I got there the slow way. A few years ago I was doing a month-long backpacking stretch through parts of Asia, mixing ashram stays, monastery visits, and cheap guesthouses. One night I was sitting in a cave-like meditation space near a river, and the whole floor felt dense under me. Not magical dense. Heavy. Like the air had pressure in it. I immediately thought, “Okay, this is earth current. This is the telluric stuff.” Then, five minutes later, I thought, “You’re an eager 21-year-old with a journal full of half-remembered retreat quotes.”

Both were true, in a way. The floor was heavy because of the cave, the river, the humidity, and my own brain looking for meaning. The telluric stuff was real in the background, but it wasn’t the main event.