On my way home from work-- as I stared at the random stranger with the shy eyes but eager smile across from me on the G train-- it happened. It was almost hallucinatory. I rubbed my eyes, stared up at the lights and moved on to another equally random stranger sitting on the other end of the train. He wore his headphones with pride, and the smile beaming from his face was in constant motion-- lip syncing to some unheard voice-- when it happened again... I had an "Out of Life" experience.
You know those dreams where you find yourself standing over your body? Those dreams where you just lift away from your fleshy home, and glide? They're called "Out of Body" experiences and what happened to me on the G, was similar in sensation. Except instead of shedding my body, I shed my life.
Staring at these "strangers" and seeing their idiosyncrasies-- the girl with shy eyes, the guy with the proud smile, the uncomfortable woman next to me-- I suddenly disappeared. My life, my experiences, my families, my thoughts and worries, just silenced.... as if someone had taken my soul and removed everything that was Me from it and placed it inside a trophy case outside of Me. Inside it I could see the memories of my life moving and shifting. Some frozen in place-- the only memory of my grandmother was a black and white picture-- while some were vividly alive, like my first time on stage. But there I was standing, looking inside this memory trophy case wondering what this could mean.
SNAP! Suddenly I'm back on the G train. The girl is now shyly talking to the woman next to her, "The first time I saw you at work I thought you kind of looked like Loretta, from Family Guy, and I've just been wanting to tell you that for the longest!" she giggled self-consciously. The woman did look like Loretta, I thought. "Loretta" then distorts her face into confusion and mutters "Thanks?" and off they went into a conversation about work. The guy with the Dre headphones is swiping through his iPhone. And I am suddenly back outside of my life, on some distant fringe of the shores of my mind.
Is it dark? Is there sound? Where's the trophy case? Where am I? Just blankness. Then with an odd inaudible pop, the Dre headphones guy and shy girl appear in front of me. However not in their body form. Instead they're appearance is rather shapeless, more like glowing wisps with observant eyes. From within each of them I can hear the echos of their conversations of the physical world and the soft muffled singing of the headphones, yet all I see are these two energy globes staring at me; Not menacingly, not anxiously, but peacefully.
The crackled and static laden "Next stop Classon. Stand clear of the closing doors please." brings me back into my body, my life, my experiences, my pain, my insecurities, my job, my dreams, my hunger, my existence. I look at the two strangers... and wait. I must have seemed so intensely crazy, but it felt like it needed to be done. So I waited for them to just look at my eyes... and they did.
In that instant it all made sense. I no longer saw the shy stranger or the headphones stranger or Loretta. I saw beyond their experiences, beyond their lives, beyond their dreams, beyond their strategies of how to move through this world as a man/woman. For that split millisecond, when we made eye contact, I felt and saw the Me in them....That raw uninhibited self that has no country, no religion, no political party-- that part of ourselves that has been observing existence. That part of us that has no physical shape, that observer that has no gender, that part of you that you hide oh so well... I saw.
As I gather up my things, I can't help but smile at the simplicity of it and yet how hard it was to see... The doors open and I now find myself having an "Inner Body and Life" experience as I step off the G train.
2010