One of the most central mysteries of faith, perhaps the central mystery, is the experience of eternity in a single moment. If I devoted my life to cataloging the various expressions on that subtly complex theme, I would never come close to fully documenting it. In some religious, the experience of transcendence, of perceiving the whole of reality--all time, all space, all consciousness--at once is the central and primary goal of practice.

In the West, we don't place much emphasis on transcendence. We're a culture whose wild ideas are focused in the future and in the past, seldom the infinitude of this very moment. Is it any surprise that Transendental Meditation and Buddhism reached their peak in the United States in the late Sixties, when future and past seemed to be crumbling onto everyone's heads? The past--the source of tradition, authority, and power--was colliding with the Future--the Civil Rights Movement, the Women's Movement, postmodernism--and the war between past and future began generating casualties that provoked deep and heartfelt pain in the mass of those caught up in it: Martin Luther King, Jr., JFK and RFK, the thousands killed in Vietnam, even Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin and Jim Morrisson. Where was peace to be found? The promise of transcendence must have seemed to many a great balm. Become the eye of the hurricane, bend like a reed in the wind, and the tumult cannot touch you.

But this stab at transcendence became yet another casualty in the ongoing melee of money, prestige, hype, status, and validity. The backlash against people like Maharishi Mahesh Yoga and others like him was forceful and public opinion turned the search for transcendence into yet another expression of idealistic hippie nonsense. It persists in the West, but it has no public backing. There's no modern-day equivalent of the Beatles spending the summer at an ashram learning TM along with Mia Farrow and her dear sister Prudence.

So it should be that much more striking when a moment of transendence steals upon you out of nowhere. A moment when thought and feeling create a chain reaction in the soul that leaves you breathless and feeling newly born, raw and wide-eyed. To the religious, these moments are kisses on the forehead from a loving God.

It happens, often as not, when you are at your lowest. People at their lowest are also at their lowest reserves of pride. Make no mistake: pride and self-assurance are the walls that we build around ourselves. They keep the bad stuff at bay, but they also keep out some of the good. It's no accident that our moments of greatest enlightenment come at our greatest moments of surrender.

Ah, surrender. What a beautiful word in its religious context! The word Islam means "surrender." Islam itself is a study in surrendering to God, becoming both lover and beloved of God. Do you remember the moment you opened up your soul to your true love? How beautiful your true love looked in that moment when you felt yourself being accepted totally? It was your moment of greatest earthly surrender, and you came to light because of it.

People who have made vast and sweeping fuckups of their lives are ripe for this kind of surrender. They are ripe for it because their walls have crumbled away, or have been besieged by enemies until they no longer stand. When surrender is all you have left, you reach for it like a drowning man for a rope.

But you don't have to hit bottom befure you reach for the lifeline of surrender. All it takes is a willingness to recognize and release the stones that are pulling you down. Those enormous rocks that you cling to because they have your name on them and for no other reason. The ones you grip so tightly out of spite and anger and fear and greed. Sins are stones that drag you under, nothing more, nothing less. Holding onto them is vastly stupid and yet so common that it has become an integral part of the way we live our lives.

Part of the religious dialogue between God and humans is God saying, "I'll take those stones from you now," and the person saying, "No thanks. Not today. I'm holding onto these; they're all mine. They're keeping me stable."

And God sighs and says, "But they're also dragging you down and drowning you." and the person says, "Oh, I know. But I've still got a little air left. I'm cool."

Oftentimes the moment of transcendental epiphany comes when your head says, "Why am I holding these giant rocks?" and your heart says, "Help me please, I'm drowning!" All of a sudden, these precious stones become lead weights; you look down and you see the abyss beneath you, growing and growing, you struggle for air and realize that your head is under water. And then, as if it were the simplest thing in the world, you

let

go.

And as you rise joyfully to the surface, you look down at those stones, sinking to a vanishing point and realize how small and worthless they were. You rejoice! Your head clears the surface and you take a deep breath. The sky is so blue, the sun so bright and clear! You've never felt so weightless, so free.

And then, the next day, or the day after, you're walking along the beach and something catches your eye. You look down at it, and almost without thinking, you turn to the person next to you and say, "Hey, look! A rock!" And you snatch it up, and off you go.

My moment came to me late last week. I was driving to work, filled with anger and spite. My employers had made a decision that had gone against my direct and explicit warnings and dire predictions. This decision was going to cause me a lot of extra work with no extra reward, and no good explanation could be given. In fact, the only explanation given was that the decision was being made out of frank and unrepentent nepotism, and for no other reason. I was righteously angry, condemnatory, filled with rage and obloquy. I was driving to work going over and over and over the plague that was being visited on me personally by my employers. The force of indignation made my back so straight I could feel the vertebrae popping. I was thinking things like, "I'll just quit. That'll show them. Ungrateful bastards. Taking me for granted. Assholes. Let them try and do this without me!" Every small and bitter and petty little thing I could think to say came out of my mouth.

Then, out of nowhere, I thought, "You know, you're supposed to be a Christian. Why don't you . . . pray about this, or something?"

Like a lot of Christians, I think, I have often taken the outlook on prayer that it is kind of going to the dentist: you know it's important and good for you, but you put it off because it's hard to make time for it and you're afraid that little twinge you feel might be a sign of something much worse.

But I was ready to surrender. I was tired of being angry and outraged and victimized. I just said, "God, I don't want to feel this way anymore. I want to replace all this anger and pride with love. How about it?"

Like a wellspring erupting in the desert, my heart overflowed with love. In an instant, I saw my life, my employers, my situation, my world: all bathed in the soft light of infinite love and infinite connectedness. The anger vanished. The pride evaporated. There was just me and this love pouring out of my heart. It lasted for about a second and a half. But that was enough to wash away all the dirt and grime and leave me feeling whole and complete and refreshed.

And that's lovely, it really is. But what strikes me about it today is that such epiphanies don't remove the source of your anger and pride; they wash away their effects: the toxins and filth that anger and pride excrete while you harbor them. But the choice always remains to pick them up again or to pass them by. This is our freedom and our responsibility.

This morning I came into work and the fruit of my employers' bad decision was waiting for me. Anger and pride, those notorious brothers in arms, were waiting for me at my office door. "Come on in," they said. "Let's talk."

I looked down and saw that my hand was reaching out to shake theirs. "Stop!" I shouted inside my head. I ran inside my office and shut the door. I sat on my hands. They had other things to do, so they've left me alone for the time being. But I know those two; they'll be back. I'd better go get ready for them.