Often, proceeding a philosophical discourse--or rant--of mine, someone will inevitably ask me the question, "What made you get into 'all of this'?" While an answer to such questions can never FULLY be traced to one single event in life, in this case it's easy for me to pinpoint one in particular that rises above the rest in my memory regarding my obsession with "the search".
On January 7th, 1994 my mother picked me and my sister, Shea, up from our soccer practice (I was just shy of ten at the time) and allowed us the "treat" of eating at McDonald's (I'm a vegetarian now, but I loved me some McDonald's as a young-buck). It strikes me that we were so hungry from practice that we actually ate in the car, despite the fact that my mom was and is to this day an absolute "clean freak". Rounding the windy roads of Central Pennsylvania a certain pain began to increase alarmingly in my gut. We got home, I leaped from the car, and ran to the bathroom, assuming that it was simple indigestion from the not-so-healthy food. After about 20 minutes, no bowel movement, and a continued rise in pain, I knew something was SERIOUSLY wrong; my mom strapped me back in the car and we rushed to the hospital.
I'll skip the preliminary waiting room experience (detoxing teenager screaming at the top of his lung, something a nine-year old usually hasn't experienced by this age) and the test experience (9 shots and two-hours later for an "inconclusive result") to cut to the chase. I had appendicitis. It was critical that I go into surgery immediately. What was to follow would change my young mind forever.
A needle struck my vein in the operating room and I quickly drifted off into the abyss. This didn't last long. Suddenly, my consciousness sprang forth and I realized that I was looking down from the ceiling in the operating room, watching the surgeons hover around a body. When the head surgeon stood erect to give an order the patient's face was revealed and... it was ME! I couldn't believe it! Here I was, floating around a hospital, unattached to my physical body. Something inside me told me that I wasn't dead, so I decided to explore. I noticed that if I concentrated on a position in the room (and eventually outside it) I could easily move to that spot, in order to change perspective. Eventually, I snapped back into my body and awoke.
I can't begin to describe the dissonance one feels at such a young age when something of such magnitude occurs. Keen on social expectations I immediately understood that I couldn't tell my parents, especially my father who to this day insists that NO human being (except for our mythical hero, Jesus) has ever perceived anything beyond third-dimensional consciousness. So I pondered what to do. It was from the exact point forward that my search began feverishly to understand the mechanism with which I left my body. Eventually I discovered that it was called an "Out-of-body Experience" and that as many as 1 in 4 people will have at least one such experience in their life. I also learned how to control it.
Often such traumatic and life-altering events propel us to unravel the nature of mind, despite the lack of road maps and clear pathways we are so used to in linear thinking. These events have happen to all of us in one way or another, and it's important that we don't allow them to reside in the shadows of our minds, wondering whether there was any meaning behind them. There is. If you allow yourself to open to the experience, the divine can plant its seed in your fertile mind and your search will begin fresh beyond your wildest dreams: seek and ye shall find. And that's my word.
