Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman Page A

I was ready to burst out laughing and the people in the van were trembling with anger. The driver grabbed his change and drove out of the station in a very unsaintly way. As their van pulled out, Socrates yelled, “Meditation is good for you. Keep practicing.” We'd no sooner returned to the office when a big Chevy pulled  into the station. The clang of the business bell was followed by an impatient “ooga-ooga” from a musical horn. I went out with Socrates to help.  
    Behind the wheel sat a forty-year-old “teenager” dressed in flashy satin clothes, topped with a large feathered safari hat. He was extremely jittery and kept tapping the steering wheel. Next to him, batting false eyelashes in the rearview mirror as she powdered her nose, sat a woman of indeterminate age.  
    For some reason, they offended me. They looked asinine. I wanted to say, “Why don't you act your age?” but I watched and waited.  
    “Hey man, ya got a cigarette machine here?” the hyperactive driver said.  
    Socrates stopped what he had been doing and with a warm smile said, “No sir, but there's an all-night market down the road.” Then he returned to checking the oil, giving it his full attention. He returned the change as if he were serving tea to the emperor.  
    After the car sped away we remained at the pump, smelling the night air. “You treated these people so courteously but were positively obnoxious to our blue-robed seekers, who were obviously on a higher evolutionary level. What's the story?”  
    For once, he gave me a simple, direct answer. “The only levels that should concern you are mine---and yours,” he said with a grin. “These people needed kindness. The spiritual seekers needed something else to reflect upon.”  
    “What do I need?” I blurted.  
    “More practice,” he answered quickly. “Your week-long meditation practice alone didn't help you stay calm when I ran at you with the sword, nor did it help our blue-robed friends when I poked a little fun at them.  
    “Let me put it this way: A forward roll is not the whole of gymnastics. A meditation technique is not the whole of the warrior's way. If you fail to understand the complete picture, you might be deluded, practicing only forward rolls--or only meditation--your whole life, thus reaping only fragmented benefits of training.  
    “What you need to stay on the right track then, is a special map that covers the entire terrain you will explore. Then you'll realize the uses--and limits---of meditation. And I ask you, where can you get a good map?”  
    “At a service station, of course!”  
    “Well then, sir, step into the office and I'll give you just the map you need.” We entered laughing, through the garage door. I plopped onto the couch; Socrates settled without a sound between the massive arm rests of his plush chair,  
    He stared at me for a full minute. “Uh-oh,” I said nervously under my breath. “Something's up.”  
    “The problem is,” he sighed at last, “that I can't describe the terrain for you, at least not in so many…words.” He rose and walked towards me with that shine in his eye that told me to pack my suitcases--I was going on a trip.  
     
    For an instant, from a vantage point somewhere in space, I felt myself expanding at the speed of light, ballooning, exploding to the outermost limits of existence until I was the universe. Nothing separate remained. I had become everything. I was Consciousness, recognizing itself; I was the pure light that physicists equate with all matter, and poets define as love. I was one, and I was all, outshining all the worlds. In that moment, the eternal, the unknowable had been revealed to me as an indescribable certainty.  
    In a flash, I was back in my mortal form, floating among the stars. I saw a prism shaped like a human heart, which dwarfed every galaxy. It diffracted the light of consciousness into an explosion of radiant colors, sparkling splinters of every rainbow