The Mind Creative
People who know me also know that I have a dour disposition. I
am—and have been—cantankerous by nature. I have a short fuse,
and a caustic sense of humor. In short, qualities totally unsuitable
for someone who wanted to pursue a career as a social worker.
In a word, utterly disagreeable. Well, two words.
When I moved to Canada from Uganda, a friendly shrink strongly
suggested that what I needed (desperately, he said, for added
emphasis) was to clean up my mind. Give it a thorough scrub, as
it were; and he recommended Transcendental Meditation. TM for
short.
This was in the late seventies,
and TM was making its
presence known on the
continent. There were many
centres operated by people
who claimed to have been
inducted by the great one—
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. But I
wanted the real stuff and so
trekked to San Francisco
when I heard that he would
be there for a few months.
Nothing like going right to the
fount! When I got there, I was
told that it was not possible
to see the head pooba, but
one of his disciples would be
happy to oblige for a mere
1000 dollars.
In the late seventies it was a steep price to pay for laundering
your mind. I had an old aunt, who had a sure fire cure for almost
any erratic behavior. For instance, when I was a small boy, I had
the habit of sleep walking. She recommended to my mother that
what she needed to do was to make me sleep under the cot. She
did. It took only two nights and an equal number of nasty bumps
on the head to cure me of that!! But, alas, the aunt is no longer
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