Exhaling a warm and saturated breath
The combination of my air and my breath meets the dew point
I release a cloud of condensation
It’s like standing outside in the winter
But it’s August and it’s 75 degrees in here.
Why can I see my breath?
Breathing in and out, slowly
A criss-cross grid of fine blue lines falls down towards me
Like a trappers net, only like a feather
It hovers about a foot above me
It arches up in a form of the contour of my body
It’s a mirror of me in a cross cross grid of dark blue glowing lines
I extend my hand towards it
It moves away from me
I touch it; It is ice cold
I snap my hand back
A radio is playing Amanda Ghost:
“Welcome to my Filthy Mind”
Suddenly I have the sensation of looking at myself from far above myself
Consciousness is a separate thing from my body.
Well, I’ll be damned.
I’m over here.
And now I’m over here.
With nothing more than a thought wishing it so, I change the location from which I observe my motionless body on the floor below me
Next, I observe myself from the other corner of the ceiling.
Check this out, I’m over here.
And now I am over here.
But I am down there.
The room turns into tiny blocks
(Tiny cubes)
(One inch cubes)
These blocks become smaller
(And smaller)
Until they are now tiny pixels
The pixels and cubes crash into each other
They take on the essence of water
The room is an ocean of cubes
And I am also made of cubes
They are dissolving
I am dissolving
I become one with the ocean
A wave rises up from the floor
The carpet and the furniture ride the wave
Four feet into the air
Now it’s a gentle rolling wave
Rolling towards the wall
Another wave rises up
And I dive into the wave
The wave becomes a sheet of glass
I crash through the glass
(It’s definitely glass)
(It could also be a mirror)
The glass shatters and tinkles
And the shards fall down the chasm with me
Tumbling down like Alice
I hear a tinny sing song voice:
Giggling “oops, shit, fuck me!”
I let out a breath and everything leaves me
None of that mattered
It’s over
None of that mattered
It’s over
None of that mattered
It’s over
I feel immense relief
(None of that mattered)
(It’s over)
(One could weep with relief)
I’m standing on a glowing white floor
Maybe it’s a disco floor
Maybe it’s a server room floor from the IBM commercial
It’s whatever I want it to be
I will a home into existence
Merely with thoughts
Creating with my own volition
Everything looks real
The hardwood floors are made with the wood from dicotyledons
The wood fibers run down the planks like dark brown rivers
I touch the patterns and I admire the grain
This a beautiful floor and the wood is alive
I stare at the rocker switch mounted in a wall receptacle:
Professionally installed;
With only a thought it is there.
It even has little white screws
To imagine something is to create it in this space
I think to myself, if I can will things into creation with a mere thought,
Then surely with a mere thought I could destr-xxxxx
I’m not allowed to finish this thought.
I’m cast into a darkness of groaning souls sitting down and bent at the waist, their heads down to their knees
They moan and groan
I don’t know if they know where they are
There is nothing but darkness and shadows here
Or is there?
I look way way way up
There’s a tiny window with a glowing yellow light
I concentrate on it
I ask it to help me
And it does
Whatever is up there and listening is so merciful it could not possibly deny your request.
Even me?
(Someone like me?)
Yes, you.
And just like that I am gone
Now I’m marching in formation
With shadowy shapes of humans
None of whom are aware they’re in this space
But not me, I see the room we are all in
Where are we?
Where are we going?
I jump up and down like a little hyperactive kid
I see myself from outside of myself
And I go, oh! That is who you are.
Along the wall we are being watched
By three silent observers up in recesses in the wall to our left
They’re looking at us through something that looks like a giant studio camera
The lens is a yellow square
Like the same yellow square I asked for help.
I ask where we are and what is going on
The observer in the middle puts his fingers to his lips and motions me to shhhhhhhh.
The floor begins to open up
It looks like a bright blue glowing map of the earth where the oceans lie
It swirls around in a vortex like a hurricane
It’s maybe a hundred or a thousand feet across
And a giant eye appears in the center
The eye is maybe twenty or two hundred feet across
It stares at me
It blinks
I go “oh no, I am god.”
Then I recognize my own self deceit:
My ego, beholding this beauty and creation
Wants to think that it is me
And that is of me.
I am one with it and I am of it
But I am not it
It is not the one that is from and of me
I am the one that is from and of it.
I am ashamed and I humble myself:
You are not God.
I am taken to a space where we discuss my mission in life
You have to go back.
I am not allowed to remember the content of this discussion
Other than this question:
Where did God come from?
I am told that even if there was a way to communicate that to me,
I do not have the capacity to understand.
I accept that answer.
It makes sense.
I am allowed to remember this question and this answer.
But not the rest, because to be consciously aware of the conversation is to directly influence what I do next.
I have to figure it out on my own.
I’m approaching a bright white light ,
The light is love.
The light is nothing but light.
The light is joy.
The joy is pure
The joy only wants to radiate and reach out and turn everything it encounters into white light and joy as pure as itself:
I become one with the ocean of light
I am me,
I have my own thoughts
But I am one with everything.
We are all in harmony with our creator and creation,
Except that God is still something separate that we can be in communion with, but that we are not.
This is the source,
This is place where your burdens are borne
This is the consciousness that hears your prayers
Heaven knows what you’ve been through
And there is a lot that I still do not understand
The sacrifice was only the beginning
This is the place where all human experience exists
Simultaneously and without contradiction
From the beginning to the end
What is real and true to me,
What is real and true to you,
All reality, all truth
It is happening here
All of your eternity is only the blink of an eye here
Heaven only knows what you’ve been through
This is lovely but it seems like spending eternity here would be rather dull.
Well it’s anything but dull,
If you tune into what’s going on.
I try and the first things I see are my (now ex) partner and my (now ex) roommate.
They are alive, of course.
I was always told you’d see Grandma and dead people
But I only see the living.
I have to go back.
Can I go back?
There is some discussion.
Yes, you can go back.
The space I’m in spins like a tornado
I am caught in a storm
It’s a million miles an hour
I’m slammed back into the wall
I sing and I cry out in tongues
The sequence of the experience of being returned here happens over and over and over again:
I open my eyes and I’m so sick I could vomit. I search the room, I ransack the room looking for something to puke in.
I find an Aldi’s grocery bag and I open it and just as I am about to hurl my guts out into it, the sequence starts all over again:
I open my eyes and I’m so sick I could vomit. I search the room, I ransack the room looking for something to puke in.
I find an Aldi’s grocery bag and I open it and just as I am about to hurl my guts out into it, the sequence starts all over again:
I open my eyes and I’m so sick I could vomit. I search the room, I ransack the room looking for something to puke in.
I find an Aldi’s grocery bag and I open it and just as I am about to hurl my guts out into it, the sequence starts all over again:
I open my eyes and I’m so sick I could vomit. I search the room, I ransack the room looking for something to puke in.
I find an Aldi’s grocery bag and I open it and just as I am about to hurl my guts out into it, the sequence starts all over again.
Over and over and over again.
And then, finally I open my eyes and I am in more pain than I’ve ever been in my life.
I know where the Aldi’s bag is this time.
I open the drawer it is in.
I open the bag.
I hurl my guts out into it.
My next thought perplexed me: “You cheated.”
Renee is in the room with me
Renee is as pale as a ghost.
Renee says “You are incredibly strong.”
Renee never wanted to discuss this again