Note to Self
Perhaps there’s this too…. There are moments when, as human beings, we feel connected to all things, when we sense our being extended out into the objects around us, into the space around us. I remember one such moment in a 20th Century life. The sun was setting on my city of glass towers, casting an amber luminescence that reflected off the glass, refracted, diffracted, even shone through the buildings, illuminating their hollowness with warm orange rays. I could see the atmosphere itself with a clarity of actually seeing photons striking gas molecules and refracting off in quantum directions. I followed the flow of photons back through atmosphere to the edge of space, through the orbits of two small planets where I was confronted with the inspiring immensity of a star. Bits of itself leapt violently into space from a surface churning with energetic activity. I followed the emanating energy back out into space, through a solar system of planets and asteroids and stray bits of rock, dust and gas into an expanse of space dotted with solar systems, which became a cloud of solar systems, which became a whirling galaxy, which became a cloud of galaxies, which became a universe of uncountable galaxies. So immense, so grand, so beyond the usual imaginings of my mind as it existed in that body. I felt so small, so infinitesimally small in such an expanse of matter, always in motion, always in flux, a universe in which, suddenly, all things seemed possible. In that moment I was no longer a man standing on a balcony watching a sunset. I was a part of the immensity of all existence, all I had seen, all I had sensed, my being extended out into it all. I was a part of it. It was a part of me. I was connected to all things and they to me. And yet, there I was, also observing it all. Something about that made me feel immense, perfect, beautiful, divine.
If you’ve ever experienced a moment like this, then you know a little of how I experience reality in the spirit realm, in the soul space that is not space. You use so many words to describe it, this flip side of existence. I’m using words and expressions you can understand, in your present state of being. It’s not the way you would think about it were you not so intricately bound to that body and mind of yours. Words cannot express the way thought works as an unmanifested being.
But it’s as difficult for us to think in terms of the physical realm you’re reading this in. Once we are manifested into a body we forget what it’s like to be an incorporeal being. When we die and are separated from manifestation, that memory of being is lost just as fast. We forget what it’s like to have been physical. We forget having been physical. I don’t know why that happens. No one does. It’s just the way of it. Every transition is a moment of forgetting followed by a journey of remembering.
But some of us think even this is changing. We’re evolving. Together. More and more beings are achieving a state of enlightenment. Enlightenment is nothing more than remembering who you are on both sides in the cycle of life and death, both your material existence and your spiritual existence. We think this is a divine purpose, that it is the intended state for all beings, all consciousness, to know the true nature of themselves from the perspective of both ways of being simultaneously.
You may think of my state of being in divine terms, that there is perfection to my way of being as a pure soul, a spirit. You may even envy me for it. But there are experiences available only to a physical manifestation.
The epiphany of that day on the balcony watching the sunset was not in the moment of recognising my connected to all things. Ecstasy came in the moment when my consciousness collapsed back into my being, my physical being, though my senses still seemed to touch the stars. I stood there on my balcony. Taking in the beautiful light of sunset, the glinty towers, the North Shore mountains all purple and hazy in the thick atmosphere, as people walked along the sidewalk below, chattering about the day’s shopping, I stood there, and the emotional wave hit me. In my mind I had perceived my connectedness to all things. Back in my body, aware of the sensations of seeing, touching, hearing, smelling myself in the space of all things I felt connected to all things. You may envy my spiritual connectedness to all things. I know beauty, light, perfection, love in a way you can’t comprehend right now, but you sense them in a way I long for, like a kiss remembered but lost in time. I long for the way a body moves through physical space, the sensations of being alive, of creating with your own hands. You may think of the spiritual existence as characterised by divine bliss but I assure you, the bliss you’re imagining is possible only in your form.
You can touch, and the things you touch can have an indescribably pleasurable sensation. The soft downy hair of an infant, the ripe earth in a farmer’s hand as she decides which crop to sow that year, the shiver of a lover’s skin as you caress the gentle curve of his neck, the sudden jolt of energy to all your nerves and cells that accompanies almost any moment of ecstasy, or even of terror. It’s all so exquisite, so divine, so lingeringly delicious.
I realised this in that moment on the balcony as my mind, body and spirit were for the very first time, integrated and fully aware of each other. I realised the infinitesimal insignificance of my being and, simultaneously, my own immensity as a being experiencing all of creation.
Even in that life I would forget that feeling for a while, then remember it, only to forget it again. Yes, you have bliss, but you also have suffering. And when you get all caught up in either one, you tend to forget the other. There was very much suffering in that life. Suffering’s part of the journey to enlightenment, though it’s easy to go astray when in the throes of it. The bliss follows the suffering, so long as you’re willing to learn the lessons it teaches you. And that I managed to do, so in that life I experienced other epiphanies and ecstasies, moments in time of complete connectedness, and once, while writing and producing a play, I experienced that kind of blissful connection for two full weeks. Even that experience was difficult to keep in my presence, in my day to day life. But it became more and more easy as that life went on, as I learned more, as I integrated my spirit into my body and mind more and more.
And then I died. What memories I do have were a long time coming – in the transition back, I’d lost them all. It’s even harder to remember it in my present form. I’m not able to conjure up the physiological sensations necessary to relive it, even as memories. I like to believe I’m closer than I’ve ever been. That soon I’ll break this cycle of life and death, this dichotomy of manifestation and spirit. It’s what we exist for. It’s why we go back – to experience the bliss. Here, for some reason it’s easier to remember the bliss than the suffering.
It’s always a bit of a shock, the way we enter the world at birth. It’s an unfathomable suffering to an undeveloped mind and a soul in transition. It’s the one bit of suffering I can remember a little of. I remember too the breast and milk and warmth and mother that followed it, not the sensations of it, so much, but the elemental emotional content of it a little. I know that there was other suffering that comes with life. I just can’t remember it at all.
There is no suffering in my reality – it’s so difficult to remember what it even is. And I believe there’s no suffering in our evolutionary future, though that’s an evolutionary choice, a purpose, something we must strive toward individually and collectively. It’s this purpose that compelled to come to this man this morning. He’s sensitive, and I’m vibrating at my highest level in this manifest existence. I knew I could reach him with these thoughts and he would write them down. He’ll see that it’s published. I’m coming back again, taking the journey to manifestation, and one day in that life, I’ll read this and it will awaken memories I’d lost in the transition. Important memories. Don’t ask how I know this, how I can know this. My sense of time and space won’t make any sense to you, nor do cause, affect and coincidence have the same meaning for me. But if you’re reading this, perhaps it’s waking something up in you.
Hi. Isn’t it exquisite to be me?
