Spirit moves some to build sacred spaces

BY FINN-OLAF JONES

THE NEW YORK TIMES

When he was a sophomore at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, Martin Birrittella experienced something that changed how he would spend his free time for the rest of his life -- and possibly longer.

"I was reading Swami Muktananda's autobiography," he said, "and suddenly I felt like I was being electrocuted by a million volts of energy. It was like getting a heroin injection of love right in the heart."

That extraordinary experience, known as kundalini, or higher consciousness, by Hindus, left him feeling as if he wanted to "meditate for the rest of my life."

Seventeen years later, after he cashed out from taking two companies public, that possibility became a reality. Four years ago, Birrittella and his wife, Sarah McLean, a yoga and meditation instructor, built their dream retreat in Sedona, 120 miles north of their home in Scottsdale, Ariz.

Situated on a promontory at the end of an isolated road that twists into the desert away from Sedona's sprawl, the house, which cost some $2 million to build, is a low-slung olive-green building centered on a templelike meditation room and overlooking the orange-colored buttes of the Munds Mountain Wilderness.

"When the Indians came up here and saw the rocks and the faces in them, they thought this was the center of the world," Birrittella said one afternoon as the setting sun lent a crimson glare to the buttes framed in the meditation room's enormous windows.

Along the walls were religious statues amid Birrittella's three-dimensional, van Goghesque paintings on carved composite board -- vivid visions that came to him during meditations. The 12-by-16-foot windows slide open to the stone patio, where, like the sanctuaries of Vedic epics, a gate leads straight into the forest wilderness. This is a place of solitude and worship. "There's no social scene here for us," he said. "It's all about meditation. This is our church."

Many people acquire second homes to seek out sun, surf or snow. But for those like the Birrittellas, a second home is for seeking out the soul. In a time in which people are increasingly retreating within their own walls to work, entertain and socialize, it seems inevitable that cocooning would also extend to matters of the spirit. Indeed, given that many of this country's earliest European settlers came seeking religious sanctuary, creating a personal place of pilgrimage could be seen as an ultimate manifestation of the American dream. Many of us have a touch of Thoreau thinking and dreaming in his Walden Pond cabin in us. And sometimes that cabin takes fantastical forms.

Retreat for loved ones

Pritam Singh has spent the past 20 years transforming a hilltop farm near Woodstock, Vt., into a sprawling personal Sikh and Buddhist retreat with a temple, two meditation rooms, a Japanese Zen garden and some half-dozen houses built in a 19th-century New England farm style.

"When you are apart from your normal life, you're in a neutral place, a tuning fork trying to get tuned," he said. "That's why I find the farm so necessary for my own spiritual development."

A successful real estate developer who created a string of resorts along the Florida Keys, Singh makes his home in Key West while commuting to his $6 million Vermont retreat for three months every year.

"I was involved with all the anti-war and alternative lifestyles stuff in the late '60s," he said. "And eventually I decided that I wanted something I could really believe in."

After studying with various groups, Singh, who was born Paul LaBombard in Fitchburg, Mass., settled on Sikhism and changed his name. Later he also adopted the Zen Buddhist beliefs of his wife, Ann Johnston.

"I take the Asian outlook that the two religions aren't mutually exclusive," he said.

Unlike the Birrittellas' place, Singh's compound was built for large gatherings of friends and family to come worship.

"The whole idea is about friends getting together and exploring," he said. "Mostly we do Buddhist meditation practices. We do walking meditation. We eat together. I think it's important to explore spiritual dimensions with lots of different people." Up to 30 Zen Buddhist monks have lived on the property as guests of Singh and his family.

While Singh's and Birrittella's Eastern philosophies tend to be inward-looking and geographically flexible, New Age pilgrims often seek psychic connections to specific locations.

Just south of Sedona, in the Village of Oak Creek, Allyson and Dan Schutte established their retreat in the shadow of the red, lighthouselike Horse Mesa and nearby Bell Mesa, one of the many renowned vortex areas -- New Age "hot spots" thought to hold psychic energy -- in the region.

The Schuttes' two-bedroom, 1,500-square-foot house with whitewashed brick and wood-beam interiors overlooks an open backyard where wildcats and javelinas come to frolic amid the juniper and yucca trees. It is a lovely rustic haven unto itself.

But for the Schuttes, another home, which they bought last year for $485,000, offers something more.

"I have experienced some very interesting phenomena out there, thanks to the vortexes," said Allyson Schutte, who runs a trucking company with her husband in Columbus, Ohio.

"I can touch a tree or plant and feel the energy from it. It's a place we go to meditate, take courses and to feel the love and protection that emanates from the mountains."

Allyson Schutte travels from her home in Ohio every other month to meditate, and her husband sometimes joins her. "I think Sedona is more a feminine site," she said. "Women seem to react more to the energy. Last February I brought my mother, who was very skeptical, but she ended up feeling the aura as well."

Last modified: January 06. 2008 12:00AM

When he was a sophomore at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville, Martin Birrittella experienced something that changed how he would spend his free time for the rest of his life -- and possibly lo . . .