Stuart Perrin Books
The Dancing Man ~ A Deeper Sense of Surrender...
These two novellas are linked together by a common thread. They are both rite-of-passage stories in which the deaths of a parent and of a teacher force the young protagonists to re-examine their inner lives. "The Dancing Man" explores the relationship of Joshua and his paternal father. "A Deeper Sense of Surrender..." explores the dynamics between Stuart and Rudi, his spiritual father, who died in a plance crash in 1973.
Stuart writes:
For many years, I ran an antique store in Manhattan. People would come in, see Rudi's picture on my desk, and tell me stories about how he died. I rarely said anything, but in my silence I'd remember the plane crash and the last moments of my teacher's life. I kept these memories in my heart. I didn't want to embarrass others by telling how I was in the plane with Rudi, that I heard his last words, that I'm alive because he passed his soul force into my body at the moment of impact. I am a living miracle, and I'm grateful to my spiritual father for the life he gave me.
My paternal father died when I was sixteen. His clear, radiant eyes, his depth of surrender, of spirit, love and forgiveness, and his total resignation to God's will during his last hours, made me question why he lived his whole healthy life relatively unhappy. Before passing on, he transformed himself into my spiritual teacher, though I didn't recognize it til much later. His death sparked my search for Rudi. Even at sixteen, I knew I needed to find someone who could teach me how to transform my chaotic inner world into one filled with peace and harmony. I didn't want to wait for my own death rattle to find my connection to God. Nine years later, in a small Manhattan antique shop, I met my spiritual father.
"The Dancing Man" and "A Deeper Sense of Surrender..." are two chapters from the story of my life. I joyfully share them with the reader of this book and hope I shed a small light on how the spiritual process unfolds in a human being. Both stories speak to the perplexed human soul, peering out from a dark inner cham- ber at Siva dancing on the streets of New York City.
An excerpt:
From a dark cloud mass, the mountain appeared that destroyed our plane.
"Rudi's dead," Beau whispered to me.
I knelt and placed my lips on my teacher's, breathed into his mouth and massaged his heart. "It can't be."
"He's gone," Beau said again.
I sat on a cold mountain rock, the plane strewn around me: a wing here, a fuselage there, a propeller leaning against a tree, the cold night air chilling my joints and bones... down I went to the depths of my being where fear cuts through fog and mist and tiny lights glitter on far away mountain peaks. "But where am I?" I thought, "perhaps a place so secret that only my inner self knows of its exis- tence."
"Six," I said to Beau through the haze. He put his arm around me. A warm sensation trickled through my body. Beau's face moved in and out of focus. "Six," I said again, not knowing why the night and fog came so quickly, covering the mountains, the sky, the stars and the moon, not knowing if I'd ever see Rudi again. "I hear a six—year—old child crying cRudi, Rudi," I said with tears streaming, with blood pouring out my mouth. But it's all a dream; soon I'll awaken, and the flight will continue toward a small town near Albany.
That's how it ended. On a mountain top in Catskill, New York. That's also how it began: life and death, two intertwined serpents. The past died on the mountain and the future rose up and spit fire in my face, a future coiling and uncoiling, leaving me groping in the dark.
