Danny's Mind: A Tale of Teenage Mysticism and Heavenly Power

by James T. Bailie

  Chapter 13

   

  Sometimes before talking about Heavenly Mind, I find it helps to first get people into the mood—out of their clunky Head Minds. I have everyone pick up a common object–a dandelion or twig or blade of grass if we’re outside; a pencil, or even a candy bar if not. I talk them into the headless state—ask them to wrap awareness around and into their object. Embrace it in silence. Feel its existence. Feel its 3D-ness. Feel the depth that headlessness gives to every object—and even to space itself—how it all becomes mysterious and exotic. Rest in that. We do this for a while and you can see the noisy churning of Head Minds calming and growing clear. They’re no longer stuck in their thoughts. They’re receptive. And then it’s time to teach.

  I wonder if Mr. Tan could use this in his classroom?

   

  -  From His Recorded Words

   

  Afterwards they called it the Sermon on the Hockey Boards.

  It was about a week after Aunt Polly had died, and Michelle arranged it. The little impromptu sessions of kids gathering around Danny had been growing—from the early get-togethers of five or six sitting under a tree to really noticeable groups of fifteen, twenty, or more. It was becoming a big thing and Michelle decided it was time to organize an event.

  She picked an area on the school grounds that made a natural theater. During the winter months, the athletic department put up a hockey rink on the far west corner where the varsity and junior varsity teams played. It wasn’t for official games because there wasn’t any real place to sit; they just practiced there. But spring through fall, the boards for the rink were stacked about five feet high next to a wide hill that slopes up the street. Michelle’s idea was to have Danny give a bigger talk from the hockey boards, like a stage, to an audience of kids on the hillside. She picked locker cleanout day, which happened once every two months, when students got an extra hour at lunch to clean the trash out of their lockers. It had always been a joke, most kids went to Taco Johns or McDonalds or hung out in the parking lot. This time though, word went around: Locker day Thursday in front the hockey boards: Danny Speaks. And that afternoon, sure enough, fifty or so teenagers gathered there on a hillside before a stack of white hockey boards.

  It was a good cross section. The main cliques were represented, and a smattering of everyone else. There were probably a dozen geeks and bookworms; a lot of the activities people and a few of the student council-cheerleader populars; a bunch of the choir-theater-band types; a number of the “soft athletes”—runners and swimmers—and a few of the “hard” athletes from the football, hockey, and baseball teams, among them Tim’s friend Frank Mitchell, who was something of a slugger on the baseball squad. Also, gathered in their own little circle, were a clump of the Young Evangelical Society, including Steve Kinney and Jen Wright, who I’d discovered had been dating for the last few weeks. I wasn’t completely sure what the YES crowd was about, but I had an inkling it was religious (some toted their Bibles like athletes paraded their letter jackets) and from the fliers they’d put up on the school bulletin board they did things like group prayers, picnics, and movie nights out. There were rumors that they were suspicious of the whole Danny movement, or “Danny’s Way” as it was starting to be called. Steve and I exchanged How’s-it-going glances.

  As for Tim himself, I hadn’t seen him since that afternoon at Taco Johns. There was talk of a real fallout between Tim and Coach Stevens after a recent shouting match about Tim’s continuing lousy play on the field and then rumors that his parents had pulled him out of school for some sort of check-up. Maybe they were getting his drinking and drug problems sorted out. No one really knew, or if they did, they weren’t saying. I was glad he wasn’t around, period.

  Now I was surprised at the easy way Danny moved through the audience to the boards. There was a time when he got nervous taking a pee in the school bathroom. Now he almost floated with confidence, like royalty in disguise. One little girl with pink hair reached out and clasped his hand for a second as he passed by; she was what you’d politely call different. A few other girls put their hands out to do the same. This struck me as odd, but Danny just smiled in return. He climbed on top of the boards and sat down with his legs dangling.

  Michelle and Sally were right up front. I didn’t want to be too near Sally, but I ended up about twelve feet away, because I still wanted to stay close to the “stage” and keep a watch on everything. Even with Tim out of the picture for a while, I wasn’t sure about all this fuss and wanted to be able to get to Danny if things got strange. Sally’s mouth soured in an upside down U when she saw the distance I’d chosen, but I turned away.

  At first, Danny did something unnerving. Nothing. He just watched everyone silently, smiling. You could see his gaze connecting with one face after another in the crowd. I overheard Sally say to Michelle with whispered awe, “Look at his bright eyes.” I guessed it helped that his eyes were naturally a pure blue, but when he looked at me for a second even I felt weird inside. Of course, I made myself snap out of it, and he began to speak in his unusually calm voice…

  But I’m not going to try and cover everything Danny said. A lot of people have, and a lot of it comes out wrong. Not everything. Just somehow there always seems to be extra “stuff” that he said, that he never really said, like, “I am the conduit to God” or “If you want to know the Kingdom of Heaven, follow me.” One time I saw a picture in black marker on a boys’ room stall that said “Danny reigns!”, and other makeshift posters on lockers proclaiming, “Danny’s Mind!” He didn’t like that stuff. He called it degrading. So whatever you heard about him saying some those other things, it’s not true.

  First Danny held out a dandelion he had picked and asked everyone to do the same with whatever they had nearby—a blade of grass, a pen, a twig, he said it didn’t matter what. I had a pen knife, which worked just as well since I was only pretending, while Danny led the others in two minutes of “headless contemplation.”

  He began the teaching with what he called the Declaration of Heavenly Mind, because that was the goal, to know the eternal dimension in our lives. He said, “Know these things:

  “First, know that you are Heavenly Mind. It is not something you have to acquire the way you learn math or how to drive. You already are the stuff of God and Heaven, and Heavenly Mind is the deep knowing-feeling of that, like a sunray connected to the sun—”

  Some of the kids started chanting after him.

  He paused and said, “You don’t need to repeat. Feel it.”

   “Second, contrary to how you feel most of the time, know you are not your body and you are not the thoughts and the feelings inside your head—that’s the Head Mind. When you imagine you are Head Mind, trapped and experiencing the world through two peep holes, you remain tiny, and you cannot know the greater nature of Heavenly Mind.”

  “Third, know that life is the ultimate game, and it’s the same for all of us: To discover Heavenly Mind. To discover our true selves…through our practice of headlessness. It’s simply the best game in town.” He smiled like a wise man.

  A lot of new kids who hadn’t heard him talk before asked questions covered in prior gatherings. He answered them sometimes as he had before, sometimes with changes. A lot of it reminded me of what he’d said to Michelle on the bleachers, though somehow, it always sounded new. He explained the headless stick figures that were appearing all over the school; they symbolized unlimited Heavenly Mind eclipsing limited Head Mind. But he also told them not to label the figures because the concept was beyond those kind of words (and I personally think he was annoyed at seeing his name appearing with so many of these pictures). People listened in different ways—most gazed up at him attentively, while some continued contemplating their flowers and twigs, and there were a few whisperers (like the YES group), some puzzled squinters, and a couple of harmless gigglers—more the “I get it” kind of giggling, than the mocking kind—and no one paid it much attention. But I monit
ored every reaction.

  Danny responded to someone, “Don’t get confused. The human eye can only see what it’s built to see. Even in Heavenly Mind, the human eye can’t see sound, or atoms, or emotions, or colors that didn’t exist before. Heavenly Mind is how God would see if he had your eyes…which hopefully you’ll learn, he does.”

  “And it’s not just a matter of seeing. We’re not talking about x-ray glasses. This is a way of feeling the world beyond your own story and your name-self, which is just the main character in your story. Imagine God sitting over a gigantic train set. He built it himself. He loves it. And he wants to experience it from every possible angle. So, since he’s God, he creates little living train-set people and in their eyes he sets little heavenly cameras so he can join with them and look out at all his creation, all the time. Get it? That’s why we’re here. If you ever feel worthless—I used to—just remember, in Heavenly Mind, you become the eyes of God on earth. That makes you very special to the universe.”

  The actual techniques of headlessness had been evolving as different kids tried new ways. This may have been one of the reasons it was becoming popular—kids were making it their own. This was great news to Danny. He wanted kids to experiment and invent new ways. He called it, “Our key ring of practices…Find your way, not mine.” He invited some kids to bring up their latest experiments. I’ll just mention two that stuck with me.

  Tori Muskat stood up at Danny’s gesture. She was something like a hippie, wore plaid ankle length dresses and noisy clogs and kept one thick braid of sandy hair on her shoulder. Figure’d she was into this. She announced abruptly, “I found a really good way of doing headlessness when I go walking. It works better for me than just sitting down practicing.” She suddenly looked at Danny apologetically.

  He laughed. “Nothing could be better. Share.”

  She did, and as she talked she became more and more excited. “I was…just walking…down a sidewalk. And the headlessness I’d been struggling with earlier came on all by itself. I just let myself sink into the rhythm of the movement and it got so deep and the scenery, everything I saw, began to flow. My vision opened up like a giant tunnel that the whole world floated through. The sidewalk, trees, the clouds—everything was going through me; instead of me walking through it. Everything became bright. Colors—the yellows and reds in the leaves, the green grass—it was all blazing, like fresh nail polish.” She snapped her brightly colored fingers and giggled.

  “And everything leaped out at me, the trees and mail boxes, the fences, grass and flowers. Everything vibrated. And this one thing was special: when I stopped at a big tree, I realized, I’d never seen a tree before… Now they were majestic, like mountains, and their branches spread out, all different but all perfect…as if they knew what they were doing. I could almost hear their silent tree language, and they were saying, joyously, one beautiful thing—I am.” She raised her hands up into the air like living branches. And people listened. A few hyper types even clapped briefly.

  Danny beamed. He said, “In Heavenly Mind, every tree is the burning bush.”

  At this, there was a rustling among the Young Evangelicals, though no one except me paid attention. And Tori exclaimed, “Yes, Danny! I get it. I could actually feel that tree burning…with life.” She became flushed and sat down, saying to no one, “I can feel a tree.”

  Danny closed his eyes. The YES people began whispering to each other. I couldn’t hear the words, but as a few fingers tapped against Bibles, it was clear they weren’t pleased. I wondered what Steve was doing with this group of holier-than-thous. I would have never suspected he was like that. Then he put a hand on Jen Wright’s knee to calm her down. Oh, yeah—Jen. At least I hoped that was the reason.

  Fortunately, most of the other kids were talking excitedly to each other, and didn’t notice the stirrings in the YES crowd.

  Danny finally looked up and began where Tori had left off.  He asked people to, “Notice how Head Mind tugs at things going by you in your vision; how it subtly tries to grab hold of something, anything, jerking you from one object to the next—this tree, that bird, a crack in the sidewalk. Observe how it’s afraid to let go, see how afraid it is of total flow; because when that happens, Head Mind disappears. Try it and see if this isn’t true. And then go further. Let all life flow through you in the same way: all the bad moments, the upsets, annoying people you run into; and the high points and wonderful people you encounter…don’t get suckered too deep into those either—because they’ll always flip on you—just enjoy their flowing by and watch everything and everyone grow bright and shiny. Like Tori’s nails.”

  A few other kids stood up to share their headless experiences, and Danny commented on each in turn. The other one that stuck with me was Shaun Pennick—Mr. Together, Mr. Student Council, Mr. Headed-for-Harvard; really, the kind of person who—unlike flower child Tori—I would not have expected to be interested in this. He told of some experience he had standing in front of a mirror and suddenly feeling like his face was no longer his face. And that a head was visible in the mirror, but he couldn’t feel it on his shoulders. Real Shaun, he said, was something floating…behind it all. He called the sensation, “Kind of awesome.” And then he got flustered and said, “Hey, Danny, am I kidding myself or is this legit?”

   Danny smiled. “Headlessness makes a mirror of the world. It’s God looking at himself. And it can feel like floating without a body, because it doesn’t ultimately need a body.” He looked around at the crowd. I did too; because the YES people were huddling again.

  Danny continued. I think he was pulling together all the experiences kids were sharing. “As you have these moments in headlessness, notice how the world becomes less heavy, more with you and less against you—feel how your name-sense (‘I am Steve, I am Mary, I am Danny’) becomes much lighter and less demanding. You might even feel moments of just plain I am in a big way that has nothing to do with anything going on in your life. Head Mind is a torturer. It tells you the world is heavy, and you are small, and you need to worry about math tests, zits, making the cheerleader squad, what your friends and enemies think of you, or your parents. That’s how it stays energized. Heavenly Mind makes it all lighter, even funny. Of course, this doesn’t mean you won’t study hard for that biology exam…if it’s what you have to do, you will. But you’ll do it much sharper, and you’ll understand it more deeply, because it won’t feel like a burden.”

  A lot of kids, I believed, didn’t really understand him—including myself—like the guy who asked Danny if he could see the future (he can’t). And later on I asked Danny what he thought. “Well,” he said, “a few are listening and thinking, I get it. A few more are listening and thinking, I get it…but it’s too hard and not practical. A lot probably can’t listen at all, and they’re saying to themselves, Crap. That’s how it should be. They can go back to texting and video games and whatever keeps them entertained. I’ll concentrate on the ones who want to know more.”

  One kid from my American history class said “Danny, do you believe in magic?” He was carrying one of those large greenish-orange books next to him. I never understood how people could read that magic wand fluff when real stuff like Conan was available.

  “Oh, there’s lots of magic in the world if we could just see it.” Danny said, and went into one of his closed-eye moments. Then: “We’re fascinated by our paranormal fictions—all the teenage vampires, zombies, Harry Potter. Why? Is it because they take us in very human ways beyond our very real human limitations? But what if at our core reality, we’re not really humans, and we already have a beyond-human consciousness without limitations? That’s the true paranormal reality.  And when you find it, all the handsome vampires and the beautiful flying witches and wizards will seem kind of—plain.”

  During a quiet moment, Jen Wright, from the YES circle, asked a question loudly, and a little sarcastically. “So, Danny—how will I know if I actually ever reach this Heavenly Mind?”

 
I was bothered by the sarcastic toner, but Danny laughed unconcerned. “Simple. Your head will explode.”

  This produced a stunned reaction from the crowd. “And it will be a perfectly silent, beautiful, shimmering explosion. A heavenly bomb—your own H-Bomb—going off inside you. You’ll know it if it happens. You’ll know it forever.”

  He closed his eyes again in a weird pause (he did tell me later that these were “little internal journeys” while he waited for the words to spring up). He held his hands apart, like he was about to clap. “you practice headlessness…” As he talked his hands inched inwards and outwards, never quite completing a clap, but getting closer. “Over time headlessness weakens the obstructions of Head Mind. You can’t make it happen. It will seem an accident that comes out of nowhere. You’ll just get nearer and nearer until.” Snap! He brought his hands together with a loud crack. “Head Mind finally crashes and there’ll be a flash of total openness where Heavenly Mind explodes inside you. At that moment, you’ll see with God’s eyes.” There were gasps from the gathering, including Michelle and Sally. The YES kids stayed serious and seemed unimpressed.

  Danny sealed it by saying: “So next time you hold your hands like this, remember you’re also creating a symbol of that moment when you connect to Heavenly Mind.” He held his hands touching in prayer, and many others followed.