Free An Improvised Life by Alan Arkin Page A

callousness I’d perpetrated on others because of some pursuit that seemed noble in my own mind, the ends being more important than the means, and what I discovered, finally, is
that there are no ends. What seem like ends are simply arbitrary signposts we put up for ourselves in order to make us comfortable, to give ourselves the illusion that we are finished with something. The blessing of the event with the pigeon was that it had rubbed my nose in my own complicity in this behavior, and I could no longer allow myself to get away with it.

CHAPTER NINE
    After about five years of intense work with my therapist, I began to feel that analysis had its limitations. It helped me get rid of some fears, and it opened my eyes to an interior life, but I was starting to come up against things for which Freud didn’t seem to have answers, or even any interest. I started having deep and significant breakthroughs that took me into other realities. I had several dramatic experiences that suggested strongly the possibility of other lives, which were disconcerting to say the least, but were as tangible and transforming as anything I’d ever experienced, and my doctor, who was a good and responsible man, couldn’t help me with what I was discovering. In addition, when confronting him with issues that didn’t seem to be solvable, he’d come back with “Well, that’s the human condition,” or some statement that was the equivalent of “Well, I never promised you a rose garden.” This idea infuriated me. The suggestion that the best we could hope for in our personal lives was settling for endless disappointment
and mediocrity sounded like a cop-out. He might not have promised me a rose garden, but there were people out there who had rose gardens, and I wanted one. Occasionally I’d meet people and see a look in their eyes that told me they’d achieved some sort of peace and joy, some ability to relax into themselves, and it made me feel hungry and envious. If it was possible for someone else, it was possible for me.
    Shortly after finishing the filming of Catch-22 I began reading a lot of Eastern philosophy, Buddhist and Vedantic, mostly, and I also started meditating. The transformations that took place from these new levels of awareness were dramatic, sometimes frightening, often disorienting, and changed me so much that within a couple of years I began not to recognize myself. There was a great shift in my philosophy and belief systems, but the intellectual aspects of the changes were only interesting sidelights compared to the fundamental changes that took place within me, tangible, physical changes in my body along with a deeper awareness of the world within and around me.
    For example, there was an occasion about three years into my early work with my first meditation teacher when I woke up in the middle of the night feeling as if my heart had exploded. I had never had any concern about my heart, never had any pathology, but I was sure I was having a heart attack. For some reason, instead of calling a doctor I called my teacher and asked him if I should rush to a hospital. Instead of pointing me to the nearest emergency room,
he congratulated me. “Your heart has opened,” he said. “It’s a great blessing. Relax and enjoy it.”
    Now I don’t recommend that everyone who feels their heart “explode” follow this advice—but in my case, at that moment, and given my new awareness of mind and body, I relaxed into the sensation and within half an hour the explosive feelings in my chest subsided, yet for many months afterward I felt out of balance.
    There was a new heat in the middle of my chest, and my center of gravity went through a shift; even my posture changed. I was living in a new place inside my body and it took a long time to adjust to what was feeling like a new me.
    I had read a lot of material in mystical literature on the seven vortexes in our bodies, and learned that a good part of our work is to awaken these