Dying to be Free

I remember the micro-moment of being absolutely certain that I was about to die in a car accident- a large Lincoln moving at high speed just about to crash into us. I was 13 years old. For several years death had been what I was most afraid of. Reaching that moment, instead of panic, I was surprised to discover blissful relief, not because I was sick of being alive, but because at 13, with a good and relatively easy life with no major traumas, I was already exhausted from maintaining an identity, and I didn’t even really know it until the last moment. Such ill-fitting costumes we’ve been convinced to drag around, and most of the time we didn’t even know we were wearing them, nor do we know how constrictive they are.

Like many people who’ve gone through a near death experience, I had a life-review, the entire life in complete detail and then some played out in an unimaginably short period of earthly time. In my life review, it became clear that since the age of 7, there had really been very few moments in which I had actually been really truly fully alive, fully there, living with only the thinnest of self-reflective filters. I had simply been sleepwalking in a world of other sleepwalkers. And, when the tape of a short life was over, there I was, finally fully Here as the curtain was about to close, and not just in a car in a 13 year old body in Wisconsin; I felt myself in all times and all places. Every moment of my life and the moments of so many other lives was somehow right there. It seemed like all time was happening right there. On top of that, I consciously knew that this infinite awareness had been there- typically in the background- every moment of life.

In the days, weeks, and months after the NDE, I would walk around, mouth agape, seeing the people of my town as vast beings crammed inside small bodies. This cramping wasn’t due to a fault in the material world itself. Nature had never been so beautiful. All of nature was perceived as free and vibrantly alive, and every now and then I would encounter a human who did not seem to be sleepwalking. The constriction I noticed was wholly caused by the adoption of the self- referencing self as the central locus of identity. Under the weight of this psychological construction, everyone appeared like 100 foot tall golden angels stuffed inside 6 inch egos.

It is wholly possible- and largely preferable!- to back-engineer the most significant aspects of a near death experience through meditation practice. I was completely charmed by the Ishayas’ Ascension practice partly because it took me to the same depths of Silence as a transformative NDE in the first few minutes of practice. That is not the experience of most people, nor did that crazy depth last for me. It took a couple years of solid practice to bring about a fairly consistent experience of a deep silence alongside daily life.

With any good meditation practice, one takes the same pathway into the place where the personality melts into the soul and the soul melts into an indescribable Wholeness. It is certainly true that not all NDE’s involve a conscious immersion into an Infinite Silence (in fact some NDE’s are even awful and hellish), but my own NDE and those of many others did involve a merging with a totality. Like these sorts of NDEs, Samadhi dissolves the tensions and barriers that block us from the experience of our True Nature- and through that dissolution they reveal the bliss, contentment, and peace that come with flowing along with the river of life.

Coming Events and Courses

Meditating with Ganesha- May 9th- 6-8:30 PM UK time- via Zoom

An early memory from my childhood involved the comforting presence of an elephant-headed being dancing in my bedroom. It was a night in which I was frightened by ghosts, and prayed for help. Years later, after learning about Ganesha, I figured that I may have just encountered Ganesha.

Ganesha is a great patron of scholars and writers and all those involved in creative undertakings. He is a great lord of Mantras: lover of knowledge and wisdom and joviality. A great patron of sacred language. In this class we’ll be exploring the living presence of Ganesha through his myths and mantras.

The course fee is done on a sliding scale from $11 until $44. The course will also be recorded for those who would like to join, but can’t attend at that time.

Here is a link to the sign-up page.

Ascension- First Sphere Course via Zoom- May 23rd and 24th- 4pm to 8:30 pm UK time.

This is a weekend course learning the effortless practice that is Ascension meditation. This is the practice that most effectively brought me into Samadhi, and has been my primary practice since 2002. The course runs from 4pm to 8:30 pm (Portugal/UK timezone) on both days. We’ll flow between meditation practice, conversations on the multi-layered evolution of consciousness, and time for questions and answers.

If you sign up by May 14th, the early bird rate is $222.00. After that, the regular fee for this course is $250.00 USD, free for those repeating. We also have a sliding scale option as we don’t turn students away for lack of money. To pay on the sliding scale system, you can simply send a course fee by PayPal and an email letting me know that you’ve signed up. If PayPal doesn’t work, Zelle or Bank Transfers are also options.

Here is the sign-up link.

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No part of this post was produced by AI :)