Some forty-plus years ago, a piece of What I Am found itself locked in a steep gravity dive through a black void. The invisible platform from which I had observed and operated, infinitely connected to and in communication with the All from that in-between place, far above the small body I’d slipped into and back out of freely, evaporated from under my formless self. Then came the falling, the relentless falling. Plummeting down with a sickening velocity, I felt most of what I knew, understood, and remembered being burned away like heat tiles on a hot reentry. Have you ever tried, handless, to clutch at the thin air of spacelessness?
As the dizzying fall slowed, I who had no form became for the first time the small body which had only been a mild curiosity to date, became it in layers, down through the top of the head and blooming outward from its core. I curled out to fill its form like a frenzied lotus opening. I put down the crayon and coloring book and stared at the back of its–of my!–hands in shock and disbelief. Scrambled to orient myself as the sickening feeling flared and then faded in the pit of the stomach.
Surely this is a terrible accident, a horrible mistake. Surely any moment I will find myself back where I half-remember and belong. I cannot be this object in a world of other objects. It is impossible, insane, utterly wrong. I must remember that this is not how things are, that the body and these other objects are not the truth, that this is not what I am, I tell myself over and over. I must hold onto these facts at all costs. Yet I can no longer escape the body at will: I am locked in.
I learn to tiptoe around the whirlpool singularity where the moment of entry is stored, lest I be drawn in and unraveled. Several years pass before the developing brain can afford to approach the memory directly; I learn to skirt it gingerly, exploring at the edges without being sucked in. I come to assume that this is the normal way of entering the body–why would I be any different?–but when I ask others, only funny looks, cleared throats, and pregnant silences ensue. I learn not to talk about it. Having squeezed through this pointless point into form, I must rebuild myself entirely.
The years pass, and clues emerge. I seek solace in nature, lose myself in the joy of movement, and know the first time I see a meditating yogi that this is what I must do. My family resists, so I wait until everyone else is asleep to meditate in my room without interference. My body grows. As I fall asleep at night, I long for those I almost remember; sometimes I see their shimmery silhouettes in my doorway, and their inner light bathes me.
My dreams fill with whole lifetimes, deaths, the transitions and expansions that follow the deaths; communion with suns and with the fabric of spacetime, voyages to far galaxies and into formless zones, multidimensional puzzles to be solved, meetings with others. I awake in tears of homesickness for telepathic union and for travel at the speed of thought, awe at what is to come, confusion about why this world seems so much dimmer than what is known and seen during sleep. Pieces of the illusion fall away; clarity emerges.
Gaia is entering a wondrous time. A time of miracles, dissolving secrets, joyous unfoldings. I wander along her surface, in the desert, conversing and connecting, communing. I am privileged to attend these times. Despite the difficulty of arrival, I must say the trip was worth it.
Namaste
