Escape Plans Unlimited

Yesterday, She and I broke out the Just Because Club book again.

This time, we decided to head downtown to the heart of Eugene, OR for a dice walk. Without giving too much away, let’s just say it surprised both of us.

The exercises in the book have a tendency to create an eerie ambiance. This eerie ambiance tends to heighten different and less-used parts of my awareness. Sometimes it creates an aura of what I think it might be like to be dead and lost in a bardo realm of some kind.

Tonight’s activity was no different in those respects.

The dice walk lasted for an hour. I will highlight only one aspect among many.

We rolled a “5.” This meant that we had to find a nearby shop and go inside for 5 minutes to look around.

We went into what looked like an audio/video/home theater shop. It turned out to be the Dave Minor Theater I had recently heard about after my return to Eugene.

David Minor Theater

David Minor was a friend of mine. He was a much closer friend of my dear friend, Meghan. (see her blog here.)

Last June or July, I went to Kinkos in Eugene to make some copies. I had to park my bike around back due to the police lines out in front of the store. Outside the front windows I could see a very mangled bicycle and a slightly less mangled car.

A full messenger bag sat in the street, over 20 feet away from the rest of the wreckage.

I stared at the situation and mentioned to some of the other customers that this kind of thing makes it hard to return to “business as usual” without seriously considering how we spend our time and our lives. They shrugged it off, gave me a strange look, and went about their business in a half-somber fashion.

I left and found She at the pizza place near there. Not long after, I got a call from Meghan. She told me that her friend David Minor had died that day in a bicycle accident………..

David Minor Memorial

Now, many months later, they opened the theater in his name. She and I bought tickets to see the movie “Choke” based on the book by the author of “Fight Club,” Chuck Palahniuk.

Yesterday evening, we spoke with the owner of the theater about David, and his reasons for opening the theater. He said, “People usually try to forget about death and tragedy as quickly as they can. This theater is my attempt to fight against that.”

I could go in all kinds of directions about the significance of this dice walk and how we ended up in the theater. I won’t do that here. You have to take your own dice walk and get your own results. What I will do here is say that I have enjoyed cemeteries for a very long time. For as long as I can remember I have loved walking through them, looking at them as they passed by outside of my parents’ cars when I was a wee lad, and I still visit a very amazing cemetery here in Eugene every chance I get.

This kind of work, the Just Because Club, and the related text, The American Book of the Dead, have validated many of my experiences around death. They bring the unexplored into full view. You might say that they bring the occluded obvious into sharp relief.

The American Book of the Dead presents a method of “liberation by hearing” by which the essence that once dwelt in the human body can be liberated from its attachment to the body by way of hearing specific instructions read by one among the living. These instructions arrive at difficult moments in the essence’s journey through the “bardos” or the spaces between death and rebirth.

You may not accept or understand these ideas. That is fine. For now it is enough to bring them up and consider them. Most of us have no recollection whatsoever of the space and experience between conception and birth, but it obviously existed. Why not investigate the possibilities of a space between death and birth too?

I keep getting the message loud and clear that I am in position to assist some of these essences in their journeys. I am very reluctant to accept this charge.

Did David want something from me? Did his essence notice that someone on this side of life was paying attention to the spaces between? Did he take that opportunity to send me a cry for help?

Time will tell.

For now, David, I leave you with this brief method of concentrating your attention, if the need should arise:

“All phenomena is illusion,
Neither attracted nor repelled,
Making no sudden moves,
My habits will carry me though.”

The false self suicide of yesterday? The false self who would have never considered that anything at all could possibly take place after death…

Good luck to all of you…living, dead, and anywhere in between….May this effort be used for the benefit of all beings everywhere.

Best of luck on your journeys, David.

David Minor