Attuning to Nadas, or, the Hum of the Universe

A vibe piece

Allegory of the Senses by Gerard de Lairesse, 1668 (oil on canvas)

Last night, I woke up at 2:30 a.m. flushed with energy. My heart pumped light-bands, intricately woven across my chest. I knew there would be no going back to sleep, but I was okay with it. I wasn’t manic; I was positive.

Despite my best efforts, as I was getting out of bed, I woke up Grace, who is nine months pregnant and ready to pop at any moment. I kissed her on the cheek and told her I was up now. She’s used to it at this point.

I brushed my teeth, put the dishes away, and sat down to meditate. One perk of loving to sit stillness is that I actually get joy from such a nightly interruption, being awake when most are asleep, absorbed in a space that resists interruption, feeling like a kid reading ghost stories by flashlight beneath the covers.

There’s a kind of transgressive energy behind it, one that reminds me of the handful of times I’ve had to hitchhike, suddenly on my own, open to what the world had to offer. You just stick your thumb out into the wind, praying for some kind-hearted person to scoop you up, ignoring the relentless judgment of the others who pass by, slowing down to gawk at you, or shaking their heads as they speed by, rubbernecking at your life choices. Self-doubt is inevitable at such times, but when necessity is the mode of things, going with the flow is easier, and if you let it, inevitable. It’s hard to imagine a life driven by the wind, drifting in the currents of fate, supported by the self-knowledge that, after a certain point, we will all have to.

Here I am awake, though I should be sleeping. Here I am writing when I could be doing other things.

Why am I awake, you might wonder? Well, earlier in the day, I received an intense massage from a renowned master in this flow—his method lies somewhere among deep tissue massage, Jungian depth therapy, energy work on the meridian lines, and somatic tantra. At one point, he had me biting down on a towel, screaming at the top of my lungs, knuckling a release. I had no choice but to let it all go. He warned me that I might feel “emotional” after.

He wasn’t wrong. As the day wore on, there were moments when I’d feel a light breeze caressing my back one minute, and the next, it would feel like centipedes were crawling in my belly.

People don’t often talk enough about just how strange your life becomes when, after many years, the lines blur between your “spiritual path” and your very existence. Like, you will just wake up in the middle of the night with your heart wide open, blasting, and eventually, it’s the default. Time ceases to matter in a way. It feels circular instead of linear. Hours feel less consequential than the awareness of experience within those hours.

It makes me think that maybe life is a series of fragments guided by energetic force. Sometimes the truth is a bit… purple. Like a sunset or a broken heart or a kitten’s meow when you least expect to find a kitten there.

As these lines continue to blur, you’ll soon start hearing the Nāda, known as the sacred soundtrack of the universe. When the chaos of thoughts subsides and the mind becomes ever quieter, an “inner sound” emerges, like a silent vibration of the self. This phenomenon is the focus of entire branches of esoteric yoga practices, each seeking to cultivate the power of this bizarre internal symphony.

But your immediate reaction might be utter terror. Reality seems to have fractured. These sounds are not sounding, yet you hear them crystalline and penetrating. You read somewhere that this can happen from spiritual practice, as you open your “crown chakra” to larger currents tied to the universe, but you instead feel as if you’ve landed in a psychotic hell realm where you’ll hear a constant buzzing the rest of your life. To the point that multiple visits to ENTs across the country diagnose you with tinnitus and advise you, adamantly, against meditating, because meditating will only create a larger canvas for tinnitus’s impasto.

If all of this sounds utterly batshit, well, first, trust me—I get it. I am the last guy to have thought I would be talking about Nadas and chakras as being as real as a rock. Life has an ironic way of reshaping us, and it seems my trajectory includes a systematic dismantling of my former beliefs, as I slowly morph into a living representation of all ideas and traits I once doubted and held in contempt.  

What I am trying to get at is that after a certain point, something uncorked within me. Not in the sense of champagne—that would be too instant. It’s been a process. On the cusp of fatherhood, I can feel all these karmic patterns unwinding themselves, forcing me to reevaluate the structures upon which I’ve built my identity and confront the illusory “order” I so desperately attempt to master and control.

Suddenly I feel as sensitive as I’ve ever been, alert to stimuli, quick to emote. The recent months have required me to drastically reshape my habits. Much like when I had to give up drugs and booze, some of these changes are ones I never aspired to make.

It’s an openness that’s led to two months of no caffeine because I’ve come to realize I don’t need it anymore, and that it was only adding an undercurrent of anxiety I could do without. It’s been the same amount of time since I stopped consuming all forms of sugar, carbs, and dairy as part of an elimination diet, which, I’m somewhat sad to report, seems to be working. My energy flow feels more natural, no longer dependent on the sucrose that I once relied on for a quick or easy boost.  

You might be wondering—why the elimination diet? While my meditation teachers have taught me to embrace the inner sound of the Nada as a gift, until implementing this diet, my sinuses have been a constant disaster.

This is an old wound for me. My childhood is riddled with ear and sinus infections, constantly on antibiotics to correct the pattern, often considering surgical solutions. As I grew older, my sinus issues became less of a thing, especially during the initial stages of my recovery when I embraced the role of a wellness-worshipping, vegan-fueled, cold-showering nut-bag.

But in the last two years, coinciding with a breakthrough in my meditation practice, my sinuses began wreaking havoc once more. It sometimes feels like there’s an angry gremlin taking residence in my nasal cavity. And yet, as my energy levels stabilized without the need for noxious sugars, the troubles appear to be sorting themselves out, and the elimination diet has been a godsend, grief over ice cream notwithstanding.

I suppose the point I’m making is that the body has an innate intelligence, a way of healing itself on its own timeline when you open all the channels, finally stepping out of your own way—as unsettling and frightening as it may feel while you’re in the midst of it.

Put another way: my mind is now bright, but my body is still catching up. There’s still so much pain and insecurity stored in the crevices there, the parts of myself that need to prove to the world—to you, to me, my family, to God—that I’m okay, that I’m worth it. That my life is back on track and won’t be train-wrecked again because I will not allow such a fate to befall my unborn child.  

While it might sound weird to liken the sinuses to spiritual passageways, that’s what the massage therapist told me they represent—all the things I wasn’t allowed to say and all the things that were said to me that hurt me or made me believe myself undeserving of grace. But now, with my senses ablaze, when I let the vibrations in, no matter the circumstance—no matter the hour—I am making space for their gradual release.

It seems I finally have the capacity to tackle these deep-seated patterns, to allow them to unwind and watch them unwind without judgment. Call it hypersensitivity, call it being alive. Call it baby on the way; call it being reborn.

Later in the morning, as part of my Friday cheat meal, I had my once-usual post-workout smoothie from Earthbar, which is basically the juice equivalent of Equinox. The cacao, protein powder, and crispy cool texture had me tripping on love like I was on a light dose of MDMA, which, I suspect, is how God intended for cacao to feel when the Mayans first discovered it.