Part III - The Liminal Experience

Ted Reads Part III - The Liminal Experience

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Fair warning.  This blog is about twice the size as normal. 

To remind everyone, I had a subdural hematoma that slowly developed over several weeks in July of this year.  The brain bleed was in the space between my brain and skull.  It gradually pushed my brain off center and to the left.  (That might explain my political learnings?).  At a critical moment, the symptoms of that phenomena caught my wife’s attention, and I was life flighted from a remote location in Colorado to a Trauma Center in Denver.  My life and later, my well-being was very much in doubt.

In a previous blog, I shared what I called “lessons learned” from my stay in the hospital.  I also mentioned that I would share the unusual experience(s) I had while I was in hospital care.    

I had the experiences I will speak of below a half-dozen times a day, every day.  Each experience was similar, building on the previous one.  I was very sad when it stopped after fifteen days, though on my last “visit” I had a sense that I had ‘seen’ it all.  Everything felt “complete.” 

What happened was that I moved into and through a different level of consciousness than I normally experience.  I have though, had a good half dozen similar moments in my life where it seemed as if I was entering a portal or doorway to another level of existence.  Each time, it is as if some irresistible power has pulled me in.  They are always unexpected.  There has always been this sense of not knowing if I was going to live or die, and actually not caring whether I did or not.  There is a term – liminal - used to explain this phenomenon, though I will tell you that is far too small a word to describe the experience. 

In this case, what I experienced was my moving freely between full consciousness, to regular sleep, to ‘regular’ dreaming and then moving to a much deeper level of sleep/dreaming.  This time was different in that I kept going back to this space/place dozens of times.  All the others were one and done and typically lasted a few hours at most.     

None of the previous experiences were drug assisted which always made them even more shocking to me.  This one had some drug involvement for three days (starting two days after the third level of consciousness started) due to having a craniotomy and subsequent pain medication. 

All of these experiences were and are, for the most part, almost impossible to capture in words after the experience, as I am trying to do here.  Forget about any words, DURING the experience(s).  Words weren’t necessary and would have diminished the experience as they are being diminished as I write here about the experiences. 

I believe that anyone can have these kinds of experiences (without drugs of any kind) IF they are open to it.  Given the right opportunity and guidance, which includes instructions on “how” to be alone with themselves and out in the natural world, sufficient time dedicated to being alone, and at least one person to share the experience with.  This is some of the coolest work I do with others.    

This most recent experience had some of the same characteristics as the others.  Unexpected, spontaneous, and except for the surgery period of time, drugless. 

On the first evening, shortly after I arrived at the hospital (life-flighted) and two days before my surgery, long before any medications started, I went to sleep.  I began dreaming.  At one point in my dream, I had the sense of leaving the dream I was having, going deeper, and was drawn towards a gigantic, ancient wooden door or gate.  The kind one would see protecting a medieval castle.

As I approached the door, I saw this specter of a leprechaun-ETish, radiant creature seemingly swathed in red, standing there, looking at me.  He was not scary, and, at the same time, I knew he was death.  I wasn’t terrified, but I was unsettled and surprised.  I knew he was waiting for me.

I woke up and told my wife, “I’ve just seen death,” and asked for a warm blanket.  A few minutes passed, and I asked for another, then another.  I ended up with six or seven on top of me over the next few hours.  The nurses who would bring the warm blankets felt like angels and the warm blankets were mercy.  I stayed awake a long time.  I didn’t want to fall asleep, but eventually I did.    

I immediately started dreaming again.  I wasn’t looking forward to going back “THERE,” but I did anyway.  It wasn’t as if I chose to go there, and quite frankly initially was not all that interested in returning.  This time, and every subsequent time that I fell asleep over the next fifteen days, I felt myself moving from regular dreaming (whatever that is) into another deeper, distinctly different level of dreaming; of consciousness, far deeper than normal.  A level that I couldn’t wake up from, and eventually didn’t want to.  I’m guessing this would normally be identified as nightmare country, but there was a total absence of fear. 

This second time, as I approached the door the ‘being’ came towards me, and I saw that the “redness” that I originally saw as a cloak, was actually, his being lit up from the inside out, like a Christmas tree bulb.  I realized he was going to always be with me.

I now call him my guide, but it is only retrospectively that I use that word.  I had no idea that he and I would visit that “place” (that level of consciousness) 40-50 times over the course of the next fifteen days.  I didn’t ‘try’ to go there.  I did begin to go to sleep with somewhat of a gleeful anticipation.  I eventually preferred being there.  I was not in control.  I was invited and led.  I was disappointed when the visits stopped. 

Each time I visited, he would see me coming and as I got close and eventually next to him, he would turn, and we would walk through the door.  We would walk for a bit, crest a little knoll, stop, and he would turn towards me, look at me, smile, bow, turn away as if he was seeing it for the first time towards the horizon, spread his arms as if he were Vanna White showing a contestant what they had won on “Wheel of Fortune,” and a curtain, or veil would fall and WOW!!! HOLY COW!!!!  There was no editorializing or any kind of promulgation of perspectives or whatever; there was absolute silence.  He looked around also as if he had never seen it the way he was now.  

With each trip, the scene got bigger and more beautiful and more profound and more complete and more satisfying than the time before. I was aware, knew without doubt, that I was witnessing a privileged, inside view of what it means to be a part of and in this universe.

It was bigger than what it means to be a human being.  There was no “and this is the purpose of life or whatever.” It was just a sense of ‘this is what is.’  Always beyond words.

What I saw was always stunning, always similar, never the same.  It was an endless combination of the shimmering Northern Lights, psychedelic yellows and oranges, blues and reds, every possible combination of colors.  Always in slow motion, gently twirling and swirling.  Merging, separating, shifting, appearing, then disappearing, smoothly, towards me, then away from me, emerging, disappearing, and blending.  Warm, inviting, pulsating, captivating, constantly re-creating, mixing, mesmerizing, intoxicating, amazing.   

Sometimes appearing empty, yet at the same time full and complete.  Beyond awe.  The only word I could come up with to describe what I saw” when I came back” is “FANTASMAORGASMIC.”  (I don’t think it is a word.) 

Each time I would go there, the scene before me was larger, fuller than the last. Imagine watching a movie on your phone.  And the next time that same movie continues but now on an iPad, next a computer screen, then a TV, expanding to a movie screen, an Imax.  Next time….. 

Each visit would totally comfort me, I felt totally supported and safe.  I grew to LOVE going to sleep.  Couldn’t wait.    

He and I never exchanged a word.  There was absolutely no need for words.  I had no questions.  there was no judgment.  He had no need to say anything, I had no need to know anything more than what I was experiencing.  It was as if I knew exactly what I was witnessing.  Words would have only diminished the experience. 

I am having trouble even now, here, finding them.  I knew I was witnessing the unknown, known.  In other words, I both knew and didn’t know exactly what I was experiencing.  I just knew that it was.  And it was real. 

There were words when I would “come back.”  I told my wife about the trips, and told her I was being shown, one by one, all the elements of the universe.  I knew that, somehow. 

On what was to be my very last ‘visit, ’ I found myself like an astronaut on a spacewalk, floating, gently twirling in the middle of that globe that represented the universe. All the while the movement of colors was happening in every direction.  In front of me, behind me to my left, to my right, above me, up from below me, washing over me.  I was completely encircled in this unbelievably beautiful space.  Inside out, outside in, then back again.   Then I couldn’t tell the difference, and it didn’t matter.  It was like a totally immersive visual sound bath, with the colors being the sound.  If you have ever seen or been to the Sphere in Las Vegas, and can imagine being effortlessly suspended in midair, right in the middle of it, with the most incredible light show imaginable, surrounding you from every direction, you have a little piece of what I experienced. 

At one point during this last visit, I looked down at my chest and was shocked when I realized that what I was seeing “out there,” was exactly what was happening inside me also.  The colors were coming into me, out from me.   

It was then that I realized that I was a part of it all.  There was no boundary between what I was seeing “out there” and myself.   

I had been seeing the elements of the universe as an observer at first.  On this last visit, it became crystal clear to me that I am an element of this universe also.  The same for everyone (including you) and everything else.   

There is no separation between “it” and myself, and you.  The same things that I was seeing “out there,” I saw was going on inside of me.  The colors, the pictures, the movements. I realized that I was both a generator of cosmic energy, as well as a consumer.  I was as all the other various, nameless, countless elements were.  Nothing more, nothing less. 

I knew that I was experiencing every element of the universe all at the same time.  On each of the prior ‘trips’ I had been gradually exposed to and shown the entire universe, one element at a time.  They didn’t have names; I just knew them.  They didn’t need names.  Intuitively, realizing they are all connected. It was all ‘there.’  Everything, everyone.    

Each time I would awake the warmth of the experience would always fade, as in the “feel good” part of the ending of a love story, or when the last light of a beautiful sunset disappears followed by a bit of an involuntary chill and shudder.

I always requested a warm blanket from the nurses, and they would smile and give me one.  I am realizing now that it helped me transition from this incredible warmth of my ‘trip’ back into the world that we call human life. 

If there was to be a theme song that accompanied my vision, it would be John Lennon’s “Imagine”.

Or who knows?  Maybe I was just seeing the inside of my own brain the entire time.  Photos of the universe and photos of the human brain in action are very difficult to delineate.  

I was puzzled by what I DIDN’T see, however.  Death, strife, war, hate, meanness, racism, sexism, disease, exploitation, etc.  What about THAT?  Where does all THAT fit into that “beauty beyond all comprehension” experience. 

If, in fact, I was being shown and was myself (knowing that you are too) a part of this “FANTASMAORGASMIC” experience, where would all the darkness that is a part of my life be in that picture. If all that wasn’t there, my experience could be simply written off as nothing more than a two-week series of hallucinations.  A drunken experience.  Gratefully (though it took several weeks) that answer began to appear and has continued to filter in since then.

Next time I will talk about the “So What” of this experience.