In early 1997, I regularly meditated in a local interfaith chapel, that provided sacred literature from a number of traditions. I began to sit in meditation with the first mystical poem within Lex Hixon's, Atom From The Sun of Knowledge. At the time I did not know what a Sufi was, and I did not know that I was playing with fire. As soon as I began to meditatively read, I had a powerful spiritual experience. I felt as if I had been lifted several feet off the ground, and that I was suspended in a vast expansive space. The quality of my breath became more intense and spiritual than I had ever known it. When my mouth opened, the air just rushed in and then back out, of its own accord. 'I' was not pulling or pushing the breath, rather it was 'I' that was being breathed by Life itself. (I would later connect this with Reshad Feild's novel, The Last Barrier, where he speaks of reversing the usual sensory roles, and meditatively imagining that God is seeing, hearing, and tasting you, rather than you seeing, hearing, and tasting God). It was incredibly exhilarating. Afterwards, I was scared; I knew this material had something to do with Islam, but I told myself that anything that felt this wonderful could not be harmful. I returned a number of times and meditated while again reading this poem. The same incredible experience came each time, and within a week or two, it occurred to me that this seemingly supernatural breathing pattern was similar to the ocean tides and other rhythmic processes of nature. I discovered only years later, when reading the preface to this book, that it was not common literature, but rather, direct initiatory transmission of Sufism, the ancient mystical path of Islam. The practice that I was performing was in essence equivalent to the sacred initiation ritual of 'the taking of the right hand' of the Prophet Muhammad. The day I began reading this mystical poem, I unknowingly became a dervish, an initiate on the Sufi way. Little did I know, that I had returned Home to the mystical Source of Being.