Why the color amber is important to me. An excerpt from my memoir, The Rise and Fall of the HoneyBun Empire

One quiet Monday night, when I was about five months sober, I sat in the chair to meditate. No one was screaming, anywhere. My mantra was “Relieve me of the bondage of self” from AA’s Third Step prayer. I figured it was as good of a mantra as any. 

I had paid the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi my thirty-five dollars in 1969 for my “unique-only-for-you-never-share-it-with-anyone-it’s-like-a-seed-you-have- planted” mantra because …. The Beatles … and it was a perfectly fine mantra, but after it came out that the Maharishi was hitting on women at the ashram in India to the point where Prudence Farrow was so freaked out she locked herself in her room for two days, inspiring John Lennon to write “Dear Prudence,” my unique Maharishi mantra had lost some of its sheen as a spiritual token. The Beatles told the Maharishi they were leaving the ashram and returning to England. The Maharishi asked them why. John responded, 

“If you’re so cosmic, you should know why.” 

The Maharishi shot John an angry look and that sealed it for John and then they were gone. I have since shared my Maharishi mantra with a few other similarly disillusioned Maharishi meditators and, amazingly, we all have the exact same mantra. Who would’ve guessed? 

I believe in the benefits of meditation, absolutely, but a mantra can be anything one chooses, hence my choosing of “Relieve me of the bondage of self” that night. 

I was pretty tired and I dozed off and had a dream that a ball of amber light was clustering at the far wall of my loft, thirty feet away, up near the high ceiling. 

I opened my eyes and, sure enough, that was exactly what was happening.
I watched the cloud of amber light unfold itself out of nothingness into the midnight air and after a few moments there was a blinding flash and I found myself, as much as my self still existed, enveloped in an infinite ocean of pure energy, light, and love. 

I have no words to describe this. It was the burning bush of the Bible, the sudden illumination of the Buddha. I don’t know how long it lasted, for time is irrelevant in the Eternal Now, but as I came out of it, back into this realm, this plane, all I could do was to say out loud, sitting in my grandma’s chair, “Thank you thank you thank you.” Over and over. 

I know now that God, or whatever you want to call the infinite loving Force behind the creation of everything, was letting me know that I was not alone as I entered this new phase of my life. The timing was clearly not accidental: I would find out, in five days time, that my wife had a boyfriend.