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| Photo by Richard R. Barron, copyright 2017, all rights reserved |
Your love was like
mist around a mountain
in the early morning light
lovely to behold but long gone
before the onset of the night
Tuesday, December 03, 2019
Mountain Mist
Your love was like
mist around a mountain
in the early morning light
lovely to behold but long gone
before the onset of the night
Imaginary Men
As a father, and as an American male, there are certain avenues of behavior that are closed off to me. All men in this culture are expected to be strong, decisive, and brave. Excessive displays of emotion are considered taboo, and male-male relationships are expected to be masculine in nature: no crying, no whining, no real discussion of emotion. We are expected to be aggressive, determined, and assertive in every arena of life. We are required to act as if we know what we are doing, even when we very much do not. Our children must never know that we have fears; our lovers, partners and wives should never know how vulnerable we really are to their whims. We are taught to believe that we are in charge of our own lives, and that we chart our own destinies. We are the masters of our own souls.
All of it is rubbish. The men I know are every bit as emotionally fragile as any other human. Some are just much more adept and skilled at hiding that fragility. Others actually come to believe the legends they create for themselves. Self-sewn myths about their own prodigious skills, propensities, and physical attractiveness. I have known men like that, guys who are are quite successful with the belief that they are self-made men. It is a life orientation that can work, at least to a point. I have personally witnessed how, at the end of their careers, and toward the end of their lives, men like this come to the sober understanding that the things they ignored -- their children, their health, their families, their friends -- were the only things that really mattered. I have seen men who, at the height of their success and power, are lonely, bitter, frustrated and completely lost human beings. It is as if, all at once, the false gold they had pursued is suddenly revealed for what it is; the ephemera of success, prestige, domination, and wealth, all come to mean nothing unless they are spent entirely in the service of others. Suddenly these men begin to understand the sacrifice that others have made in order to be in relationship with them; they remember, often with shame and guilt, the harsh and selfish ways in which they have frequently behaved. They find themselves wondering how in the hell anyone could ever stay in a relationship with them.
Of course, American men will seldom ever speak with each other about such realities and truths. There is no need to, really. There is an unspoken understanding among men that we are each involved in our individual masculine journeys. We are each the hero of our own real life heroic adventure. It is a solitary journey, one which we must traverse mostly alone. In our own perceptions, we daily do battle against the injustices and inequities that we encounter in everyday life. We walk in perpetual awareness, mentally preparing ourselves for that fateful moment when we are called into physical struggle to protect the ones we love. We spin hero fantasies in our minds eye, where we take out the bad guy, and rescue the hostages, or save our loved ones from terror and harm. Any man who has ever actually faced those situations knows how terrifying they are, and how instinctive your behaviors become. Only with repeated exposure does one build the courage to stand bravely like the movie heroes we believe ourselves to be. I have seen men panic, cry and run from danger. I have seen big strong men faint dead away at the site of blood, or upon seeing a mangled body in a fatality car accident. As the strong, reliable, soldier types we imagine ourselves to be, we should be immune to the brutality that we sometimes encounter in life. We should be unmoved and unshaken when we see the gruesomeness of violence and war. We imagine ourselves willing to stand in the breach until our very last breath, in order to protect our loved ones, our community and our nation.
In this way, we are all imaginary men. We are not as brave, as capable, as we imagine ourselves to be.
At the same time, there is immeasurable depth, unrealized courage and untapped strength in each of us. When called into action, most of us will respond admirably and bravely. It is in those moments that the reality of ourselves as men can be known. Likewise, we can find those true men of strength in moments of love and vulnerability to those we love and cherish. The men who love strongly, love truly and love fearlessly are not imaginary, but in this culture, unfortunately, they are very rare.
All of it is rubbish. The men I know are every bit as emotionally fragile as any other human. Some are just much more adept and skilled at hiding that fragility. Others actually come to believe the legends they create for themselves. Self-sewn myths about their own prodigious skills, propensities, and physical attractiveness. I have known men like that, guys who are are quite successful with the belief that they are self-made men. It is a life orientation that can work, at least to a point. I have personally witnessed how, at the end of their careers, and toward the end of their lives, men like this come to the sober understanding that the things they ignored -- their children, their health, their families, their friends -- were the only things that really mattered. I have seen men who, at the height of their success and power, are lonely, bitter, frustrated and completely lost human beings. It is as if, all at once, the false gold they had pursued is suddenly revealed for what it is; the ephemera of success, prestige, domination, and wealth, all come to mean nothing unless they are spent entirely in the service of others. Suddenly these men begin to understand the sacrifice that others have made in order to be in relationship with them; they remember, often with shame and guilt, the harsh and selfish ways in which they have frequently behaved. They find themselves wondering how in the hell anyone could ever stay in a relationship with them.
Of course, American men will seldom ever speak with each other about such realities and truths. There is no need to, really. There is an unspoken understanding among men that we are each involved in our individual masculine journeys. We are each the hero of our own real life heroic adventure. It is a solitary journey, one which we must traverse mostly alone. In our own perceptions, we daily do battle against the injustices and inequities that we encounter in everyday life. We walk in perpetual awareness, mentally preparing ourselves for that fateful moment when we are called into physical struggle to protect the ones we love. We spin hero fantasies in our minds eye, where we take out the bad guy, and rescue the hostages, or save our loved ones from terror and harm. Any man who has ever actually faced those situations knows how terrifying they are, and how instinctive your behaviors become. Only with repeated exposure does one build the courage to stand bravely like the movie heroes we believe ourselves to be. I have seen men panic, cry and run from danger. I have seen big strong men faint dead away at the site of blood, or upon seeing a mangled body in a fatality car accident. As the strong, reliable, soldier types we imagine ourselves to be, we should be immune to the brutality that we sometimes encounter in life. We should be unmoved and unshaken when we see the gruesomeness of violence and war. We imagine ourselves willing to stand in the breach until our very last breath, in order to protect our loved ones, our community and our nation.
In this way, we are all imaginary men. We are not as brave, as capable, as we imagine ourselves to be.
At the same time, there is immeasurable depth, unrealized courage and untapped strength in each of us. When called into action, most of us will respond admirably and bravely. It is in those moments that the reality of ourselves as men can be known. Likewise, we can find those true men of strength in moments of love and vulnerability to those we love and cherish. The men who love strongly, love truly and love fearlessly are not imaginary, but in this culture, unfortunately, they are very rare.
Monday, June 24, 2019
Competing Universal Truths
I have been thinking a lot lately about our competing realities.Right now in America, it is possible for us to live in completely alternate and parallel universes of truth. Some of us live in a liberal-rational universe of progressive democratic idealism and (mostly) relative truth. Others of us live in a religio-literal universe of scriptural prophecy, apocalyptic foreboding, conspiracy theories and absolute truth.
All of us are victims of the battles raging between these two universes.
Our parallel universes are evidenced by the fact that we have evolved conservative and progressive news networks, and online news sources that aggregate and present information in ways that affirm our prior biases. Different universes of truth need different universes of news. The universe you inhabit is indicated by the news choices you make and information sources you consume.
Each universe has its own apocalyptic mythology. In one universe, the apocalypse is a cascading environmental disaster of man-made climate change, or worse, a total nuclear war and global annihilation. In the other universe, the apocalypse is an imminent supernatural intervention by God that will separate winners from losers, sheep from goats, and a time when faithful believers will be rescued and rewarded. Or worse, a total nuclear war and global annihilation, which the faithful believe they will miss because they hold an acritical belief in the "rapture."
Both universes are founded upon assumptions and beliefs that can't truly be tested. Whether the universe started with a something-from-nothing bang, or was created by an all-powerful supernatural being, there is no way to definitively prove, or disprove, either creation myth.
Those ensconced in the libero-rational reality will likely flinch to hear the Big Bang theory referred to as a myth. A true believer almost always blanches when their sacred ox is gored. However, science-based beliefs are every bit as made up as religious beliefs. They are created in the human imagination, just like all religions. Sciencentrists (a neologism) privilege knowledge they believe to be discovered, or "scientifically proven," much like religious doctrinaires point to scripture and say "thus it is proven."
It is undeniable that scientific knowledge undergirds most of the technological and quality-of-life advancements that the modern world enjoys. It is also undeniable that scientific advancements have given birth to some of the most horrific and terrifying prospects for humanity's future: nuclear wars, biological warfare, and vastly improved battlefield weaponry, to name just a few; not to mention the environmental destruction that industry and technology make possible. Whether science-based beliefs are a net positive or net negative for humankind is an as yet unanswered question.
Libero-rational individuals are likely, at this point in the essay, to comfort themselves with the smug assumption that science is absolutely a positive development in the history of humanity. This response puts the lie to their much proclaimed preference for "objective truth," and "open-minded inquiry," and reveals their prior-bias for what they will accept as "truth" and "knowledge." At every stage of human history, the dominant and hegemonic power has proclaimed itself to be the pinnacle of human achievement and understanding. Thus, in the middle-ages when philosophy was a hand-maiden of the church, it was believed that religious understanding and knowledge were the flower of humanity's best minds, and thus all other beliefs were assumed to be vastly inferior, or dangerously flawed. In other words, much the same smug attitude that many in the libero-rational universe hold in regard to scientific knowledge, and in their utter rejection of religious beliefs and understandings.
Those ensconced in the religio-literal universe are often also offended upon hearing their beliefs described as products of the human imagination. In that universe, truth is revealed to humans by God, and that truth can be found within ancient human writings they believe are divinely inspired by God, another proposition which is beyond human capacity to validate. They willingly turn a blind eye to their own agency in accepting the multitude of rationalizations, explanations and misinterpretations that comprise belief in their sacred texts.
For the libero-rational universe, the truth about reality is discovered through rational thought and scientific experimentation. For the religio-literal universe, truth is revealed by God through manifestation of the supernatural into the natural world. Both universes, however, rely on the same human agency in accepting, believing, upholding and maintaining their ascribed sets of beliefs. Each individual adds his or her own psychic energy to perpetuating and propagating the beliefs they have either chosen or inherited from their socio-cultural ecology.
One big difference between these two universes is their relationship with human agency. The libero-rationalists, supporting the truths of human scientific discoveries, embrace human agency in this life. For the inhabitants of that particular paradigm, humans have the power and responsibility to make changes we deem are good and necessary. For those living in the religio-literal universe, human agency is surrendered to an all-powerful, hopefully beneficent, supernatural being who intervenes in human history to effect its will for the world. A potent symbol of one's affiliation to this universe of belief is how completely one surrenders their life to the whims and influences of this supernatural being. That is to say, when faced with the toils and tribulations of everyday life, when one surrenders their own agency to rely, instead, upon prayer and other religious observations, in hopes that will change the situation or circumstances that are distressing the believer.
Our current political situation in the United States is very much a result of the clash between a religio-literal universe and a libero-rational universe. Many Trump supporters proclaim themselves to be Bible believing Christians -- which means, they believe the apocalyptic script that has evolved over many years of Protestant Fundamentalist groupthink. They view Trump as somehow ordained by God, and think his task is to bring about a resurgence of the nation of Israel, thus paving the way for the second coming of Christ. It is a schizophrenic belief, however, since many of these same people believe they will be spared any end-of-world nightmares scenarios by virtue of being "caught up in the air" by Jesus during a much-feared-but-still-hoped-for Rapture.
Many Trump resisters, however, feel that Trump is nothing more than a demagogic fraudster who trades on the acritical prior biases and beliefs of his self-described Christian followers. For these resisters, Trump is a dangerous and precedent breaking, racist and hate-spewing con artist who threatens the entire American experiment in democracy.
Proceeding, as both do, from their firmly held and diametrically opposed universes of belief, it is unlikely that there can ever be true accommodation between these two groups of believers. As has happened in other countries around the world, religious fervor and blind obedience to religious authority is threatening to erupt in this nation as well. Because each universe holds the other in disdain (although, fairly, the libero-rational camp is open to valuing a diversity of opinion), it is likely that only the total defeat and capitulation of one side to the other will determine which version of reality will prevail.
Robert Frost may have captured this dichotomy of beliefs in his brief but gut-punching poem:
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Thursday, February 14, 2019
Every Day Love
Love is not romantic.
Real love lives
in the muddy ditch
of human passion.
Anger, jealousy,
words later regretted;
those are the true
facts of love
and marriage.
Forgiveness,
patience,
reassurances
of desirability,
apologies whispered
in the dark.
Love is proletariat.
no matter which
class it obtains.
Hard working,
ever abiding,
shown in touch
and in deed.
Love persists,
and grows
deep roots.
A family tree
is grown in
the hard sunshine
of every day love.
Real love lives
in the muddy ditch
of human passion.
Anger, jealousy,
words later regretted;
those are the true
facts of love
and marriage.
Forgiveness,
patience,
reassurances
of desirability,
apologies whispered
in the dark.
Love is proletariat.
no matter which
class it obtains.
Hard working,
ever abiding,
shown in touch
and in deed.
Love persists,
and grows
deep roots.
A family tree
is grown in
the hard sunshine
of every day love.
Soul Prison
"We have known this before. We have done this before." He stirred half-and-half into his coffee, turning it a creamy caramel brown. He adjusted his glasses and scratched his nose with his right hand. There was gray stubble showing on his cheeks, and tiny red veins showed on his cheekbones and nose.
"The one story in the Old Testament that is literally true is the Tower of Babel. That is another moment in human history when mankind became aware of its own godly power, and understood that these human forms are really just prisons for rebellious angelic souls."
Outside the coffee shop, it was a cold Oklahoma morning. He pulled a small flask from his jacket pocket, and poured a goodly portion of whiskey into his morning coffee, mixing it in with a spoon. The other people in the coffee shop went about their lives, chatting, enjoying a scone, visiting with friends. No one else paid attention to our conversation.
"So let me get this straight," I started. "You're saying that these bodies, these human forms we walk around in all day, are prisons? Made specifically to harness and restrict the powerful spiritual beings that we truly are? That we all naturally have the power of gods, but these bodies worn by our souls suppress those powers?"
"Exactamente!" he said, sipping from his big, white, coffee mug. "They have good bagels here, would you like one?"
"No thank you," I said, smiling about how he went from profound statements of metaphysical speculation to jabbering about food, and back again.
He sat back down with a toasted sesame bagel and honey pecan cream cheese. "Where was I?" he asked, spreading the cream cheese onto his bagel.
"You were talking about these bodies being prisons for our rebellious souls."
"Right," he said, pointing a cream cheese smeared knife in my direction. "Did you realize that most religious have proscriptions against suicide? You know that because you're a Bible thumper. In Christianity it is a considered a grave sin to commit suicide. Why is that? Have you ever given that any thought?"
"No," I answered truthfully. "But I remember when Gennifer Carn killed herself by sitting on the edge of a bathtub, and shooting herself in the chest with a shotgun. Everybody at work said she was burning in hell forever. I thought, well shit, her old man was screwing around on her, and she was distressed. Why would God condemn her to an eternity in hell for being so heartbroken that she couldn't take it anymore?"
"You get my point, then," he said around a mouthful of bagel. "There is a belief, almost a consensus, that people who commit suicide are committing a crime against God. And that is true. Suicide amounts to a jail break by souls who are trying to shorten their sentence."
A drawn out "ooooohhhhhh" while nodding my head was all I could manage as what he was saying sunk in.
He slurped a shot of whiskey-dosed coffee, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I am making it sound so dramatic, calling it a prison. In a way that's true, but it's more true that we are living inside a correctional system. This entire world, and all of its inhabitants, are residents of a spiritual penal institution. We are here to have our attitudes adjusted, our behaviors corrected, our understandings expanded, our souls purified through suffering and grief, and also to be glorified by love and sex and close friendships. And dogs. I'm pretty sure dogs make us better, just by hanging around with us."
His service animal, a big yellow lab named Sheffield, looked up at him, grinning. It was like Sheffield understood what he was saying.
Suddenly the coffee shop grew louder as more customers wandered in. He moved closer to the table and leaned across, looking me in the eye. "You ever been dead?" he asked me.
"No, never dead. Had a few hangovers though that made me wish I was dead." He didn't smile.
"I died when I was in the Nam." he said. "I got shot by a machine gun, right through both legs. I remember getting hit, and time just slowed down. I didn't feel any pain. It was like I jumped outside of myself, and watched from a distance as my body went tumbling to the ground. It was like watching a slow motion movie. It felt like I was hovering about four feet above my body, watching as the firefight continued around me. I watched my own eyes glaze over as I bled to death there in a muddy field, with a hot sun beating down on me."
As he described it, I could see the images in my own mind. I could imagine him as a young wounded soldier, laying under a hot sun, dying.
He took another sip of coffee, and his eyes had a smoky, far-away look, as though he wasn't seeing me anymore. "That's when I met the being of love and light. That's how I know what I know."
He went on to describe his experience. First, he said as he watched his body from above, a pinkish gray fog started to surround him, until he could no longer see himself lying on the ground. Then, he said he was rapidly hauled through a long dark valley, which he called "the valley of the shadow of death." At first he was frightened, he said, but then he saw a bright light in the distance rapidly moving toward him. The light grew closer, and brighter. "If I had eyes, I would have been blinded," he said. "But I realized that I was outside my body, and that I was perceiving things without the aid of my body. I could see, but I had no eyes to see. I could hear, but I had no ears to hear."
The bright light came closer until he felt enveloped by it, no longer able to distinguish between where his disembodied self ended, and where the light began. He described a sense of overwhelming peace, and love, and acceptance from the light. He claimed that, without hearing it, the bright light was communicating with him. It told him not to be afraid. "Let's see what you have learned," the light told him. At that moment, his life began passing in front of him very rapidly, and from the time of his earliest memories to the moment he lay dying on the battlefield, he saw every moment of his life. He felt every emotion he had ever felt. Moreover, he said, he could sense the emotions of all the people he had interacted with throughout his life. The hurts he had caused. The pain and anger he had evoked in others by his actions and decisions.
"The being of light wasn't judging me, not like we are told by religion. It wasn't a deal where the being was saying that I sinned, or screwed up, or was evil. Instead, it was like a review of my life with director's commentary. The light was teaching me, telling me what I was learning during each memory we observed. It was kind of like a parole hearing, where the parole board makes you talk about what you have learned, how you have improved, and whether or not you have accepted responsibility for your crimes."
He took another bite of bagel, and I saw the cream cheese smeared on his lips as he chewed. He swallowed and took another drink of his coffee. Breaking a small piece off the bagel, he tossed it toward Sheffield, who expertly snapped the tidbit out of the air as it passed in front of him.
I sat quietly on my side of the booth, waiting for him to resume his colloquy. His eyes had a distant stare, as if he was not aware of my presence. I could tell he was re-living, or perhaps re-dying, his battlefield experience.
Suddenly he looked at me again, and he was present in the moment. "That being of light showed me things, told me things, taught me things, that I never would have been able to know here in this life. Here in this limiting body." He patted his left hand three times over his heart. "It told me that I wasn't ready yet, and that I had more to learn about love. It said I had to go back. I protested that I didn't want to return to my body. I said I wanted to stay with the light, and to continue learning. Believe it or not, the being of light laughed, in kind of a loving and soothing way. It said I would return, and we would be together again. But that my time in this life wasn't finished. All of a sudden, I was back in my body, being dragged through the mud by two of my fellow Marines."
He paused to reach down and stroke Sheffield's head. The dog looked up at him with adoration in its eyes, but also what I sensed to be concern and alertness to my friend's emotions. "Who's a good boy?" my friend said absentmindedly.
"But, how does that lead you to believe these bodies are prisons? That this life is a prison sentence?"
"It's hard to explain," he said. "What I experienced in those few minutes I was dead can't be conveyed in words. Our language is also limiting, just like our bodies. Our language rests upon common sensory experiences that we can all understand. The words we have invented are tied to those experiences of the physical world. What happened to me was not in this physical world, but a world that we would probably call 'spiritual,' except that for me, it was real. As real as you and I sitting here right now. So, without really speaking, the being of light told me, or inserted into my mind, the understanding that this life is like a prison, a school, and a hospital, all rolled into one. We are here being both taught, and corrected. The days we are each allotted are like the term of our prison sentence. We can do nothing to either lengthen or shorten those days. We have to serve our term. We can't escape this."
His plate was empty, save for dozens of toasted sesame seeds that had fallen from his bagel. He stared down at the plate, lost in his own thoughts again. My phone started buzzing in my pocket, reminding me that I had another appointment that I needed to get to. I wished that I could stay and visit with him longer, but he was also becoming restless.
"It was good talking to you, young man," he said, reaching across the table to shake my hand. "I don't often tell these things to people. In fact, you are only about the fourth or fifth person I have ever really talked to in detail about it. But, I feel like I am getting close to the end of my sentence." A wan smile brushed across his lips. "I ain't mad about that."
Just then, Sheffield stood up and moaned, then whined. "Well, my guardian angel is asking to go outside," he said, scooting toward the end of the seat. He reached out and pulled his motorized scooter closer to him. With deft and experienced moves, he lifted himself out of the booth and into the chair. The dog knew how to move out of the way, and once his master was in his chair, the dog stood patiently on the right side of the chair, waiting to leave.
"I appreciate you spending part of your morning with me," I said. "I can say that I have never had a conversation anything like this one, in my entire life."
"You're welcome, son," he said with a smile. "You're going to need that knowledge soon." A little laugh escaped his mouth. "See you around, then," he said, pushing the joystick on his scooter, and motoring quickly away.
I sat stunned, pondering what he meant by his final words.
"The one story in the Old Testament that is literally true is the Tower of Babel. That is another moment in human history when mankind became aware of its own godly power, and understood that these human forms are really just prisons for rebellious angelic souls."
Outside the coffee shop, it was a cold Oklahoma morning. He pulled a small flask from his jacket pocket, and poured a goodly portion of whiskey into his morning coffee, mixing it in with a spoon. The other people in the coffee shop went about their lives, chatting, enjoying a scone, visiting with friends. No one else paid attention to our conversation.
"So let me get this straight," I started. "You're saying that these bodies, these human forms we walk around in all day, are prisons? Made specifically to harness and restrict the powerful spiritual beings that we truly are? That we all naturally have the power of gods, but these bodies worn by our souls suppress those powers?"
"Exactamente!" he said, sipping from his big, white, coffee mug. "They have good bagels here, would you like one?"
"No thank you," I said, smiling about how he went from profound statements of metaphysical speculation to jabbering about food, and back again.
He sat back down with a toasted sesame bagel and honey pecan cream cheese. "Where was I?" he asked, spreading the cream cheese onto his bagel.
"You were talking about these bodies being prisons for our rebellious souls."
"Right," he said, pointing a cream cheese smeared knife in my direction. "Did you realize that most religious have proscriptions against suicide? You know that because you're a Bible thumper. In Christianity it is a considered a grave sin to commit suicide. Why is that? Have you ever given that any thought?"
"No," I answered truthfully. "But I remember when Gennifer Carn killed herself by sitting on the edge of a bathtub, and shooting herself in the chest with a shotgun. Everybody at work said she was burning in hell forever. I thought, well shit, her old man was screwing around on her, and she was distressed. Why would God condemn her to an eternity in hell for being so heartbroken that she couldn't take it anymore?"
"You get my point, then," he said around a mouthful of bagel. "There is a belief, almost a consensus, that people who commit suicide are committing a crime against God. And that is true. Suicide amounts to a jail break by souls who are trying to shorten their sentence."
A drawn out "ooooohhhhhh" while nodding my head was all I could manage as what he was saying sunk in.
He slurped a shot of whiskey-dosed coffee, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I am making it sound so dramatic, calling it a prison. In a way that's true, but it's more true that we are living inside a correctional system. This entire world, and all of its inhabitants, are residents of a spiritual penal institution. We are here to have our attitudes adjusted, our behaviors corrected, our understandings expanded, our souls purified through suffering and grief, and also to be glorified by love and sex and close friendships. And dogs. I'm pretty sure dogs make us better, just by hanging around with us."
His service animal, a big yellow lab named Sheffield, looked up at him, grinning. It was like Sheffield understood what he was saying.
Suddenly the coffee shop grew louder as more customers wandered in. He moved closer to the table and leaned across, looking me in the eye. "You ever been dead?" he asked me.
"No, never dead. Had a few hangovers though that made me wish I was dead." He didn't smile.
"I died when I was in the Nam." he said. "I got shot by a machine gun, right through both legs. I remember getting hit, and time just slowed down. I didn't feel any pain. It was like I jumped outside of myself, and watched from a distance as my body went tumbling to the ground. It was like watching a slow motion movie. It felt like I was hovering about four feet above my body, watching as the firefight continued around me. I watched my own eyes glaze over as I bled to death there in a muddy field, with a hot sun beating down on me."
As he described it, I could see the images in my own mind. I could imagine him as a young wounded soldier, laying under a hot sun, dying.
He took another sip of coffee, and his eyes had a smoky, far-away look, as though he wasn't seeing me anymore. "That's when I met the being of love and light. That's how I know what I know."
He went on to describe his experience. First, he said as he watched his body from above, a pinkish gray fog started to surround him, until he could no longer see himself lying on the ground. Then, he said he was rapidly hauled through a long dark valley, which he called "the valley of the shadow of death." At first he was frightened, he said, but then he saw a bright light in the distance rapidly moving toward him. The light grew closer, and brighter. "If I had eyes, I would have been blinded," he said. "But I realized that I was outside my body, and that I was perceiving things without the aid of my body. I could see, but I had no eyes to see. I could hear, but I had no ears to hear."
The bright light came closer until he felt enveloped by it, no longer able to distinguish between where his disembodied self ended, and where the light began. He described a sense of overwhelming peace, and love, and acceptance from the light. He claimed that, without hearing it, the bright light was communicating with him. It told him not to be afraid. "Let's see what you have learned," the light told him. At that moment, his life began passing in front of him very rapidly, and from the time of his earliest memories to the moment he lay dying on the battlefield, he saw every moment of his life. He felt every emotion he had ever felt. Moreover, he said, he could sense the emotions of all the people he had interacted with throughout his life. The hurts he had caused. The pain and anger he had evoked in others by his actions and decisions.
"The being of light wasn't judging me, not like we are told by religion. It wasn't a deal where the being was saying that I sinned, or screwed up, or was evil. Instead, it was like a review of my life with director's commentary. The light was teaching me, telling me what I was learning during each memory we observed. It was kind of like a parole hearing, where the parole board makes you talk about what you have learned, how you have improved, and whether or not you have accepted responsibility for your crimes."
He took another bite of bagel, and I saw the cream cheese smeared on his lips as he chewed. He swallowed and took another drink of his coffee. Breaking a small piece off the bagel, he tossed it toward Sheffield, who expertly snapped the tidbit out of the air as it passed in front of him.
I sat quietly on my side of the booth, waiting for him to resume his colloquy. His eyes had a distant stare, as if he was not aware of my presence. I could tell he was re-living, or perhaps re-dying, his battlefield experience.
Suddenly he looked at me again, and he was present in the moment. "That being of light showed me things, told me things, taught me things, that I never would have been able to know here in this life. Here in this limiting body." He patted his left hand three times over his heart. "It told me that I wasn't ready yet, and that I had more to learn about love. It said I had to go back. I protested that I didn't want to return to my body. I said I wanted to stay with the light, and to continue learning. Believe it or not, the being of light laughed, in kind of a loving and soothing way. It said I would return, and we would be together again. But that my time in this life wasn't finished. All of a sudden, I was back in my body, being dragged through the mud by two of my fellow Marines."
He paused to reach down and stroke Sheffield's head. The dog looked up at him with adoration in its eyes, but also what I sensed to be concern and alertness to my friend's emotions. "Who's a good boy?" my friend said absentmindedly.
"But, how does that lead you to believe these bodies are prisons? That this life is a prison sentence?"
"It's hard to explain," he said. "What I experienced in those few minutes I was dead can't be conveyed in words. Our language is also limiting, just like our bodies. Our language rests upon common sensory experiences that we can all understand. The words we have invented are tied to those experiences of the physical world. What happened to me was not in this physical world, but a world that we would probably call 'spiritual,' except that for me, it was real. As real as you and I sitting here right now. So, without really speaking, the being of light told me, or inserted into my mind, the understanding that this life is like a prison, a school, and a hospital, all rolled into one. We are here being both taught, and corrected. The days we are each allotted are like the term of our prison sentence. We can do nothing to either lengthen or shorten those days. We have to serve our term. We can't escape this."
His plate was empty, save for dozens of toasted sesame seeds that had fallen from his bagel. He stared down at the plate, lost in his own thoughts again. My phone started buzzing in my pocket, reminding me that I had another appointment that I needed to get to. I wished that I could stay and visit with him longer, but he was also becoming restless.
"It was good talking to you, young man," he said, reaching across the table to shake my hand. "I don't often tell these things to people. In fact, you are only about the fourth or fifth person I have ever really talked to in detail about it. But, I feel like I am getting close to the end of my sentence." A wan smile brushed across his lips. "I ain't mad about that."
Just then, Sheffield stood up and moaned, then whined. "Well, my guardian angel is asking to go outside," he said, scooting toward the end of the seat. He reached out and pulled his motorized scooter closer to him. With deft and experienced moves, he lifted himself out of the booth and into the chair. The dog knew how to move out of the way, and once his master was in his chair, the dog stood patiently on the right side of the chair, waiting to leave.
"I appreciate you spending part of your morning with me," I said. "I can say that I have never had a conversation anything like this one, in my entire life."
"You're welcome, son," he said with a smile. "You're going to need that knowledge soon." A little laugh escaped his mouth. "See you around, then," he said, pushing the joystick on his scooter, and motoring quickly away.
I sat stunned, pondering what he meant by his final words.
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