Return to the Ground
The Mill
It’s 2012.
A normal day.
I’m lying on the couch in our condo, staring up at the ceiling. The building, a once productive cotton mill, had been converted into historic apartments. Thirty feet above me, thick white beams, more than a century old, crossed above and below black water pipes and trim.
In an instant, the edges and boundaries of everything within my perception dissolved. White beams, black pipes, and the air between them began to flow and swirl together like a painter’s wet palette. There is only witnessing, the ever flowing exchange of energy within creation, all moving on the backdrop of the eternal, conscious nothing.
Time doesn’t exist. Nobody truly dies, though in a way beyond comprehension. The witnessing rests in a pure, fundamental peace. No fear. No worry. No questions. Only dynamic stillness and contentment.
Then suddenly, the boundaries return. Edges reappear. The witness again falls into separation. A moment of child-like awe gives way to a surge of fight-or-flight, terror, and uncontrollable sobbing.
No drugs, no special breathing, no conscious intent for this level of transformation.
It was simply an ordinary day, and yet nothing ordinary remained.
The Egret
February, 2024.
A mid-morning walk feels peacefully energizing. The winter air burns cold against my face, searing my nostrils as it meets the warmth of my nose. My foot steps fall in a steady rhythm hitting on the sidewalk, my arms swinging gently in counterpoint.
I’ve been contemplating the energy of intention, not the words that form it, nor the feeling of action that follows, but the quiet buzz that gathers in my awareness at the instant of intending, before action begins.
I intend to lift my arm, then lift it.
Each time, the subtle energy of intention hums within my awareness, alive and easily discernible.
Intrigued, I wonder, can I feel what comes before intention?
At that question, everything shifts. There is only witnessing, no sense of effort, no doer, no “I .”
Looking up, I see an egret flying, and somehow, I was the egret flying. The trees behind it, and the bright blue sky beyond, the space between, and the sound of my foot steps, it was all me. I am Josh walking, and the walking itself, all at the same time.
For a few moments, ‘I’ am the present moment, cleaved to God, within God’s creation. It’s so simple, so fundamental. There was no apparent separate self, yet everything was known from within.
Minutes later, separation returns, and within it a quiet awe. Beneath the reappeared boundaries flowed a profound silence, the stillness that lies before intention, the stillness of being itself.
The Birder
April, 2024.
Leaving the wooded part of the trail always holds a special fondness during my runs. It opens into a meadow lined thick with trees beside a lake, home to abundant wildlife. Even spring mid-mornings in the south can be cold, and the sunshine in this opening brings more light and warmth than the shade of the woods.
I jogged past a sixty-something man with an obnoxiously long camera lens resting on his round belly, a snug pair of cover-alls, knee-high rubber boots, and a wide-brimmed trucker cap. The lake attracts bird watchers year-round, but spring seems to bring more than any other season.
This man was the spitting image of so many from the small farming community where I grew up. I recognized a subtle but clear conditioned judgement arise. I categorized him as a simpleton. Subtle, yet now obvious, a well-worn pattern began constricting the base of my throat and upper chest.
Self-judgement’s disguised projection was recognized.
This fool was no longer being fooled.
A radiating field of excitement and joy surrounded this man, beautiful child-like energy clearly overlaying and shining forth. Giddy, he appeared to dance his way to a better view with the same energy a four-year-old would bring to a new playground.
And then came the stillness beneath it all.
I saw the birder as nothing less than devoted to God, running about in awe of life presenting as these feathered creatures.
He was life presenting as a birder witnessing itself as nature. And I, life witnessing the birder witnessing life witnessing life witnessing life.
Life in awe of life.
In an instant there was unity.
From his being broadcast the radiant, dynamic stillness. My judgements dissolved with its recognition and acceptance, and my broad chest expanded.
Everything tethered by love, floating in a sea of life. Love replacing separation.
Awe and intense love filled the hours that followed, with waves of weeping rising for the sheer perfection of everything.
God, hiding in plain sight, raised the sparks buried in the hidden constriction of my heart.
The Shift
Sitting in the Publix parking lot, listening to a Zoom call with a handful of yoga friends, I was feeling frustrated. The conversation had turned fearful and contemptuous with judgements cast about healers and healing. Labels: evil, arrogant, demonic.
I felt a familiar constriction in my chest and gentle trembling, yet entered the conversation anyway. Gently, I pointed toward something being missed. With that small redirection, with its reframe, the tone shifted. It became lighter, more joyful, and expansive.
What followed was a confirmation I’ve come to expect when something true settles in.
Walking through the produce aisle, I felt expansive, alive, connected to everyone around me. The air itself shimmered; gooseflesh rose across my skin and a quiet urge to weep with joy moves through me.
Waiting at the deli counter, the boundary of my body dissolved as my field became the same electric brightness that surrounded everything.
What was a momentary glimpse with the birder and was now a full embodiment. I was both me and not me, the me that I understood myself to be was a silent witness observing Josh, and everything else, go through the automated motions of living.
I was no longer the doer, yet action was happening. I was under the action, resting in the space before intention arises, as was glimpsed with the egret. I watched myself order at the deli counter, and then I watched myself thank the deli clerk. A joyful glow emerged from his face with the meeting of our eyes, a burst of sparks. As his attention shifted back into the sea of shoppers awaiting his help, the glow began to dim.
Intense, genuine loving-kindness was felt for everyone, and an impulse arose to connect with each person I met as had happened with the deli clerk.
Standing by a stock cart was another clerk, a tall, slender young man. His attention seemed agitated, drawn up and directed entirely in his mind. The glow I’d seen with the deli clerk was here too, but dimmed, glowing like embers. Sparks awaiting a lift. His inward anxious pull, left his field rough-edged and bristling.
Most people I passed felt similarly stressed, with their mind-bound bodies tense, faces distorted carrying visible strain of their mental conflict. Hurried days, grating to-do lists, and discordant expectations all pressing down on the quiet sparks waiting to rise.
At the checkout lane, receipt in hand, the same glow radiated from the clerk packing the groceries. His radiance was neither restrained nor dampened, but subtle and meek. Unguarded, he seemed to humbly watch people’s faces, raising sparks gently, with his genuine attention.
Driving home, there was still no sense of a doer, only witnessing. Fully calm and content, traffic laws and societal conventions were naturally followed, and interactions with other drivers were free of even a hint of conflict. The same quiet autopilot that moved me through the store now drove me home.
At home, putting away the groceries, subtle constrictions began to take hold again. Noticing that my family, who would ordinarily be home, was gone, the witness shifted back to the doer.
A trickle of thoughts began:
Where is my family?
Why aren’t they home?
Each thought burst into sub-thoughts:
Are they alright?
Has an accident occurred?
Did I forget about an event? Was there an abduction? A car accident?
And then sub-thoughts for the sub-thoughts:
What might have happened? Where should I look? Who should I call? Their stuff is there. Maybe they’re upstairs? Outback? Wouldn’t I hear them? Why would they be in the back yard? Am I being crazy?
The tickle of thoughts became a raging river.
My body began to tremble as the fear chemicals began to spill into my bloodstream, and suddenly I was again entirely a doer, frightened within the weight of my swirling mind.
My body stiffened, my breathing quickened.
A Walk, I thought.
And sure enough, my finder app showed them along our usual walking path.
I began jogging down the walking path to confirm that all was well. As the stress chemicals reabsorbed and cleared, calm slowly returned.
And all was indeed well, yet I found myself once again caught in the distress of my mental torrents, like all those people in the grocery store.