rink, relax into the tackle in football and turn toward the skid in the car. Now I call it “the decision to surrender.” Back then, I called it “just letting go.”

I was fourteen. The morning mist was lifting after an all-night soaking rain. My girlfriend Cheryl and I decided to go for a hike down a precipitous gorge in upstate New York. We had most of the crisp spring day to play before reporting to work as dinnertime servers at a local restaurant. The trail was winding and steep. Three hours later, we arrived at the bottom of the granite and shale canyon.

Cheryl was an intriguing, rare combination of tomboy and temptress. I was a mix of tenderheart and tomcat. In a wondrous, inexplicable way, we complemented each other, generating a lot of easy, relaxed fun together. After spending an afternoon playing and swimming in the rippling stream, it dawned on us we didn’t have enough time to hike back up the zigzagging trail to the top and get to work on time. After discussing our limited options, we concluded we could still make it back to civilization and our job deadline if we climbed straight up the vertical cliff.

Ascending the steep cliff turned out to be quite easy. Protruding from the sheer granite wall were small rock ledges as easy to climb up as rungs on a ladder. Within thirty minutes we were twenty feet from the top. We would have been home free, except that the previous night’s rain had soaked the soil near the crest, loosening the shale ledges. As we neared the top, each time we placed a foot or hand on the next rock outcropping, the shale broke away from the cliff. Very quickly, we found ourselves frantically moving our hands and feet from one shelf to another, searching for something solid to support us in order to clamber up the last few feet to safety.

We were very close to the top and firm ground. But we couldn’t make any more progress. With total panic on her face, Cheryl looked over at me—a silent plea for guidance screaming over the space between us. I didn’t know what to do next. I had no answers. Like her, I’d also run out of ledges within reach to grasp. I felt myself beginning to slide down the cliff.

Suddenly, my whole life flashed in front of my eyes! It was like watching a movie being projected a few feet in front of me. During the first second of my descent into the abyss, I re-experienced every major positive event of my life in full, living color, including all the emotional and physical sensations of each incident. I re-lived every significant birthday party, picnic, vacation, romantic date, school honor, sports achievement and family celebration of my short life. This vivid, instantaneous and comprehensive review was very rich and satisfying. Considering my precarious situation, an incongruous aura of calm and fulfillment swept over me.

The flashback ended as abruptly as it began. Suddenly, I was acutely aware of being suspended in time and space between the life review I’d just experienced and the next moment of present time—me in the midst of my slide down the cliff. During that seemingly eternal moment, the realization hit me like a ten-ton boulder: I don’t want to die! A wave of acute appreciation flooded over me. I love life. I want to continue exploring what life has to offer. I remember whispering to myself, I want to live, as if one part of me were informing another part of me.

Then, swoosh! I plummeted into the vast emptiness beneath me. Some alert, unknown aspect of my being spontaneously yelled to Cheryl, “Lie flat! Relax! Let go!” Hearing the words that came unbidden from within me, I, too, obeyed, and consciously chose to surrender to the inevitable.

I don’t remember anything after that decision, including what logically should have been a very abrupt and painful landing. All I know is, Cheryl and I were suddenly sitting in the stream at the bottom of the gorge where the current formed a small pool. Although the water in the pool had turned crimson with our blood, neither of us was experiencing any aches or discomfort. Upon close examination, we found the bleeding came from small, razor-thin cuts all over the fronts of our bodies. But we had no broken bones, bruises or other injuries. Our bodies weren’t sore or tender—just laced with teeny nicks and slices that quickly stopped bleeding. It was as if the only purpose of the scratches was to remind us that, yes, indeed, we had just gone free falling down a six-hundred-foot cliff.

After a short period of wonderment, we practically danced up the long, circuitous trail to the top of the gorge. We were so thankful—and simply happy to be alive, in one piece and being given a second chance. The climb was effortless. Inexplicably, we were totally refreshed and recharged with energy when we reached the top.

Crisis. Emergency. Danger.

These threats to my well-being were my early teachers. From these seeming enemies, I learned that when faced with an expected outcome I don’t like, I have an option. I can open to an alternative scenario, another framework, a different set of rules. I jokingly call my ploy “switching channels.” It’s an apt metaphor. I simply let go of my old way of viewing the world and allow a fresh perspective to emerge—or not! After all, when we truly let go, anything can happen! More often than not, however, I find myself shifted to a new reality—a different station with a new storyline that has a much better ending! This is the stuff of miracles and alchemy.

I first noticed the saving gift of grace when I was a kid. I’ve always enjoyed the thrill and challenge of perilous situations. On the ice rink, I discovered that if I completely collapsed into a fall, I came out unscathed. Caught in a precarious position when tackled on the football field, I went with the force of the hit to tumble out of harm’s way. When in a sharp skid while driving, I embraced the skid by turning directly into it to straighten the car. When my feet slipped on a rocky trail, I went with the twist or slide and landed—like a cat—upright and stable. Like the proverbial drunk falling safely down the staircase, I used to sled down a steep set of wooden stairs on a makeshift cardboard toboggan, deliberately crashing at the bottom and never getting hurt.

I practiced the knack of letting go in everyday situations, so that I was able to successfully apply the skill in much more urgent and crucial predicaments. As a teenager, the art of “abandonment to the moment” saved my neck in several near-miss car encounters. Attempting to pass a vehicle on the winding mountain roads of my home state of Pennsylvania, I found myself on several occasions eyeball-to-eyeball with the driver of an oncoming auto. With both cars going fifty miles per hour, my next stop in five feet and two seconds was the Pearly Gates. Each time, I instinctively let go—of the steering wheel, my projected scenario and my programmed ideas of physics. Voila! I ended up rattled but untouched on the side of the road.

In my young twenties, as a professional journalist covering floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, accidents and assorted disasters, I observed this miraculous dynamic of super-natural powers on countless occasions. When confronted with a choice between the dire prognosis of their current belief system and an unknown outcome if they let go of those beliefs, people will often choose to let go. They release their preconceptions of how the physical universe works. They let go of their need to have events fit their expectations of cause and effect. The reward for such surrender of one’s rigid beliefs and expectations is a much preferable outcome—in fact, a miracle—or, at least, what we call a miracle: an occurrence outside our box, our paradigm, beyond what we think or believe is possible.

I’ve witnessed people lifting two-ton trucks, ripping open steel elevator doors, and performing medical procedures they had no way of knowing how to conduct. How? By choosing to go with an unknown future instead of a known past. When a person’s own life, or the well-being of another, is at stake, people often decide to drop the limitations taught by our culture. When it’s dramatically obvious that a known past will lead to a known—but fatal—future, people will often choose to give up their familiar, current beliefs and allow something fresh and new to occur.

As a young journalist, a light bulb lit up inside my head: If we can tap these super-normal abilities in a crisis, why can’t we access these extraordinary powers at will, whenever we want? Thus began my lifelong quest for the Holy Grail—the sacred vessel that holds the nectar of the gods, the knowledge of how to recapture our true nature.

Indiana Jones and the Volcano

Experiencing a live volcano was on top of our agenda when my friend Rob and I visited the exotic land of Costa Rica. The plane touched down in the capital city of San Jose, and, after clearing customs, we headed for the car rental to pick up a 4×4 and a map to Mt. Arenal, the nearest active volcano.

After an arduous drive through torrential rain, we finally arrived in a quiet village supposedly at the foot of a fire-belching monster. I say supposedly because it was so foggy, we weren’t even sure a volcano existed. We couldn’t see a tree a block away, let alone a volcanic mountain looming 5,000 feet above us.

Locals claim if you really listen closely, you can hear the beast rumble. We never heard a whimper. By the second misty day and night of no sighting, I suspected the local population had fabricated the story of an erupting volcano in order to attract tourist dollars. A volcano of convenience. No muss, no fuss. Just some imaginary rumbling every so often that only the locals hear from a volcano no one ever sees because of the rain and fog!

Near the end of our second day of waiting out the rain, we were eating a tasty native dinner of red beans and rice at a colorful local dive when the owner of the café strolled over to our table. Without hesitation or invitation, he plopped himself down. Miguel appeared to me exactly as I’ve always imagined don Juan of Carlos Castaneda fame to look. His face was dark and swarthy with a kind but inscrutable expression. Staring straight into our eyes, he declared in halting English, “You want to know volcano, not just look at it.”

Being a veteran traveler, I have learned to be agreeable in a foreign country and, in general, say “yes” to practically everything spoken to me by the locals. Not realizing the full import of the distinction between the words Miguel had used, I responded amicably, “Yeah, yeah, of course, we’d like to know the volcano.”

Without another word, Miguel turned over one of our paper place mats and, pulling a broken stub of a pencil from his shirt pocket, began to draw a crooked line. We watched in silence for the next twenty minutes as he guided the pencil over the grease-stained paper in absorbed concentration. What emerged was a detailed map of twists and turns with landmarks indicated by little, kid-like pictures of trees, stone walls and tiny shacks to represent a village.

Finished, Miguel put the pencil back in his pocket, sighed and spoke directly into our souls with piercing, green eyes. “This,” he said, tapping the crude map with its meandering trail, “take you to volcano. To be with volcano.” With his finger, Miguel softly tapped his chest over his heart, “to feel and know spirit of volcano.” Then he laughed softly and cautioned us we would be scared because the volcano would definitely erupt when we were there. “But volcano not harm you,” he added hastily. With a wistful look in his face, Miguel shared how he and his friends have picnicked at the edge of the volcano his whole life and the towering inferno had never harmed him. His words only mildly consoled me.

The sound of the cold, drenching rain woke us at dawn. We still couldn’t see or hear the volcano. Since the downpour discouraged us from any other tourist activity, we decided we may as well get soaking wet following Miguel’s map to wherever it led. Maybe the rain would stop once we were out of the village. Fat chance!

We drove up the steep mountainside of what the villagers below insisted was the volcano until the rugged jeep road ended abruptly at a craggy cliff. I was very surprised Miguel’s rough, hand-drawn map actually corresponded to what we found on our journey. His drawing indicated the sheer cliff and the small, hidden opening we found nestled between the rock wall and a weather-beaten wooden fence. We followed our friend’s makeshift chart through the hole, up a circuitous rocky path, over many collapsed lava rock walls and past long-deserted fruit orchards. The trail ended abruptly at an imposing 300-foot wall of solid volcanic lava flow so jagged and sharp we couldn’t climb it.

Fortunately for us, Miguel had anticipated this challenge. At the left edge of the lava flow, his map showed a naturally camouflaged trail through the dense rainforest. Our confidence in both our friend and his diagram strengthened over the past several hours, we plunged into the dark primeval forest. The jungle growth was so thick with vines and roots, the path so muddy and slippery, I felt we’d dropped into a comic scene right out of the Harrison Ford movie “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark.” During one hilarious moment, Rob and I both lost our footing and, clutching each other, slid back down fifty feet of the mudslide trail. Grabbing overhanging vines, Tarzan-style, saved the day—and our necks! Our guardian angels must get a lot of overtime pay!

Undaunted and filled with the rush of adventure, Rob and I helped each other stand up, pull ourselves together and restart the climb. Clawing and scratching our way through the rainforest, we finally reached the top of the lava flow. My first impression was how very windy and cold it was up there for a tropical climate. The pouring rain and dense fog had persisted, obliterating the view of anything more than a foot in front of us. As we inched our way along the top of the volcanic rock, I remembered how Miguel had told us of his many idyllic picnics here with his friends. Not very conducive weather for a picnic on this morning!

Suddenly, a booming roar filled the air, followed by a very powerful rumble that reverberated throughout our bodies. We felt the Earth roll in one undulating wave after another! Although Rob and I had never experienced an eruption before, we instinctively knew this was the volcano showing its might. The ground continued to heave in unnerving spasms. People-size boulders sped past us down the slope. Flying rocks were propelled into nearby trees, the sheer force imbedding the projectiles cleanly into their trunks. We heard and felt nearby avalanches crashing their way down the mountain. We could only see a fraction of the devastation because of the blinding downpour, but our bodies definitely registered the massive rearrangement all around us.

A sharp electric terror shot through every cell of my body. Its message was explicit and commanding, “Leave! Now! You must go now to save your life.”

I shouted to Rob, “We’re out of here! It’s not safe!” To my astonishment, he shook his head from side to side indicating he didn’t want to go.

“I’m staying. This is too cool!” he yelled over the roar of the wind and falling rock. He was nineteen years old. His sense of novelty and exploration was still stronger than his sense of danger and good judgment. I started to argue. I made zero impression on the brash, young daredevil.

Then another explosion rocked our world. I watched in horror as the heat, ash and force of the blast denuded a huge 200-foot tree in one second, stripping off all its leaves and limbs. If this volcano could do that to a tree, it could do the same to us! I knew with certainty I was supposed to leave posthaste.

Jumping off the top of the lava mound right into the rainforest, I bolted without another thought. I threw myself into the “Raiders of the Lost Ark” express mudslide, riding the flowing water and sludge through the dense jungle growth down the side of the still-quaking mountainside. In what seemed like only a few seconds, I arrived at the bottom of the lava flow. The path was certainly faster and easier going down than climbing up! For a brief moment, I lay soaked to the bone, resting in a mud puddle, my ripped clothes covered with brown muck.

Recovering some of my composure, I became aware for the first time of heat radiating from the lava flow smoldering several feet to my left. I crawled in the direction of the flow until I was within a few inches of the mass. To my surprise, the air felt like I had just opened a 400-degree oven. The surface was so hot, I instinctively jumped back a few feet. When we first arrived earlier in the morning, the extremely cold wind and pelting rain had so neutralized the radiant heat from the lava, we didn’t even notice the temperature.

But the heat was not the only aspect of the lava that the elements had concealed from us. I picked up a small twig and approached the foot of the black mound that had gushed from the top of the mountain. Getting as close as I could to the sulphurous heat, I stuck the branch into the rain-drenched ground about two inches in front of the lava. Within a minute, the lava hill reached the stick and buried it!

Suddenly my whole body reeled with the involuntary shudder of recognition. For the last hour Rob and I had been walking on a live, moving lava flow! And Rob was still up there running around on the molten granite.

Another eruption, three times louder than the first one, filled the air. My ears throbbed from the deafening boom. My feet and body registered avalanche after avalanche of crashing rock careening down the side of the volcano. Descending the rough trail, I ran head over heels in a panic, determined to outrun any rockslides coming my way. After a half-hour of the fastest, long distance race I’ve ever run, I arrived at our jeep safely sheltered under a broad-armed tree. Collapsing into the front seat, I fought to catch my breath.

As my pulse and mind quieted, I was overcome with fear for the safety of my friend still walking around on the moving bed of liquid rock in the midst of periodic violent explosions. I began feeling intensely responsible. I’d left a young kid in my charge on top of an erupting volcano! A nightmarish vision bombarded me. I saw his parents, who had entrusted their son with me, watching local authorities dig through the rubble of the volcano searching for the body of the lost American youth. Feeling so guilty and worried I could neither relax nor rest, I decided I must leave the jeep and hike back up the volcano. I had to find Rob.

No sooner had I opened the door of the jeep than an insistent inner impulse told me to stay put and listen inside for further instructions. When I receive such forceful commands from my inner coach, I usually obey. Quieting myself as much as possible under the circumstances, I endeavored to get in touch with my next best intuitive move. I challenged myself, Was it wrong what I did? Was it selfish and self-absorbed to look after my own safety and leave a young kid behind?

After I felt all the intense emotions stirred up from asking these soul-searching questions, I received a very strong message directly from Spirit. My inner knowing spoke to me emphatically, saying:

“You did the right thing. You followed your intuition. If you recall specifically, your inner coach told you that it was dangerous for you to stay, and that you needed to leave immediately. It said nothing about your friend Rob. Nothing at all. You were right to follow your guidance and leave. In fact, had you stayed, you may very well have endangered your friend’s safety! Had you stayed, you would have been out of alignment with your intuition and, therefore, out of harmony and integrity with yourself. This discordant state has a strong tendency to interfere with another person’s ability to tap into and follow his or her own knowing. Had you stayed, you may have hindered Rob’s ability to hear and heed his inner direction. You took the most helpful, loving and appropriate action by following the letter and spirit of your intuition. You following you own internal urging allowed your friend the space to realize he must rely on his own internal wisdom.”

Spirit’s message was a fascinating new lesson in intuitive guidance for me. In general, and for its reassurance in my present predicament, I was grateful for this fresh perspective. I never before realized the precision of intuition. I never before understood the independence of one person’s guidance from the inner counsel of another person in a shared situation.

At the exact moment I realized the import of what I was being told by my inner coach, Rob came streaking down the trail toward the jeep. In the fury of the last violent eruption, Rob received his own internal signal to vamoose. Guided by his own inner compass, he immediately took the Mudslide Express through the jungle to safety. I was extremely relieved—and appreciative to Spirit—that my nightmare vision of Rob’s demise was averted. I gave silent thanks for the eternal lessons I learned from our escapade.

Back on solid ground, Rob and I were anxious to leave the mountain rains and clouds. We hopped into the jeep and sped toward the sunny western coast of Costa Rica. Driving down the mountainside, we both lapsed in and out of thankful silence for being alive. Perhaps the next day, the morning’s events would seem a great adventure, but, right then, the very real danger we’d just survived remained very palpable and raw. Our minds, emotions and physical bodies were still remembering and replaying our narrow escape.

Suddenly, Rob and I experienced simultaneous intuitive hits to pull over and get out of the jeep. Leaning against the vehicle, we turned as one toward the top of the mountain we’d just descended. As if waiting for us to stop our downward trek away from the mountain and turn our gaze upward, the clouds parted to reveal the awesome Mt. Arenal volcano for the very first time since our arrival in Costa Rica so many days earlier. The dense mist lifted. We saw exactly where we had been hiking on the lava flow. We pinpointed where the tree line ended and the lava flow began. We’d been standing only a hundred yards from the open mouth of the volcano when it erupted!

The restaurant owner Miguel had promised we would be with, we would feel and we would know the spirit of the volcano. He said the mountain would definitely erupt when we were there. And he’d promised the volcano would not harm us. The rain and his crude map tricked us into going so close to the volcano that we did, indeed, get to know the volcano, not just view it.

Was it the spirit of the volcano that sent Miguel to us? —and turned the skies into a torrential downpour in order to obscure the treacherous nature of our journey so we wouldn’t be scared off? Rob and I agreed, stranger things have happened. One thing was certain. If we’d been able to see where we were going, we would never have walked as close as we did to the mouth of the cauldron.

Now, viewing the majesty of Mt. Arenal, we were humbled and ever so grateful for the experience of having been able to safely feel the mountain’s power and personality. As we were sending out our thankfulness to and admiration of the volcano, the mountain erupted again with an explosion twice as high as the volcano itself. Two miles of elegant ash plume shot up into the dark blue sky. The event was quite dramatic and very humbling.

We knew the volcano was responding to our love and appreciation for its gift to us that day. Then the clouds closed back in and our mighty friend said good-bye, leaving us forever changed and enriched by its friendship.