Chakra Wha???

The other night I sat audience to a rather memorable conversation. In the midst of a bar rumbling with the sound of liquored gaiety shouted over the blaring jukebox, I listened, perplexedly, while several friends animatedly discussed their unforgettable third eye experiences.

Feeling dumb, I only vaguely recalled hearing of this third eye before. 1996, the year I decided to don thrifted bell bottoms, give up red meat and smell of patchouli. The year my best friend Jenny swore we could get high smoking incense, which turned out to be a foul-tasting lie. That year I was a member of the Karma Patrol at the annual Whole Earth Festival, an event resplendent with stereotypical tofu skewers and vendors selling useful wares such as clay flutes and hand carved wooden hair combs. The duties of this position included handing out daisies and water, helping lost children, and the occasional application of sunblock to a patron's hard-to-reach-limb. One moonlit night during our training, Patrol members gathered at one organizer's apartment and painted the side of her building with a garish mural of cliche hippie crap: rainbows, hearts, peace signs, and if I recall correctly, a creepy but colorful eyeball proudly proclaimed to be a third eye by its dreadlocked master, the "ultimate trip". The artwork was appreciated by all but the landlord, who was rumored to have demanded a return to off-white along with an eviction notice. Yes, it was during that regrettable year of hippie poseurism that I first heard of the so-called third eye, and I'd had no cause to think about it since.

The conversation then turned to dreams and meditation. Here I am no better. My only experience with meditation goes back to my years at Cal, when I took a filler course on meditation to meet the minimum unit requirement for my college. The class met at Dwinelle at 7 a.m. I soon realized it was not really a class on meditation, a reality betrayed by the snores emanating from the various pajama-clad students hunched over their desks in uneasy nodding slumber. I'd rather be sleeping, too.

As for my dreams, all I recall in the morning is the merciless trill of my alarm clock. What dreams I do remember are nightmares I'd sooner forget. I enviously listened to tales of swarthy dream journals filled with vivid recollections of the subconscious, interpreted with the help of Freud, Jung, et al. According to my bar room crash course on spirituality, dreams can serve as beacons to guide us in our conscious states. Recording them is imperative. Crap, the last journal I kept was in 6th grade, mostly filled with jabber about boys and bust measurements.

Feeling inspired on my drive home from the bar, I stopped by Rite Aid to buy a spiral notebook to serve as a dream journal. Reaching for my credit card to pay, I realized I'd forgotten to close my bar tab.