Some Thoughts on Expansion

Dearest Readers:

I’ve been describing my new-ish Substack newsletter as “intimate explorations of creativity & self-healing (plus frequent odes to dogs).” I suppose this next post below falls into the category of self-healing, because any time we can expand our points of view, that is healing. Any time we can soften the mind enough to take in new information, that is healing. Any time we can recognize and realize—and truly take in— that an an ultimate level everything is actually okay, that is healing. In Tibetan medicine—and most Eastern medicines, in general—we hold the understanding that when we heal the mind we heal the body (and vice versa) and that when we expand our consciousnesses we help heal the ALL.

As I sit once again at the bedside of another beloved who is entering into the dying process (and death, to me is simply the expansion of consciousness, the dropping of the body), I am thinking about expansiveness. I am thinking about the Mysteries. I am thinking about love and life. I’m thinking about this 90% of the brain which human beings apparently do NOT use. I am thinking of sunsets and rainbows and the precious beauty of the natural world. I am thinking about Ram Dass and Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche--great guides for the journey home. I am thinking about the dream I had a few nights ago in which my father was walking off, arm-in-arm, with my stepmother (who died years ago). I am thinking about families, and how painful it feels to be judged, or to judge. And how judgment makes us contract. But how love allows us to expand. I am thinking of expansion and of stars, and of that one time my high school friend Mary Kay and I were on some beach in Connecticut, lying on the ground at nighttime, gazing at the sky, and--oh!--the stars! There were galaxies, complex constellations, and so many stars. They were vast, innumerable, beautiful beyond description. I had never seen so many starts up until that point in my life; nor have I since. Seeing them filled me with wonder and possibility and a sense of right-ness. And here I should add that we were were likely herbally high at that moment, which means our view was likely enhanced; but I remember feeling very acutely as if I were being given a glimpse of the ENTIRE universe, of the Truth with a capital-T, and I also remember experiencing such a sense of peace, of completeness--but also of beginninglessness and endlessness. (Pretty profound for a lost and confused high school weirdo, but hey, we all have hidden depths. And plant medicine conjures them up).

It’s quite possible that this was the first time in my life I felt (and understood) that everything was actually okay. But ever since that moment--and we’re talking decades now--part of me has been continually seeking that same experience. Every time I look up at the night sky, I hope to see that impossible explosion of stars, and stars beyond the stars, and to experience that feeling of liberation, of getting beyond the Self and into the realm of Truth. It’s why I do what I do.

Above I used the word “simple” to describe the dying process, the dropping of the body. Ram Dass used to tell us that death is “like taking off a tight shoe.” (He was quoting Emmanuel.) And I am noticing that--noticing how I choose to perceive death as “simple” and life--with all its messy human entanglements--as so impossibly complicated. Perhaps we are the ones who make it complicated.