Under the House

[AllenVanAllen]

One hot summer afternoon of my fifth year, I chose to do a little exploration under the old house where I lived. My old home was not much more than a shack lifted off the soil by great gray bricks. It had no A/C unit, wall or central, just a giant attic fan that was fun to send paper planes into and watch them disappear into the darkness. The space under my house always had enough light filtering in with plenty of room - just in case I had to make a hasty retreat. I knew I could get out fairly easily if I encountered some sort of beastie. So, danger be dammed.

My entire life I've always been the anxious type, even at five and my entire family reminded me of that fact often. So my explorations went on with the same intensity I was used to. While I was under doing my grand exploration on the cool hard dirt, lying on my stomach, hands buried in the soothing earth, a feeling began to pull me from my wild fascination of the tiny creatures and their world, a sense of great calm and peace came over me. It was unlike anything I had ever felt. I began to focus on my breath and nothing else... in...out...in...out. The peace I was feeling went even deeper. Then all at once I was filled with a vision of me, or at least what I thought was me. It's as if I was a wave on the surface of the ocean... but I could also sense the great depth of that same ocean. The part of me that I knew and could see was just a teeny, tiny part of something much greater. Then a thought came to me, "Who are you? Who is Allen? What am I? At that moment I didn't know anymore. Even then I didn't understand why me - a five-year-old would ask or care about such questions. It was that moment that started me on the long path to the profound realization - there is much more to me than what I can see.

Since then, I've found that there's so much more to us than just the life experiences we've had. We are not only the sum of our physical and emotional experiences but what we truly are...is the pure consciousness we experience this universe with, which is pure bright and luminous. I've come to realize we're not merely punished flesh, we ARE life itself and our depth is unfathomable. We are the universe and there is nothing to fear...ever. We don't have to be weighed down by what happed to us in our past. We can simply learn from it and move on freely. The most important thing I've learned is that we can find a deep lasting peace when we connect to that depth that is more "us" than we even know. All we have to do to find this place is be still...

I have no idea what happened to me that day but I was changed somehow. For that experience in my life, I will be forever grateful.


Thank you. Peace :hi: