I
The Gravity of Water
A warm sensation came over me. Time stopped, and all that surrounded me slowed immensely, almost to a complete standstill. I could no longer hear my heart beating in my ears; the chaos that lived inside me calmed, and the primal fear that had just seconds before consumed me—like a farm animal fighting the inevitable death in the slaughterhouse—was gone. Seconds stretched like elastic concepts that enclosed me but could not reach me, and I became an observer of my own story. The need to continue thrusting myself to the surface faded. My right arm remained upward, cresting the water’s surface, reaching toward the sky, toward what felt like another world—one where I was no longer welcome. I was slipping away, and I found myself surrendering to it.With the lifting of mortal weight, I stilled, and all around me became magnificent. I could feel a brilliant ray of light from the big, gleaming country summer sun—a warmth I had felt tightening the skin on my forehead as it pressed against the car’s hot passenger window just minutes before. My eyes followed the sun’s beam as it pierced through the water’s movement, creating silhouettes of small kicking legs from vibrant bodies that floated, and bouncing off sand particles that shimmered as they, too, floated. In my newfound understanding of time, I noticed all the small things I would otherwise have overlooked, such as sand. The sand, caught in tiny tidal waves, swept the lake’s floor and rose in a fervent dance, becoming part of the momentum. And there they were, like me, floating in a space of quiet where warm hues of orange, green, and tan cradled them as they did me. I had been in this lake before, but never had I truly seen the color of the water. It was so resplendent it felt like my first visit. Below the surface, there was a world unseen and beautiful, warm, and incomprehensible. Here I was overwhelmed with sensations of novelty, gratitude, love, and an abundance of awe. Unlike air, it was this love that filled my lungs to capacity, and I was drowning. How can I reassure her that I will be okay?My body felt heavy and weightless at the same time. Air in my lungs seemed unnecessary, yet I remained alive, alert, aware, and composed. Although I was submerged, I began to get glimpses of images above the water, observing my mother on the beach blanket with my tiny brother and sister. She began scanning the lake for me. I could see all the children and their parents on the beach and around me—so many, yet none noticed me. “Why can’t they see me?” I asked the universe. “How do I make them see me?” I repeated to myself like a mantra. Through a phenomenon known as astral projection, the water’s surface had vanished, and the space melded with that above the water. There was no horizon, allowing me a direct line of sight to where my mother sat on the small hill, on the plot of earth she selected for its 180-degree view of the lake, of everyone, the parked cars, of us. She was in control there, choosing that spot every time we visited the lake. The lifeguard chair, perched high above the hill behind my mother, stood like a beacon. My mother began to panic. I could not only see but also feel her fear. She was now standing, scanning the lake from left to right with her right hand shading her eyes for a clearer vision. She yelled my name as she scanned; panic had set in, her pulse quickened, and I now knew this was real and not my experience alone. Simultaneously observing and feeling the hysteria and chaos above the surface, I too was still immersed in the calm of the surrender I had committed to below the surface. I had a choice. I had agency. In the vacuum of my mind and the stillness of the water that enveloped me, I heard a voice, so internal as if it were my own. It had no cadence, accent, or gender. With calm and no sense of time, the voice came from within me, and I was asked, “What would you like to do?” There was a pause, yet because it felt as though there was no time, the pause was neither long nor short. It just was. I replied with certainty, “She won’t understand. This will destroy her.”My attention pivoted, and I found myself identifying the bodies around me, planning my next move as to whom I would reach out to in hopes they would feel the graze of my tiny hand. Little suits with flowers adorned bodies that floated horizontally; larger bodies stood vertically. I dug my toes into the sand, trying to propel myself forward enough to brush my fingertips along the torso nearest to me, the one standing vertically. The sand, soft, loose, and deep, offered little support for my push. Like creamy mud, it enclosed my six-year-old foot, swallowing my toes, pulling me back deeper into the dark corners of the water. Into corners of the lake where the summer sunbeam did not reach, where no one ventured, where I did not want to go either. Retreating inches felt like miles; I could not reach the waistline of the nearest body. I sensed the water recoiling from her as I tried to push forward, like heat radiating off a concrete wall. She was tangible; she was a mother to one of the horizontal bodies kicking and splashing around me, taunting me. “If only I could let her know I was there,” I mused, “she could help me. Mothers know what to do. She could find my mom and tell her where I am.” Amid the motion of the water, I discerned a figure in a white bathing suit approaching. It was the type of suit grandmothers wear, from a time when women didn’t show their thighs. Her hair, long and silver, was braided tightly down her back, the ends trailing in the water. My right arm, ever so weak, floated up to the surface, my fingertips just breaking the water’s crest. I could not muster the strength to push myself up and scream for help; that energy had left me. My lungs were filled with water, and my body’s weight cemented me to the lake’s floor. “Her hair is pretty,” I thought.Like a sudden rebirth, I was thrust into a light so intense it felt angry, violent, and deafening. Water poured off me, out of my mouth, my eyes, my ears, and yet remained in my lungs. My chest harbored its own small lake, hard and painful, as if the water clung to me in one final embrace. Awareness assaulted me like a blunt force. I had been extracted from the tender clutches of the water, a dimension where I existed out of sync with time, where I floated and watched children play, unseen. I hovered on the brink of two realms of existence, unafraid, dwelling in the unfamiliar.Her face was out of view, but I felt it above me. My temple pressed against her chest in her white, antique swimsuit. She was older—I sensed that. She had a maternal presence—I felt that too. Though I couldn’t see her, my vantage point was strangely dual: physically against her yet visually from above, akin to a scene from a Salvador Dalí painting, until I gasped my first breath. A miniature deluge rushed from my lungs, cascading down my small form as I took in air. It was excruciating. The breath tore through me with such force that I almost yearned to be returned to the depths from which I was plucked. With each subsequent cough, more water expelled, and the primal urge to breathe overwhelmed me.With this same dual vision, I saw my mother notice me in the arms of this woman. Her legs propelled her forward, and she sprinted with unprecedented speed. She raced down the hill, cutting through the shallow water as if skimming the surface until she plunged into deeper waters. Her body swayed left and right, cleaving through the rising depths in a desperate effort to reach me. She snatched me from my guardian’s embrace and hastened back to the beach blanket as swiftly as she had come for me. “Breathe, Lelanea, breathe!” she demanded. “Breathe!”
II
The Path of Purpose
Much like the event of Oneness from the NDE, ‘Moments of Connection’ would become a common theme throughout my childhood. However small, like tiny bursts of light that flickered quickly, they came with love, excitement, joy, and awe, and didn’t linger, nor did time stop as it had during the NDE. I recognized these bursts as “connection,” a reminder that I was part of something bigger than this human experience. They arrived without rhyme or reason; they came when I was alone, often when I was in nature. They arose in moments where I surrendered to the universe and asked the Source to guide me to where I was meant to be. They emerged when my 16-year-old self-fantasized and imagined what “love” might feel like, imagining with fantastical stories a life so very different from the one that awaited me—one filled with exotic travels, unique cultures, different skin tones, dialects, and languages. I knew with great certainty that life held an exciting adventure for me, that I was here to experience as many things as possible, and that these experiences would come through connections with others, far from the clutches of the culturally deprived small Midwest town that had swallowed me as the lake once did. There was a world of incredibly beautiful beings out there, and I felt a deep, innate force within me that I had to meet and experience these beings. ‘A Course in Miracles’ describes these moments of immense joy, love, gratitude, and awe as the effects of the Holy Spirit. The Vedas refer to this as Oneness, an innate knowing of being connected to everything around us. Looking back, I now recognize these subtle shifts as the tremors of an awakening that awaited me.
III
The Great Illumination
The words danced violently on the page as did the human bodies next to me on the other side of the aisle. The jumps, jolts, thrusts, and ricocheting that took place through the 14th Street tunnel were so immense that bodies with too loose muscle contractions or misplaced handrail grips could be bounced, oreven catapulted, causing a person to take on such bodily contortions that one would appear possessed.Often, a person could be found lifted from their seat, left precariously straddling the edge, seekingassistance to reposition themselves. The ability to stand hands-free, read, or walk on the L train as itmoved between Brooklyn and Manhattan via the 14th Street tunnel was a sign that one had lived in NYC long enough not to be considered a tourist. Like a personal cell number starting with 212 or a decade-long driver’s license, the artful navigation of the tunnel was a glorious stripe earned. At 28, I could do all three. My finger, like a beacon, held the sentence, and despite the movement of the words, I could find my wayback, not breaking my reading stride. I was on the fifth sequel, ‘An Experiential Guide’ to James Redfield’s ‘Celestine Prophecy.’ A book gifted to me by my father when I was 16 years old and whichsomehow traveled the world with me, unread until a decade later. These books were my introduction to a world of energy, spirituality, synchronicity, self-healing work, parental forgiveness, and compassion. This book would also be the catalyst for my spiritual illumination, revealing a path of Non-duality andUniversal Oneness.
One of my gifts, having been in NYC for 3-4 years by this point, was that I had become aprofessional at acquiring the end seat in each subway car. This seat, highly sought after, was abench for two that you often had to yourself, as no one would dare sit next to you if there wereother spaces available in the middle of the car. Here one could fall asleep, daydream freely, orsprawl out without consideration for the personal space of others. This seat also allowed one tohave a single directional view of the entire car—no head rotations necessary. In NYC, this was agood thing.
As I continued to follow my finger down the page from line to line, I found myself deeply enthralled, as if the book was revealing some mystic message from ancient ancestors, divulging the secrets of the universe. I made my way to the end of the chapter and brought my eyes up for a momentary reprieve, to give them a rest and to contemplate what I had just read. Slowly, I raised my gaze to look at the faces around me and assess where I was in my L-Train journey. The chapter I had just read sparked something within me. I felt as though I was floating, and as my eyes lifted, the subway car became incredibly bright and illuminated, more so than usual. I quickly recognized how odd yet beautiful the car was—how beautiful the people were. I slowly scanned the faces, recognizing smiles, lovely features, and feeling a stillness in the car that wasother worldly. Time had not stood still as it had in my NDE, but here was that heightened feeling of love again, of joy, appreciation, and awe. A connection to all that was around me was recognized. I no longer felt alone, individualized, separate, or invisible. I felt “whole.” I was incredibly grateful for the experience—to see the illumination, to see the faces, to be in the subway car, to be in NYC, to be alive. My heart swelled, and I held this feeling of abundance at such a high level that I was shocked at my ability to contain it without sighing loudly or giggling like a lunatic. As quickly as these emotions had come and as swiftly as I could scan the room, they began to waver, and I found myself descending from these high vibrations and emotions. I sat back against the seat and recognized that I had experienced a moment of connection, butwhere had this moment come from? Was it possibly the book? I never spoke openly about the experience, but I told everyone I knew to read the book.
IV
Unity Consciousness
I had just spent a fun three days in Vancouver, B.C., and it was everything I’d heard it was: beautiful, sprawling, influenced by nature, and incredibly culturally diverse. Returning to Portland, I was idling in traffic, attempting to cross the border back into the US. Traffic was backed up, inching forward 6-12 feet every 6 or 7 minutes. Surrounded by a huge park, historical markers, monuments, mini plush green pastures, picnic tables, and groups of roaming international tourists, I could feel the electricity of excitement in this place.Recognizing this major delay and extensive traffic, I decided to make the best of it. I took out my book, “Gene Keys” by Richard Rudd, and rested it on the steering wheel to read between segments of idle shifts. As I made my way through the end of the 4th Gene Key, delving into a shadow of ‘Intolerance,’ exploring the gift of ‘Understanding’ and into a Siddhi of ‘Forgiveness,’ my concentration was broken by the faint sound of music that was in stark contrast to my own. This interruption was aggressive, angry, and vile. With my contemplation of what I had just read abruptly broken, I began the search for which car within the backed-up four lanes of vibrating autos this music could be emanating from. What does it matter where this music is coming from? Oh, how the ego wants to know, so that it might judge.This break in concentration and act of seek-and-find continued until I finally located them. The car in the row to my right had slowly inched its way up to me, and there I studied the four twenty-somethings as they gazed off into the distance with wandering yet sedated eyes. “What the hell is wrong with these people? How can they listen to this music; it’s so angry?” With scorn and judgment, I began to roll my windows up, not breaking my stare. With the windows fully up, I continued to study them. They didn’t seem to emit energy that matched the intensity of the music. They weren’t headbanging, yelling, or sacrificing small children in their car. They seemed to be in a state of deep contemplation, internal exploration, or even possibly just numb and resting in that state.As I continued to observe them, taking them in, I heard my own voice, sharp and clear: “Lelanea, don’t judge them. They are your brothers and sisters. They are you.” As clearly as I heard my own voice, I recognized a huge shift in my perspective. The edges of my thoughts began to soften, my judgment dropped, and I felt open. With increased curiosity, I moved from my head to my heart space, and there I felt connected and kind. I felt warmth. After what felt like minutes of learning them, taking them in and exploring their mannerisms, I subtly began to notice that my gaze was shifting to movement in my peripheral vision.Behind the car of twenty-somethings I was observing, there were three more rows of cars, and beyond those cars were two boys, about nine or ten years old, throwing a football back and forth at what appeared to be a cookout. One Asian and one Black, they were in the distance. With my attention now fully on these two boys, I noticed something odd yet familiar: they were moving in slow motion. Their movements weren’t elongated or distorted, but everything around them, around me, had slowed. Not only were their movements slowed but so were those of the trees blowing in the wind that they were playing under. Their faces were lit with light and laughter, emanating feelings of love, joy, and excitement, and I could feel their ecstasy of play. I watched them, their movements, their play, their gestures, and I felt I knew them. I knew them intimately because I was them. I had experienced these exact emotions when I too was their age, throwing a ball back and forth. My mind raced with memories of playing this game in neighborhood fields and lots, even able to feel the energy of the kids I was playing with in those recollections.Still riding the wave of this new perspective, my attention was drawn to the gathering of adults barbecuing to the right of the boys’ play. How brilliant and happy everyone seemed. Time was still slow, unaffected by gravity in this dimension. My body was filled with joy, awe, and curiosity, and I briefly wondered if I had accidentally ingested a gummy or something. That thought quickly passed as I knew I hadn’t eaten anything in hours, so no accidental dosing could have happened, nor would a gummy alter one’s vision this way, I naively suspected. I watched the thoughts come and go without attachment to any concept, idea, or story of my own. In a state of ineffable bliss, my curiosity moved to my left, to what would be outside my driver’s side window.The astonishment I felt was equally divided between this new perspective and the people I was encountering, as if I had come to Earth for the first time and was captivated by the species, the culture, and the ability to feel their emotions. As I studied my surroundings, the illumination of all that surrounded me began to intensify, as if I was brightening the screen, so to speak. Bright dazzling faces, smiles that didn’t just offer gestures of but emanated the energy of the emotion and projected it outward where the antennas of my new sensitivity could receive. I now found myself utterly in love with and studying an Indian father, his wife, and two teenage daughters as they strolled around an erect monument. I watched as he clasped both hands behind his back, swayed back and forth from one historical plaque to the next, reading and examining. His wife and daughters beside him, holding hands, I could feel the deep unconditional love he had for his girls and the love he had for the feminine, for his wife. I could feel his pride not only for his family but also pride in the overcoming of obstacles that allowed them a different life in a different country. He felt like the wealthiest man on the planet, rich in love and trust in himself. His face, etched in lines of life, was one of the most beautiful faces I had ever seen. I loved him, I knew him, I was him, and I knew his story. I sat with this family for what felt like 10 minutes, and I took them in entirely, as they, in slow motion, floated with intention.I continued to move onward with my gaze, as if I were being universally guided from one experience to the next, and softly to my right another family caught my attention. As I continued moving along the cultural display, I came upon what appeared to be a Pakistani family. A wife and husband strolled arm in arm with numerous older children walking beside and behind them. No rushing, all walking with intention, laughing, smiling, sisters holding hands, and at moments would disperse around a monument to take in different aspects of the architecture. I could feel their story, the love the parents had for their family and the overwhelming sense of gratitude for what they had built and created together. I spent time with each person, and I felt them, I felt their energy, their emotions but not on a human level, on a soul level.Was this heaven, or at least what Hollywood has presented heaven to look like: bright light, illuminated, unconditional love and forgiveness, no sense of anxiety or worry over materialism, no depression over one’s identity or mistakes. This was raw, beautiful, intentional, and otherworldly, and I was not only an observer, but I was also the experiencer. Suddenly, as if I were watching a film, the two boys throwing the football now ran across my line of sight with the ball in midair and the other running under it, lining up for the catch. Grabbing my attention completely, I followed the boys in flight, still running in slow motion until my eyes landed on a small patch of wheat-grass planted as a border between the park and the lanes of cars. I couldn’t detach visually from this wheat-grass. The light of the sun illuminated the gentle hues of gold. The wind was clearly blowing as the grass was moving but still in slow motion as time was still altered. My windows were rolled up and I had the sounds of Marconi Union separating me from the sounds of the world outside, yet I don’t recall hearing the music inside of my car. All sound had disappeared, and it was as if I, like in my NDE, was back underwater with only visuals and energy to relay the events to me.The light began to intensify, and the illuminations took on the brilliance of starlight. People were walking beside my car, and as each person passed, I could feel their emotions and with their emotions came their story, their experience, and their choices in lessons and I knew them, felt them, and experienced them too. I began to see a thread of light that not only moved from person to person but from tree to person and back to me. I was numb, numb from the beauty, the overwhelming sense of love, and the awe of this otherworldly event that I somehow stumbled into. As I studied the thread and simultaneously felt the energy and emotions of those walking past my window, I began to hear my own voice speaking to me in my mind. “Don’t you see, we are all mirrors of one another. Fragments of the same light, of the same source. We each chose a different experience through that of different lives.” I quickly understood that because we are all mirrors of one another, I can have as many experiences as I want in one life by connecting to others through their journey of their chosen life-experience. That through emotions we’re all connected in the material plane, and we are tethered to one another through these shared energies that are expressed via emotions.It was in this space that my understanding shifted from the human existential connection to the universe, understanding my truest self, in my most authentic nature, that I am all of these experiences, and that I am all of these people and that I am source energy. For one of the few times in my life, I did not feel a separation between myself and the others I was viewing, as I did not feel a separation from anything. I did not have a self, nor an identity. Not only was I connected to the trees and the wheat-grass, but I was the people, the trees, the wheat-grass, and I was having a remembering. I found myself whispering, “I am all of this, and I am God.” I felt myself in every living being around me. The energy in the rocks, roots, clouds, and even the thread of light that still connected everything in my vision. I was the energy of consciousness, and that consciousness is the source. I realized that this very experience I was having was an experience that was providing valuable information to something beyond my perception at that time, and that by having this, I was contributing to a collective consciousness. I had been invited into a new stream of thought, one that I intellectually observed, but this was more than the sharing of information. This was a “download.” My body was filled with a love that I can’t even began to articulate with a human language, I felt a connection to everything around me that not even MDMT can replicate. My vibration was high, the highest it had ever been that I was conscious of, and after the messages were received, my vibration began to change, lowering, and I now felt back in my body. I had never left my body, yet the vibration was so high that I did not feel as though I was in my material form. Like the snap of fingers, the speed of time resumed to its familiar pace, the people moving past my window lost their smiles and vibrance, the illumination of the wheat-grass dulled, and I sat there in utter shock. Things felt dense, a little heavy, and a bit confusing. My heart was still filled with love, and the messages I had received were coursing through my bloodstream. I had integrated every one of them. Not one was lost to me. As I came back to myself, I quickly turned around and found my dog still asleep in the back seat, the cars ahead of me and beside me had not moved, and my face and shirt were soaked all down the front of me from where I had apparently been sobbing from joy throughout this experience. I knew I was smiling from ear to ear as I was receiving information, and I knew I was deeply moved by the heightened state of love, but I had no idea that I was weeping. How could this be? I was out of it for what felt like 25 minutes, yet no car had nudged forward. Where was I? What happened to me? I spent the next several hours navigating the imagination of my ego, trying to make sense of it yet balanced by the knowing that still resided in me. My whole life, I have never felt connected to people around me outside of the micro moments of connection and the NDE. I lived a life of feeling like an observer of others, not knowing where my energetic matches lived, traveling all over the world and throughout the US, moving from state to state seeking connection and home, and the biggest download of them all that day was that I was home. The illusion of division and separation is one of the greatest tricks the ego has ever unknowingly played. I was the love I was seeking; I was the safety, calm, and home that I sought in others. It was time to stop seeking and time to start experiencing, for everything I needed, I already had, and I am being called to share it with my brothers and sisters as a gentle reminder that they too are the universal consciousness that connects all living beings and when we remember, we remember our divinity.
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