Doesn't Anybody Believe Me?

 

I can never get Indra’s Net out of my head. It has been introduced and I will never not think of reality in this way. Years before I knew about this Buddhist tale, my dearest Buddha, my father, slipped away. I asked for a meeting, about a month after his death and he came to visit me in a dream.

 

The account of that dream follows:

DREAM

 

Sometime in the night, I had a very realistic dream. I was in a hallway; it was something like a nursing home. It almost had a hospital feel to it. I noticed a few rooms. They were large rooms with hardly any furniture in them. The rooms were not perfectly tidy. They weren’t dirty, they just had an old and worn feel to them. The carpet was worn, slightly soiled and blue.  At the end of the hallway, there were two stainless steel doors that looked like they’d just push open. Those doors looked brand new and they stood out from the rest of the place. There seemed to be a gold, glowing light shining between the cracks and around the hinges. The doors seemed less real than the rest of the dream. They had a dream quality to them.  I heard a noise from the last room on the right. It was almost like the sound of a glass hitting the floor and shattering; but not quite. I went in and there sat daddy. He was sitting on a small coffee table, directly in front of a TV. There wasn’t anything else in the room. He was leaning over, picking up something on the floor. This was the noise I had heard. It was something like large jewels. I think they were gold diamond-looking jewels. He was putting them back in a glass jar. The jar looked like almost a gallon maybe. It seemed as if he had just knocked them over when he had sat on the table.

He was wearing his red flannel shirt with black checks. I guess you’d call it plaid. He had a hat on and grey pants. He looked good. He looked like himself five or six years ago.

“What is that?” I asked him; referring to the jewels.

“Hair.” He said.

I didn’t get it, but I knew we were in a special place. I was completely aware of the fact that he was not alive in the physical world and I was aware that this was a special meeting on the other side somehow. I think there were only four large rooms. Two on either side of the hall. I wondered why others weren’t there meeting their deceased loved ones. With all the wear, I figured these meetings must happen all the time. I asked him if he’d seen anybody else and he mentioned one of his brothers. I don’t know why I forgot, but I think he said  he’d seen JP so far. Somehow, I knew this wasn’t “Heaven”. It was some place where we could meet, but it was between here and there somehow. He stood up and we walked out of the room. I looked to the steel doors but he sort of guided me away from them. I was thinking that “Heaven” must be beyond those doors. We started down the hallway in the direction from which I came. We had our back to the steel doors and I realized he was walking me out. He was to my left and I put my left arm around him as we walked slowly down the hall. He put his right arm around me. I asked him how he was doing and he said, “Kind of lonesome right now.”

I felt as if he was dealing with his own grief as he had to leave us. He knew much more than we do, but he was still aware of the fact that he wasn’t  right here with us. This was the first time I ever considered things from his point of view. He would love to be able to visit us and comfort us. He’d love to spend time with the grandkids. But he was limited and somehow aware of his limits. I am not sure if he can come and go to this somewhat neutral place. Thinking back, it seems like it must have been a place where people who have passed away can meet with the living. That’s why the furniture was so sparse maybe. I remember thinking that the hair-jewelry was something he could use whenever he got ready for new hair. I supposed he must have other jewels for other things; like youthful skin and bones. I never asked but I figured it worked this way.

By now, we were at the end of the short hallway and I could see a surprisingly short flight of stairs descending there. These steps, I knew, would lead to an exit and I’d be in this world again. I was completely aware that I was dreaming and I knew I only had a few more seconds. “You know I’m here, don’t you?” I asked daddy. Somehow, I thought he needed assurance instead of the other way around. But he didn’t.

“Oh yeah,” he said, “All the time.”

I noticed, as we got closer to the stairs, he got older and more feeble. At the end of the hallway, at the top of the stairs, he didn’t have the same clothes on. He had on the T-shirt and pajama bottoms he died in. He was smaller and weaker at this point. 

And then he just faded right out of my arms and disappeared. I spun all the way around looking for him. I wanted him to come back. But I knew this meeting was over. I looked at the stairs and took one step down and woke up.

I don’t think he feels lonesome except for when he is closer to this side. I believe, as much as we’d like to be with him, he’d like to be here too. He never said so, but I felt as if he was missing the grandkids the most. Even though he has keen awareness of how it all works, he is sensitive to our sorrow and he would like to be able to do more to comfort us. He’ll do what he can, but we’ll have to get used to the limitations.

That was from October 17, 2009, 15 years ago.

 

I still remember that dream very well. I remember the comfort it brought to me at the time too. That was such a difficult period in my life. When we speak of the death of a loved one, we sometimes use terms that would make it seem like our fault; “I lost him,” we say, as if it was somehow our job to keep an eye on our loved one, or we were supposed to hold them.

Did I lose my dad? Did he lose me? Did he lose his life?

These are certainly the most difficult questions aren’t they?

I know that my own passing is just around the corner; no matter how many more years I get. I will be leaving my sweet nieces and nephews and I will be leaving two grandsons too.

God knows I don’t want to, but nature has a way of oscillating. I won’t lose my life, but Life will allow me to fall to the ground, in the same way that a brown, drying leaf falls to the ground. But I already know that I carry on.

It is the strangest thing to consider, but Life does go on.

If only you could see me as I am. I am, as Alan Watts said, “a people.”

Alan Watts would say that the earth peoples. He said that we did not come to earth, but are of the earth.

Why is this significant? I am Uncle Mark. I am Gaga. But I am mostly just another plant which has grown out of the earth and will surely decay right back into it. I will be back.

It is not a stretch to imagine an innocent person being killed today in some random bombing in some random war. Where do they go?

That person falls and Life goes on.

Why will their loved ones grieve? Because of the oscillation of Life as it dances away from their loved one and into the atmosphere.

Does the persona carry on?

This is the most difficult part for me, but I don’t believe the persona carries on. This makes me feel sad, but the loss is not as real as it seems.

I see this change as an abrupt oscillation as opposed to ones which seem to be more spread out; as in the case of someone going from being 5 to 25.

When we observe someone at 5, and then follow them to 25, we see changes which completely replace the younger persona with an older persona. It is the same oscillation we could consider when we see our departing loved one and then we see that persona replaced with a baby.

You might hold a brand new baby and say, “This baby looks and behaves nothing at all like Uncle Mark.”

But someone else, holding that same baby, then separated from that baby, and reunited in 25 years might say, “This adult looks and behaves nothing at all like the baby I remember holding.”

We cannot really work this out with thoughts, but who we are really trying to discover is The Constant. No matter who we are referring to, The Constant is never what they are in this moment. They were not that persona some time ago and they won’t be that persona in time to come. Ah, but Who they are is none of that.

You will never die, but Who you are going to be has very little, or nothing at all, to do with Who You Are Now.

 

 

Do you worry about what or who you will forget? Chances are you have already forgotten people. Chances are, you’ve already forgotten places or events. If memory was what we needed in order to make it to the other side, we are doomed for sure; we lose memory along the way and it only gets worse whenever we leave behind a body of experience.

Go back and watch the scene where Dorothy wakes up:

(I am purposefully leaving out the dialogue from others here.)

“Oh Auntie Em, it’s you.”

“But I did leave you Uncle Henry; and that’s just the trouble. And I tried to get back for days and days.”

“But it wasn’t a dream; it was a place; and you, and you and you, and you were there, oh, but you couldn’t have been, could you?”

“No Aunt Em, this was a real, truly live place. And I remember that some of it wasn’t very nice, but most of it was beautiful. But just the same, all I kept saying to everybody was, ‘I want to go home.’”

“And they sent me home.”

“Doesn’t anybody believe me?”

 

As a little boy, only seven years old, I sat beside my Grandmother’s bedside as she lay dying. “Oh Lord,” She prayed, “Please take me home.”

I was naturally confused by this, but her desire to go home was completely natural.

When my Grandmother woke up from the real, truly live place where she had been traveling for the 80 years prior to that moment, she instantly woke up and said, “I remember that some of it wasn’t very nice, but most of it was beautiful and all I kept saying was, ‘I want to go home.’”

Then, on September 21, 2009, my Daddy died and woke up and saw his Aunt Emma. “Oh Emma, It was a real, truly live place.” he insisted.

Somewhere on this same journey, I will suddenly wake up and I will see Bill’s dog, Emma. I will reach down and I will pet Emma and I will say, “Oh Emma, don’t you remember? It was a real, truly live place. And I remember that some of it wasn’t very nice, but most of it was beautiful.”

So do I presently believe that the life I am presently experiencing is a dream? Of course not. It is a real, truly live place, some of which is not very nice, but most of which is beautiful.

But I do believe that there will come a time when I will begin to wonder if it was real. I won’t be able to verify the validity of my memory in any testable way.

The reason this will all seem rather technicolored and feverish is due to the fact that it won’t be remembered by my physical brain. The Mind in which The All conserves All thought is The Mind of The I. When I recall all that has happened to me, when I was me, it will seem unreal and real at the same time.

This will be the way the story of my life will be told, by the True First Person, when I die:

“Well, I was Mark Coker. It was really interesting. I remember growing up in a town called Powder Springs. I had a Daddy and a Mama, a sister and two brothers. I grew up and quit school and I got married and then…”

And of course, the whole story will be recalled. The memory will be there, but even I will begin to see how I used some of Life’s actors to portray folks in this story of mine.

Nobody will have actually died. No divorces actually ended any kind of actual marriage. There would be no real sickness, but the story I would tell would be filled with sickness and health.

Now

Here is the real question I must ask:

Do I believe this?

I do. I actually believe it will be even better than this. I don’t see how anyone could ever really doubt The I.