A Familiar Space

I sit suspended in an infinite ocean of light and emptiness. From this island of ephemeral beingness is that I see the source of a sound, a small stirring of something, movement and rhythm, repetition. The singing of crickets. A high pitched vibration––not yet knowing if it’s called light or sound.

It starts maybe just as a hint of something, a barely perceptible smell coming from somewhere that I simply call the familiar space.

I sit in this silence in the midst of a lifetime, knowing in part that there is another space. When I sit in intense presence, in the midst of death, I hear movements. Some coming from me. I hear movements coming from outside, from above, from below. Movements which my mind tries to categorize as familiar entities. But somehow I know that something moves outside in strange ways; presences, nameless in eternity. Stirrings of will. Subtle flickers of sound and light.

I know  I am supposed to be something, but the thing that puts together the world does not seem to be fully functioning at this moment. I see my hands. I call them my hands, yet they move on their own accord even if there is no I that moves. I see hints of legs. I hear a voice I call my voice, yet it flows from a space I cannot touch. I move my arm and I do not know how I move my arm. Out of convention I say “I move my arm,” but what produces the movement of shadows and sound? What brings the vibration, the echo of silence that surrounds this body? What brings and moves the cold within––the shadow of death?

If I close my eyes, I sense parts of my body. More accurately, I sense sensations. Around the heart, below, above, I sense a field of presence all around. If I open my eyes, I seem to feel a space before movement, yet  the space I sense is very limited; much more limited than I thought.

I push my hands against this membrane. I push the membrane and I feel you closer. Yet the idea that the world is one is only a projection of my mind. The idea that my body is one is only a projection of my mind. All I can be conscious of is the flickers of sensation––impulses of light and sound that come and move within.

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