June 27, 2023
We are now in our 3rd week of what promises to be a summer full of new experiences and time spent together. I’m doing the best I can at savoring the time, intimately aware that this is time I cannot get back with the two of you, and coming to appreciate that as you grow up and become more independent, our time together will dwindle.
Complicating my effort to maximize my time and presence with you is a pretty steady stream of life learnings coming to me. I am learning new things about myself at perhaps a faster pace than ever before; part of me wishes I could spend much more time writing the two of you, as I find the writing really helps me capture and solidify my learnings (and, hopefully, serves you in adulthood). Of course, it seems more important to spend time with you now, in your youth, than it does to write to you later, in your adulthood. So I anticipate having limited time to write this summer, but will focus on maximizing the value I get from writing nonetheless.
[Also, I’m aware that the apparent dichotomy-between maximizing my fulfillment of the time with you now and writing-is likely more imagined than real. Through my self exploration I am almost certainly more able to be fully present and enjoy the time I spend with you. And spending time with you almost certainly helps me identify learnings faster than I would otherwise. Just as one example, in my last note I observed how much I miss being Gran’s little boy; I don’t think it’s coincidence that learning came to me while I spend time with the two of you at exactly the same age I miss being myself.]
Visualizations, or what I have previously called visions, are starting to return in my meditations. The form and format are very different than before. I’ll talk more about the prior format in coming letters; for now I’ll just say that the entry into the visions formed a pattern. They all started generally the same way, as I was intentional about visualizing certain things to start every vision. Now, I am finding that if I remain still and focused long enough, visions will sometimes just appear. One recent example:
I was in the ocean, near enough to shore that I could walk back to land. I saw a dog out in deeper water, bobbing in waves. Worried for the dog, I swam out to rescue him. As I approached, he floated away. I kept swimming; he floated away again. I started to get frustrated that my efforts to rescue the dog weren’t being rewarded. I even started to get angry that the dog didn’t appear to be putting any effort in swimming back to me so that I could rescue him. And that’s when it occurred to me that I had assumed the dog needed rescuing. What if he didn’t? At this moment I realized that the ocean was God. I was swimming in the ocean of God; of course the dog didn’t need saving. I was attached to the shore, and the belief that I needed to be able to return to shore (and bring others with me). I realized that I needed to surrender to the ocean, to God, and did so. Suddenly I was far from shore, out to sea. I had anticipated calm, peaceful waters; instead, I was caught in the middle of a storm. The waves were enormous, and growing. I rose with the wave, and then fell between the waves. I would drop 20, 30, eventually 50 feet at a time, crashing back into the water and being buffeted by the next wave. What had happened? Hadn’t I surrendered? Why had the ocean suddenly become so scary.
And then I realized: being with God doesn’t make the storm go away. The storm still happens. This realization led to the next: being with God can let you release the fear of the storm. The storm itself may be unavoidable, but it’s the fear of the storm that makes it so painful, so unpleasant, the thing we work so hard to avoid. Once I accepted the storm, and again surrendered, I came to be at peace with the waves; I did not enjoy them, but I no longer struggled against them. I accepted the storm and the outcome it might bring, recognizing that I was powerless against the storm except to make it worse through fear. Fear was more likely to get me injured or killed than surrender. I remained alert, aware, and reactive: the storm required my faculties and awareness. I just accepted that the outcome would be what it would, and then was just there, in and with the storm.
The next day’s meditation began with discomfort in my stomach. Rather than resist (my typical response), I engaged with it. I put my awareness on the location of the discomfort, welcomed it, and asked it what it wanted me to know. At that moment I felt discomfort in my chest. I asked my stomach if the chest discomfort was what it wanted me to know, and felt another discomfort in my chest. I thanked my stomach for guiding me, and brought my awareness to the discomfort in my chest. As I approached my heart I came upon a guard dog. I welcomed the guard dog and asked him what purpose he served: to protect me, and those who threaten me. I hugged the guard dog and thanked him for his service. I asked if he would stand down, as an experiment, knowing that we could always call him back into service if needed. When he agreed, I asked him to take me to what he was protecting. The guard dog brought me to a walled off area. I asked the wall what purpose it served: to protect me. I asked the wall if it would be willing to open, knowing that we could close it again if needed. The wall opened and receded out of sight, revealing my heart. My heart was grey and sickly. I thanked my heart for pumping and keeping me alive. I asked how I could help: “love”. I asked if there was anything else it wanted me to know: “I can heal”. I asked if there was anything else: it asked me to light it on fire, to burn away dead tissue and make room for new, healthy tissue to grow. I set my heart on fire: the outside burned quickly, while the fire took time to get into the veins and arteries and clear away the dead tissue. My heart looked stronger, healthier. I asked my heart if there was anything else: I saw your mom and my mom (the people I care about most, and therefore the people capable of hurting me most) sending hurtful energy toward me, toward my chest. I asked my heart how it wanted me to respond: “let them hurt you; let them see that they hurt you”. I sensed that this wasn’t the whole answer, so I stayed with it: “send them your compassion; they aren’t hurting you, they are hurting themselves”. Rather than resist, run away from, or fight against hurtful energy, I just let it calmly pass. My heart was unscathed and untouched, and I realized that only my efforts to resist brought hurt.
I asked if there was anything else. A hole opened up in another dimension, overlapping with my heart. The hole was black, peaceful, and calm. I sensed that it was a portal to another dimension, to God, to an endless source of love and energy. I sat and bathed in the healing presence of that loving energy for quite awhile. After awhile, I asked my heart if I could be leave for today: yes.
The first vision is, I think, reasonably self explanatory. The second interests me for a few reasons. First, I’m particularly intrigued with the parallel between stomach discomfort leading to awareness of chest discomfort and the months of heartburn-e.g. stomach pain-preceding awareness of blockages in my heart. Second, the book I mentioned in my last note advocates visiting with the heart and engaging with it in intentional visualization, in a format reasonably similar to what I outlined. The book specifically mentions that people with heart disease often come upon a wall around the heart. What was unique to mine, at least relative to my book, was the guard dog. I’m stunned by this metaphor: I have always lashed out at those who hurt me, or in particular those I think might hurt me. I lash out very rarely, and only with those I care most about-e.g. those with the potential to hurt me.
And the metaphor around the black portal I find particularly interesting. I’ve been wrestling with an idea paralleling physics and spirituality. Physicists have struggled for decades with calculations that imply that ~90% of the universe is made up of dark matter and dark energy, despite the fact that we’ve never observed and know very little about either. We really only understand the aspects of the universe (like stars) that emit light, or those (like planets) that reflect it. Similarly, at least in Western faiths we tend to think of God as our source of light. And so what I think I discovered is that God is in fact both a source of light and dark. To be clear, this dark is not the same as the darkness of shadows, wherein an entity merely blocks out the light. The dark aspect of God is different: infinite, limitless, a source of peace and endless calm. Or at least those are my preliminary thoughts. Interestingly, the idea of God being the source of both light and dark seems, at least on the surface, to have parallels with the yin/yang concept from Chinese spirituality; and the idea of God as vast emptiness seems to have a parallel in the Zen buddhist concept of mu. I’m not sufficiently knowledgeable on either yin/yang nor mu to comment much further, other than to say this is an area I will probably continue to explore.
More broadly, I have this sense that physics and spirituality are both knocking on similar doors from different sides. What I understand of quantum physics, much like dark matter and dark energy, feels related to spirituality to me. For whatever reason, I have this suspicion that our mystics and physicists will soon see our understandings of the universe merge.
In one brief bit of health related news: my cardiologist yesterday confirmed that I have no major blockages in my arteries. So the good news is that apparently I am not at immediate risk of a heart attack. This gives me some space to pursue longer term solutions, like attempting to heal via diet, exercise, meditation, and visualization of healing. And somehow through all of this I am beginning to understand that my health and spiritual journeys are not separate, but somehow the same journey observed from different angles. I don’t fully understand this idea yet, but the simplicity of the idea gives me some peace, and some comfort that I will be able to focus on the enormity of the task at hand.
I love you,
Dad
Letters to Leland 