The Vanishing of Everything But Love Itself, part I
The Vanishing of Everything But Love Itself – Part 1
Since I claim to have practiced the Art of Forgiveness since 1999, people have naturally, asked me, ”Well…what happened in 1999?”
The following is an account of an unprecedented experience I had beginning in February of 1999, following a period of profound disenchantment with my life and the world in its entirety. Utter bleakness enveloped me in a total mental and emotional devastation that brought me to my knees in prayer. I begged God for a Real Solution. I wanted Love Itself to come to my aid!
An Answer came that went beyond religion, beyond everything I had tried and exhausted. I had tried relationships, material success, artistic fulfillment, deep involvement in my faith (Baha’i) and a vast array of self-help, psychological and spiritual cures. I knew I needed something that far exceeded the narrow limits of my own machinations.
Little did I know that I was asking for far to little, even though, at the time, I felt I was praying for a great thing. I did not understand that I was asking for my disenchantment, my depression, my frustration, my ego and with them–the world itself –to vanish.
My prayer went something like: “God, I don’t know what I need, I can’t do this by myself, I need your power, I just want you…and on, and on, desperately, like that.” This prayer was recited mostly on the floor, vigorously for weeks. 
After a succession of events that led up to the magnificent event described in this article, I received the Answer to my prayer. Here’s what happened:
It’s 6:00 am and I’m standing in the Continental Check-in line at San Francisco International Airport. I feel a sense of wonderment curiously laced with nonchalance. This is going to be no ordinary plane ride.
From somewhere else in another line down the terminal, a caged rooster crows, “Time to wake up!” Strange thing: a rooster in the airport. But I know the rooster and its crowing are just for me. Spirit is speaking directly to me through everything around me and, for once, I am hearing the language that I’ve longed to hear since I became aware of its absence.
“You are about to come to full awakening.”, the Voice says. This is not an imagined voice. It is certain and spoken clearly– somehow without sound or timbre.
I take my window seat on the plane. Seat B and C are taken by an older couple. The wife is nagging her husband. He is apparently ill and I get the sense that they have just visited a medical center regarding his illness. I glance over at the man who is sitting next to me. The glance becomes a gaze. “Hello”, I say. “It’s nice to see you.” And although I’ve never seen him before, he seems utterly familiar to me.
His eyes have a timeless, holy light in them, which belies his ordinary human disguise. He gives me a tiny smile of recognition. His pant leg is touching mine. Yet, I do not mind. Instead I’m aware that our physical proximity is a necessary facilitation for what is occurring in another dimension. My light body has become an energetic channel seemingly having its own will and purpose: the reclamation of projected thought. Energetic whorls spiral from my midsection into the man seated next to me and seem to be clearing out old ideas about his identity as a sick old man. I soon forget to think of him in this way.
I glance over at his wife. She does not smile. She has noticed that her husband’s pant leg overlapping mine. Still, her eyes, too, have a deep timelessness to them. They seem to glow. As I glance across the aisle and behind me, I notice that everyone’s eyes appear this way.
“Don’t sit so close to people. You’re bothering her!”, the wife nags.
“That’s all right”, I hear myself say in a soft, courteous voice. “It’s not bothering me.”
The energy spirals continue of their own accord to clean out my historical images– this time, of the wife. I watch while thoughts of: old woman with a sick husband who nags and lives a dreary existence, disappear into me. A whole ethereal happening is superimposed upon the surface of our verbal exchange.
A moment later, the three of us relax. Apparently, the clearing has come to completion in our joint release from the past. Gifts of a different order have been given through me and I have similarly received through these two souls. There is a quiet, tangible bond that now exists here, though it would be inappropriate to speak of it. Indeed, it requires no verbal communication to be understood.
The aircraft taxis down the runway and lifts off. As I climb higher through pink- shadowed cumulus clouds, I have the uncanny sensation that I am climbing into Heaven itself: it’s something like hearing exquisitely beautiful music with my whole body.
“Your assignment with these two is complete. You’ll be moving to the back of the plane now.” The Voice directs.
“Excuse me,” I say to my two traveling companions. “I’ll be changing seats now. Feel free to take the window seat. I won’t be returning to it.” I get up and move past them. I walk down the aisle to the very last row.
There is a young, blond woman in business attire seated there. She’s napping. I drop into the seat beside her and the energetic whorls become activated. “Over-privileged, too-attractive-for-her-own-good career girl.” I hear my old ideas about who I think this young woman is. They flow back into me via these fibers of energy that circulate between us as she naps.
As my thoughts empty and the whorling subsides, she suddenly jolts awake and looks around her. She is initially annoyed that someone has infringed upon her space by taking the vacant seat next to her. “Wow, you sure woke up!”, I say. “Do you remember me?” I ask her, smiling.
She looks perplexed. “Do I know you?” she asks.
“Not from here, no.” She stares at me.
“From…?”
I smile again. “From before either of us got here, remember?” I do not wonder if she thinks I am a kook. She understands me perfectly. We speak as dear friends; we both are elevated by our meeting.
I am instructed again to move to another seat. “You will meet a Friend of God. Start heading towards the forward rows. I find my new traveling companion who looks up at me and smiles as I take the empty seat next to her.
“Hi there.” We both smile. There don’t seem to be any words of explanation. We both know why we have come together. She begins to sing a chant into my ear. Simultaneously, in the other ear, the loudspeaker comes on as the grating voice of the stewardess announces landing information. The gentle Hindu chant being sung in one ear and the jarring voice of the stewardess in the other, produces the effect of my awareness being split, opened somehow. A see a golden light, a kind of elixir flowing down over my crown and forehead. I sense that this is a gift, an essential bestowal for what is about to occur.
The Voice informs me that time is about to speed up. I do not yet know that time will go so fast that material reality– everything–is about to vanish. Conversely, I feel slower, calm, completely quiet inside.
(the astonishing story continues… proceed to part two)
The Vanishing of Everything But Love, part II
About Love: Part Two
Upon deplaning, I cross through the arrival gates. While crossing through the first doorway, an energetic veil strips away from my perceptual field. Everything pops into a bright and vibrating luminosity, the very molecules appear to be moving faster. I scarcely have time to notice this, when I passed through the next gate. A second veil strips away. Bloooop!
Suddenly, I’m standing in an ocean of light! Everything, including my body, has blown to light. Waving lines of energy are emanating from the horizon in all directions and flowing towards me and through me then rolling up behind me like waves on the shore. There are no separate objects, no names. My thoughts have ceased I am pure experience, pure being. All is unified, connected in waving flows of energy, ecstatic, alive.
No matter which direction I turn my head rolling up of the waves is always behind me. This phenomenon seems to relate to the flow of eternity, as though time itself is rolling up behind me. I have no memory. There’s no link between each moment and the next, each a total NOW. Each thought is a total communication that speaks to me of the Divine.
“I” had disappeared. There was only this profound, unspeakable Love…Supreme Bliss…God
“For when the true lover and devoted friend reacheth to the presence of the Beloved, the sparkling beauty of the Loved One and the fire of the lover’s heart will kindle a blaze and burn away all veils and wrappings. Yea, all he hath, from heart to skin, will be set aflame, so that nothing will remain save the Friend..
Ecstasy alone can encompass this theme, not utterance nor argument; and whosoever hath dwelt at this stage of the journey, or caught a breath from this garden land, knoweth whereof We speak.”
(Baha’u’llah, The Seven Valleys, p. 35 & 39)
I see that “I” do not exist and, in fact, “I” never have. It has always been this…this Totality. This is the biggest deal of all, and paradoxically, because this feels so natural… it’s no big deal!
And then “I” have a thought: “One would have to exercise a great deal of sobriety to sustain such an experience.” Whoops. The following thought: “That’s the floor”..and then “Oh, yeah..that’s an escalator… that’s…an arm”, and then the whole world arises again in place of the undulating, vibrant cosmic sea..
“This must have been how I “made” the world in the first place.”, I realize.
I sit down. Something stupendous has just happened to me. This was an unmistakable experience of God. This was orders of magnitude more than I had prayed for! I have been taken by Grace into a state without time, without historical reference, a vanishing of everything but Love itself. I am forever changed.
I look around me. Although I am aware of the people and airport happenings, I still can’t see normally…my eyes are effervescent with light. I feel –within and without– intensely illuminate.
A kindly, middle-aged couple appears at my side and guides me down the escalator towards the baggage claim. It’s as if they know I need a seeing-eye dog. They happily chatter away and take me right to my bag on the carousel.
There is a certain comedic tone to the communication I am witnessing. A brightly lit confirmation and elucidation of my experience springs into existence before me. There, at the bottom of the escalator, is a gigantic sign, hugely lettered, that reads: “Knowledge of God”. Coincidentally, some book venders had set up a stall to sell some kind of religious books in the terminal. I can almost hear a Calliope playing humorously behind the scenes.
As I stand outside the terminal, waiting for the shuttle to take me back to my parked car, I’m struck by the supreme orchestration of occurrences that led me to this singularly significant moment.
I had prayed for a miracle. I had become completely devastated to find that I couldn’t seem to realize the promises being outlined in the Baha’i Writings. I had asked God to either end my life immediately or bring me a total solution.
As His unmistakable answer, I was astonished to find a thick volume in my hands: A Course in Miracles. I was invited to “A Teachers of God Reunion” in San Francisco in the spring of 1999 where I met highly skilled practitioners of the Course. There I was introduced to the ways of healing love through Singular Illuminate Mind and the principle of the Atonement as outlined in the Course (ACIM).
From the Introduction:
“This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does aim, however, at removing the blocks to the awareness of love’s presence, which is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite.
This course can therefore be summed up very simply in this way: Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the Peace of God.” (A Course in Miracles, Introduction)
I have been practicing the Art of Forgiveness ever since.
Mercy Unalloyed to you. – Oraea
Note: The content of this article is based solely on the author’s experience and is not intended to represent any official Baha’i Viewpoint.
The Exquisite Art of Forgiveness
True forgiveness is an art, it must be practiced exquisitely.
It is an art-form because, like a martial art, it takes discipline, exercise, determination and the development of latent talent within. It must be over-learned, replacing the ego’s habit of judging, defining and miscreating. It is practiced through exquisitely mindful awareness of errors of thought, and having noticed them, releasing them to correction.
Make no mistake, there is an art to letting go of judgments, stepping back and allowing the One who knows make the correction. Stepping back, where you would have formerly defended yourself, is nothing short of a highly skilled maneuver akin to dodging a bullet like Neo in the Matrix.
“All human standards of judgment are faulty, finite.” (Abdu’l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 22)
Since all our judgements are faulty, we cannot try to use our old idea of forgiveness to accomplish anything. The Art of Forgiveness is something different. It is the recognition that we do not know and so, we cannot judge. How then, can we “blame” and then “forgive” something that we have misunderstood because our the scope of our understanding is severely limited.
To forgive is to acknowledge that there is nothing outside of ones self. To forgive is a form of personal responsibility taking that leads to unified perception. To acquire unified perception is to remove the sense of separation from God. It is the Atonement (At-one-ment). It is the Ultimate Healing, it is reunion with the One, Divine Beloved. This is an exquisite experience.
All the Glory of the Kingdom is veiled if our minds are split–or not whole. Healed and unified perception is of paramount importance because minds that see truly, bless those they look upon. Healed minds can heal. They can “cleanse the rust from off the heart”. A healed mind shines Light into the darkness and releases the Comforter within.
To be forgiving means to understand that one’s purpose is to be for giving. We are created like unto God – the Great Giver. We are designed to give. And since we are a whole part of the Oneness, when we give, we are giving to ourselves. The issue then becomes not whether we are giving or not but what we are giving. Are we are extending the brightness of Kingdom through clarified perception, reflecting from a clear mirror? Or are we projecting illusions from a split mind, reflecting shadows from a mirror obscured by the dust of acquired learning ?
“Know thou that the Kingdom is the real world, and this nether place is only its shadow stretching out. A shadow hath no life of its own; its existence is only a fantasy, and nothing more; it is but images reflected in water, and seeming as pictures to the eye.” (Abdu’l-Baha’, p. 177)
If the Kingdom is the real world and this nether place is it’s shadow, then who casts the shadow? Almost all of us “make pictures” or project illusions, from our minds through our faulty judgements and have thus created a shadow world that we then react to as if it were real. This creates enormous conflict.
We do not realize that we are causing the world we witness. The good news is that because we make the world with our thoughts, we can change it by changing our minds.
Enter, the “Art” of Forgiveness.
“The holiest of all the spots on earth is where an ancient hatred has become a present love.” (A Course in Miracles, T. 26:IX)
The practice of the Exquisite Art of Forgiveness is a real, nuts and bolts, everyday occupation in which we become Wagers of Peace. We can usher the whole world into a bright new reality via the power of Unity. One mind is all minds.
“Should any come to blows with you, seek to be friends with him; should any stab you to the heart, be ye a healing salve unto his sores; should any taunt and mock at you, meet him with love. Should any heap his blame upon you, praise ye him; should he offer you a deadly poison, give him the choicest honey in exchange; and should he threaten your life, grant him a remedy that will heal him evermore. Should he be pain itself, be ye his medicine; should he be thorns, be ye his roses and sweet herbs. Perchance such ways and words from you will make this darksome world turn bright at last; will make this dusty earth turn heavenly, this devilish prison place become a royal palace of the Lord — so that war and strife will pass and be no more, and love and trust will pitch their tents on the summits of the world. Such is the essence of God’s admonitions; such in sum are the teachings for the Dispensation of Baha” (Abdu’l-Baha, ibid, p. 34)
The Exquisite Art of Forgiveness is radical, it is mercy unalloyed. It is a total relinquishment to the healing power of Love.
Heroes are being led to the field of battle…the battleground of the mind.
“Arise, O people, and, by the power of God’s might, resolve to gain the victory over your own selves, that haply the whole earth may be freed and sanctified from its servitude to the gods of its idle fancies.” (Baha’u’llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha’u’llah, p. 93)
Heroes, being led to the field of battle – the battleground is the mind.
~ D. Oraea Varis
Note: the ideas expressed herein are based solely upon the author’s experiences and are not intended to represent any official Baha’i viewpoint.
