Out Of My Body

I lay in bed reading Little Women the summer before tenth grade. As I read, I humbly realized that I was more like Beth than the outspoken, tomboyish, main character Jo (Josephine). My false self wanted to be like Jo, but I couldn't deny the similarities between Beth and myself. Beth was happiest when she was home with her family, she didn't have any need for the world outside, and she often was quiet in the middle of the family noise. This is so much how I was, I loved holidays and family vacations where the world outside was temporarily forgotten. Though on holidays, I'd do my part to make them special, I also was completely happy being quiet and letting my brothers and parents do the talking.

About two thirds of the way through this book, Little Women, Beth dies. By this time, I had so completely owned how I was like this character, that her death was devastating to me. I cried and while I cried, I started to think about this name "Harriet". I saw it, the name, floating in front of me, and I didn't know what it was. The next thing I knew, I was on the ceiling, above my bed (interestingly, the place I looked the most when I was prayed/talked to God), looking down at my body. The name Harriet floated over the body, and then the "I "at the ceiling had the thought, "Oh, this is who I am this time" and with that, "I" was right back in my body again, looking through this body's physical eyes.

At the time, I had no context in which to contemplate this experience. I had never heard of "out of body" then, so I just didn't think about it. Years later, Willis Harman, the former president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences wrote in his book, Conscious Creativity, that we can only reflect on ideas that are within our paradigm, our structure of thought. So first we have to widen our structure of thought before we can seriously reflect on experiences that lay outside these limited paradigms.

It wasn't until I was in college, taking an introduction to eastern religions class, writing a paper on Zen Buddhism that my paradigm of reality opened wide enough to recall this experience and be able to reflect on it. I still don't remember having any deep insights around it other than wonder that I had left this body, and this body was clearly temporary. I am still struck that the exact words that "I" thought while on the ceiling are imprinted in me, I have no trouble recalling them. The ones that have really made me ponder are the last two, "this is who I am this time", implying of course, that there were other times.

Reincarnation is a tricky subject, especially since we tend to think linearly about it and I'm not sure it's quite that simplistic. I've had a few more experiences around it but still can't say what I definitively know. I once had a dream/vision where "I" was wandering around when the dinosaurs were here, and this voice telling Itself that I was here during this time. At another time, I had a vision while I was driving across the United States by myself. I was singing Agape chants, listening to Rev. Michael Beckwith sermons, in a great state of consciousness, and I turned to my left to look at the Colorado mountains and this voice in me, yet beyond "me" , said I was here before those mountains were formed. [At the exact same time of this awareness, I knew I'd be working with Rev. Michael Beckwith someday, which made no sense since I was driving back east to permanently settle down. 5 years later, I was back in Los Angeles, on staff at Agape, Rev. Michael's church.].

I also had a dream once where I was the witness along with this same "I Am" voice. I was being shown this woman on a beach, with long black hair, it was really windy and she was screaming in agony. I was told, "this is who you were once". That's it. I have no idea what she was screaming about, though since the dream, I've had the intuitive sense that she had lost her baby in the ocean...but I don't know, nor do I know for what reason this was shown to me.

The I Am was, is and forever shall be. When we let go of our identity with our individual drop of the ocean, and dissolve into the vast ocean of Beingness, we become awake as all the ocean. In other words, we can see all time and space as this I Am when we drop our identity with our limited temporary self. This for me is the effortless explanation of being around when there were dinosaurs, and before the formation of the Rockies. However, there is no question that in that one dream, I was told that I was specifically this woman. And in the out of body experience, it wasn't that I was all people, I was this body, "this time".

Being an individual Soul that reincarnates until it is free - in general, a perspective of Hindus and Buddhists - makes sense to me, but at the same time, my sense this concept is a bit too linear. I resonate with Helen Greaves book, A Testimony of Light, where she talks about group Souls, which makes a lot of sense to me too. Group Souls can have many perspectives, and as an individual I can tap into my group Soul identity, which is me with many perspectives, as well as the all encompassing, Absolute I Am identity.

For me, speculation around reincarnation continues. However, what I do know is, to identify solely with form, with personal history is painfully constricted relative the vast, oceanic, spacious, formlessness of our true Self.

My favorite principle articulated by Ernest Holmes, inspired by Plotinus, is; God, or Spirit, or Life (whatever conceptual word that works for you) is in, through and as all creation, yet never absorbed by it. Who we really are, is in, through and as our bodies, personalities and history, yet never absorbed by it. This is the Truth that sets us free.