 Welcome to Major Moments of Mindfulness, the Lightenment Show. I'm Andrea Marion, creator and host. Your mindful awareness and focus happen naturally all the time. At the end of the day, those are the moments you remember. And intermittently, this awareness reaches a significantly higher consciousness level. A deep insight or intuition arises that changes life in a small or grand way. This is a lightenment moment, which I explore with guests in each show. Today, Andy Mayer. He takes more than a small step, actually a big leap, into openness on the lightenment path. Andy is 75 years old, an avid year-round Vermont outdoorsman who bikes, hikes and cross-country skis. He volunteers for Resource Vermont and manages their LP collection and repairs stereo consoles. The nonprofit sells the popular retro records and stereos for their financial support. A UVM graduate in 1971, Andy started with his lifetime employer, IBM, 18 months later. He married a year after that. Then in two years had a son. When he was 53, he was fortunate to retire early. Andy has always lived in Vermont, except during 1971-72. Andy asked me to read some lyrics from a song, Leaf and Stream, by Wishbone Ash. He thought he might get emotional reading it on his own because the lyrics relate to touching times in his life. I find myself beside a stream of empty thought, like a leaf that's fallen to the ground and carried by the flow of water to my dreams. Before we contemplate Andy's dreams to come, let's start with the landmark year, 1971. What I graduated with, coming out from that, didn't seem like the job prospects were all that forthcoming. And I thought, well, I've got a motorcycle that I have and time and motorcycle time. I'm interested in seeing the national parks. So I put that together and started a trip with my cousin and my brother. That was Andy's enlightenment moment of clarity. And as you will see, the experiences he has on the motorcycle trip that he takes, along with the song lyrics he loves, lead him to have this clarity through his life. I remember one of the first stops is Wind Cave National Monument, where he got some great experience in spelunking. I think after that you get the Badlands, Rapid City, the Four Presidents, or Mount Rushmore. My definition of enlightenment aligns with these words from Ralph Waldo Emerson. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across the mind from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages. Andy's enlightenment moment or gleam of light across the mind came as, I won't get a job. I'll go across the country. It wasn't Andy's parents or teachers or Emerson's so-called bards and sages who thought this was a good idea. Andy's father and extended family ran a gas station business. The hard-earned income had put Andy through university as a first-generation college student. Andy certainly was expected to head directly into career advancement, but after graduation he set off across the U.S. on a motorcycle. Even when Andy's brother and cousin turned east for home at the end of the summer, Andy kept on. But he wanted to earn his way forward. He joined crews of migrant workers to pick fruit to earn a few dollars. I picked pears in Medford, Oregon. That was one of the hardest things I had done. Something that was a little more fun was picking cherries near Flathead Lake, Montana. You could eat those and eventually ended up in Eureka, California. So from Eureka, where I couldn't find work, after a month I went into Sacramento, California and found a job that day that I went there just at a gas station. Gas was like 25 cents a gallon then. I was on 12th and D Street. I remember the first day I got the job. Where am I going to sleep? No place to lay his head was a big unknown for Andy. Rebecca Solnit emphasizes life unknowns when she writes, leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That's where the most important things come from, where you yourself come from and where you will go. I didn't know when I was going to come back, if at all. Reliableists such as Frank Ramsey, Alvin Goldman and Ernst Soza both support and refute these kinds of intuitive experiences in their philosophy. While these philosophers generally acknowledge that rational intuitions or perceptions, memory or assumptions represent justified knowledge, they don't agree that Andy's hunches amount to knowledge. Towards the end of the day as I was writing I'd start to look for a place. I had a tent, but I didn't always use it. I remember that night I slept on pavement next to a tool shed. Out of sight, my bike was parked behind a billboard, I think. As I continued to work for that gas station, he allowed me to move into the tool shed. And that's where I stayed for about three months. He told me that ever since his trip he has never taken living in a house for granted because he once lived in a tool shed. An avid 70s music collector, he even rigged a beat up stereo consult next to his shed bunk and bought a few second hand LPs. See the Janis Joplin album cover in the photo? Her song lyric, freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. Andy turned to song lyrics to ground his experience. He particularly connected to the Steppenwolf lyrics. Get your motor running, head out on the highway looking for adventure in whatever comes our way. And an easy rider, you know, the mode there was that people are maybe not welcomed in the south especially if they're on motorcycles. So I think it was in Arkansas. I just pulled to the side of the road, put the bike up a bank and slept right there. In the morning I wake up and a police officer's there. And it was a whole friendly thing, you know. He helped me get my bike down from the bank. And I said I had run out near running out of gas and he says, well the station's open now. Andy's hunch to trespass worked out well. It would not be considered a reliable source of knowledge according to the reliable philosophy. But look where Andy's trip led him. Pretty soon I had a temporary job at IBM, but I started manufacturing. And I remember going in to meet someone who was going to train me. And her name was Karine. And he says here's your man Karine. So I had a job, I bought a house and married within a year after getting back. Karine was, we were both working at IBM to start. And I remember after she had buddy, our son, she says, I want to be a housewife and a mother. She was making more money than me. And we had, you know, mortgage and the house and everything. Andy prioritized time with family and self-sufficiently. As you can see, he and Karine building their garage together. And they all enjoyed national park visits and a long trip out west as well as many camping outings. The idea that I quoting the peace of mind that I understand about indecision, and I don't care if I get behind people living in competition, all I want is my peace of mind. Ralph Waldo Emerson would like Boston's references to letting go of societal competitive norms and comparisons with others. Emerson wrote 160 years earlier, we know the truth when we see it. Let skeptic and scoffer say what they choose. When I got back from that motorcycle trip, I was satisfied. I actually sold the motorcycle. Fortunately, Andy was able to retire early and spend many happy's with his wife Karine and their son buddy. Unfortunately, Venus has a shadow side, the bottom side of up. Andy lost Karine to a pulmonary embolism following coronary bypass surgery in 2009. Here is the ending to the leaf and stream lyrics we heard in the beginning and which refer to grief such as Andy experienced. Alone I've walked this path for many years. Listen to the wind that calls my name. The weeping trees of yesterday look so sad. Await your breath of spring again. The song ends with different words and Andy's spirit and soul follows along. Far beyond the hills where earth and sky will meet again, our shadows like an opening hand control the secrets that I've yet to find and wonder at the light in which they stand. From 1971 to today, this is Andy's story of steps into bright openness, something we've all experienced and as Andy tells us through the song lyrics, he believes in mysteries to come. Get with who you are, along with everyone else, this is The Lightman Show.