I returned home bitter and disillusioned with my brush with enlightenment. It seemed to me that the path to true enlightenment involved humiliation and purposely confusing people to make yourself look more Zen.

I returned to work, I returned to partying, I returned to that comfort zone we all build around ourselves, and I was happy. That was until one day while SCUBA diving with some fairly new and inexperienced divers, one of them got into serious trouble. Tangled in their own kit they began to panic and started pulling at their buddy's equipment to get their spare airhose. This in turn made their buddy panic, and pretty soon the two of them were spiraling down into the depths in a tangle of hoses and air bubbles. I swam quickly to them and grabbed hold, filling my BCD jacket with air to stop their uncontrolled descent. Then suddenly I felt my regulator ripped from my mouth. I instinctively went for my spare and found that too missing. My immediate reaction was to panic. I was 30ft down and both my main and back-up air supplies were jammed vice-like into the mouths of my fellow divers. I thought I was going to die.

Then my brain screamed at me .. "AIR!" and my mind flashed back to the rockpool. But this time instead of the feeling of anger and humiliation I felt relaxed, centered, and focussed. Looking down I saw one of the airhoses freeflowing air into the ocean, so I reached down and with a light tap to close the valve I put it into my mouth. Needless to say it took a little while to find out who had which bit of who's kit, but eventually I had both divers back together and we were on the way to the surface and a gentle reminder about PADI training.

Once back on the boat both the divers came up to me to thank me for saving their lives.

"Oh I doubt that" I said "I'm sure you would have sorted it out by yourself if you'd had to"
"You are too modest" one said
"It's humiliating" muttered the other.

Then once again I felt that clarity. His word 'humiliation' struck a chord. He had not been humiliated, only helped. Would he really have rather died than to have been helped?

That night I packed my bags, got in the car, and drove down the coast, hoping the Prophet would still be there. I had learned the first and most important lesson.

If we care too much about how others percieve us, then we never truly appreciate ourselves.