yellow, blue, and green. You see colors you don’t recognize, ones you’ve never seen before. Music floods the room with fantastic, kaleidoscopic, surround-sound melodies you’ve never heard before.
Neon signs pulse and boogie in rainbow strobes of cherry, lemon, vermillion, grape, lavender, and gold. Electric toys run on tracks up, down, and around shelves stacked with indescribable colored boxes, packages, papers, pencils, paints, inks, cans of food, packages of multihued candies, bottles of effervescent sodas, chocolates of every possible variety, champagne, and wines from every corner of the world. Skyrockets suddenly explode in starbursts, setting off sparkling flowers, cascades of cold fire, whistling embers, and animations of light.
The vastness, complexity, depth, and breadth of everything going on around you is almost overwhelming. You can’t see all the way to the end of the space, and you know there’s more to it than what you can take in from this torrent that’s tantalizing your senses and emotions. But you do get a strong feeling that you’re actually part of something alive, infinite, and altogether fantastic, that you are part of a large and unfolding tapestry that goes beyond sight and sound.
You understand that what you used to think was your reality was, in fact, hardly a speck within the vast wonder that surrounds you. You can see how all the various parts are interrelated, how they all play off each other, how everything fits. You notice just how many different things there are in the warehouse that you’d never seen, never even dreamed of existing in such splendor and glory of color, sound, and texture—but here they are, along with everything you already knew. And even the objects you were aware of have an entirely new context so that they, too, seem completely new and strangely superreal.
Even when the switch goes back off, nothing can take away your understanding and clarity, the wonder and beauty, or the fabulous aliveness of the experience. Nothing can ever cancel your knowledge of all that exists in the warehouse. You’re now far more aware of what’s there, how to access it, and what’s possible than you ever were with your little flashlight. And you’re left with a sense of awe over everything you experienced in those blindingly lucid moments. Life has taken on a different meaning, and your new experiences moving forward are created from this awareness.
I WONDERED AT MY NEWFOUND UNDERSTANDING in the other realm, enjoying and exploring that all-encompassing consciousness. As I did so, I became aware that I had a choice to make.
I reached a point where I once again strongly sensed the comforting presence of my father surrounding me, almost as if he were embracing me.
Dad, it feels like I’ve come home! I’m so glad to be here. Life is so painful! I told him.
But you’re always home, darling, he impressed upon me. You always were, and you always will be. I want you to remember that.
Even though I hadn’t always been close to my father while I was growing up, all I could feel emanating from him now was glorious, unconditional love. During my physical life with him, I’d often been frustrated by his attempts to make me conform to Indian cultural norms, such as trying to get me married young and making me feel like a misfit because I didn’t always comply. But in this realm, I became aware that without any physical restrictions or the ties of all his cultural conditioning and expectations, all he had for me was pure love.
The cultural pressures he’d put on me during life had all dropped away, because they were all only part of physical existence. None of that mattered after death; those values didn’t carry through into the afterlife. The only thing that remained was our connection and the unconditional love we had for each other. So for the first time, I actually felt cherished and safe in my father’s presence. It truly felt amazing, as though I’d finally come
Neon signs pulse and boogie in rainbow strobes of cherry, lemon, vermillion, grape, lavender, and gold. Electric toys run on tracks up, down, and around shelves stacked with indescribable colored boxes, packages, papers, pencils, paints, inks, cans of food, packages of multihued candies, bottles of effervescent sodas, chocolates of every possible variety, champagne, and wines from every corner of the world. Skyrockets suddenly explode in starbursts, setting off sparkling flowers, cascades of cold fire, whistling embers, and animations of light.
The vastness, complexity, depth, and breadth of everything going on around you is almost overwhelming. You can’t see all the way to the end of the space, and you know there’s more to it than what you can take in from this torrent that’s tantalizing your senses and emotions. But you do get a strong feeling that you’re actually part of something alive, infinite, and altogether fantastic, that you are part of a large and unfolding tapestry that goes beyond sight and sound.
You understand that what you used to think was your reality was, in fact, hardly a speck within the vast wonder that surrounds you. You can see how all the various parts are interrelated, how they all play off each other, how everything fits. You notice just how many different things there are in the warehouse that you’d never seen, never even dreamed of existing in such splendor and glory of color, sound, and texture—but here they are, along with everything you already knew. And even the objects you were aware of have an entirely new context so that they, too, seem completely new and strangely superreal.
Even when the switch goes back off, nothing can take away your understanding and clarity, the wonder and beauty, or the fabulous aliveness of the experience. Nothing can ever cancel your knowledge of all that exists in the warehouse. You’re now far more aware of what’s there, how to access it, and what’s possible than you ever were with your little flashlight. And you’re left with a sense of awe over everything you experienced in those blindingly lucid moments. Life has taken on a different meaning, and your new experiences moving forward are created from this awareness.
I WONDERED AT MY NEWFOUND UNDERSTANDING in the other realm, enjoying and exploring that all-encompassing consciousness. As I did so, I became aware that I had a choice to make.
I reached a point where I once again strongly sensed the comforting presence of my father surrounding me, almost as if he were embracing me.
Dad, it feels like I’ve come home! I’m so glad to be here. Life is so painful! I told him.
But you’re always home, darling, he impressed upon me. You always were, and you always will be. I want you to remember that.
Even though I hadn’t always been close to my father while I was growing up, all I could feel emanating from him now was glorious, unconditional love. During my physical life with him, I’d often been frustrated by his attempts to make me conform to Indian cultural norms, such as trying to get me married young and making me feel like a misfit because I didn’t always comply. But in this realm, I became aware that without any physical restrictions or the ties of all his cultural conditioning and expectations, all he had for me was pure love.
The cultural pressures he’d put on me during life had all dropped away, because they were all only part of physical existence. None of that mattered after death; those values didn’t carry through into the afterlife. The only thing that remained was our connection and the unconditional love we had for each other. So for the first time, I actually felt cherished and safe in my father’s presence. It truly felt amazing, as though I’d finally come
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