Home

If I could tell you who it was who was standing before me watching the snow stream down from the heavens like the ominous code of the Matrix streaming down on a pitch black screen prompting Neo to wake up from his dream, I would. But the man, it was a man, standing before me was me and yet it wasn't me. No, the me I saw would never be throttling another man's throat while simultaneously holding a gun to another's head. So, if it wasn't me, who was it?

As this question percolated in my mind, the code of the Matrix that was the evening's snowfall began to fall harder. The once distinct features of "my" face became more and more opaque as the snow began to form a solid white barrier. It was as if I were watching a sheet of ice form from nothing, creating an impenetrable wall between me and the man who was me but also not me.

And in that moment of observing the observer who was me but could not be me, our eyes found each other. And in their depths, a universe burst forth, enveloping the snowy landscape and all who happened to be caught in its swell until nothing was left but a single point of consciousness, pulsating at the center of a cosmic stage.

It's glow the light that gave life and warmth to all who had the privilege of calling their world home. It is this cosmic consciousness before me which I now found myself standing, my hand reaching out as if grasping something or someone with a tightness I had only vague notions of. And even though I stood before this astronomically omnipresent entity, it was as though I were looking at my reflection in a murky pond.

It was me and yet it was not, but not like before. No, this me was more vast and vibrated and reverberated throughout the whole universe, pulsating in the hearts and minds of every living creature both sentient and not. It was; he was; she was life itself, the very essence that makes all that we know of possible.

This was the enigma that danced on the tongues of all beings no matter their level of awareness. But this was not God. No, this was something more. Something beyond. An even older intelligence than the God I knew.

No, I had the feeling that this being whatever it called itself was the nexus from which God emanated. If God was our Father, this was God's Father, Mother, Grandmother and Grandfather. This was existence itself.

"Hi." The greeting tumbled from my mouth and hung in the air as still as a hummingbird. I couldn't see it, but I could feel this being, this cosmic energy smile and then its warmth wrapped around me like receiving a hug from someone who you loved dearly but haven't seen in ages.

"Welcome home, Jack. I've missed you so much."

And in that moment, the thread of reality snapped, broke and reconstituted itself, and I found myself back standing before the man who could not possibly be me, but now I knew was me. The sky's snowy tears frozen in time. Our eyes still locked. Only now I could feel the beat of his heart and the racing of his mind.

"Stop", I said. The word an unconscious reaction to the atrocity that was this man's act. Tilting his head and with an emotionless countenance, the hand holding the gun shifted so that I was now looking down its barrel. My mortality now a grave reality. His finger ever so slowly pulled back on the trigger. There was a click. Then a clack. And then nothing. Silence. But not death. Reality snapped once more, and once more I found myself standing in that cosmic void in which the entity inhabited. And once more, I felt its warm embrace, the love, the joy and the sorrow.

"Come. We have much to talk about. I'm sure you have a lot of questions, but first. Tea."

My legs moved in the motion of walking, but I was not walking. I was moving forward, or perhaps the universe was moving around me, giving me the impression of forward motion. Reality once again collapsed, and I found myself sitting in a coffee shop, sitting across from the kindest most loving person I had ever met, sipping on a cup of tea. The world was still a blur, but this being was crystal clear, wearing a dark grey cardigan over a white cotton button-down shirt. Their hands wrapped around a steaming cup of tea.

My mouth opened to speak, but instead of words, we exchanged a lifetime of thoughts, emotions and experiences with only a glance into the depths of each other's eyes.

"Yes." The being finally did say aloud.

"But." Was the only thing I could think of to say.

"Now, you see."

"Yes."

And in that instant, everything faded. The being. Myself. The world. The universe. Everything. Darkness fell like an overdue sleep. My heart was happy and my mind at ease. And in that moment, I knew who I was and who I was going to be.

And if you could touch reality and have reality touch you back in such a way that gave meaning to your existence, you would want to hold on to it until all of reality came to a crashing halt and you and it were no more.

And so I held onto the being as tightly as I had seen myself choking a helpless man in the street, wanting to never let go, and yet I knew the inevitability of our parting.

I now knew this being as deeply and as intimately as any partner I had ever known, and in that deep resonance of knowing, I understood. I understood what had to be done and why it had to be done.

But I did not like it, and neither would he.