(Editing note: The piece below has had minor edits for clarity and time references and removing personal details, but is almost exactly as originally written. I came home after this experience and wrote this. I wanted to get all the details recorded in case I forgot. Looking back on this years later, it’s clear that nothing will be forgotten.) (Regarding references to dance and Anna: my daughter Anna was an accomplished ballet dancer at the time of this experience.)

27 Feb 2018

Tuesday night’s group meditation was where the magic happened. It was led by Mike, a new person I didn’t know before. He’s a young guy, the son of the bookstore owners. He created a meditation session based around 6 pieces of classical music. Each musical piece was associated with one of the Chakras. We were supposed to listen to the music, think of the associated Chakra, and allow related visions to enter our mind. After each piece we would stop and talk about our experiences, then start the next piece.

Visions? Oh did I have visions … it was as real as the world around you, as real as what you’re standing or sitting on right now. I still have the visions clearly in my mind, but they’re not really ‘visions’, they’re views of another aspect of this reality that we can’t usually see. It seems silly for me to wonder if it was ‘real’ or not. If a butterfly comes and lands on my shoulder, then takes off and leaves, do I wonder if it was real? No, I saw it, it was here, that seems real enough. In the same way, what I saw in these visions seems like an unmistakable part of my reality now.

But it was more than that, more than ‘seeing is believing’. I’ve had drug-induced visions, strong dreams, deep imaginings. This was not that at all, a solid and deep foundation of reality remained. There has never been a second of doubt that it was a simple perception of that which is.

1. The Solo Dance.

The music rises and falls; there are light happy notes and heavy somber notes, but a grace and beauty in how they flow together, in how the patterns unfold. It suddenly became Anna, and also me, and everybody, the Dance of Anna’s life, the unfolding majesty of how she follows her Muse without doubt or worry, confident that the Universe is unfolding as it should.

2. The Big Dance.

There’s an underlying rhythm to the music now, a larger pattern. Within it are smaller variations, variations within variations, fractally complex down to the smallest scale, and up to the largest scale. The Dance Floor is enormous. Is it infinite? It contains all of us. It stretches out as far as you can see on a level dance floor. But it’s not just 2-dimensional, somehow the dance floor extends up and down, and in other dimensions. Past and Future? Up and Down? Happy and Sad? Right and Wrong? This partner or that partner? They’re all different dimensions, different ways in which we can move our Dance.

I see most everybody dancing together, most dancers are moving in unison. They dance together in small groups, small groups join together, individuals change groups. Occasionally an opening appears, and one individual or group takes ‘center stage’ and is the focus for a moment. Gradually I notice more and more dancers who aren’t in sync; they don’t make appropriate moves; they bump into others; they don’t move with the music.

What’s going on? Why is the dance falling apart in places?

I realize that not everyone can hear the music. No wonder some dancers are out of sync! Then it gets more interesting: These aren’t all human beings — it’s the dance of ALL life. The dancers who can’t hear the music are all human beings. Some people dance well, but so many are out of sync. Always the humans.

3. The Illusion of Time.

The movements of the previous dances come into a new focus. They form a coherent pattern, when the dancers are in step. The pattern stepped out over time becomes a visual pattern, a pattern in another dimension. Just like a 1-dimensional pattern might look like ‘ .. .. .. .. ‘; a 2-dimensional pattern like a painting, a 3-dimensional pattern like a sculpture. Patterns in Time are similar.

Suddenly Time reveals its true self. The ‘Past’, ‘Present’, and ‘Future’ are just different areas in this pattern, but it all fits together. The Past and Future become just as real and visible as the Present; they’re just different places in the pattern. I broaden my perspective on my own life, and the events of the Past and Future suddenly make more sense, they fit together into a beautiful pattern. A repeating fractal pattern of my entire life and the lives and activities around me and around the entire universe.

4. Behind the Curtain

Focus returns back to a single moment in time, back to Now. For a moment I’m back in the same room as my body, then perspective zooms out to the whole world. The round Earth unfolds, unwraps into a flat sheet. The flat earthers were right? No, the entire universe gets laid out on an infinite plane. I’m floating in front of it, and I see the universe stretching off infintely up, down, left, and right. I start to see details and movement in the universe, but soon the most prominent feature is light, little sparkling bits of light in clusters here and there.

Small specks of light appear and move around on the plane of the universe. Some are brighter than others, color varies, they all move differently. Then the Knowing arrives, and now I know that these specks of light are the ‘souls’ of living creatures, the spark of life energy that animates the body and manifests the miracle of life.

I get a brief moment to enjoy this view of the entire universe and the how prominent life is when IT appears.

Somehow I get a peek behind the curtain, the flat plane of the universe lifts up and I can see ‘behind’ it, behind the universe. There is a glowing ball of light, it shimmers and shines with a bright white-yellow light.

Again I get to see and watch this vision for a moment without understanding it. Then again the Knowing arrives. This ball of light is the source of all those specks of light in the universe. It is the Single Source of the spark of life energy that animates us all, every creature in the universe. What people call God, Spirit, Source, Brahman. We are all deeply connected together by this, in ways that I still can’t describe because they are beyond the mind’s comprehension.