Trying to experience life fully

Friday August 5, 2016

5 a.m. At the dentist’s yesterday morning, I had to wait quite a while. (A temporary crown had broken the day before, and they had squeezed me in.) Rather than succumb to irritation or impatience, I – existed. I remained in neutral. Hard to explain. And therefore a couple of remarkable things happened. Can I recapture them?

One thing, I wondered what it would be like to be entirely present, to be fully aware of my life as a 6- or 12- (or however many there are) dimensional being. We have been told that as we become more aware of other dimensions, our experience of time necessarily changes (because those dimensions are crammed into our experience of time in a sort of spare-drawer or junk-closet kind of way). So what if we were fully aware, what would it feel like?

I knew that it isn’t a matter of how we think about things. And yet that isn’t something to be ignored, either, if only because the way we think can get in our own way. If you think guidance is “over here” or is “them,” your opportunities are going to be lessened than if you thought “they” are right here and are not “them.” So, although we can’t think our way into an experience of wholeness (call it), we can prevent ourselves from having it by thinking wrongly.

So I kept that in mind, and tried not to think but to be. What would it feel like to experience myself as I really am, rather than only as this 3D-experiencing machine with a lifeline to the non-3D? Since it can’t be thought into, I couldn’t use concepts to frame it. All I could do was intend to feel it.

Working from that intent, I held myself in an attitude of not-thinking alertness. (Sorry for the inadequacy of description, but I can’t find words for it, or in fact even concepts to try to describe in words. I think a better observer might come back with analogies, at least.) The result was that I “intended” into a clear mental space whose “feel” I have experienced occasionally. I saw a room, with two main objects in it, one closer to me than the other. I can’t remember the objects but the impression was of a very rich room – like a room in a museum, say, with the walls covered with artwork. Nothing moved, nor did my intent. I was being careful not to “move,” myself. I let it be, and held my intent, and tried hard not to start thinking about it, or associating ideas to it.

I don’t remember how it ended – whether it faded, or I started to think, or what. It only lasted a short time. Less than a minute, maybe, though it seemed longer (or perhaps I should say “timeless”) while it lasted.

I remember resolving to try to stay in a state of remembering at least my intent to experience life as fully as possible, and it did seem to affect my day, as long as it lasted. (That is, as long as I remembered.)

Now, by that phrase, “experience life as fully as possible,” I am not talking about what people often seem to mean when they say something similar, which is, roughly, “cram as many experiences, emotions, etc. as possible into my life.” I mean nothing like that. Rather than compiling “external” events and my reactions to them, I’m talking about expanding my moment-to-moment pattern of perception so that I live in the world more as it really is and less as it appears from a constricted 3D perspective. I don’t know how to do it – I won’t know unless / until I succeed – but I think I know how to go about it, focused intent and stillness. But how to remember intent, moment by moment? That’s a big question.

Obviously this way of proceeding won’t be for everyone, if it is even for me. But it seems worth a try, and now I’m wondering if this is that people aim for by meditating. The trouble with all this exploring is that so little of it can be expressed, and such little as can be expressed can be so misleading. Still, it seems worth pursuing.