There have been several moments in my life where I've been keenly aware that the energy I put into the environment, the outside world, is reflected back at me, transformed in some way.
I'll share two of these experiences with you, both profound and life-changing. The first involves a panic state and is contrasted by the second, which was and continues to be a state of love.
A couple years ago, I was visiting my best friend in DC for the weekend and had, for various reasons, been imagining myself as a single point of consciousness, a unity. At some point (pun intended), while talking with my friend, I achieved that goal; I became a single point of consciousness, squeezed down and compact in the present moment and time. I could still talk and move, see my body, but my body was only an external representation, the complex shape, of the singularity of light that was me.
It felt like all of my motions were not my own - that is, I had no independent existence. I felt that the earth and the universe itself was in perfect balance and that the random unconscious scratching of an itch or the shifting of my body was the result of shifting around me, of my internal motions, and the connected motions of my friend, and the motions of people around me I couldn't see. Everyone on earth was all shifting together in perfect harmony, silently mirroring each other in infinite, but related ways. My individual self, this body, was a discrete, yet whole and continuous part of that larger continuous wave. I felt like I was a coral in a clear blue sea. Almost motionless, just gentle swaying of energy.
I woke up the next morning and my operating system was clear. My mind had no content. I was. Then I was light. Then I was the one seeing the light. Then that light was differentiated. Over the course of a couple of hours, I saw my mind construct its view of the world from nothing, the absolute beginning, from stillness to motion, from the gross to the granular, in a fractal, recursive, type of way. I was terrified with joy.
Walking to the Metro that morning with my friend, we came upon some, for lack of a better word, strangers walking toward us, just run-of-the mill people you'd see everyday and walk past without a thought. These people were aware of me and I was of them. And then I saw the grid of my life as the literal configuration of other people within space and time, relative to my own position and motion in the moment, moment by moment. And then the grid rotated and I felt my life take a different direction; I was walking at a slightly different angle through the grid, through the array of people and their motions and paths that present themselves to me in daily life. The relative change in my position changed my connection to them.
Once my friend and I boarded the Metro, I could feel the last fragrance of the weekend on the passengers' eyes and the heavy fear of the nation in the headlines of the papers, as if the words and the strangers were inconsequential but the feeling was everything. The people could have been anyone, the words, anything, appearing, as needed, upon looking. It's not the words or the bodies that count, but the underlying energy of it all. The single motion was flowing and I was a part of that in a continuous way.
To be merged is to be connected. There is a flow to life, and if I am fully merged with life, connected with it, then there's just life, there's no individual, discrete "me." There are eyes being contacted and heads turning, arms moving, people walking, all in one motion and each individual consciousness affects the overall flow and space of it.
We eventually made it to Union station and my friend and I said our goodbyes; I was now on my own in some sort of 4th Dimensional space.
I grab a snack and move to the gate. I feel that I have created this world at some point in the way, way distant past. After all, I just saw the whole creation of life from nothing a few hours ago. I am God in totality and in continuity, but at this moment only a discrete portion of that energy.
I look into the eyes of a homeless woman and feel the depths of her despair. I can't bear it, I look away. I cannot recognize the reflection of my despair in her. I feel responsible. I have created this mess at some point. The enjoyment of my life is her despair. These are the types of thoughts that send you to the crazy house, I know this.
A line forms around me at the gate for my train back to Philly. People move as separate, discrete particles of consciousness in the continuity of it all, continuously gliding from all directions to stick to the line forming around me, or to continue past, pulled by some other destination.
The line forms around *me*. I am the center of my experience, the experiencer, that's what "I" am. Yet I am aware that others are separate, also at the center of their experience and its all interconnected. The only difference between me and the others in this moment is in terms of mental structures and corresponding physical orientation and motion in space and time, and in physical form. We are all collectively the experience and the experiencing.
I am now the infinite loop between the past and the future. I wrap back around myself from the past, over myself, through a dimension outside of space and time, around the present moment, and pull myself from the future.
There was another time I had this flow-of-life realization. I was on an escalator on the Metro platform a few years earlier, right before I took a sojourn to psychotic awareness. Standing with my friend, a different one, I turned my head and saw a continuous flow of energy move up the escalator, a flowing of and within the motions of the people around me, the turning of their heads, the scratching of their noses, the shifting of their bodies in response to the wave. Now, at the time, I thought I had caused this wave, I felt like God but self-conscious of it. I moved and it caused a ripple effect. And in some ways I was correct. But I was missing the other side of the thing, that the people behind me on the escalator were part of the flow and that I was part of the flow as well and that their motions affected mine as much as mine affected theirs, just standing and talking with my friend.
If I take a look at my total consciousness, all of the states I've experienced up to now, I can see that there's the phase of being aware of external reality, awake as I am now typing this out. And then there are various states within that phase - happy states, joyful states, miserable states. And then, contrasting with awakeness is sleep and its various states. If I put both phases together, I can see the whole wave of my life, all of my awakenesses and sleeps, and then there is continuity. I can trace my consciousness back through the day I was born - I mean, I can see that it's all connected, I can feel that. And even before this body's birth, well, I can see that that's continuous as well.
If life is continuous so far as I can see, a flow in physical space and through time, then this means my individual body motions now are connected with the motions of the bodies of every human back through time, in a very real and literal way. Eggs and sperm. Eggs and sperm. Motions affecting motions. Internal motions affecting external ones and back and forth. Some motions have names. Processes exist, but motions are motions at the fundamental level. And then there are the larger motions of the earth, and the galaxy, and so on.
All actions, all motions, occur in the present moment. So, as an individual, if my actions are not aligned with the flow of the moment, then I have some internal energy curving back towards myself and within myself, a swirl, an eddy, a whirlpool. My muscles stiffen, I'm always on the lookout for the end. I can get stuck in these swirls and then my internal reality affects and affirms and influences my external reality which reflects a transformed version of itself back to me and the swirl grows faster and deeper. This is how I understand karma.
For a long time I believed I was worthless and couldn't fathom why my internal music had value in the external world. I acted out this belief in manifold and myriad ways.
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Fast forward a couple years to this past weekend. It felt like a confluence of forces acted to totally break apart my mental conception of life and love.
I began focusing on compassion. Like, what if I looked at myself with total and absolute compassion and love? What if all of the motions I've tried so hard to control, by virtue of hiding shame and by virtue of fearing life, are actually OK? What if I looked at all of my motions in the present moment with love? All of my motions are OK, past, present, and future. That includes my thoughts. That includes my physical motions. And what's more, I can see that there is a link between the two.
There's now a freedom. I am free to move, free to express, free to connect. I had a moment in Clark Park this weekend, amongst beloved friends, where I just let myself dissolve into the thing. The music I was playing was offered up to the general flow of the sounds and motions in the park. And it just deepened and deepened.
It's the same flow I'd seen years earlier in DC, but now I was connected to it. If I can look at all of myself with compassion and love, then anything that enters my consciousness, which includes other humans, will be met with compassion and love. I am now connected to the flow. All actions are as they should be.
If I can love and accept the shame about myself and my humanity, if I can look at it, I am no longer afraid to look at others. The consciousness looking back at me, the light in the eyes of those I am connected to, the flow of people in the park, the movement of a fly in my room, it's all the same light, the same movement as I have inside, the same light that's looking at myself with compassion and love. There's no reason to be afraid. I am simply part of the flow.
I went to a benefit dinner on Monday, afterglowing from the weekend, and was in a state some would call in Pentecostal Christian circles being "drunk in the spirit" - I've been there before, much younger, after speaking in tongues, so I recognized this for its clarity and joy and communion with others. It's the joyful flow, the inclusion, the connection, the offering of food, the tears that happen hearing a Native American spiritual being sung, the embarrassment, the feeling uncomfortable being so physically close in a tiny room, and the absolute acceptance of all of that. And the fall from that state as well. If I am a filter of the larger thing, a transformer of the larger energy, the overall wave, then acceptance, complete acceptance of the moment is the valve that lets it all flow. And behind that is peace and love and compassion.
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