Application of Impossible Things: A Near Death Experience in Iraq (11 page)

Two personalities work with me in the Healing Environment. Although I don’t know the personalities as physical people in the physical world, within this environment one of them is familiar as an old friend. The ease and humor that we bring to the activity is intimate with the quick communication and inside jokes common between friends or colleagues who have known each other for many years. The other personality is more of an observer, as if learning how to do this work and having to apply some effort to keep up with us.

No essential difference is evident between these personalities and those of the Gathering in the sense that they are all perceived as complete beings, individual and fully aware of themselves and All That Is—
the Infinite Creative Force and Consciousness. Put into
immediate terms, they all feel like personalities that, should they focus into a human being, would not stand out at a dinner party. I don’t perceive them as unknowable or unrecognizable in the way of a sci-fi alien monster or a being who doesn’t share some significant overlap of consciousness with us. Our natures are similar: we are consciousness. Differences exist in demeanor, interests, styles of interaction, preferences and things of that nature, but basically we are of
one shared awareness. As distinct individuals, in the way that we as humans remain basically aware of the shared experience of being human, we share the basic awareness of being conscious. Not all of these personalities encountered in the various environments have had experiences in the human physical form. Not all of them have chosen to participate in this particular reality. Our interactions and recognition of base similarities come from the expanded awareness state rather than from shared background or experience in the physical earth universe.

Although the familiarity is obvious from within the expanded awareness state, from within our physical consciousness state some of these personalities might seem frightening or as lacking in consciousness altogether. We don’t normally recognize the consciousness of an electron, or a table lamp, for instance, though they do contain consciousness. Some of the personalities that I encountered in these environments seem somewhat cold, robotic, lacking emotion from a physical human being point of view. Yet they are clearly living, conscious beings and related to me as a living, conscious being. It’s recognized that we exist in concert, all experience being cooperative and parts of one source: All That Is.

That primary awareness of the inherent relatedness of all consciousness is not necessarily something that we focus upon within the physical. How others are different from us tends to be more noticeable than how they are like us. We make value distinctions in describing the consciousness of animals
or plants as
opposed to ourselves and judge many objects as inanimate. We group people from different cultures separately from ourselves or separately categorize people with different clothes or skin color. Because we don’t normally recognize many forms of consciousness and their enduring similarity, we concentrate on distinctions between forms. Even in thinking,
Well, we are all living beings,
we don’t include all consciousness in the assumption; we ignore the table, computer, sidewalk, the wind, a stone. We often don’t interact even with other recognizably conscious beings from an innate respect for their inherent value as
beings
. In that oversight, we set up separation and competition rather
than recognize a natu
ral alike-ness that would support full awareness of our cooperation.

Our distinctions are revealed to be artificial and look arbitrary from the perspective of expanded consciousness. From the perspective of any of these expanded environments, aggressions, irritations, intolerances, defenses, and competitions common to physical mind consciousness—and so, our physical lives—seem laughable. The fact that my physical body is blown up within an international conflict involving tens of thousands of beings provides an amusing basis for the goofing off and laughter between us as we fix my body. The conflict, any war, isn’t judged as good or bad from criteria of expanded consciousness. The violence is a little baffling and considered an odd “physical-world phenomenon,” but it’s also entertaining to watch the multitude of conscious beings navigating it as a unique and creative experience.

If physical experience is understood as an equivalent to our going to a movie, the movie will only be absorbing to the level that our individual minds allow or choose to participate in the illusion. Imagine that I watch one of the dinosaur movies from the 1950s. It’s impossible for me to buy into the illusion of the movie and become emotionally involved—I’m laughing too hard at the technical aspects of such primitive special effects, the stagey acting, and the practiced accents that sound vaguely Etonian. It all strikes me as hokey and hilarious. This is an equivalent of observing our physical dimension from the Healing dimension. Watching the movie, I can easily see the reality behind the illusion. While appreciating the creative efforts, cooperation, and application of acting and technical skills within the context of the time—1950s—I maintain my viewpoint of early twenty-first century. Likewise from the awareness of my Whole Self on the Healing dimension, I appreciate the physical world with all its amazing creative efforts, cooperation (largely unconscious), and skills applied to exist and experience within it while it remains an illusion and is highly amusing. I can see the reality behind the illusion.

As described earlier, the healing
action itself is accomplished from the level of the energy matrix and is nearly effortless. With a focus of intention,
heal this
, and an equivalent of waving a hand past that portion of the body, the body is restored. The action isn’t dire or heavy with self-conscious weightiness, technical intricacies, or
drama. Within
ongoing amusement, a thread of intention is held, and that intention moves the physical reality.

As we heal my body, many of our specific jokes and amusements might not seem funny or even make sense from a physical mind perspective. We joke about the specific and intricate timing necessary to pull off being at exactly the right place at the right time to be blown up and the vast networks of agreements between people that are necessary to make it work in just the way it did. We find it quite funny that
all
involved in the
incident experience what
they think is the same incident,
yet each individual splits
off into his/her
own string of
reality so that his/her perceptions of the details of the incident will never match. (This is a concept that I’ll discuss in Chapter 9.)

While healing the body, we try different combinations and extents of healing, laughing at some of the combinations as we imagine possible consequences and challenges each would present in experiencing a continuous progression into the future within that body. We try making my physical body fully blind and find that to be very funny as we project challenges I’d be likely to encounter as a result. We try a complete healing of my head, arm, and foot, leaving only some small shrapnel in my arm, and laugh at how many people would attribute such minor injuries to luck since others in the truck are maintaining much more extensive injuries. We try leaving part of my skull missing and moving shrapnel into the brain to cause brain damage, then watch, laughing, while a trajectory of a life with that challenge takes shape. We try removing my right hand altogether and fall all over ourselves laughing while watching me trying to learn to write, eat, and otherwise lead with my left hand.

These variations on the healing still make me laugh, but that doesn’t mean I’d think some of those situations were at all funny to actually experience on a daily basis from within physical consciousness. In describing this scene I have some fear, as I did in Chapter 4, of unintentionally minimizing the genuine emotions and difficulties that exist as a result of the
IED
*
incident that I was in, as well as others that I know of, or inadvertently insulting others whose difficulties in life might be current, intense, and raw. The emotions and physical extremes encountered by others who were in the truck with me, who were in the teams that helped get us out and patch us up, the families whose lives have been irrevocably altered by this and many other equivalent situations are
real
. And
some of the stories are heartbreaking when viewed from within our physical universe … we are currently living from within this physical universe, after all.

In order to understand the humor, it’s absolutely necessary to adopt a comprehension of the body and physical life as temporary and the soul or spirit or consciousness as enduring. Were I to publicly express my amusement at some of these sorts of situations in others’ experiences, I’d likely be judged as rude and heartlessly insensitive. Until a broader consciousness is more common, laughing at or ignoring anyone’s pain and discomfort will be considered insensitive because it most often is: it tends to originate from ignorance, arrogance, or self-defense rather than from understanding that we’ve each, as an expanded consciousness,
chosen
our experiences
as they are
.
Perhaps only when we recognize a co-passion for
all being
,
a delight and joy of having chosen to experience
this
situation from within
all possible
situations, and
awaken h
onest admiration and curiosity for others’ unique experiences will it become socially acceptable to ignore or laugh about pain and discomfort—our own or anyone else’s. Until then, it will be difficult to find amusement within some of our most intriguing creative endeavors.

While fooling around healing my body in the Healing Environment and being fully cognizant of some of the tasks I’d agreed to perform for the Gathering, my companions and I also more seriously explore what scope and type of injuries might best situate me in fulfilling some of those tasks.

Chapter 4 carried a discussion of my own responsibility in creating and agreeing to participate in this whole incident. That sense of responsibility is also implied in the selection of my injuries. I chose the injuries; I crafted my experience. They are not a result of coincidence or bad luck and aren’t a punishment from some god. A common base assumption, particularly prevalent in religious belief systems, is that if I’m a good person, good things will happen to me, and the natural follow-through: if I’m a bad person, bad things will happen. A Catholic friend of mine once told me that she couldn’t understand why someone she loved had died because she thought she was a good person, and she had always believed that
bad things don’t happen to good people
. Her base assumption said that somehow we earn and deserve that death of a spouse, that car accident, this illness, that impossible boss, this crazy stalker, or getting blown up. Even New Agers and
“enlightened”
eastern philosophies support this base assumption through ideas of karma: what you put out will come back to you (seven-fold, in some cases). If bad things are happening to you, you must have acted selfishly or meanly; you must have sent out negative thoughts or done something nasty in a past life that you’ll pay for now.

My choosing which injuries to retain and my being blown up by a roadside bomb in the first place are assumed to be valuable, useful, and good from the perspective of my expanded awareness states. The experience isn’t a punishment for actions or thoughts that were bad or evil and isn’t bad luck or a mistake. My injuries are not reflections of some construct of original (or even mildly quirky) sin
. From the expanded perspective of my Whole Self, the event
and aftermath are experiences that I chose for various reasons with amusement and a sense of joy and excitement for this novel experience. That I’m not always as thrilled about the results from within the physical perspective as I was when I dreamed up this adventure often strikes me as amusing even within occasional frustration or discomfort. (In the meantime, getting blown up is a great source for jokes…)

In the end, we settle on a particular level of healing for my physical body that will serve my wants and needs.

I’m ready to return to the physical.

Chapter 8 - Jumping Off

When we’d finished I thanked my companions, then moved to another location that served as a convenient jump-off point. There I met briefly with some other beings that were familiar to me. We discussed mechanical details of what I’d agreed to do for the Gathering, as well as some personal issues. Then I simply took a deep breath and popped back into the body.

Like the others, this final environment is more a state of focus than a place, and this state feels as if it exists between the physical dimension vibrations. If the physical can be thought of as a chord, this environment would be a vibration between the notes of the chord, within the chord but separate from it.

The environment lies between the solid physical and pure energy matrices, between physical mind and expanded consciousness, and between the time and space of events on the physical plane. Nothing of particular effect is accomplished from this environment. I’m aware of—but not manipulating—the physical world. I’m aware of—but not communicating directly with—personalities occupying places like the Blink Environment. It’s a waiting place, a location specific to returning to a physical body. Revisiting it now, I feel as if I stand within the scene of the blown-up truck while it is suspended in time: a very
Twilight Zone
sort of feeling.

The beings that I meet with on this level have a very practical awareness of consciousness operating within the physical dimension. The joking and fooling around that takes place here is more sober or wry in deference to understanding that what looks easy and fun from expanded awareness can be difficult and painful within the body and can seem endless once immersed within the time/space construct. The discussions we have with each other remain focused on very particular events and situations. The mechanics of setting particular energy levels from within the physical dimension and then different ways of maintaining and directing the energies toward desired goals are discussed in depth and in relation to the unique mental and emotional habits of my physical-focus personality.