In February this year I had an experience which once again illustrated the limitations of functioning primarily from the head - or from the mental body, as I like to call it. I was going about my day doing my thing when suddenly the entire resonance of my experience shifted. Here in Aberdeen it was extremely hot, dry, and dusty. Yet my senses appeared to tune into a completely different environment. I felt like I was in a sub-tropical, temperate, moistened, lush, green, fertile atmosphere - the kind of place one would associate with a paradise island getaway. Not only did I experience this as a distinct physical location, but my entire mood shifted into a feeling of complete peace, expansion, freedom and radiating joyfulness. It was such a sudden shift that I was swept away by it for a few moments - my whole being sighed, "Ahhhhh - this is it!"
Then, as swiftly as it had unfolded, it evaporated, or dissolved, or withdrew. I sat on the couch, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Was it a memory? I noticed that when I asked this question my thoughts and visualizations searched for a reference point, and eventually took me directly to a time in Mexico when I had lived as close to a paradise-type lifestyle as I have yet come. Was I remembering this? I must be, I told myself.
But as much as my mental body grasped for a past point of reference, another more subtle knowing kept affirming it was an event yet to be - but at the same time one already occurring. The more I entertained this idea, the more I felt sure this was indeed the case. Accordingly, my mental body then started figuring out what this meant. Is this some place I am supposed to move to? Am I going to leave Aberdeen and live closer to the coast? I knew that whatever this environment was that had whispered so clearly into my current experience felt completely aligned with my being that I absolutely had to go and live there.
For about three days I swam through the memory of this encounter. Its resonance stuck to me like honey on my skin. Suddenly Aberdeen felt inhospitable and intolerable. I started having conversations with myself, my mother and friends about leaving - about possibly moving nearer to the coast. I even thought about taking a map out to examine the South African coastline for possible locations. Not that I could afford to move mind you. Not that I had even contemplated the immensity of making such a sudden change in my life.
Then, early one morning while sitting quietly with one of the cats on my lap, I burst out laughing at my behavior. I realized yet again that there is nowhere to go and nothing to do but to meet the moment I am in right now and respond to it.
I then recalled a conversation I had once had with a wise old man in Mexico. In it he had said to me: "There are two earths you know Miguel, and this is what people living in this one do not know. There is the earth made by our madness, and there is an earth made by God. This earth made of our madness is dying, and in the next few years many are going to die with it, and many are going to shift their awareness into the other one. They will wake up there as if out of a sleep and this will all have been a strange dream. But we cannot shift to the other one by running away from this one. This one is the portal into that one. We enter that one by fully embracing the madness of this one. I am already happy with my madness, so I often walk in that other one," he smiled matter-o-factly. "Where do you think the ancient heaven is Miguel?" he asked. "Right here, right now, right in this. The portal opens right where we are when we are right where we are."
The mental body can only contemplate probability. It projects what is likely to happen based upon what has already happened. The heart however is able to contemplate possibility. The head tells me, when I have experiences like this, that there is something I need to do to make it happen - some other place I need to go.
My heart on the other hand assures me that any shift within my personal paradigm is determined by what I am being now - not what I am doing now. The heart tells me that the shift is not based solely upon what happened in the past - but on what unfolds right within the moment I am in now. The head wants to move the radio around the room to change channels. The heart knows that the tuner is always right here, right now.
The gift of that experience is the feeling it placed within my heart. Now I know what the ancient heaven feels like for me. Now I have a point of navigation. When I am truly immersed in the moment, truly here, this is what it feels like. Delicious.
