The time I touched Infinity

The most amazing, inspiriting, yet also terrifying transcendental experience I've ever had

created by me having a good ol’ time playing around in Adobe Illustrator 😎

When I was 19 years old, I had the most beautiful, intense, and simultaneously terrifying transcendental experience. It has shaped who I have become, what I believe, and how I move through the world in the deepest of ways.

It happened in a hotel room in Viriginia.

I was moving from New Jersey to Florida—a long drive, 26 hours if my memory serves me right. I did it by myself in 2 days, spending the one night in Virginia.

At the time, I was reading one of the core Spiritism books… I can’t remember which one… there are five… but that is an unimportant detail.

Note: If you have never heard of it, Spiritism is not the same spiritualism. Spiritism is… a whole thing lol. If you are curious and interested in finding out more about it, check out what the Encyclopedia Brittanica has to say about it, or go to this Allan Kardec site to find out more about the books (Allan Kardec was the co-author with spirits?! author of the books).

Here’s the thing… the nature of reality, and the philosophies, ideas, and beliefs about it, have always been tremendously fascinating to me… even as a child.

I grew up in a family that was 100% non-traditional when it came to spirituality.¹ We were not at all religious, even though my mother and my maternal grandmother felt a connection to the figure/personality/being known as Jesus Christ. I’m sure we would have been (were??) considered Christian, even though we had absolutely nothing to do with any churches whatsoever.

My grandmother considered herself to be a Spiritist—or at least I think she did. I know my mother was into it, too, and I grew up with the concepts of spirits, reincarnation, mediumship, and all that good stuff. My grandmother herself was a powerful medium. As I got older, I became interested in immersing myself more in that knowledge, so I decided I wanted to read the books.

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Side note…

Now, at this time, I feel compelled to side-track a little bit to speak to what I mean when I talk about “god…” because I’m about to be talking about god in this writing…

I was brought up with the concept that there are two “forms” to/of “god”—the personification and the… um… well, non-personified I guess?? Lol… the all-pervasive energy that is consciousness itself. Religions tend focus on personified aspects of god (as one god or many gods).

Also, you may notice that I have a tendency to only capitalize the word god when it shows up at the beginning of a sentence… not necessarily throughout. That is because I have always related to the concept of god as the consciousness-that-permeates-all-of-existence rather than God-as-a-personified-entity. The new age concept of Source or The Universe is more attuned/similar to how I have always thought of and viewed god. (And, FYI, I capitalize THOSE words to distinguish them from the normal meanings of source and the universe that do not speak to the consciousness-that-permeates-all-things. Just to be more confusing?!)

As I have understood it, the consciousness-that-permeates-all (i.e. god) can/sometimes will… essentially “coalesce” into a personified form, and this is where these figures that religions are built around come from.

And to be clear, these are just the concepts that I was taught and/or have come across in my “studies.”

There are… mental conceptual questions… that these ideas bring up that my brain does not exactly know what to do with… or put more plainly—it brings up a shit-ton of questions which I have never found any satisfying inner/emotional resolutions for… and so, I allow it to just be a concept I hold lightly, with interest.

But it does feel like it makes a sort of sense within me.

Ok, enough about this… let’s get on with the story!!

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The time I touched Infinity

That night in the hotel, when I was 19 and moving from New Jersey to Florida, as I settled in to get ready for bed, I read more of my book.

As always, reading about the subject of spirituality gets my brain going… thinking and analyzing questions and topics of a similar nature as the ones I discussed above in my little side note.

My brain kept thinking… pondering… digesting… even after I stopped reading and had tucked myself in for sleep.

I have never been one to fall asleep quickly.

At best it doesn’t take forever… it’s especially helpful when I have something interesting to roll around my mind, because it lulls me off to sleepy lala-land.

Well, that night, given what I’d just been reading about, my brain kept on going on that mentally delicious track.

Considering the nature of reality.

Pondering questions regarding the nature of infinity… and how strange a thing it is to try to imagine.

How can the universe go on forever? How can there be no boundary? But how could there possibly be a boundary? That would imply an end somewhere… and such an end implies that there is something beyond it. And how could there be something else?? What else? And if there’s nothing… well, nothing is still something. So no boundary!? But how can it go on and on and on and just never… stop?!?

What is the purpose of it all, anyway? All of this creation… this matter we exist in? To what end did the supposed god-consciousness create it for? And then back to infinity… If material reality was created for a purpose, then at some point there was a nothing, then how can it not end? And yet, if god is everything, then how could there be an end… there would be something outside of god… but if god is all-that-is… there can’t be anything outside of all-that-is????

Yes, yes. Oh the questions my mind enjoys pondering… and to lull me to sleep, nonetheless 😅

As I contemplated god, the nature of what is, and what infinity could possibly mean from my finite, human vantage point, my mind was drawn to visualize myself in my hotel bed, as if I was seeing myself from a vantage point above, like looking down on myself from the ceiling…

And the curiosity about infinity seemed to draw my perspective upwards and backwards… still looking down, but as if I was floating up and away, broadening my perspective as I floated.

Looking down at the town I was in.

Floating farther up and seeing the land beneath me recede.

Seeing the lights of the land get smaller and farther.

The land receding farther.

Backwards and upwards…

Floating up through the atmosphere…

Seeing the continent…

Then the Earth as a whole…

Receding farther as my perspective continued to broaden.

The earth receding from me… getting smaller…

As my perspective moved farther backwards still, through the solar system…

The planets receding from my view…

First Mars, then Jupiter… Saturn (beautiful Saturn!)… Uranus… Neptune… Pluto…

Then, the solar system receding from me.

My perspective broadening more and more… taking in more of the universe around me… SEEING it all more and more…

All the while, my mind still pondering the questions of infinity and existence…

God. What is god? How is god infinite? How could god be anything but infinite? Are we not all god? Then we are all infinite? How can anything be infinite??

The entire universe is god, and god is in all of us… then we are the entire universe as well…

I am finite… yet if I am god and I am also the universe… and god and the universe is also infinite, then I am infinite as well. But I am also finite. Both are concurrently true and yet impossibly so…

I am finite yet also infinite…

How can the finite possibly coexist with the infinite… much less comprehend it…

All the while, as these thoughts (and other similar ones) rolled around my mind, I was visualizing that expansion through the universe. Fascinated by what infinity is… might be… could be… would be like…

Thinking these thoughts… analyzing them… while watching the universe recede in my mind’s eye…

The solar system receding from view… smaller and smaller… other solar systems came into view… our solar system blending in… smaller and smaller… until no longer distinguishable from others… receding further…

My view encompassing more and more… seeking infinity…

Coming to the edge of our galaxy…

Receding father still…

Our galaxy receding from me…

Other galaxies coming into view…

Everything receding…

Receding…

Receding…

Our galaxy becoming smaller than night stars in our skies…

I could see constellations of galaxies in my mind’s eye…

All receding… and more and more of the universe rushing by and coming into view…

It was a beautiful sight.

And as I pondered these existential questions while experiencing more and more of the universe…

There was this one beautiful instant where I saw myself coming to the boundary of the universe… passing through it… like passing through a membrane… and then…

I suddenly knew the answers.

I understood.

I understood what it all meant.

I understood the universe.

I was the universe.

I encompassed all-that-was.

And I understood god.

I understood infinity.

I understood Everything

It was the most amazing feeling I have ever felt.

The peace was utterly indescribable.

I embodied, embraced, and encompassed infinity.

And then…

After that sublime moment of supreme and divine understanding… it was like a small piece of my consciousness “looked back” “over my shoulder” and “remembered” that it had this finite body it had ties to… with this body’s finite “I”…

And, in that half-breath of remembrance, my consciousness was instantly sucked away from peaceful infinity, crashing down and back into this tiny, finite body…

And suddenly I was wide awake, completely separate and finite again, and absolutely fucking terrified for it. I had never felt so terrified and painfully alone.

The boundaries of my body felt cold and alien.

The empty room I was in made me ache in my aloneness.

The darkness of the night in this strange town oppressed me.

As I shivered in my ungodly separateness, I still carried the sense of the understanding I had just come to… I KNEW that I had understood god and the universe… existence itself… I knew that it had all made “perfect sense,” if I can use such a phrase to describe it…

But my mind no longer had access to that understanding. I could not remember a single answer.

All I had left were the feelings I’d experienced while in that expanded state of consciousness.

This felt like an unbelievable and unimaginable loss in that moment and grieved it deeply.

It took me a while to get back to sleep, I think, but eventually I did sleep.

And the next day, I woke up and continued my journey to Florida like normal… I don’t really remember if I was shaken the next day or not…

I do know I made it Florida just fine, and life went on like I had not just touched infinity.

This was my first attempt at creating a galaxy background. It’s a little clunkier than the other, but I still like it!

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This whole next part… I want to delete it all.

It feels like I am trying to argue with and convince some invisible figment of my imagination—who is hell-bent on arguing against what I share—that there is value to what I am saying.

I keep asking myself what I really mean to say and share, and trying to write without attempting to counter invisible arguments 😅 but damnit, I keep failing miserably. I seriously considered deleting the entire thing and ending it without further commentary…

But there is something within me that feels that I need to include it.

And I am tired of trying to rewrite it to make it feel less like I am trying to defend my position throughout. I hope it doesn’t read strangely… I hope it doesn’t feel like I am being defensive… but I will let it be and allow you to read it as it is now.

👇

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I am 42 now, as I write this, and this night happened a long time ago. I have written about it before (probably in more detail), but have since lost that writing somewhere along the way. My memory of the exact happenings certainly has dimmed over the years… but the feelings I experienced and emotional connections created to what I understood that night will always burn bright within me.

The knowledge has forever become a part of me… whether my mind remembers it or not.

What I have been left with is a sense of a deep, stable, and secure OKness…

All is well. All is, has always been, and always will be as it should be. We are all ok.

There is nothing serious going on here.

And omg, the feeling of peace that lives at the basis of my being!

My mind can be quite the anxious storm, and sometimes it can be easy to get caught up in that stormy surface chaos.

But when I can bring my attention back to my center… diving down into the core of my beingness like a diver on stormy seas might dive down to the calm, quiet sea bottom…

Oh! The peace that is available to me there.

Even through the worst of times, I have this anchor within myself.

I wish that my words could do justice to the emotional experience.

I wish that by sharing these words, I could envelop you in the feelings they attempt to describe.

Because the mind? Your mind, my mind… cannot grasp it… and that’s probably why I was not able to hold on the mental knowledge of what I’d understood.

The finite cannot comprehend the infinite.

Our minds are the very definition and boundaries of our finiteness.

And I know that when I say that all is well, that can seem like a whole lotta fluffy, by-passing nonsense. I get it.

But the truth that I experienced IS that of peace and OKness.

There is nothing in existence that could happen that would be wrong or a mistake… nothing can be messed up in the grand scheme of things…

It all simply is what it is…

And that’s OK.

It is all experience.

Existence does not need to be saved.

In our separateness, we create pockets of experiences that are cut off from the whole, and, in those pockets, through our ignorance of the greater whole, we create the suffering… making it, therefore, seem like there is something going horribly wrong.

But this can never be so.

Yes. We experience horrors on this planet, and I am not trying to diminish the suffering that is experienced here.

But the truth is it is our disconnection that causes us to inadvertently create the painful life.

I know, I get it. Disasters and destruction… horrible acts of violence… human cruelty… there is so much in the world that makes the mind reel…

How can any of that be ok?

How can anything be ok when everything seems to be falling apart??

Well, my friend…

We humans do not have the vantage point to see the whole picture.

I do not have the answers…

I knew them for an instant long ago… and then instantly forgot them! 😉

All I DO know is that there IS a greater… order… to it all.

And that, ultimately, it IS all OK.

There is no eternal damnation.

And if we can learn to flow in and with existence, all will flow as it needs to. We may not always like how that feels and call it bad sometimes… it’s not always going to be a “pleasant” experience… but the flow IS perfect in its… lol… flow…

It’s so hard to find the words!!!

And I can hear a million people arguing with me, giving Very Good Reasons for Very Good Arguments against the OKness I speak of.

And to that, I say…

No worries. I have no desire to argue or to convince anyone of anything.

I am not here to teach.

I am just here to exist and share tales of this small blip of a finite existence of mine.

What you do with my tales? Well… that’s none of my business.

I hope it inspires you. 
I hope it speaks to you. 
I hope it touches your soul.

And, if I’m lucky…

Maybe… just maybe…

I could be the catalyst that helps YOU to someday touch infinity too…

1. Well, non-traditional by American standards, I suppose. It was not so different or strange in Brazilian culture to hold the beliefs we did. Spiritism is quite well known and widely practiced in Brazil, and I believe that it is considered, there, to be a type (if I may put it that way?!) of Christianity.