Rose Does Vegas
Well, not exactly, but this was the humorous theme I had in mind as Joanne and I drove to Las Vegas a week and a half ago for our yearly vacation. We had never jointly been to “Sin City,” though I had been there for a couple of days when I was four and my parents drove back from Ventura, CA to Elkins Park, PA. It’s only a four hour drive from our current home in Castaic, and since it was so close we figured this year that we should check it out at least once, though we sensed it might not really turn out to be our cup of tea. So Joanne booked our hotel and three different shows to see, and they formed the foundation of our week. We would see Blue Man Group, Monty Python’s Spamalot, and Cirque du Soleil’s O!
The drive was four hours of mostly high desert chaparral with several cities dotting the way, so most of our time was spent cruising through sparse mountain ranges and the Mojave Desert. As we approached the Nevada border, there was a little pop-up town consisting of two Casino/Resorts that were literally in the middle of nowhere. We wondered if someone’s driving to Las Vegas, why on earth they’d ever want to stop here? To save on gas perhaps? It was a truly odd spectacle, one that we drove past in a matter of minutes back into high desertscapes.
The final stretch of mountains released us into a valley. In the distance we could see the “Emerald City,” something that looked really big, but was, again, in the middle of nowhere. That is the truly odd thing about Las Vegas.
As we approached the little dots became bigger, and the skyscrapers grew in size, and we realized that Vegas is much bigger than it looks from a distance. We continued to drive for miles until our exit into the heart of the downtown Vegas strip.
The incongruent thought of “Rose Does Vegas” popped into my head once again. It seemed like such a disconnect! As we turned off the freeway into the bowels of the strip, we were overwhelmed by streets packed with cars, cabs, and ad-trucks pimping escort services. The sidewalks were teeming with people dressed in all sorts of garb. We weren’t exactly sure what the dress code would be, but the strip was littered with what looked more like an Atlantic City Boardwalk crowd. No offence to the East Coast or AC, but I was surprised to see so many t-shirts, shorts, sandals, and varying outfits.
It had been a long drive, we were tired, and traffic was jammed. We took our time looking at many of the forty-plus Casino/Resorts on the way to our destination at the Venetian. They were vast and took up many city blocks each. We saw the Great Pyramid, the Statue of Liberty, The Eiffel Tower, a Pink Flamingo, among other things all jammed into the strip. It created sensory overload for us as first time visitors.
We made our way into the parking garage at the Venetian. You have to walk through the Casino to get anywhere by design, so the path to check-in is littered with one-armed bandits, cigarette smoke, flashing lights, nervous people sitting and gambling amidst the throngs other folks walking around. As we made our way to the main lobby, we saw the Sistine Chapel painted overhead. Again, more overload.
We checked in, and collapsed in our room. Opened a bottle of champagne on ice, and feasted on snacks we brought with us.
As I kicked up my feet and began to finally relax, I was again struck by the thought “Rose Does Vegas” and how the basic vibe here was so materially oriented, seemingly a million miles away from what Rose stands for, which features an integration of the material, mental, and spiritual. And yet, something told me there was much to be explored before reaching any final conclusions.
As the week progressed we alternated between hanging out at one of the twelve pools and jacuzzis, seeing a show every other evening, dinning out, and for Jo, the necessary shopping excursions.
Though we were drawn to the slots, we didn’t spend a penny on them. In fact, we ended up “winning” a quarter because Jo found one on the floor of the Bellagio during one of our evening trips (only one show was at our Casino – Blue Man Group – so we had the chance to visit three other Casinos during the week).
I missed the sound of real coins going bing, bing, bing as they use to dance out of the slots and those coin filled cups used to hold your “winnings” from my days of Atlantic City gambling in the late 1970s. Everything was now electronic, and even though bound by Nevada law to pay equally for all, I just didn’t trust those machines. They were too easy to rig, and I knew they are programmed in favor of the house. I didn’t feel like trying my “luck” in that manner.
It seemed that most people I saw during the week at the slots sat like robots, smoking, drinking, staring, and pressing buttons over and over, some winning, but most losing to the house. I read a gambling paper in the Venetian Sports Book, the place with thirty giant monitors with horse races, and all sporting events televised, that said the poker machines were your best bet to bet the house if played properly. I filed that away for another day, and just watched part of a baseball game to while away an hour one afternoon while Jo was shopping. It was still fun to explore.
Still, we didn’t spend a lot of time in the Casinos as they’re noisy, smokey, and full of throngs of hopeful people whose next big win is one button push, winning hand, or roll of the dice away. We settled into a routine where, after a nice breakfast, we’d hang out at one of the pools for 4-5 hours, relax, swim, read, and even meditate. I brought my Holosync CD with me, something new that I’ve been testing for the past six weeks, and have been making solid progress with (more on that later). It was fabulous to be able to spend an hour each day, Monday through Friday, sitting at a pool in the shade and simply “turning on and tuning out.”
The Holosync CDs use “difference tones” – a phantom tone created by the brain/mind system when two slightly different tones are fed into separate ears– to induce altered states by sympathetically vibrating the brain. You begin in waking beta, and gradually “dive” through alpha (highly relaxed) to theta (dreaming, REM), and finally to delta (deep dreamless sleep). Now it’s way cool to be awake during this, and why this is possible is because our brain/mind systems function in all four frequencies at any given time. It’s just that certain when certain frequencies dominate we happen to be in waking, dreaming, or deep sleep state.
So it’s not like in waking beta, there’s no alpha, theta, or delta energies. It’s just that those signatures tend to have very low amplitudes (or energy levels). So the CD uses a pleasing combo of rain and gong sounds to occupy the “monkey mind” (random thoughts) while the low frequency difference tones force both hemispheres to entrain or resonate more deeply at alpha, then theta, and then delta. So it’s common to fall asleep during the first months of this practice, though the goal is to maintain awareness and concentration as you move through these states.
Now, back to the Venetian pools, it was great to set up camp on lounge chairs, often by water fountains that add some white noise to mask the constant monkey mind Musak they have playing just about everywhere. This current version of Vegas is ORANGE [1] heaven after all – the culmination of the glitzy material world with big buildings, flashing lights, shiny objects, and the very best designs, food, shopping, service, and comfort that anyone would want to have. Seriously, everyone should go there at least once for a week to experience this, but what was missing was that more GREEN accommodation of quietude, serenity, and silence in appropriate doses. I believe that is the future of Vegas through an integral lens, but that’s another blog!
So did Rose Do Vegas? We toyed with the idea of having a session, as we brought along the video and audio recorders, but as the week wore on we just didn’t feel the need to do so. We were enjoying the comforts, service, and down time as well. Our previous vacation in Maui in 2007, though two weeks in Paradise, was hardly restful. It was more of a bootcamp that laid our foundation with the Rose Agenda along with other key information.
So we gloried in the fact that we could take a bit of rest this year and just enjoy the opulence and abundance. At least, these were the things we focused on, as there was plenty of opportunity to experience the “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” vibe that encourages people toward excess and extremes. We saw some of that as well. Ironically, while we were asleep by 10-11 PM each night, that’s when the restaurants begin to close and the night clubs begin to open. They go until 5:30 AM. We saw revelers in the Casino lobby one morning as we ate breakfast who had been up all night. Two young men were wearing plastic crowns, holding half consumed beers, and a cigarette in the other hand. They were a hysterical sight. They were in the midst of an all-night bender and having a great time of it!
Somehow I know that Rose would approve in any and all cases. It’s more a question of balance, equilibrium, and extremes, and learning when to say enough’s enough! No small challenge in an environment like Vegas that is cleverly designed to solicit excess at every turn.
Joanne engaged Rose one day at the pool privately. She had just finished reading a book called Loving Frank about Frank Lloyd Wright, the architect, and his tragic mistress Mamah Borthwick. According to Elias Mamah was a focus of Joanne’s, so she was riveted as she read it. Jo wrote down session notes, put down her notebook and airtyped Rose, and then captured what Rose said in her notes. I will note for the record that Jo didn’t autowrite with her pen, she airtyped as she has from the first month, and then captured that with her pen. It was easy in such a relaxed environment.
On Friday, May 9th, I had an wonderful experience during my Holosync meditation. We had spent six nights at the resort, so I was rested and relaxed. As my CD moved from the Dive into the second half called Immersion, designed to ramp up delta energies, I continued to experiment with the kind of air-typing Jo does with Rose. I was sitting in a towel-draped lounge chair, legs crossed, back and head up, with my hands resting on my thighs. I began by asking if my inner self was present. I got the usual answer, “I am always present” through my fingers. This is a grounding way I open my recent experiments with airtyping, as Rose has been encouraging me to do so.
This was my fourth session that I had done with the Holosync CDs, the previous three at home in my office sitting at my computer. Because I was rested and relaxed, I found that “sweet spot,” for lack of a better term, and had a deep conversation with mySelf for around twenty minutes. That’s a long time at the beginning, so I was excited! I was so relaxed yet awake, and the exchange really flowed smoothly, my airtyping fingers serving as the voice of inner self, and my internal thoughts acting to represent Paul.
At one point I asked, “What can I call you?” and the response was “Friend.” I really liked how neutral it was. I didn’t get Krishna, Buddha, Jesus, or Maitreya – the usual New Age sort of thing, just a friend. Nor a teacher, just a friend. That’s about as unthreatening a personification I could hope for. So I was pleased. At one point Friend suggested that I call these interactions Conversations with mySelf, modeled after Neale Walsch’s popular Conversations with God, but in a less distorted form because God doesn’t speak in a single voice through any single person, place, or thing. Instead God or All-That-Is speaks through everything and everyone, so that’s a sure sign you’ve got distortion when anyone claims they speak for God.
I was also pleased because of this session’s length, though Friend clearly suggested that I take my time, and there was no rush to develop my airtyping skills, because the main focus right now is on Rose and building our website, books, and workshops. Still, Friend was also very clear that this breakthrough on my part was due to Rose, and that she was involved as well in supporting my development. Rose continues to encourage all of us to experiment with the many different types of channeling and energy exchanges that suit our innate intents. In my case, airtyping is the perfect thing to develop, because it suits my Sumari/Sumafi intention.
Afterwards, I told Joanne, and asked her if she had been looking at my fingers? She hadn’t, but she was very emotional and excited for me, as she intuitively knew that I had made a breakthrough. I quietly asked for her notebook and simply wrote down:
May 9, 2008 2 PM
Conversations with mySelf [2]
I resisted the impulse to take notes afterwards. I drew the line, as this was my vacation! So I trusted and allowed, per Rose’s themes for 2008, and let it slide into the dreamy memories of that CD induced delta state. In hindsight, the CD was a key tool for learning to induce this state, something Friend suggested I would leave behind like training wheels in time. But I can’t recommend this CD program highly enough, and it goes to eleven different levels, and I’m only at level one. So it’s designed to allow us to tailor it to our needs, and how far we wish to take it.
Later that evening, we saw O! by Cirque du Soleil at the Bellagio. What a way to spend our last night! The Bellagio is one of the best designed and run places in Vegas, and being Friday evening, it was packed. We first had dinner in a restaurant bar, watched the Lakers lose to the Jazz (though they won their series 4-2), noshed on finger food and washed it all down with fine wine and water. The show let us both speechless. It was simply the most creative use of the proscenium arch in theater I had ever seen.
Sumari creativity combined with Zuli perfection of body, movement, grace, and power.
There was a twenty foot deep water tank whose top is level with the stage. So there were synchronized dancers, acrobats, fire dances, contortionists, clowns, high divers, and host of other characters all mixed in a surreal unfolding of exotic music to tell a dream-like story of the many different kinds lives we live. Sometimes the “floor” was solid, sometimes it was water. All that was missing was ice skating!
They went into the audience, pulled out planted cast members in two instances onto the stage and into the water, where they simply disappeared. I had seen a promo piece on O! when it premiered several years ago, so I had some sense of the incredible logistics involved, and yet I was still completely blown away. As the final curtain fell, we just sat and took about ten minutes to try and make sense of what we had just seen. It felt like we had been abducted by aliens or something. The experience was both familiar and strange.
We walked back to our room and in the morning, after another lovely day at the pool, drove home to our kitties. On the drive home I was struck by the fact that Rose did end up “Doing Vegas” in some sense, and yet, there was no need to judge or condemn the many activities that occur in that surreal city. It is truly one of the ten wonders of the world, and everyone should “Do Vegas” at least once in their lives. Whether or not what happens there needs to stay there is up to each of us to decide anyway. Sin City may not be for everyone, but we discovered that there is something for everyone to explore, whether you’re touched by a Blue Man, attacked by a Killer Rabbit, or encountered a mermaid, it’s all a choice.
Endnotes:
[1] For more information on the worldview color system, see Emerging New Worldviews.
[2] I want to acknowledge Grey Bear’s sharing of what he calls Conversations with Myself here on NewWorldView. I have read some of his postings in Ellen Gilbert’s Inner Visions forum, and had forgotten the title during my experience. So when I returned from vacation and noticed that he had posted another series with the same title, I felt comfortable that my slightly different spelling is enough to distinguish and honor the two sources as unique, creative contributions.