It is 7:30am on a Saturday.

I'm in Houston, Texas after a thousand mile flight yesterday so that I could attend the weekend Holotropic Breathwork workshop being conducted by Stanislav Grof and Tav Sparks.

It is appropriate that I'm in Houston; home of the Johnson Space Center from where so much of our manned exploration of outer space has been controlled.

It is here that I will hopefully begin a journey just as momentous, but instead of moving outward towards the cosmos, I will begin a journey even more spectacular--one that will go further than the edges of the known universe.

This will be a journey to inner space.

I'm trying not to spend too much time thinking about what will happen today. After all, it is the left brain's machine-like buzzing that keeps up the constant chatter during my waking state and this is a weekend for my right brain to dominate.

Today is a day for my consciousness to take its first tentative steps to seek out the ground of its being. There is an excited awareness in me as I prepare to go downstairs to join with 80 or 90 other consciousnesses as they too seek The Other.

I also have some concerns, the largest of which is that nothing will happen. Yet if that is what comes of this weekend, then so be it.

A lesser concern is my health--especially my hypertension--which is more of a problem to the organizers of the workshop than to me. While it is controlled by medication, I would guess that the intensity of the breathing technique is always a concern. I was told that Dr. Grof would probably talk to those of us who have this problem about how to work with it. I found out in the past couple of years that my high blood pressure has apparently caused some vascular damage in the white matter of my brain. I have had a couple of yearly MRI's to insure that it hasn't gotten worse--and it hasn't.

I understood that one of the symptomological clusters that can result from this kind of damage is Multiple Sclerosis, so besides having the MRI's done, I've also been checked for general balance and muscular control. Physically, I've always felt healthy and the only concern I've ever had in this regard is that I don't want the ability to go as deeply into myself as possible to be affected by whatever this damage may have done within my brain.

This became one of my concerns after my shamanic workshop last November when I was completely unable to journey as my fellow participants had all been able to do. But honestly, these things really don't concern me. As Italians--and Doris Day--put it, que sera, sera, whatever will be, will be.

Plus, I trust whatever inside or outside my self has gotten me to this point. It's been a relatively short journey considering. But the Holy Grail for me are those incredible non-ordinary holotropic states of consciousness that Stan Grof talks about in his book, When the Impossible Happens: Adventures in Non-ordinary Reality.

I especially trust that the strange series of events that occurred last night when we were choosing our partners for the workshop is meant to be.

As I sat in the second row--never the first--before the evening talk by Stan Grof, I watched my fellow workshop participants filtering into the room. Besides these participants, many were there just to see and hear Dr. Grof because of his renowned reputation in the fields of consciousness and Transpersonal Psychology.

Soon a younger woman sat down next to me and my lifetime habit of trying to become invisible surfaced. I do this so that I won't have to talk to anyone. Small talk, you see, is like a small death to me. I don't enjoy it, I'm not good at it and it seems meaningless...which of course is exactly what it is supposed to be. Small talk is simply the human need to establish contact with someone and neutralize what otherwise would be an awkward situation; which is to be in close proximity to someone without speaking to each other. Yet, for some reason I have yet to discover, a sense of isolation is how I am most comfortable in most social situations.

Then, as I listened to the people around me, I thought, wait a second! These people are here this evening for the very same reason I am. So in fact if I do talk with anyone, it is not small talk. It is about this very important work most of us will be doing this weekend.

I can't actually remember who spoke first, but soon the woman I'll call D and I were talking away about our respective paths toward wholeness and spirituality, and it was rather amazing to me how quickly I became comfortable with the situation. Again, social anxiety is something I've lived with all my life, so the times I can actually overcome it I find surprisingly pleasant.

Soon Dr. Grof began to speak. He gave us an overview of his philosophy and work over the past 50+ years in consciousness research. After a couple hours, he said that the people who were not attending the workshop could leave. He then gave the rest of us, who were the actual workshop participants, an idea of what we would be doing for the next two days.

He told us that we would be working in dyads or pairs. I was already aware of this, and this, too, is one of those anxiety-producing situations that I've always dreaded. But I thought that perhaps I had lucked out since I had now connected with D. Although I knew that she was from Houston and that there were people in the room she knew, it seemed to me that we were as good a pairing as any.

I was surprised, then, when Dr. Grof said that it was now time to choose someone to work with and D quickly rose and said to me that she wanted to continue our talk after the workshop was completed. She then walked away towards someone she knew who had been sitting a few rows behind us.

Ugh! Here we go again, I thought, sighing inwardly. So I looked around for someone else I'd have to now get to know.

There seemed to be any number of people around me who were themselves looking for a potential partner, so I made a comment to no one in particular that I wondered if we were supposed to pair up with someone of the same sex--or if it didn't matter. But then when I looked around, a very attractive woman I'll call T was looking at me and asked if I was partnered with anyone yet. With an increasing heartbeat, I answered No! And that was it! I was now one half of this new word I'd never heard before called a dyad.

I must in all candor tell how unique an experience this was for me. Let's put it this way. Never in my life has what I would call a beautiful woman ever chosen me for anything; husband, lover, boyfriend, friend or even lab partner. It just doesn't happen to me. Again in all candor, I must admit that I'm not the most attractive man in the room...any room...even when I'm the only one in the room. Secondly, my social ineptitude seldom dazzles women if and when I do meet them.

Then there is the additional piece of baggage that I carry around.

I don't ever recall working with or being around a beautiful woman without becoming increasingly preoccupied with a desire to be close to her in every way; emotionally, physically, intellectually, spiritually and....did I mention physically?

Having been around them most of my life, I know too that most males are this way. This is comedically emphasized with the wonderful line from "When Harry Met Sally" when Billy Crystal makes the statement that "No man can be friends with a woman that he finds attractive. He always wants to have sex with her. "

This is certainly an accurate description of most men's attitude towards women, made even truer when Meg Ryan asks Billy, "So, you're saying that a man can be friends with a woman he finds unattractive? Billy's great answer, "No. You pretty much want to nail them too. "

Jokes aside, of course this makes men seem very superficial and one dimensional, but unfortunately that is the superficial side of the male animal--human and otherwise.

So here I am walking out of the room with this very lovely woman whom I'd just found out has had an number of experiences with Holotropic Breathwork as well as many Rebirthing experiences. So it would certainly not be a situation of the blind leading the blind. Instead, I would be sharing this experience with a person who herself was very familiar with these kinds of breathwork technique.

That night in bed, I chastised myself for my usual attachment to a woman's physical appearance, but truly I had to wonder how this had happened. Even my belief that most of what has occurred on my journey thus far has been because it was supposed to happen didn't make sense based on my past experience with women.

Yet it had happened and who was I to question it? So I was determined to tame my ego as well as my libido in this regard and fully enter the experience we would both share in less than ten hours.

(Go to Part 2)