After every flight, UPS pilots fill out a form, called a “gripe sheet,” which tells mechanics about problems with the aircraft. The mechanics correct the problems; document their repairs on the form, and then pilots review the gripe sheets before the next flight.

Never let it be said that ground crews lack a sense of humor. Here are some actual maintenance complaints submitted by UPS’ pilots (marked with a P) and the solutions recorded (marked with an S) by maintenance engineers. By the way, UPS is the only major airline that has never, ever, had an accident.

P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.

P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.

P: Something loose in cockpit
S: Something tightened in cockpit

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There are no shortcuts to experiencing Mystery.

Sometimes I trawl the Internet, looking for others who write about the same kinds of things as me. Or I talk to different people, hoping that I will find others of like mind. I look for others who access the Mystery, who might enrich my life thus.

And probably they are out there. Possibly some of them might even blog. But the inherent problem with these approaches is simply that they (reading, talking) are based in language. They are words, whether written or spoken; and words are symbols for the reality, not the reality itself. And the very essence of Mystery is that it lies somewhere beyond the range of representation. It is both simpler and more complex than that, because it’s just direct experience.

We are so awash in symbolic thought that we can get entirely trapped in it. Our minds are powerful things. What religion do we respond to? Which football team do we support? All of our choices, our identifications, are closely aligned with whatever symbols ring true for us, what stories speak best to our beings. Even something as serious as our political stage is nothing more than seeing whose story you believe in the most.

And this isn’t to say that stories are untrue. They’re true insofar as they resonate and carry us forward on our path.

But they’re not enough. But we are so trapped in this world of stories and symbols that many of us begin to think that there’s even no such thing as ultimate Truth. Well, there is. It’s just not necessarily translatable into English.

Access to Truth can only be accomplished through practice that leads through direct experience and heart-to-heart transmission.

This is what is lacking, and becomes ever more lacking the more our society embraces — and becomes entrenched in — increasingly arcane, symbolic levels of communication.

IMHO.

It’s happened a few times in the last week, a week which I might begin to consider a watershed in my development as an acupuncturist.

I’ve started to get noticeable clinical results.

I treated a man with severe sciatic pain, and within twenty minutes it was reduced to a mild ache.

I treated my father-in-law, who was visiting for the week, for some arthritic pain and stiffness this morning. With one needle, his back stiffness vanished.

I treated my wife for sinus headache, and cleared her sinuses up.

In each of these cases, no one could be more surprised at how well it worked than me. It’s extraordinary.

And with success comes a pitfall: I begin to see how easy it is to start to think that I’m someone special, someone important, that I have power.

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