Moose and Wasabe shared an office in old China Town…. they both had spring roll addictions!!!!

I = Interviewer.

M = The Mystic of Cascadia.

I : You follow teachings that have existed for thousands of years. Have you learned anything from current times that you would include with these teachings?

M : Yes, there is one thing I’ve added that has become quite important to what I teach. It is The Wisdom of No Escape, and the Path of Loving Kindness as taught by Pema Chodren. The most important component is the meditation Tonglen. It is a vehicle with which a profound understanding of ones self and others can be obtained. It’s not an easy path to follow, but gives deep meaning to life, something well worth the effort involved.

I : Tell us about this mediation Tonglen?

M : It’s a breathing meditation which reverses the usual roles of the in and out breath. Normally you breathe in the good, and breathe out the bad. In Tonglen, we breathe in the bad, and breathe out the good. Obviously that is an over simplification, but it is the essence of it.

The basic idea is to breathe in the bad such as pain and suffering, and breathe out the good such a joy and happiness. Another example is breathing in confusion and breathing out understanding. You can adjust the scope if the meditation to suit your needs. For example you can use just yourself as the one breathing in pain, and out happiness. You can use just another person as the target. Or it could be a family, the residents of a city, a country, all the way. to everyone on the planet. Adjusting the scope impact the level of openness one experiences

I. : So what is the big take away from doing Tonglen?

M : There is no big take away. There are as many take away’s as there are people practicing their meditation. The take away’s are in the details of our personal history.

I : If there are no big take away’s, how are people going to know it’s worth while to learn how to do Tonglen.

M : You just have to practice the meditation and experience what it can bring to your life. For example, I have a friend who is suffering from depression. With them, I would breathe in their pain and suffering, and breathe out joy and happiness to them. This experience will make me feel different about my friend than if I’d never done the mediation. I would now feel a loving kindness for them to a degree that didn’t exist before. Does this make sense?

I : Yes. It tells me I’m going to have to try Tonglen and see how it changes me.

M : That’s exactly right.

As with all candidates, Falcao, the soon to be Mystic of Cascadia, was sent into the wilderness surrounding The Temple of Being. The only rule… don’t come back until you’ve had a vision. Most took the well worn path of fasting until a vision came. The mushrooms and herbs in the forest that helped bring about a vision were well known. Rather than fasting, Falcao chose a harder path to a vision. He chose going into service as a healer, and seeking his vision through mindful meditation. It had never been done before, but Falcao didn’t care. The life of a healer was a rewarding one, one he could be happy with if that was his fate. And then there was the dream he’d had about getting his vision. This was the final piece that led Falcao to choose the path he did. He would never have believed this path was going to be so short.

The Mystic followed the forest path until he came across a village that had no healer. The villagers welcomed him like they were giving him a parade, with children following in his wake as he walked through the village. On his first night in the village a bear attacked a family working in their garden. Falcao created a blistering light at the end of his staff and used it to chase the bear away. He then proceeded to take care of the family’s wounds, setting them to heal as a result of his expert attention.

Late that night Falcao was visited by the village witch. She was upset because she had attempted to be the village healer but had only bungled her attempts at healing. She cast a spell on him to give him a traveling sickness, namely of not being able to stop traveling. That night the Mystic had put himself into a deep meditation attempting to result in a vision. The witches spell piggy backed on this mediation and took Falcao on a traversal of the Multiverse. His attempts to control his sliding from one Multiverse to another began to be effective. The more he traversed, the greater grew his control, By the end of the evening he had mastered what he would call transporting the Multiverse.

So it came to pass that Falcao successfully had a vision just by doing meditation on the Multiverse. Thus began the stories of The Mystic of Cascadia Multiverse Stories.