Guided Meditation | Chen Holtzman

Sundays at 4 PM, I attend Rad’s Relax & Restore yoga—”a calming Sunday practice that blends slow Yin to release tension—” yada, yada, yada. Really, it’s an excuse to lie on the floor in a dark candle-lit room for an hour and pay 30 bucks and tell myself I’m undoing hours of sitting on the computer.

In this last class, Rad, who fondly reminds me of my uncle Avi, dressed in desert-colored sharwal attire and draped in beads, asked us to close our eyes and take a few deep breaths before we begin, to focus our minds and surrender to our inner… whatever. Now, Rad’s a nice guy, and I paid 30 bucks so I’m down with the shanti. This time, however, I was in for a lot more than stretching.

After closing our eyes, Rad instructed us to envision ourselves in a jungle. Immediately I think…. Oh lord. Oh god. Noooooo. Not guided meditation nooo. But I went along with it ‘cause what am I gonna do? Get up and leave? Yalla, might as well loosen up the ‘ol mind’s eye. 

So I’m in a jungle. I’m hacking through thick… gummy foliage… bugs… everywhere, wandering aimlessly like an idiot. Then Rad says, “There’s a fog… and the fog carries you to a clearing. Beyond the clearing, in the distance, an ancient temple is calling to you.” Rad says to “Answer the call.” So I do! I walk across the clearing toward the temple’s towering wooden doors, trying to decipher the carvings above the doorway that hint at what awaits inside. Rad says, “Whatever is inside this temple is going to change your life…”

The doors creak open, and under them a strong wind wooshes towards me like a vacuum calling me in, scattering sand all around. A choir of monks can be heard chanting in the background. Rad describes a “magnificent hall with a glistening fountain in the middle, water musically trickling drop by drop, and dozens of incredible, shiny, jeweled doors lining the walls of the great hall.

Rad says, “Behind one of these doors is your destiny. Look around. Which door is calling to you?”

As I look around the great hall at the many beautiful jeweled doors, I see a humble stone entryway swallowed in the shine of the jewels, and I think, There it is! That’s it! That’s my door! So excited.

Rad tells us to open our door and step inside. “This room,” Rad whispers in a mysterious hushed baritone, “is the chamber of your deepest secrets, your ultimate desires, your true wish in this life.”

Excited at the prospect of finally finding my true calling, I enter the room. Behind a delicate waterfall on the right wall, I see a small crevice, and a glowing light beaming through the water. “Reach your hands through the water,” Rad says in excited anticipation. “What you find in your hands when you retrieve them from the water will be your ultimate life purpose. But be warned… once you take it, there is no going back.”

Now, pause for a second.

Rad is building this up to be some profound, soul-shattering spiritual epiphany. And I’m aware that I’m sitting on a sweaty mat from Amazon in a hot yoga studio in Scottsdale surrounded by two Boomers, an overachieving stay-at-home mom, and what I can only hope is a man without something better to do. So yeah, I don’t have high hopes for this one. But Rad said I’m going to finally confront my deepest, most sacred human desire. So I reach my hands through the waterfall. I wrap my fingers around my ultimate destiny. I pull it out into the light, grasp it firmly in my hands, pull it up to my face, gaze upon it, and see…

At the discovery of my true destiny on that fateful yoga Sunday, I had to hold back from pissing myself at the sight of my cosmically decreed burger. Fifty minutes of spiritual enlightenment, monk choirs, and ancient temples… and my soul’s deepest, most profound desire is a sandwich.

I guess I didn’t really need Rad to know that one.