I have faced what seemed like certain death, or, at least, a very likely demise several times during my 82 years. The interesting part of this is that in each and every case, I felt no fear, no apprehension, no “fight or flight” response. I think that one of the reasons for this comes from a good many powerful experiences that I believe to be of a spiritual nature throughout my life. I have shared some of these experiences with some of you, and some of you have asked me if I had written them down, the last query just two days ago. I thought about that, and decided there would be no better time to do that than right now. Here then, is the first telling of my experiences that have powerfully shaped my life.
Awakening under the Milky Way
My first spiritual experience was one that I would call a spiritual awakening. I was eight years old.
I lived in Rosewood Heights, an unincorporated area of Southern Illinois that was more country than urban. There were no street lights, and only two other houses visible from mine. It was so dark that I could stand in my backyard at night and clearly see the Milky Way in glorious, living color.
My father had placed a big picnic table in the backyard that was, for me, a fort, hideout, tank, and other constructions of my imagination. One night in the summer I climbed up on the picnic table, and laid down, gazing up at the Milky Way stretched out from one side of the sky to the other. It was then that I experienced a powerful awakening.
If I were to ask you if you know you are alive and experiencing all that makes your life real, you would probably wonder why I was asking such an odd question, and answer that yes, of course you know that. However, there is a level of awareness beyond the knowing we all have of the reality of our existence.
A few years ago, I had cataract surgery. Before the surgery, if someone had asked me what colors the rooms in my home were painted, I would have said that the living room was a dark brown, and that the bathroom was a dark blue. If someone had told me that those were not the true colors, I would have laughed at them. I knew what I saw, and was completely confident in my observations. But when I came home from my surgery, I walked into my living room and saw it was, much to my surprise, a light tan. I went into the bathroom and saw that it was, astoundingly, a light blue. I could hardly believe my eyes. I thought I knew what I knew, and there was no possibility of anything contradicting that. There is always the possibility of a higher truth than the one we think we know.
I found out, at age 8, standing on a picnic table in the backyard of my home under the magnificent Milky Way galaxy, that there was indeed a higher awareness of my existence there in my backyard, in Rosewood Heights, Illinois, on earth, within that amazing gathering of 150 billion stars we call the Milky Way. I was inexplicably overwhelmed by the sudden and powerful realization that I was truly, actually, alive, and that all this that was my life, was really happening. It was all real, the table, the stars, and myself. I was emotionally shattered. This explosive awakening shook me to my core. I could barely think about what had happened to me. It was a first step into a reality that does not reveal itself in the ordinary course of living day to day.
I have had that same experience several times since then, and every time it has come unbidden, unforeseen. another shock to my ego based existence. It reminds me that I, and perhaps all of us, walk through life mostly asleep, in a dream state, unaware of a higher spiritual reality. It was, in a sense, a precursor to other spiritual experiences that would follow.
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