Peek Experiences

As you read this, keep in mind that these experiences are a lot more common than we think. Very often, our childhood years are full of these experiences. At that age, we don’t recognize how “different” these experiences are since the child knows only this reality. For the child, conditioned existence (confusion and suffering) has not yet obscured true nature.

There is nothing extraordinary or special about these experiences. They are the taste of the most ordinary, most fundamental truth - the very nature of reality and our being. 

Maslow called these experiences “peak experiences,” but I’m intentionally changing that. That which does the “peeking” is God, it is Reality itself and not the individual who is trapped in (and as) the illusion of separation.

Melting, melting, melting into my bed 

I’ve just completed a 10-day silent retreat. The bus drops me off downtown. I’m seeing stores I had never noticed before. Everything looks different, fresh, vibrant. I’m in front of my apartment building with my backpack on my shoulders. I stop and stare at the tree. How can it be so green? My jaw drops at the beauty and suchness of it. The tree is alive, the tree is powerfully alive!

I have the whole day to myself so I go out onto the street for a walk. There is only a deep stillness inside, no self-referential inner talk, nothing. A vast emptiness and joy fills my being. I spend a few hours outside, walking, looking at the ocean. As I’m walking back home, I notice: This day feels so long. Time had slowed down, perhaps stopped completely. I live in eternity. 

I hop into my bed at night. A sweetness is all I feel. The touch of the sheets on my skin, how my body feels so heavy on the bed, the pull of gravity - such grace. It’s all given, all here. I begin to melt into my bed. I feel a heavy sweetness everywhere, no distinctions between me and everything else, no distinction between inside and outside. I am held, I am loved. I hold, I love. I am. I am not… who cares! What tender beauty, what gorgeous living, what immensity of Life!

I’m melting, melting, melting into eternity, into the dark unknowable that is everything. I’m home, I am home, home is everything, everywhen, everywhere. Home is. Home, home, home, never not here… oh I’m falling, falling into such sweet nothingness that I am. 

I’m a Sugar Cube 

The teacher comes in. Small yoga studio type place. She sits down and closes her eyes. I’m not used to sitting with teachers. My thing has been silent meditation retreats, 10 days each time. I’ve never encountered a “real” spiritual teacher.

She seems sweet and strong, tells us to sit in silence for a bit. I do as she says and close my eyes. A few minutes pass, then she instructs, “Imagine yourself as a cube of sugar dropped into warm tea,” “Notice yourself melting into the water, infinite space between the particles of you that are now dissolving in the water.”

I’m dissolved into infinite space, shattered, come undone. Nothing left of me. Just space and a dark, beautiful, vastness. 

“Be gentle with me I’m old”

Deep dive group work. I’m one of the participants. I’m talking now with the prompts and guidance of the guide. He’s a much older man I’ve known for a few years now. I’m so angry about something in my past, so angry with my dad.

My guide sees this and asks me to pick a participant from the group to be my father. With that person’s permission, now this person becomes my father. My guide asks me what I’d like to do to him with my anger. Without touching him, I show that I would punch him in the stomach then hold him on the ground after he falls. I’m furious.

I’m not usually this angry, let alone wanting to be violent. I’ve only been in one fight in my life and don’t go around thinking about punching people. My support participant feels intimidated by my anger and asks to not continue with his role.

My guide smiles at me and says, as he gets up and walks towards me, “Please be gentle with me I’m old.” Him and I begin to wrestle, he tells me to keep going and to give it everything I got. He is a lot stronger than he seems.

I lose time. When I “come to senses,” I’m crying on his lap. Participants tell me my face looks different now and that the innocent child in me is much more apparent and present. I feel different, relieved, loosened, held.

That night I sleep like a baby, melting into my bed. Dreamless. In the arms of Life, a child of Life. I am at peace. I am peace. Peace is. 

I’m in Love with the Kettle and the Forest Loves Me

I’m home. It’s a sunny day. I’m grieving the ending of a year-long relationship. I feel like I’m dying. The grief is so intense, so thoroughly cutting into me that I can barely breathe at times.

Am I falling apart or am I falling open?

My kettle begins to whistle on the element. As I approach it, my jaw drops at the beauty of this thing. I’m in love with the kettle, so naturally, so obviously, so undeniably in love. The kettle is alive, it is vibrant. What staggering beauty!

The same day or the next I don’t remember. Grief takes me again and I go out for a walk. The neighbourhood is filled with nature, it is nature. As I look at trees, it’s as if they are looking at me. An overwhelming love envelops me from every direction. Everything I’m perceiving is loving me, fully, completely, and without reservation. This love is so powerful that I feel overwhelmed to the point of wanting to close my eyes. I take some deep breaths and continue my walk.

I belong. I am loved.



In the Arms of the Infinite 

Just a few hours ago I cried very deeply during group work. Tears I have long suppressed from the time my grandpa died when I was 15 years old. We had shared the same room for 2 years prior to his death and he was my best friend, and perhaps I was also his.

The tears were so deep during the work, I thought my heart was going to explode. My love for him was as fresh as ever. The 15 year old in me never got a chance to fully grieve and here I was, here for him, with him, as him, grieving this profound, overwhelming pain.

After the work was over, around 5 or 6 PM, I decided to go to a spa I wanted to try for a while. I had never been to a spa like this before, with outdoor pools and in the city. As I walk there, everything feels effortless, I’m flying, flowing through the concrete street I step on. There isn’t any trace of separation or a solid somebodyness anywhere. 

Everywhere I look, it’s not other than me, yet I have no idea who I am other than looking when my name is called or paying for something when that’s needed. Everything is going on as it always does at the practical level. Yet within me, there is absolutely nothing and there is no within me. Just an awakeness that responds to Life, an awakeness that is the same awakeness as everywhere else.

When I look at “other” people, I look as, I look through, and I look into the same dark, unknowable, shimmering nothingness that is awake as everything and everyone. The notion of Home is not even it, because there is nothing other than Home. So what’s the use of defining this that is everything? Apart from what is, nothing exists.

The unknowableness of it is so obvious that “to know” or “to understand” are seen as impossible and utterly unnecessary. How can the intellect or thought touch this? How can thought know itself? What a ridiculously gorgeous paradox!

I am not there and I am there. I both exist and don’t and prior to these thoughts is the unknowable appearing also as all knowing. I am in the arms of the Infinite, shining everywhere. The Infinite was searching for the Infinite, yet you cannot find yourself. That is impossible.

What grace, what beauty, what love!