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The Manifest: How's the spiritual/integral scene in Dallas?
Kelley Davies: This one time I saw this guy in an ashram doing some chanting. That was cool, until he got mugged outside by a couple of gang members. I think they wanted his butter lamp. The ratio of gangsters to spiritual seekers is high in Dallas, like way above my I.Q., which was 68 in second grade. I'm the only guy I know in D-town who knows that integral isn't a telemarketing company.
TM: What's the most fucked-up experience you've had while traveling?
KD: Let's see, seeing as I've had to take the bus everywhere, I've seen enough homeless tejanos, crying babies, and good old-fashioned crazy people to last me until, well, next time i take the bus. but seeing as this is a spiritual magazine (and I've only let go of about 18% of my ego) I figure I'd brag and tell you about this one time I got really wigged out in the Oklahoma Bus Station and decided to go running in the night.
I had been riding next to this really fine Spanish girl, but once she started putting the moves on me i popped a boner and had to switch seats. When I got back on the bus, she was like, "so you don't want to sit next to me. Huh? Huh!?" and me being the neurotic mess I am, I didn't know she was just fucking with me. So as I enter the Oklahoma bus station I'm having paranoid/delusional/schizophrenic attacks -- whatever the hell you wanna call it -- which happened to be very common for me at the time. And then, BOOM, my senses are engulfed by a sea of commotion and a heavy wave of rowdy bus-station folk. I felt like Neo when those dudes shoot the bullets and everything got real slow all of a sudden -- like I was in the middle of some chaotic movie. everyone around me is being so loud and I just want to run and hide in the phone booth or something. Plus I had just taken a hit of some good reefer, so you know I had to be wiggin. Next thing you know I'm outside performing one of my favorite penances, running til I sweat and then sprinting some more. I do this because I'm suffering from this major fear of emptiness in my gut and all i can do is just fucking go at it, just start running. And so after three blocks of driving my mind into the sidewalk, I'm feeling less scared and more confident, at which point I go back into the station, sit in the middle of the place, and started doing my puja -- Om Mani Padme Hum -- (silently of course; I'm not that flamboyant). And then the strangest thing happens. I actually feel the atmosphere calm down a bit at which point the hot Spanish girl comes over and sits down next to me. I guess I made her comfortable. Either that or she thought I had a big penis.
TM: How was the Shambhala Mountain Center (SMC) and why did you get kicked out?
KD: Shambhala mountain... Well, it's awesome, and it can suck.
Awesome: the Great Stupa; the food; the extraordinary mountain ranges; beautiful Mother Nature all around; solitary tents (if you get lucky); the library filled with spiritual books; the gravel in the morning, the teachers (Bill McKeever and Sakyong Mipham -- I love you guys. Keep it real.); Chogyam Trungpa's vibe; all sorts of places to sit down and work your spiritual mojo.
Sucks: lots of working (karma yoga) -- not military-style or anything -- just a lot of work cuz there's like 500 people there; people not so interested in spirituality but are there to just kind of "chill out" (which only bugs me because I'm a self-righteous, arrogant bastard. I can understand that some people just aren't ready to transform and that's totally fine). Also, since it's so safe and comfy a lot of the people that come there are actually more scared than people from Dallas. It's like jumping in a hot tub where you don't have to smell your farts (i.e. face your fears) -- that is, if you don't want to. This was very interesting to me.
The day I got the boot, I really started looking around. I began noticing that some of the people there had even bigger egos than I was used to (e.g. more sense of separation; more fear). You got guys masquerading with huge dreadlocks, and bunches of people with huge, silly malas walking around saying they're really spiritual, but most of them meditate like 15 minutes every other day, if that much. I think Chogyam might say they were being materialistic. Of course, I was wearing a mala too, and I was feeling quite proud of myself for being the only one who "really knew what it meant to be a dedicated seeker", even though I've been meditating for about a year and don't have much room to talk. But people being loud at the dinner tent, and others laughing at me for eating mindfully or practicing walking meditation on the way to the Stupa ("Aww...look at that silly meditator...isn't he cute?") just kind of pissed me off. But please check it out. It's really a wonderful place. I sleep with their fluorescent-colored pamphlet under my pillow every night.
Funny story how I got kicked out. It was two-fold. First, since my head and my heart were at constant war with each other -- and I've always been so damn inwardly focused -- I had the tendency to just freeze, or "space out". I'd take ten minutes to put the fucking soy milk in the refrigerator because I was so hyper-aware of the dude behind me spreading the butter on his wheat toast. I would flinch at the sound of a person's footsteps. And since Ram Dass says paranoia's infectious, you might say I made people extremely paranoid.
But the second reason I got the boot is the real riot. At SMC I was getting in touch with a lot of the anger I had been repressing since I was a little kid. I would shake when I meditated because all this angry kundalini shot up my spine and I just wanted to beat the crap out of something. So a couple of times I went far up into the mountains and just let loose. The first day was alright: a lot of genuine, aggressive screaming, no real harm done. But the second time I was up there singing Coldplay's "Shiver", and it turned out the whole frickin camp could hear it, meaning the hordes of people sitting peacefully in the Dathun, the leotard wearing ladies doing Warrior II in the yoga tent, the helpless children playing hide and go seek at the Shotoku children's center, which just kind of freaked the directors out. I mean what would you do if you heard some kid screaming "Purge me Jesus!" and "Fuck you!" and "I'm not afraid anymore!"? Ya, I'd laugh too, but the people at Shambhala didn't find it so funny. So they asked me to leave until I got some more grounding.
TM: What's the deal with your "American Idol" sign? And your singing?
KD: When I was in Dallas I couldn't express myself. One time my parents were at church and I ate some shrooms and got rid of about 65 pounds of pure molasses negativity (i.e. lots of tears and releasing rage, in a violent English accent, into a tape recorder), but other than that I had no way to let loose except for singing. I sang at my brother's wedding; I'd chant by this river by my house; I'd chant in my Dad's car or sing Coldplay or Third Eye Blind on the way to my Mom's. It was all I could do to feel sane. So coming to Boulder's been a blessing. Pearl Street encourages craziness, and I'm MEGA-CRAZY. AAARRRHHHGGGHH!! I figure, "Hey, not only can I get in touch with my subtle energy fields (Matthew Dallman, you sir are a badass. And by the way, I've been playin sax for eight years and I'm good, real good, so let's hook up, huh?) but I can do it in public and maybe cure a little bit of discursiveness. Not to mention, make some serious $DOUGH$!! So I made a sign. It said, "Support Spiritual Seeker?" which brought in a whopping $4.75. I then decided to change it to something more gross-realm, cognitive, superficial. And lo and behold, my first day with "Make Me the Next American Idol" scored me a smooth twenty bucks. Ironic in America? Hardly...
TM: Why is boulder so fucking insane?
KD: Because Stuart Davis rocks the house like Bjork on crack.
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