Over a year ago, I wrote and posted an introduction to what was hopefully my next book. The frame for content was an exploration of the process of living and dying simultaneously….there’s a light one for you. Not surprisingly, that writing sputtered and collapsed under its own weight like a baby horse first struggling to stand. Now I have written both a new introduction and successfully into the body of this next book. This time the baby horse has stood up, taken more than a few steps, and is well on his way to a sturdy trot. The chore now is to create enough space/time to tell a story that wants to be told.
So here is the next version of the introduction. I am excited.
“I live and die a secret. But then, so do you. Some part of us will never be truly known, truly seen, truly met, or completely embraced. This part aches and yearns and wonders and is uncertain. It is the most intimate of secrets and the point of my departure.
I know that you have this part too. I can feel it. In my struggle, I can feel you everywhere, see you everywhere. We share the same story. This makes life worth living. This book aims to keep that part of us company.
I wrote in Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence that I was not looking for answers. Rather, I was seeking to appreciate and believe in my experience. That’s what this book will be. I am going to share my adult story of seeking. I am going to share what trauma, paralysis and yoga reveals about the human metaphysic, about being alive and intimately connected to a much larger existence. In Waking, I told the story of an innocent thirteen-year-old boy who survived a catastrophic accident that left him paralyzed from the chest down; who eventually reconnected to his whole body through the practice of yoga; and who even became a father.
In this book, I will tell the story of the adult who shares what his journey is revealing, of what it is to live and die with a secret in a world that is beautiful and precious, and heart-breakingly out of joint. My goal is that you recognize yourself in
my story, in my musings, not in the details but in the feelings, the knowing without knowing. I want share the story of being alive and paying attention to what is actually present within experience before the complexity of our lives takes hold. We feel and sense so much without being able to express it in words. This is the story of Waking Again.”