Meeting My Master

The Back Story:

I met Michael Walsh through a woman I have been going to hear talk, about the awakened state. She has been one of the most inspirational teachers I have ever had, because she is so ordinary. Her name is Jan Frazier. When I am with her, she is like an old friend. She has no hidden agendas, no undisclosed neurosis or phobias. No power trips or posses of devotees. She is clear, plain and gentle. And I adore her.

She gave me hope, like no other teacher I've had before, that awakening is natural and everyday. She, like Wayne Liquorman, David Carse and Krishnamurti have shown me what life is like beyond "isms". Beyond doctrines and paths, techniques and mantras. What a relief! With her inspiration I have found I have been able to swim in the blissful waters of myself as presence, focusing on the here-and-now. Just resting in my awareness as witness, to this life, that is transpiring before my very eyes.

I had been going to sit with her, and listen to her, these last two years. My growing affection and familiarity with her, as I felt myself drawing closer to this ordinary reality we call awareness, was inspiring in it's simplicity and naturalness. I had been taking writing classes with Jan too, since she is a writing teacher, and saw the opportunity to meld my desire to communicate my experience of my seeing life in this way, with my love of words and writing.

Then, in January of this year, Jan started talking about a man who had contacted her from California over a year before. They had spent the last year emailing and talking on the phone, developing a relationship as peers, though Jan would later say that Michael was her teacher. Their plan was to start teaching together, once he moved to the East Coast. She described him as the most awake person she had ever met. She urged us to take advantage of the "wonderful, good fortune" of his presence with us.

Michael arrived in February and the first joint teaching was arranged through an Insight Meditation group down in Western, MA. Two Hundred people showed up, mostly out of curiosity, to see who this man was that Jan spoke so highly of. He stood there, in the middle of the room, tall, thin, weathered, with sparse grey hair and beard stubble and some teeth missing. He had no techniques. He had no meditations. He had no path or teaching, other than to say what being awake was not. I was electrified. I was home. I was scared. This man could do serious damage. I was in.