10- The Illusion Of Reality

10- The Illusion Of Reality

At fifty-six, my father, husband and girlfriend of twenty years were in various stages of terminal cancer.  As I walked this intimate journey with them, the gifts and insights I received were innumerable. I attribute this to a practice Phil and I had embraced for about three years.  Using a mindset of compassion and non-judgement with regard to all experiences that arise in life,  present moment awareness is heightened. Due to this we discovered a complete shift in our experience of life itself. As the primary caretaker for my rapidly declining husband and girlfriend, I was thrust into an expansion of that shift.  While the people in the world around me went on as usual, I no longer shared their experience of it. The collapsing of  timelines, and synchronistic experiences became as much a part of life as the air I breathed.  I literally watched the differences between my experience of ‘reality’ and theirs, as if it was being played before me on a stage.…because, as Shakespeare had written, indeed it was.  

Living in the continual awareness of what is truly important and what is mere distraction was life changing.  When the people I loved were nearing the end of their physical incarnations, and as one by one they passed, a kind of awareness set in as to the true nature of this thing called life.  The normal comings and goings of everyday-ness were more evident to me as I watched the world scurrying around in distraction and routine while I was enveloped in a heightened sense of present moment awareness.  A dear friend of ours, Ed Rubinstein, once wrote a book titled Waking From The Trances Of Everyday Life.  It spoke to the mindlessness of habitual ‘doing’ in ordinary day-to-day living rather than living from a state of presence while attending to those same tasks.  I found myself acutely aware of this phenomena. I was living within a kind of slowed down state of hyper-focused awareness where time was ticking forever away, while the people interacting with me didn’t even seem to notice.  Caught as they were within their own trances of everyday life, two very different realities co-existed side by side, only appearing to share commonalities.  We all drove our cars, ate our meals, slept in beds, walked the same halls or sidewalks, even discussed many of the same subjects, but our realities of what was transpiring in those moments couldn’t have been more different.  This fascinated me and I began to not only experience, but understand the concept of ‘peace amid chaos’ and the teaching “peace that passeth all understanding” more than I ever had.

Instead of living along a timeline of fear and dread as a soon-to-be mid-fifties widow facing the loss of my beloved husband, father and friend, as well as my home and income, my experience was quite different.  Instead of life pulling at me from all directions, I was free to focus on my very ill loved ones. I stood amazed at the peaceful and meticulously guided experience my husband Phil and I were both having as we lived out his last weeks at the hospital.  Spiritually centered in a thought system based in compassionate non-judgement and presence for years, together we each experienced what we considered heightened results of those efforts as his passing grew close.  An ever-flowing stream of synchronistic experiences seem to provide whatever we needed whenever we needed it, and struggle was not even a blip on our radar.  Other than the weariness of living in a hospital week after week, we were free from tending to all of life’s necessities as one by one they were either eliminated or addressed through no doing of our own.  In fact, many things that would normally need attention during the illness and after the passing of a spouse, had been eliminated the week before we even learned Phil was ill.  This is what I refer to as the collapsing of difficulties along timelines due to our practice. This, in my experience, results from an attitude of acceptance and non-attachment in regards to life experiences.  Over and over I experience the peace that unfolds as I curiously approach life without judgment or attachment to outcome, simply witnessing what it holds rather than resisting or struggling against it.  Even as I reflect on such events to share them here, I am in awe at the ease with which the road ahead of us was prepared even  before we knew it was coming.

With Phil long past retirement age, and as spontaneous as we were, it wasn’t until the lease on our condo neared renewal that we decided it was retirement time.  Having always envisioned an RV lifestyle, we decided to move in that direction. Upon hearing our plans, my daughter unexpectedly suggested that rather than paying a heightened month-to-month condo fee, we should move into her guest room for a few weeks while we hunted for our RV, so we did just that.  Within a week we sold or donated most of our possessions, put my art studio in storage, and moved out of the condo. Since Phil wasn’t going to give notice of his retirement until we found our RV, a week later, when a routine examination revealed colon cancer, we still had the full coverage from his insurance and he was still gainfully employed.  Therefore, we had almost no bills, no property that needed tending, our finances were intact for the remainder of his life because his salary continued, and I was not left with the expenses of an RV I would not be using.  Add to this that I was able to live between the hospital and my daughters guest room, which made everything very convenient.  Even the choices Phil was able to make from the hospital with regard to structuring his retirement income were informed by his terminal diagnosis.  Those choices eliminated any remaining bills I would have been left with and provided me with a small monthly income to fund my expenses while taking care of my girlfriend for the next two years.  This would not have been the insurance or retirement structure we’d have made had his diagnosis come even one week later.  As astounding as all this was, it didn’t end there.

As Phil and my father’s passing was bridged by less than a day, even the window of time I found away from Phil’s bedside in those last days, to visit my father before his passing, was filled with a blessing.  A kind of coherency rare in my dad’s last days was granted the morning I visited.  And while my visit lasted only a few hours before I was unexpectedly called back to an emergency situation with Phil, we said all that we needed before his transition.  Even after Phil’s passing, everything was so perfectly aligned that I was able to spend the time necessary to care for my girlfriend as she battled her own terminal illness. Because all of my worldly and personal responsibilities had been synchronistically resolved, it was impossible not to marvel at these amazing results I attribute to the daily practice of compassionate non-attachment which Phil and I had embraced for so long. But before I move on from sharing the collapsing of difficult timelines, I want to share perhaps the most profound result of all Phil’s experiences during this time.

As if facing the end of one’s life isn’t typically jarring enough, exiting through the painful conditions associated with colon cancer is not an easy path.  Unless, like Phil, one had spent years playing a conscious game of ‘Don’t Make It Real.”  Borrowing a phrase from the ACIM (A Course In Miracles) community, Phil and I had spent the last three years helping one another view and respond to the world as a projection of the mind, and therefore not ‘real’ in the sense that most experience it.  Seeing everything in the physical world of form as a reflection for our own benefit of awakening from thoughts of separation, we helped one another get out of the perception based conditioning of our thoughts; those automatic responses of believing the minds projection and the results such thinking produces.  For years we reminded each other, numerous times each day, to step away from the divided mind of perception and into the whole mind of compassionate non-judgement.  This practice brought us into present moment awareness like no other.  We got to the point where just the phrase “don’t make it real” could almost instantly shine a light on any situation, lifting the heaviest burden or pulling us out of intense frustration.  We laughed at ourselves often as we found one another emotionally snagged by the things in life that we were ‘making real’.  We marveled at the way this ‘not making it real’ game really seemed to lighten or shift our experiences. Our world filled with synchronistic wonder as this practice freed us from the cycle of cause and effect and collapsed difficulties along timelines.  This proved true even along the timelines we were unknowingly moving toward.

I first received the diagnosis of Phil’s cancer in the hallway just outside an exam room where he was resting from a colonoscopy. Upon sharing this news with him I took his hand and immediately asked him if he was scared.  He smiled, saying no, and that he wasn’t going to ‘make it real’.  We agreed!  We weren’t making light of the news, we simply weren’t afraid!  On the contrary, we knew that walking through such a circumstance using the practice of compassionate non-judgement would be profoundly opportunistic on our path of awakening.  And since spiritual awakening had become the center of our lives for many years, we simply continued the practices we had found, opening ourselves to the mystery unfolding before us.

The staff tending to Phil at the clinic came in and out of the room with lowered eyes and consoling words, sharing their sadness about the diagnosis. Each time one would leave the room Phil commented and repeatedly pointed out to me how the staff’s response to the situation was so conditioned that they couldn’t even see that we weren’t in fear or disbelief.  So conditioned to the beliefs they held about the news of a terminal diagnosis, they weren't able to be present to the very people they were attempting to console. It was then that Phil and I knew we would walk through what was ahead of us together, in the same kind of peace-filled awareness bubble we had played in for years.  A bubble of awareness that most of the world couldn’t see. We weren’t in denial.  That is not the nature of the ‘don’t make it real’ perspective. We had simply conditioned our minds to see beyond the programmed illusion of separation that ensnared most.  Completely aware of the physical prognosis of the diagnosis within the illusion, we were intimately connected to the reality beyond this illusion of separation which the diagnosis had also brought, and therefore completely free of fear!  As time went on and Phil’s illness progressed it was sad to watch the suffering of loved ones who only felt the ‘reality’ of impending loss.  Personally, we knew this to simply be a time of transition; a glorious time that truly should be celebrated as one steps into an expansion of themselves free from physical limitations, having completed the mission their incarnation facilitated.

Through surgery, and conditions arising from the surgery, through living at the hospital almost day and night for eight weeks, and being given various and ever shortening time frames for survival, our peace filled bubble of expanded awareness remained around us.  While I was often physically exhausted, from living at Phil’s bedside and checking in on my girlfriend when I could, Phil and I were most always in good spirits.  Alone in his room we would often talk about how amazing it was to experience ourselves actually living the awareness we had come to realize and reaping the results in this time of heightened circumstance.  It is easy to think you are growing from your spiritual perspectives when things are going smoothly.  But when the road gets rocky you get to see the degree to which your beliefs and experiences align.  We were amazed how natural it was to continue to live from our heightened awareness as Phil literally lay dying.  Phil would visit with loved ones and friends that came by, and when asked how his attitude was so upbeat, he would share his excitement about the adventure ahead of him in terms he felt they could understand. “I’ve spent my whole life wondering about the spiritual world and now I’m going to experience it first hand!” he said to one friend.  “Why be afraid?  We don’t die!” he would exclaim.  This was quintessential Phil.

Apart from high spirits Phil was also virtually pain free throughout his entire illness.  Rarely if ever on pain medication, he remained alert and truly ‘with us’ until he slipped quietly away in his sleep the night we brought him home for hospice care.  Having since watched the stark contrast of my girlfriends long and harrowing struggle with the exact same illness, and her painful lingering as she held tightly onto her body in her last days, the differences that an awakening mind like Phil’s experienced was again magnified for me. So different was his experience through his illness and transition that it is impossible to know just how much of it to contribute to his practice of compassionate non-judgement.  However, I can honestly say I have never heard of such an ease filled and almost completely drug-free presence associated with anyone passing from colon cancer.  I personally credit much of Phil’s experience with his practice of compassionate non-judgement and the difficulties that were collapsed because of it.  As for my own experiences I am certain they were aided by this practice.

A day or so after Phil transitioned, a profound thought dropped into my awareness.   It was deeper and more substantial than normal everyday thoughts that run through my mind and it caught me completely off guard.  More like a statement of fact, it carried more weight than the words themselves and was accompanied with an expansion experience beyond-the-body.  The thought was this,  ’If Phil is dead, then I can’t really be alive.’  A profound shift instantaneously arose in me and the concept of illusion that is taught in esoteric scriptures literally expanded in my awareness.  I instantly grasped a new level of understanding with regard to the physical world as a projection of the mind.  A confirmation was extended that there truly is no such thing as life (or death) as we define it.  There is only awareness…eternal awareness.  I have come to realize that this is what we are, and this is what we expand into more of upon our passing.  As we exit the limitations of our physical experience, we expand into more of that awareness, which we never truly left, but only imagined leaving in our illusion of separation. From there, if we have evolved our consciousness enough to move beyond the planes of matter, energy, space, and time we can align directly with this awareness.  For Phil and I, this evolution was practiced through compassionate non-judgement.

Because I had been wrapped in an uncommon cocoon focused on what is referred to as ‘end-of-life’ scenarios multiplied by three, I had been experiencing huge doses of this awareness for quite some time.  The comings and goings of the world around me continued to mirror stark contrasts between my reality and the hum of a distracted, unawakened reality.  Experiencing the ease of the timeline associated with Phil’s passing and how everything was divinely guided also magnified my years of practicing compassionate non-judgement, and not making things ‘real’. Giving our personal power away to those things that we grasp onto as ‘real’ limits us from our limitless, eternal nature.  Having been able to embrace the world as a mirror of the fragmented mind, even through Phil’s illness and passing, I had fostered a new level of awakening.  In truth, Phil was no more dead than I was alive….not in this physical form of illusory projection anyway.  We are both beyond those small concepts of life and death.  Knowing this allows me to approach life differently than if I buy into any ‘form’ as who I am.  The freedom in this doesn’t divorce me from the responsibilities I align with in my incarnation or remove me from tragedy.  It does however lighten this for me and moves me from one experience to the next with grace and gratitude. The opportunity this world affords me to choose love and compassion at every turn connects me deeper to my true essence. I have come to realize this as a gift beyond measure.  While I am only practiced at it and not perfect, I have come to realize that it is this attitude that moves me closer to true Self-realization.