In the Beginning there was Rama

I was introduced to meditation about 20 years ago.   My dorm mate at NYU and her boyfriend would go to these weekly meditation sessions at a space near Washington Square Park.  One day, they invited me.  It was one of the few Saturdays that I wasn't hungover so I agreed.  And so it began...

I started going to these session every week.  Some days I was hungover, other days I was not.  I stuck with it and I'm not quite sure why, given my priority was not spiritual progression but, rather, getting as wasted as I could while still maintaining a somewhat decent GPA.  I was in New York City, by golly!

Fascination, maybe?  My mom converted to Christianity when I was 10 and, as the years rolled by, she became more and more of a fanatic.  I wanted to believe in a higher power but, unlike my mom, I wasn't getting it from JC.  These classes were interesting and, if anything, an hour of meditating on my chakras was a great cure for a night of tequila shots.

My NYU Dorm at 3rd Avenue & 11st

We would focus on the seven chakras while meditating over the course of an hour.  Our teacher (her name escapes me) had a teacher.  Rama was his name (AKA Dr. Frederick Lenz).  She invited us to go to these group meditations at SUNY Purchase and even picked us all up from our dorm in a black stretch limousine.  It was the first time I had ever been in a limo and I got to ride in it all the way from the East Village to Westchester.  This meditation thing was cool!

And I never spent a penny... on the classes, on the limo rides and on the meditation cassettes they gave me.


At SUNY, it was always packed with people.  Rama would speak and then guide us all in a group meditation.  Sometimes, he would walk by an open row and touch certain people in their 3rd eye.  One day, he touched my third eye.  I felt a little patch of color and sensation but the cynic in the back of my mind whispered that it was my imagination. And I had quite the imagination.  You see, I was a theatre major. 

So, for the remainder of the school year, I continued with these Saturday meditation sessions, the occasional visit to SUNY in a limo to see Rama and my wild nights of partying. At the end of the year I was told by our meditation teacher that things were changing.  If we wanted to go the next step, we would have to pay for the privilege of sessions with Rama.  That would be the transportation to the event and an actual ticket to these events.

Additionally, meditation sessions were only open to those who were committed to following Rama.  It suddenly felt kind of cultish and creepy to me.  Besides, giving up margaritas and pot and coke?  I don't know.  Maybe this meditation thing wasn't so cool after all.

My roommates boyfriend was all psyched about it.  He was a business major and, also, a HUGE pothead....way worse than me.  I thought about how it would be for him if he was stoned all the time but he said that he had reached a place where he didn't need pot to get high.  His world was all about Rama.  What about mine?  He kept trying to convince me that it was my path too.  I was lost, he told me.  And Rama could help.

I passed on Rama and continued on a path of debauchery and self-destruction for the next 15 years.