The day was the day that my grandson, Hayden, was born in 2003.  I had been working in Santa Clara, so ended up at the hospital in Woodland an hour or so after his birth.  I expected to find a bunch of giddy, happy people – but instead found quiet, concerned people because Hayden wasn’t doing so well.  He had a problem with his heartbeat and respiration.  The biggest concern was a very uneven, and rapid, pulse plus whatever it was that was causing this.

My family wanted me to see my newborn grandson.   However, that was kind of a scary thing for me because he was in a room by himself, in an incubator, hooked up to all sorts of monitors, tubes and wires.  Because he was “wired” it was easy to see and hear the problems with his heart on the monitor above his bed.

I entered his room with my wife, and we watched him for a few minutes.  After a short time, I felt a very strong urge to hold him, but holding him flat in my hands on his back, not like you normally hold a newborn baby snuggled in your arms.  For some reason it seemed right to hold him in my hands like an offering, rather than as a baby.  Once I held him, I could feel an odd sort of warmth that felt like love, moving through my arms and hands, into his body.  It was a very nice, warm, comfortable feeling of contentment and good will.  It physically felt like warmth moving through my arms.  I really don’t know how to describe it other than to say that it felt warm, good, and as if  I was sending  energy and love though my hands to him.

As I did that I noticed his monitor changing.  His heart beat got more stable, slowed down and within a couple of minutes became “normal.”  After a short time (not more than three or four minutes), it felt like the energy flow was done and I could put him down.  I knew then that he was now going to be alright, he would be fine.  This turned out to be the case.  They held him in intensive care for a couple more hours just to observe him, but from that point on he was just a normal little kid doing everything just right.

My wife was in the room at the time that this happened. Afterward she said that it felt like the entire room had been filled with a powerful, loving energy.  She said it kind of pulsed or vibrated, and she knew that everything was going to be okay because of the power of that energy.

I had nothing to do with this event in the sense of intending it, or trying to make it happen.  I just felt an urge to do what I did, and then it just felt like it did.  Whatever was happening was happening through me, but not by me.  My wife and I were the only ones that seemed to know what was happening.  I didn’t feel that anyone else had to be in on it unless they already were.

During the 2002 Burning Man event I decided to be alone, rather than camp with a group of friends.  It wasn’t that I wanted to shun my friends; rather it was a desire to see what would happen if I didn’t have schedules or people to talk to.  Basically, I was exploring what would happen if I just let things happen on their own, without outside influences from friends.

I took my Jeep Cherokee and a small utility trailer that our family uses for camping.  The trailer made it easy to bring food, water, a stove and camping furniture.  I don’t like to sleep in tents, partly because I don’t like the process of setting them up and partly because I don’t like being hidden inside where I can’t see and feel what is going on around me. I like to watch the stars and like to see the morning light as dawn approaches.  For this reason I ended up sleeping in the back of the Jeep with the tailgate open (in order to let my long legs stick out of the back).  This kept most of the rain off, allowed me to close my stuff inside of the vehicle when the dust blew, and gave me a reasonable place to sleep.  Every morning I would heat a bucket of water to be used for a “shower,” dipping warm water over my head while standing next to my trailer.  This didn’t give much privacy, but privacy is not a big concern at the Burning Man festival.

I found my camping place to be just about perfect.  I had an open area within a circle of strangers.  However, it wasn’t very long before all of us knew each other because “my” open area was the common ground between the four or five encircling camps.  Everyone was very nice, and I very much enjoyed the freedom to come and go on my own schedule, while being able to stroll over to a neighboring camp for a visit at any time.  It was very relaxing.

One day early in the week I decided to take an extended bicycle tour around the camp, through the “residential” district.  It was one of those perfect days in the desert; no wind, a bit of chill in the air, and crystal clear blue skies.  My leisurely bicycle ride took me on a long dirt road between the tens of thousands of campsites set up by the attendees.  I was just sort of mindlessly riding along looking at the people and their ideas for the “perfect” camping experience, in awe of the creativity shown by the various campers. 

All of a sudden I felt like my attention shifted into a place that I had never experienced before.  It felt like I had woken up out of a dream (or maybe into one).  It felt like I was directly seeing and experiencing what was there at that moment, rather than seeing it all through my filtering mind.  I don’t know how to describe this feeling, except to say that it felt good and clean and pure.  It was so strong that I stopped riding in order to just stand there and observe what was before me, taking it all in as an experience of the moment.

After a couple of minutes of this I realized that I was in a place of a disconnected observer, rather than as a participant. It was like I had dropped in from another planet and was observing the activities and characteristics of an alien community with little prior knowledge or expectations of who they were or what they were doing.  Having no filters meant that I had no expectations, which meant that it was all new and unknown.

What I saw made me laugh out loud, right there in the middle of the street.  I saw that everyone was preening to attract a partner.  The men were setting up their camps with lots of colored bobbles and interesting things to attract a partner. It struck me that it was very much like the mating activities of Bower birds. Bower bird males build a nest for their future, unknown, mate and then gather lots of colorful and interesting things that they place on the ground in front of the nest.  They like to get colored string, pieces of glittery things, colored fruit or flowers, seeds, or anything else that they can find that would catch the eye of the female.  If they are successful in creating an attractive nest, and have the right objects of attraction for the lady bird, she might stop in for a chat.  Of course this just gets the lady within speaking distance, what happens next is up to the two of them to figure out.  The actions at Burning Man are very much like that.  Each person is putting out (or on) interesting things to attract a potential mate; or maybe just a friend.  It was comical because I could see clearly that everyone thought they were acting as creative individuals, when in fact they were acting from an instinctual drive. 

This is just a small part of what I saw that day.  As I spent the next couple of hours slowly riding through the camps among all of the people doing their various wonderful and wacky things, I just stayed in the position of an awakened observer not really interpreting what I saw and felt, just noticing.  That experience turned the entire week into a magical time for me because I stayed close to that point of view the entire time.  Not only that, but in many ways it has stayed with me.  I now find it much easier to just step back in my mind’s eye and observe, feel, and experience without always filtering everything through my past experiences and knowledge. I have learned to find a place of peace and calm in the midst of almost any amount of chaos.   I don’t mean that I am somehow reserved or distant, but rather it is the opposite – I am more often present in the moment, rather than dreaming of the past or the future.  This makes me more present and connected with the people I am with, rather than more distant.  That moment on the bicycle was a shift in perception that continues to resonate through my view of the world. I suspect it will stay with me for the rest of my life (at least, I hope that it does because it is like a shroud has been lifted for me).

Sometime around the year 2012 I had an experience that is so simple, and so lacking in details that it is barely describable.  However, since it has stayed with me for several years as an “outstanding event,” I assume that it was more important than I knew at the time and therefore worth attempting to describe.

One day in the mid-morning hours I was sitting on a pillow in my living room, meditating.  At some point in the meditation I opened my eyes, but stayed in the meditative mood.  I do this fairly often as it seems to help me become habituated to meditation while looking at the world.  It is a practice of taking in the surroundings while staying “empty.”  This is one of the first steps to staying in meditation all of the time, even while actively engaged with the world.

On this day I had a very unusual experience when I opened my eyes. When I looked at the room and my surroundings everything was as it normally is as far as placement, color and content were concerned.  However, everything was totally different.  My feeling was as if I had been normally looking at a two dimensional view of the world. It was as if my normal view is similar to looking at a photograph or a movie screen which appear three dimensional, but are actually flat.  My normal flat view of the world had somehow been changed into becoming a three dimensional world; with depth that I could experience, not just look at.  All of a sudden the feeling of being flat dissolved and it was like I was suddenly in another dimension.  It was more than just a shifting of point of view; it was a change in how it felt in my body.  This feeling and view of somehow being “in three dimensions” lasted for a relatively long time – ten or fifteen minutes or longer. 

It seems odd that all of a sudden it felt three dimensional.  After all, we live and perceive in a 3-D way all of the time.  This part is not new or novel in any way, but that day something was completely novel and approached being an “earth shattering event.” 

I finally came out of my meditation and the feeling/perception vanished, dissolving back into the everyday view of the world.  This moment stays in my memory as a very different, and probably important, event – but until recently I didn’t know why. 

Maybe I got a bit of an insight into this from a book that I got on my birthday a few weeks ago.  My daughter gave a book by the Dalai Lama called, How to See Yourself as You Really Are. I am having a very difficult time reading this book because it seems so foreign, but at the same time so obvious to me.  I think I get a bit of it, but then it seems like he takes a sharp turn in his descriptions, leaving me high and dry wondering what he could possibly be trying to talk about.  I will need to re-read this book a few times before I can decide if it makes sense or not for me.

However, I think it helped me find the importance of that three dimensional event. I think what may have happened is that I stopped looking at the things in my house filtered through my interpretations of what I think they are – instead I just looked at them as they are.  I didn’t look at a chair and see a “chair.” I looked at a chair and saw lines, surfaces, planes, and colors.  The same thing happened with the walls and windows.  They weren’t walls and windows; they were just what they were without any conception.  So instead of looking at these things as they were remanufactured in my mind’s eye, I looked at them as they were.  They were devoid of feelings, and understanding – they just were.  This made it feel like I was in the middle of a three dimension world (which I was), instead of like I was looking at a movie (which is a two dimensional view of three dimensional things).  I lost much meaning, but gained much knowledge about how things are as a part of the whole, rather than as individual items that were formed into concepts and notions filled with emotion and history.  The room and its contents were all the same, there were no separations between the things, and between the things and myself.  They were like they always are, but they were not they; they were it – and I was included as a part of it, rather than something separate observing it.

This silly little poem that I wrote seems to sum up a bit of this feeling:

              How far into the rabbit hole can you go?

              Can you see that all is one?

              Can you see that one is none?

              When you turn off your mind,

              And just see what there is to see,

              You will find that you are it, and that it is you.

The vision described in this short story happened in the summer of 2002.  It was the middle of the afternoon and I was taking a bit of a reading break in my living room at home.  I was sitting in my favorite chair, reading a book that my friend Ron had lent me concerning some of the things that Edgar Casey said concerning Atlantis.  According to the book, Mr. Casey “saw” the country of Atlantis before it had sunk into the ocean millennia ago.  Because of his visions, he claimed to have some kind of direct knowledge of the place, the peoples, and its history.  This all seemed, and still seems, pretty outlandish – not something I am likely to invest my beliefs in.  However, I was reading the book so that I could talk to Ron about it.

I stopped reading for a moment to ponder the question of what was it that Mr. Casey was reporting on.  Assuming that he wasn’t outright lying, it seems that he is describing some kind of experience.  I formed the question in my mind, “what was he experiencing that gave him the background to make the claims that are in his writings?”

Almost immediately I found that I was in very new, and unknown, place.  Instead of sitting in my chair, in my living room with a book on my lap, I was standing on a long pier jutting out into a body of water, looking back toward the land.  The sky was very blue and bright, the dock was in good shape, approximately ten feet wide, with wooden deck boards running perpendicular to the direction of travel.  There were no railings or any other things along the side except for large fluted, white columns spaced about every twenty feet apart along both sides of the pier.  The columns looked to be of an ancient design, with some sort of curly things around the top, but without a roof.  The pier was about 4 or 5 feet above the water.  I suppose I was a hundred or so feet from the shore. 

The water was a beautiful deep blue color, and very calm.  It was making tiny ripples as it splashed up against a smooth, perfect beach leading out of my vision to both sides.  The beach was the color of California beaches; it wasn’t white, but more of a golden brown shade.  The beach was about fifty feet deep, gently sloping up to meet rolling hills leading inland.  The hills were green with grass and a few small bushes, but there were no trees nearby.   There was what appeared to be a stand of trees off in the distance to my left.  I could see the hills up to a height of about 100 feet or so, and then they disappeared from view where the cloudless blue sky started.

Directly ashore from the pier was the front of a building.  It appeared that the hills had been dug back making room for the front wall of the building.  The large façade, consisting of a wall made from what appeared to be marble blocks, with a covered area in front supported by more columns.  There was a large opening near the center that led to the interior of the building.  It was quite dark in the opening, so I could not see anything inside of the building, just a black opening.

I looked around the landscape for a bit, turning my head to look up and down the beach – noticing that my “vision” was in three dimensions, I was in the middle of it, the vision was “projected” out in front of me.  As I scanned the view I noticed that there were few trees nearby, and no animals of any kind.  The beach was smooth. There were no tracks in the sand.  It didn’t really feel barren; it just happened that there were no animals immediately visible at this time.  It didn’t feel out of place, I was just noticing.  It was completely calm, and completely silent – although I am not sure if I could hear in this vision, maybe it was just a visual experience.

As I stood watching the scene, a lady came walking toward me out of the building.  She was tall (5’ 9” or so), had black hair, and brown skin.  She had “Caucasian” features, and a nice comfortable figure.  I noticed was that she was wearing a golden crown that consisted of a golden band about a half inch in diameter going around her head, with a cobra’s head raising up in the front.  I recognized this as the headgear that I had seen pictures of Egyptian queens wearing.  It reminded me of how Cleopatra looks in the movies.  She was wearing a wrap-around gown that had a plunging neck line, with wide upward sweeping shoulders. It was in a pattern that looked a bit like a fan starting near her belly and fanning out upward toward her shoulders.  The fan was formed from alternating stripes of beautiful blue and gold color.  The fan was edged at the top (neckline) with a broad golden colored border.  I was pretty sure that the gold was actual gold threads.  I don’t know what the blue was from.  The gown appeared to be very light and airy, and form fitting above her hips.  It appeared to be worn like a robe rather than like a dress.  Below her knees the gown gently folded, with a slit in front formed by the folds.  The best way to describe it is that it looked just like popular pictures of an Egyptian queen.  She had open toed, strap-on sandals.

She walked across the sand leading to the pier and come toward me until she was standing about ten feet in front of me, stopping to look into my eyes.  Not a word was said.  Her movements were very soft but formal.  At that moment my mind had the thought, “so, this is what Casey was seeing.”  

Poof!  The vision was gone and there I was sitting in my living room, holding my book, slightly stunned by the instantaneous transformation between my two visions (the Egyptian vision and my living room).  It left me pretty disoriented for a few minutes. I had to consciously accept the idea that I was going to stick with the living room vision.

A year or so later I was attending the Burning Man festival in Nevada.  One day I walked into the big center camp tent to see what was happening and there she was!  There was the lady in my vision, standing a few feet in front of me.  Not wanting a re-experience of missing important moments in time, I walked right up to her, introduced myself to her, and told her about seeing her in my Egyptian vision.  Neither she, nor her male friend, seemed to cotton to the idea of my telling them this.  They politely thanked me for the story and quickly backed away to get away from this wild-man telling them about visions of her in a former time of splendor.  Oh well, at least I didn’t walk past what might have been an opportunity. I don’t think that my vision was anything more than that.  I doubt that it was rooted in any sort of past, present, or future reality.  My impression was that some part of my mind was answering my question about Mr. Casey’s world view.  Rather than giving me an answer in words, it did it by creating an experience.  It was a visual answer, not a verbal one.  I don’t think I learned anything about Egypt or the lady, but I certainly learned about how vivid and spontaneous these things can be.  It explained to me why some people say they see things that others do not.  It would be pretty easy to confuse an experience like this with “reality” because it didn’t require the experience of falling asleep and waking up.  It just popped in and out again.  I suppose I actually fell asleep and was experiencing a dream, but if so it was a lucid dream that didn’t fade in and out like most dreams do.  I had no view of any part of myself which is normal in my lucid dreams.  I can usually see parts of myself such as my hands, arms and legs – but not this time.  However, from the position that I was standing I don’t think I would have been able to see myself so that doesn’t really mean much.

This experience was one of my first experiences with something akin to the healing arts. I don’t know if it is actually the first instance of this kind of thing, but it is the first time that I recognized my ability to “feel” energy associated with injuries.  Maybe it was actually a hot spot since it was injured and my hands were sensitive enough to the heat to detect it.  Maybe it was something else.  I have no way of knowing, but I do know it was something that was very strong and very obvious.

It was sometime around 2001.  I was attending a spiritual gathering with some Toltec acquaintances of mine.  It was a group that I didn’t really know very well – although I did know a couple of the folks from previous meetings.  The meeting was in the evening and we had “warmed” up by meditating a bit, saying some prayers, playing drums and other instruments, and generally enjoying ourselves.  The leader had us do some energy exercises.  We paired off in twos.  I was pared with a lady that I slightly knew.  We were asked to sit cross legged on the floor facing each other.  Then both persons were to close their eyes and one would “feel” the energy, or aura, of the other by feeling the space between them and around the other person with their hands.  I was the first to be the “feeler,” she was to be the person who I felt. 

Being basically a non-believer in this kind of weird thing, I found this to be a very unsettling exercise.  I consider myself to be an engineer/physicist and was convinced that there is no energy that can be felt in this way because it didn’t exist.  However, since I had made an agreement with myself to do as asked as long as it isn’t too dangerous, I played along with the game.  I allowed myself to be blindfolded, and reached out with my hands to explore the space between us.  We were positioned so I wouldn’t be able to get closer than about a foot, maybe a bit more, from her with my hands.  For quite some time this went as expected, I waved my hands around and felt nothing.  I didn’t expect anything more and wasn’t disappointed. 

Then I started to notice a warm sensation in the palms of my outstretched hands.  As I moved my hands around I could feel it getting warmer and cooler, depending upon where they were placed.  There was a certain place that they felt very warm.  The feeling was very much like moving my hands toward and away from a hot clothes iron.  In fact, I finally stopped because I was a little worried that it would actually burn me if I got too close. So I just kind of played with the sensation, moving my hands closer and further away from her, and up and down – feeling the boundaries of the heat.

After we were done, we took off our blindfolds and talked to each other about the experience.  She told me that I was hurting her by pressing too hard on her left shoulder/breast area.  She said that I was pushing in and out too hard, and that it felt almost painful, but not quite painful.  Then she said that she had a serious medical problem in that area.  She didn’t say what it was and since she didn’t offer that information, I didn’t ask.  She just said that she had a problem, and that I was pressing the energy in that location and causing significant pressure and warmth to the injured area.

The experience stuck in my mind because it was the first time that I had an independent agreement with the experience of feeling the “energy” of an illness or disease.  I was very sorry that I made her feel uncomfortable; if I had known that I was actually impacting her I would have been much more careful and gentle.  As it was, I had no idea that she would be able to feel what I was doing, more or less that I might make her feel pain or be ill at ease.

I have never seen that lady again since that time.  I have often wondered if by some weird magic that experience might have helped her to heal.  I have had no feedback since then, so as far as I am aware it was just an experience of the two of us feeling some kind of hot, powerful energy.

My brother Bill is twelve years older than I am.  That means that by the time I was entering kindergarten, he was out of high school and living on his own.  I didn’t really get to know him very well until after I finished high school.  After high school I went to a local junior college, broke up with my fiancé after a few months, dropped out of college, and went to live with my brother Bill at the tiny town of Elk on the coast in northern California.  That marks the time when I first began to get to know him as a person instead of just someone that I saw at family gatherings.

Bill’s main profession was as a mechanic, specializing in repairing and rebuilding large Caterpillar tractors.  He was also a low bed truck driver moving heavy equipment, small time cattle rancher, fire wood cutter, chief of the local volunteer fire department, doing just about anything that was rough, tough, dirty, hard work.   He seemed to especially like big, old, heavy equipment.  I was always in awe at his amazing skill as a mechanic, especially when working on the more complex items such as transmissions and other gear boxes.  He seemed to understand machines like others understand our best friends. There are many, many stories of exploits with him.  Going on any type of trip with him was bound to become an adventure, which I always found to be great fun.

He lived in an old, big, run-down Victorian style ranch house on the top of Sonoma Mountain, between the Valley of the Moon, and Santa Rosa.  The old place is located on property that was inherited from his wife’s family ranch, in what is now some of the most expensive and sought after areas in the state.  For most of his time living there, it was just beautiful land that was too small to make a living off of, but big enough to hold lots of old tractors, trucks, cars and other broken down vehicles and a few cattle.  For years he ran his tractor repair business on that parcel, accumulating valuable pieces and parts of things that might be useful some day when the right job came along.  In addition to the “good old stuff,” he accumulated scrap iron to be sold as needed in his retirement years – kind of a rusty nest egg.

I tried to visit him as often as I could, watching and talking to him while he worked on old equipment, sitting in their kitchen looking out of the window at the incredible view of the Sonoma Valley with its golden hills and oak trees.  He was a very difficult person to talk to because his pace was hard to match.  I might go to visit him with a question about my car.  I would ask the question in the morning, and if all went well I might get an answer by evening – or maybe the next day.  There was often a very long pause, and several projects, between comments.  I found it to be a pleasant way to spend my time, but it could be frustrating if I actually needed the information in a hurry.  One thing that he almost never talked about was himself.  He would tell tractor and truck stories for hours at a time, and talk about all sorts of adventures that he or others had, but never did you find out much about Bill.

Unfortunately, when he was in his late fifties he had a massive stroke that left him almost dead, much of his body paralyzed, and in extremely poor health.  His nest egg of scrap metal and spare parts immediately lost almost all of its worth because it depended upon his energy and knowledge to recoup the value.  This was especially the case for the tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of gaskets, seals, bearings, shafts, and odds and ends of parts that nobody but he could identify.  They turned from high value parts to scrap in the blink of an eye.

I must confess that I did not visit him as often as I should have during the next years while he lay paralyzed, or finally slumped in a wheel chair.  He could talk a little, but it was even slower and more agonizing than it had been when he was the picture of strength and good health.  I stopped by now and then, but since we really couldn’t talk and I couldn’t think of what to do, I would leave too early.  I know that I could have just hung around and done nothing, which would have been appreciated by him I am sure – but it was just too uncomfortable for me.  It was such a sad thing to see this wasted man who had been so full of energy, life and strength just a short time before. 

One day we got the call that he had died.  I think he died in his sleep, but don’t know that for sure.  At any rate, he died and I wasn’t there – which made me sad, a little guilty feeling.  I should have supported him much more than I did.  A few weeks following his death, his family had a remembrance celebration, inviting a lot of his old time friends to share good yarns and pleasant memories about my brother’s exploits over the years.

Several months after his wake I had my first lucid dream of him.  I found myself sitting with him in the kitchen of his house, chatting and looking out on the hills and the Valley of the Moon.  The house was just like it was in the old days when he first moved into the house with his young family.  There was the big old wood burning cook stove, an old wooden dining room table, and we were sitting, as usual, in old spindle backed dining room chairs.  Bill was in his early to middle thirties, in full health.  He looked splendid, a very handsome, vigorous, strong outdoorsy man – just like I remembered him in those days.

It took me a little while to realize what had happened.  At first I was comfortable, just sitting with my brother, enjoying each others company.  Then it dawned on me that he was dead, and that I was in a dream.  I looked very closely around the room and at him to see if there was anything that would give it away as being a dream, but found nothing – other than the fact that I was sitting talking to my dead brother.  It was perfectly clear, stable, and looked exactly like real life. 

I asked him what he was doing in my dream since he was dead.  He said that he had a desire to talk to me, and that this was the way that he could do it.  This seemed reasonable to me.  I asked him what he was doing now that he was dead.  He said that he was working on the place, fixing it up.  He was repairing fences for his cattle, rebuilding the house, cleaning up the mess and generally doing all the things that he had wanted to do before he died.  I asked him if he was lonely.  He said that it wasn’t lonely at all, that he had his old friends and family around a lot.  He said that he had friends and family that had died, and those that were still alive – so it was a pretty enjoyable time.

We chatted about his experiences of being dead, about his projects and about his family.  Then he asked me to let his family know that he was doing okay, that they shouldn’t worry about him.  We said goodbye to each other, and I woke up.

About a year later he was back.  We were in his kitchen again.  This time I immediately recognized where we were, and that I was in a dream with my brother.  We made our normal small talk and then I asked him what he was doing now.  He said that he was just about finished up with the projects.  He told me that he was fixing things up to welcome our mother and his wife when they died.  He planned on meeting them and welcoming them to the other side. 

We talked some more about nothing much special.  It was odd to be wasting time with small talk, but that seemed to be the thing to do.  For example, I asked him about eating – what did he eat and did he have to eat.  He said that he didn’t have to eat, it didn’t bother him one way or another, but that he did eat because he liked to.  The food was just prepared and on the table, he didn’t have to fix it, so it was easy.  He said that all of the normal things that we do when alive can be done, but don’t need to be done – it is a choice.  For the time being, he was choosing to do them.

We finally ran out of things to talk about, said goodbye again, shook hands and I woke up.  I had, and still have, the feeling that while these were dreams, they were really communications with my brother.  I felt that it was a real, solid, actual person that I was talking to.  Whether he was real or not doesn’t matter much to me, the dreams helped me to have a couple more visits with my brother, and to feel that he was doing well and enjoying himself.  I was most impressed that he came back at the prime of his life, which was a nice touch.

After my mother died a couple of years later, I had one more dream of dead people – my mother.  It was very brief. I had a short visit from her on the night of her death.  She stopped by to let me know that she was gone, but that she was okay.  She said that she was going to stay with Bill for a bit, and that they would then be gone.  She visited my brother Michael at about the same time.  He was driving his car at the time, several hundred miles away.  She visited him to let him know that she had died and was on her way.  No big trauma, just a goodbye visit for both of us.

I have not had any encounters with either of them since that time.  I would kind of like to continue having these types of dreams about them, but it feels like they are no longer available for such nighttime chats.

There have been a number of incidents that I have experienced as a volunteer fireman that feel to be slightly out of the ordinary.  As a volunteer in a very small town, I am expected to be the “first responder” at all sorts of medical aid calls, but have very little training concerning what to do once I get there.  I am far from being a trained medical responder, but still have to fill that role.  For the first few years, automobile accident calls with “injuries” terrified.  As I was getting into my protective clothes at home, and then driving to the fire house, I would think of what I might be facing.  Knowing that I had almost no training, I would think about what it was going to be like to be depended upon to do the right thing to help someone, but not know what to do. I was also afraid that it would be so ugly, and I would be so frightened, that I would unable to function.  My fear was so great that on more than one occasion I found that my car had stopped in the middle of the road and it was almost impossible to make myself continue to the firehouse. 

After a few years of being filled with mind numbing fear each time I heard my portable monitor go “beep beep beep beep beep” for a call, I had a realization that my responsibility wasn’t as great as I had imagined.  After encountering a couple of dead people on these calls, it dawned on me that in almost all cases people would either be dead, or they would not be dead.  If they are dead, then it doesn’t matter any longer.  We take so long to respond (about 6-10 minutes), that they aren’t likely to become dead during the few minutes between when I show up and when an ambulance arrives at the scene.  The realization that I don’t normally have to save lives was a great relief.  My job is to make the scene safe (put out fires, turn off engines, control traffic, etc), help get the injured people out of the vehicles and ready to be put into an ambulance, administer first aid if needed, and help people feel better in their fear and pain.  I can do all of these things.  If someone dies, I feel sorrow – but there isn’t much that I can do about that.

At about the same time that I came to the realization that we don’t save lives, it also became obvious that my main “medical” contribution has to do with helping people with their fear and suffering, and maybe some of the pain.  Pain is hard to do something about because it has to do with nerve impulses.  Suffering, however, seems to be a choice.  I have noticed that a person can be in great pain, but not be suffering if they are in the right mind.  My job is to help them get into that right mind.  I have found that I can help by just being there, being attentive, and touching them.  When I touch a person in these situations, I get the same kind of feeling that I do when I am “healing” someone.  I feel the warmth and feeling of “love” flowing through my body and hands into them.  I don’t tell the fireman, or anyone at the scene, what I am doing – but I feel that I am doing something important.

One example that comes to mind is a late night call that we got to a house trailer where a person was in immense pain because of gall stones.  This wasn’t an accident, but it was similar because it involved so much pain.  When we got there the man was screaming and hollering because of the pain, and was losing his control.  The other firemen just stood and watched, not knowing what to do.  I knelt down beside the patient and held his hand.  I could feel the warmth flowing to him, and within a couple of seconds he quieted down.  I could feel his muscles and everything just kind of relaxing; he could even come up with a bit of a smile and could talk to us. It was obvious to me that my presence was a great soothing thing for him.  Finally the ambulance came and he was able to walk slowly to the ambulance where they administered some drugs that actually helped the pain, rather then just his reaction to it.

In another case we showed up in the middle of a rainy night to an accident where a car had rolled over and the passenger’s arm was ripped off at his shoulder.  My first job was to wade in a nearby creek until I found the missing arm!  I handed the arm over to one of the other firemen, and went to see what I could do to help.  I first went to the side of the person missing the arm, and found that he was close to a state of shock.  That means he was quiet, but in a very dangerous situation.  I held his hand for a few minutes, and the danger seemed to pass.  I then turned my attention to the driver, who was his girl friend. She was really freaking out, she was just going nuts crying, shouting, sobbing while I could see that she was going into shock.  I went up to her and captured her in a big bear hug, wrapping myself around her as much as I could, and just stood there with her for a long time.  She slowly stopped sobbing and shaking, and I could finally feel her body relax.  We just continued to stand in the middle of the road, gently swaying back and forth until she was able to be on her own again.

A couple of months ago we were called out to an accident between a pickup truck and a small sedan.  The lady in the sedan was trapped, and hurt badly.  She clearly had broken legs, and maybe a broken arm.  We used the Jaws of Life and cut her free, sliding her out on a backboard where we could prepare her for transport.  During this time she was screaming at the top of her lungs.  She was by far the noisiest patient that I ever experienced.  When we got her laying down on the ground, her arms slipped and I saw both of her arms flex like a couple of pieces of rubber tubing, they bent in all the wrong places.  When that happened she REALLY let out a holler.  I held on to her hands to keep her arms from flopping about again while others prepared splints, got her connected to the back board, etc.  I found that the only thing that I could do was pour my love through her hands.  She finally became quiet and seemed to relax.  I don’t know if my holding her hands helped, but it at least gave me something to do.

There are many more instances like these where a person was in fear, or in great pain, where my touching them and being there seemed to help.  I think that the presence and touch of another human at those times of need helps immensely.  It might well be that someone just being there is all that was needed. However, it feels to me that there is something more going on, it feels to me like there is loving energy being transferred through my body and into the other person.  It feels wonderful to me, so I look forward to being able to help.  It seems to feel wonderful to them too, but my guess is that they don’t ever think back upon it as anything special. 

I wonder what is going on during these kinds of events.  One thought it is that the presence of a caring person is enough to calm fears and reduce pain.  Another idea is that maybe there is actually some kind of “universal energy” that we can sometimes tap into.  If that is the case, this energy is not obvious or observable by currently available scientific measurements or tests.  From the point of view of a scientist, I have to believe that if anything is actually happening it must be related to mental changes caused with the caring attention of another person.  However, from my experiences of being personally involved, I can state that it feels like there is more than that; it feels like an outside source of energy is involved.  Whatever the truth is, I am convinced that we all have the ability within us to offer great assistance to those in mental or physical pain.  If we can find a way to relax into the drama of the situation we can do much to help reduce another person’s fear and pain in their moments of need.

One of the things that intrigues me about “the other side” is the possibility of moving out of my body. My first with something that felt like being out of my body while completely awake happened while at work, around the year 2000.

I was working as a safety consultant for a company that made large, very powerful lasers used in the semiconductor industry.  My job was to help them design enclosures, interlocks and controls that would allow them to use these lasers safely.  I would visit their facility in Santa Clara once a week or so to talk to their engineers, inspect the equipment or attend meetings.  Since it was just a part time job, I wasn’t issued a security badge, so I had to be escorted to enter the building past the lobby.

On one occasion I showed up at the scheduled time, but my escort was not ready to see me.  I was asked to wait in the lobby for a half hour or so until he could come and get me.  This was fine with me; I get paid the same sitting in a lobby as I do actually working.  The lobby was a fairly small room that opened directly off of their tree covered parking lot.  There was a security desk, but no guard.  Four or five chairs lined each side of the lobby.  There were a couple of certificates and other business related documents hanging on the walls, but nothing of interest.  I was the only one waiting that day.  It was a fairly stark and uninteresting place to sit and wait.

Since it appeared that I would have a little time, I decided to meditate while waiting.  I sat in one of the chairs, closed my eyes, and sat following my breath.  After a few minutes, I felt myself separate from my body.  It was like my attention slipped right out and hovered near the ceiling.  I opened my eyes and found that I was near the ceiling, looking around the room, and looking at my body sitting in the chair.  It was a very peaceful experience, I had no desire to change anything, I just remained in this separated position until all of a sudden the door opened and my escort came in to get me.  This created a crisis of sorts because I could see him going over to greet me, but I wasn’t there.  I managed to force my “real” body to open its eyes and acknowledge the person, but couldn’t really talk or anything because I was in the wrong place.  With a very large effort, I managed to force myself back into my body in time to be able to stand up and say hello – but could barely do anything else. 

When he talked to me it was like it was from an immense distance, I was trying to communicate to him across some sort of barrier. We were not in the same place at all.  Luckily, he didn’t demand much communication at that time.  He gave me a temporary badge and led me off to a meeting room.  By the time we got to the meeting room I was solidly back in my body so could carry on normal communication.  I remained in a very “spacey” state for the rest of the day, but was able to talk and act more or less normal if I concentrated hard enough.

The second time I had an out of body experience I was lying in bed, getting ready to fall asleep – but was having a difficult time doing that.  One of my normal tricks when this happens is to lay on my back and let my attention move to all parts of my body.  I start with my face, near my eyes, and feel myself.  Then I move slowly down my face, to my neck, arms, chest, legs, feet, then back up to my buttocks, back, neck, head and back to my face.  By the time I do that I am very relaxed and can feel my entire body as one unit, it helps me to be aware of all of myself.  I finished the trip around my body and just lay there relaxed, when I felt myself separate from myself.  I just sort of floated up out of my body and hovered about a foot over myself.  It was quite comfortable and felt good.  I was not really amazed or anything like that, it seemed like a natural thing to do.  After awhile I decided to turn over onto my side and go to sleep.  When I rolled, I was surprised to find that I rolled under my hovering self, but it stayed in place.  For some reason I had expected that it would move with me, but it didn’t.  I could switch my attention between the two me’s, changing my point of view at will.  I finally decided to just go to sleep, leaving the second floating above me.  When I woke up, I was back together again as if nothing had happened.

Both of these experiences were very quiet and subtle.  There was nothing really dramatic or earth shattering about them.  The most unusual aspects of them were that they seemed to be so “normal.”  It was like this is a normal state of affairs, something that happens all of the time, but for some reason on these two occasions I happened to pay attention.  I think I may have had more of these experiences, but I just don’t recall them because I didn’t notice them.  They felt like the normal, and correct, way to be. 

I was attending a Toltec class given by my good friend and teacher, Ramin.  It was an evening class held in a classroom in one of the large buildings at the University of California, Davis. We had been working on the issue of “stalking” ourselves in order to become more aware of what we are doing, who we are, what we believe and assorted similar issues.  Stalking is a practice of learning to become more aware of yourself, your feelings, and your thoughts.

Ramin decided that we needed a little “nudge” to push us beyond our comfort zone to help us to experience the edge of our discomfort, and as an aid to practicing “being in the moment.”  It is always a bit scary when one of the Toltec teachers decides to push me beyond my comfort zone because they seem to be very skilled at finding ways to push me far beyond that boundary.  This evening was to be no exception.

Ramin told one of the other students to count the tiles on the floor the length of the hallway.  I chuckled to myself about this, thinking that it was an easy assignment and that maybe I would get off without too much perspiration from facing my fears.  It turned out that while counting the tiles would be no big deal for me, it was a really frightening and uncomfortable thing for the student with that assignment.  His problem was not with counting the tiles, which was easy enough.  His problem had to do with so many strangers watching him do a senseless activity.  For some reason, being observed doing something like that just didn’t fit into his personal agreements, making this a very difficult assignment.  It seemed easy to me because I don’t have much of a problem being observed doing some pretty silly and senseless things.

Then I got my assignment and almost fainted from fear.  My assignment was to enter all of the classrooms in the four-story building and as for assistance in locating a fictitious person.  I was to ask about the whereabouts of someone as if it were important for me to find him.  This was at a time when all of the lecture halls were being used, there were lectures going on in them all.  I learned in a flash that one of my personal agreements has to do with not unnecessarily interrupting professors when they are in the process of giving lectures.  Actually, it isn’t quite that – it is more that it is rude (and therefore unacceptable) to force my way into other’s space unless there is a good reason to do so.  This belief is probably connected with my being taught that children are to be seen but not heard. In any case, the idea of opening a door and asking the professor and students if they knew where so-and-so was did not fit into what I consider acceptable behavior.  However, it also didn’t seem to be something that was really all that bad or dangerous.  This would harm nobody, and the effects would be very short lived.  Therefore, I didn’t have a very good reason to reject the assignment.  I knew I wasn’t really hurting anyone, but that didn’t make it any easier for me.

As I approached the first room I could hardly breathe I was so frightened.  I had concocted a very short speech to be used when I opened the door, something like; “excuse me, I am looking for Jim Smith.  Has anyone seen him or know where I might find him?”  While my prepared speech was very short, I was sure that I would not be able to speak because of my nervousness. 

I was trembling and hyperventilating by the time my sweaty hand turned the first door handle.  To heighten my fears, the door led to a large lecture hall filled with students and a professor at the blackboard in front.  I blurted out my speech, barely waiting for a response before I apologized for the interruptions and thanked them.  I closed the left and closed the door as fast as I could, feeling a brief relief as the door closed.  Of course, that didn’t really solve my problem because there were dozens of doors still to be opened.  As I went from floor to floor doing this I found a variety of reactions to my rude interruptions.  Most people took it in stride, answered politely and let me go my way.  A couple of the professors showed great displeasure at being interrupted, but let me get an answer nevertheless.  Only one professor prevented me from getting an answer.  In one room a student claimed to know the fictitious person, but luckily didn’t know where he was!  I should have been more careful in choosing a name. It would have been very confusing if a person with the name had been in the classroom.

When I started this exercise I assumed that it would be bad to begin with, but would get better as I got used to the experience.  I figured that after a couple of rooms I would be “hardened” enough to just go through the actions.  However, that was not to be.  It didn’t get easier, in fact it got much harder the more I did it.  I never was able to get the feeling of terror out of my chest, never was able to stop hyperventilating and sweating.  It got so bad that at about at the midpoint I was on the verge of quitting the project, it was just too horrible to continue.  I knew that there were students in the halls as I went from door to door, but I was so upset that I couldn’t see them, or meet their glances.  It was like I was in some kind of a cocoon, separate from the rest of the world.  All that I could focus on was my fear, the doors, and my little speech.   I did continue, and was greatly relieved when I finally closed the last door.  I felt like running away from there. I didn’t want to be anywhere in the vicinity of the building.  When I finally got back together with Ramin and the others I could relax and laugh about it, but at the time that I was doing it there was no laughing.  Some of them said they were surprised that this was difficult for me, to them it seemed like it would be a cake walk, there was nothing at all to fear in such a thing.

This was a very interesting exercise in facing my fears, and continuing in the face of them.  I have used it on a number of occasions to remind myself that even though I might be frightened and have all of the bodily experiences that come with that fear, I can actually keep acting.  The fear doesn’t have to paralyze me like I thought it would.  I also learned the power of our personal agreements.  I wouldn’t have had a problem counting tiles, but the other student did because it went against his private, irrational agreements about what is “right” and “wrong.” 

As I sit here and recall the experience it isn’t really clear what my agreements were that I was violating, or just why it was so scary.  It seems like I should be able to do such a thing without blinking, but I suspect it would still hold all of the fear that it did on that evening if I were to do it again.  I seem to have very powerful agreements that most of the times are invisible.  However, when things are just right – they are full of power and can easily take control of me.  It is an interesting thing to experience these hidden stories and then watch them vanish from sight again, only to return unexpectedly when things line up just right.

There was another important aspect of this exercise besides scaring the daylights out of me.  Ramin had managed to find a way to get me to shift my assemblage point and to hold it there for an extended period of time.  The reason that I felt out of touch with those around me was that I was shifted, and that caused me to be out of touch with normal reality.  I had entered a bit of the “other reality” that Carlos Castaneda talks about in his books.  This was an exercise in learning to move, and hold, my assemblage point, which is an important skill for following the path to enlightenment.  It was very much of an energetic exercise, not just a simple mind game. 

The date was sometime around 1998.  I was taking an experimental college class on the “Toltec Path to Personal Freedom” at the University of California, Davis.  My instructor had worked as an “apprentice” with don Migual Ruiz and was sharing the wisdom he gained from that apprenticeship. I had been taking “beginning” classes from Ramin for a year or so. I eventually ended up taking seven or eight years of beginning classes with him – none of the classes being remotely the same, so they were always a new beginning for me. 

On this evening, Ramin was sitting in front of the class consisting of myself and three or four other students.  We were all sitting on the floor meditating.  There was a candle and some incense burning.  The room was as dimly lit as we could get the classroom without turning all of the lights out.  There may have been some nice music playing, I don’t recall that but it was often the case so I suspect that was the case this evening.  I was sitting crossed legged on the floor, about ten feet away, facing him.  He was seated similarly. 

After meditating for awhile, I decided to open my eyes to gently observe the room and class.  I didn’t break my meditation, I merely opened my eyes.  What I saw surprised me.  The room and students were as I expected, but not the teacher.  He had become a shining ball of fibers suspended a foot or so from floor.  The ball was slightly elongated, more like an egg shape or an oval.  Not pointed on one end like an egg, but longer top to bottom than side to side.  The color was mostly white, but tinged with golden tones.  The glow was not shining in a way that illuminated things in the room, it was an internal glow.  The surface of the ball was complete and solid, but appeared to be made up of millions of closely spaced fibers going from the top to the bottom, rather than a solid continuous surface.  I knew that the ball was the teacher, but could not see him within the ball, even though the ball was translucent and I could see through it.  He appeared to have changed from being a person to being a shiny ball of fibers. 

At this point I became very curious, so I opened my eyes fully and broke my meditation to better observe him as he floated in front of me.  This had no effect upon the vision, it was solid and steady – even though I was fully awake sitting there watching him.  After a few minutes of this, I closed my eyes again and returned to meditation.  When he finally rang the gong to signal us to stop and come back to the room, he was sitting normally as if nothing had happened.  For some reason I didn’t bring it up for discussion, and doubt if he was aware of the transformation. 

I mentioned this event to him a few years later and he didn’t acknowledge it, or deny it.  So I still don’t know if this was a shared experience, or a private one.  I suspect it was a private one which could be attributed to falling asleep and dreaming.  I don’t believe I was asleep.  It felt like I had shifted to a place where seeing in this way is possible, and that he was just right for me to view the reality of the event.  But who knows, all that I can do it tell about what I experienced.  What it really was, or what it really meant, is not within my power to understand at this time.  It was just an interesting event.