Words, they climb all over you

So the other night (last Friday, to be specific) I went to a party. This is not something I do frequently and almost never something I enjoy, and certainly the last thing I was in the mood to do at the time, which is precisely why I went. Laine pointed out that if I didn't go with her I'd be alone in the house with my dark, dark thoughts, and I agreed that it would probably be better for me to be around people, however much I might detest them. Plus there would be a keg there. Ain't nothin' wrong with that.

I promise, this is supposed to be an entry about spiritual enlightenment. Bear with me, people, I'm almost there.

So it took me five beers and two hours to get drunk (it felt more like work than any other drinking experience), and then it was time to go home. So Laine and two other people whose names I won't mention (we'll call them "Friend A" and "Friend B") and I headed back to our duplex - "A" and "B" were both properly trashed so Laine drove "B's" car - for a little post-party hanging out. It mostly involved sitting around and talking like pirates - which may seem strange at first, but keep in mind that whenever September 19th rolls around we're all over that baby. Anyhow. Booty was stolen, plunder was squandered, a great time was had by all.

A few minutes later "A" was ralphing Hot Zone-style in our bathroom and "B" was taking care of her. Once that had calmed down a bit, I helped "B" carry her to my bed, where I bid them both goodnight, and then I myself went across the hall and crawled into bed with Laine, who luckily didn't mind. The reason I'm telling you all this is to get it out in the open that yes, I was mildly intoxicated when this bizarre experience happened, but also to point out the weird and wonderful irony of it happening when I was feeling at my absolutely least spiritual ever.

Lying there in Laine's bed, listing to faintly muffled talking and up-chucking sounds coming from the bathroom, feeling bad for my poor hammered friends and guilty for not being better able to take care of them, I suddenly felt myself becoming One with the Source. Seriously. Like, Zen Master-style. My consciousness began to expand and reconnect with everyone and everything and everywhen, and it was totally crazy. At the same time, I found myself completely accepting it for some reason.

For just a second, there was no more separation, no more distinction between "I" and "everything else." I saw all the aspects of my little human life laid out very pretty on the table, but it was quickly beginning to seem rather meaningless; an experiment that had been interesting but wasn't really going anywhere. I felt as though I was being presented with a choice. I could expand and reunite with the Mind of God or whatever, or even just choose a new incarnation, or do whatever it is that we do when we're not hanging out here on the world's stage. OR I could decide to stay here, myself, an individual separated from everything in the universe but yet connected to everything because every rock and bird and human being is simply a unique vehicle for the Divine to experience itself - and when any given thing resonates that sense of "I AM," it is one and the same as when anything else does it: ultimately we can never be alone.

I decided I wanted to stay. Not because I would miss anyone - I mean, how impossible is that? Really I "miss" things more while I'm here because that sense of absolute all-oneness is gone, and part of me grieves to have been reminded of all those vehicles for the Divine I will never encounter here in my time on earth. But I wanted to stay, and I think it's for the same reason I ever chose a human life in the first place: as lovely as it is to just be "one with everything," there's something so thrilling and lovely and raw about seeking other human beings out and getting to know them without just being the same creature to begin with. I mean, we still are, of course, really. But the uniqueness of the human experience (on the historical and societal level as well as the individual one) is that we have chosen to forget that, and given ourselves a stage on which to act out the slow and elegant process of remembering that each of us is God. We are connected for all time, and rediscovering that connection is living and dying and falling in love and everything in between and I love it, love this, love you, everything - I love singing and sleeping and laughing and eating and smoking and shitting and exercising and making love and riding my bike and learning to walk and discovering my hands for the first time and kissing a boy in the backseat of a car and seeing a dead person made up like a wax dummy and feeling the soft mysterious alien body of a cat curled next to me and struggling through French class and being in a car wreck with my life flashing before my eyes and flying to Europe and dying in my sleep and traveling to America for the first time over the cold and undfriendly sea and leaving my paintings on the walls of caves and traveling between and underneath stars that I in this lifetime have yet to even guess about.

And usually when I have epiphanies they make my life almost difficult to get on with, because they change what every waking second after that moment feels like. But this time things have gone on exactly as before, and I don't feel particularly holy or enlightened or like I'm taking things in any better. I certainly didn't do the work that having such an experinece usually requires, but I don't feel guilty because all things happen for a reason. All I know is that I love my life and especially the people in it, love that I'm here, love that I'm learning, love that I still have so much to learn.

I love you. I love you. I love you.