Freaky Friday

Somehow, my consciousness had gotten into the body of a person I used to know when I was in high school.  His name was Lang, except now my mind was in his body instead of his.  I was tall now and I don't know if it was him or that I was not used to a tall man's body, but I was clumsy.   I tried to not move around too fast and I kept quiet because although I had tried to explain the situation to others, I figured they probably thought I was crazy or was just trying to fool them.  Since he was not even from my culture, I did not know how to act like him either, I couldn't even speak his language.  Walking along the path at school with Lang's friends, many of which I also knew when I was myself, I wondered how long this situation would last. 

Later at Lang's home, I was having even more trouble.  A family has its own pace.  Members instinctively know how to fit in and what to do.  The pace here was totally different than where I had grown up.  An old auntie was making fun of how I didn't apparently know how to use the dry erase board, but the pen had gone dry and was not marking sufficiently, how was that my fault I wondered?  I was irritated with her but I didn't say anything.  I had become a very quiet and depressed person.  I didn't know any of the people around me.  Although I had known many of Lang's friends as myself, their relationship with him was different and now I felt cut off from them. 

Thinking about it further, I realized sexually, I was still attracted to men even though I was a man now.  That would mean as a man, I would be a gay man, an added problem for fitting into society, and I didn't think Lang's family would handle it well either.  Looking around, the chairs seemed so small now and the room so closed in, I was a big man now and in comparison, everything seemed so much smaller.  I realized I would have to move out soon and live on my own.  I wasn't going to be able to fit in here.  It felt almost claustrophobic.

Someone came over to visit, he was an older African American, which confused me a bit because Lang's family was Asian.  The man teased me that I must have stayed up all night playing around if I was only now just waking up.  I said, "Why, what time is it?" and he said, "3:30PM."

I was shocked it could be so late!  So much so that I didn't believe him.  I roamed around the house looking for clocks and they verified what he said.  What did we do last night?  I couldn't remember.  But I realized I would be late getting products shipped by 5PM for work.  Today's buyers would have to wait until tomorrow for their items if I didn't hurry, but how to get to work?  Somehow I had gone from issues of a high schooler to work issues of the current time frame.  Where was I exactly?  I tried to think about work but couldn't even remember my vendors.  What if I couldn't source my product, how would I make my living?  I was getting more confused and anxious by the second.   I worked hard to convince myself it would work out somehow, just as it always does in the end. 

Then I woke up in my bed.  Still worried about time, I checked my clock but it was still early in the morning.  I was so relieved! 

The Place That Sounds Like Aum

For much of my life, I considered the whole concept of sitting cross legged with a few fingers pinched together chanting 'ohm,' or 'aum' to be really rather quite a silly thing altogether. Sometimes tradition can get rather weird and I could see no benefit to making such a pose and speaking such a noise. The concept of meditation itself made some potential sense to me but many of the trappings did not. Therefore, I doubt I had even once seriously considered that the sound 'aum' might have any significance whatsoever. To me, it was just some silly tradition.

Then one night something changed. Sometime in my early 30s I think it was, I had a weird dream experience. In the dream, I was at a place where there was a deep intense vibration. The vibration penetrated everything, and although intense, it was also strangely relaxing. It made you want more of it. In a way, the vibration was the experience but yet it was so much more than just a mere sound. Somehow, it was all the sounds of 'ohm' at once, the 'o' sound and the 'm' sound as well, all at once constantly. And forever and always was/is.

In this place/experience, I somehow just KNEW that this place, this ohm thing, was the foundation, the underneath of everything, it was that which was underlying all things. It was the underpinnings. I saw in my mind a kind of flat plane that goes on forever and a kind of gridwork that spreads out across space. The plane was flat yet it also slightly pulsed and vibrated. But I suspect this was just my conceptualization of it but not particularly how it might actually look, if it even has any real appearance to it such that light waves project to us here on Earth. I saw and experienced this for a while, and then I woke up.

Since that day, I have a new found respect for 'Aum.' Later research on the internet showed me that Aum is sometimes called 'the Primordial Vibration.' That seems a good name for it, although my only quibbling dislike about those words is that they in some ways imply that the Aum is in the past. I am sure that is not right. The Aum place is definitely in the now. I am sure it is down there right now underneath everything. You just can't quite remember it right now, but if you were to shift your consciousness just so, then you would remember it again.

In some traditions, aum is considered symbolic of this or that or whatever. I found I wanted to totally ignore all that talk. To me, Aum is the sound of that place/time/experience that underlies all things. It seems now obvious to me the word Aum is used because that is the sound you hear when you are there. There is so much more to that place/time/experience but perhaps the sound is the easiest for a couple of simple little Earth based brain cells to understand. Most of the rest of the Aum experience/place either can't really be understood well by the Earth brain cells or can't easily be put into words. I am sure that others have gone to that place/experience as well and they heard the same thing as me and Aum is such the obvious name for that place that many of them likely called it the same thing. They knew this sound was important somehow, this primordial vibration called Aum.

Personally, I don't know if actually chanting the sound really has much impact. Making the sound is not the same thing as that place. Or maybe the replicated sound could carry the tiniest little fraction of that place, a tiny influence on the psyche or a tiny reminder of what is underneath. A tiny of fraction of a very powerful thing could actually be more than a tiny thing after all.  In that way, maybe it does have some effect. And maybe you get more of whatever you focus on, even if your focus is dim. And maybe it will work if you believe it will work because belief itself has incredible power. So believe on! , all you folks who believe. Because belief has power and now that I've been there, That Place That Sounds Like Aum is, imo, a pretty darned cool place indeed!

Changing the Old Programs

I looked at the brain in front of me, not literally at it, but at a conceptualization of it, as if it were a whole item, not split in hemispheres, and not in its real physical shape but as an idea. To me, it seemed more like a dark grey half sphere resting on its flat side, an intact package containing innumerable programs, similar to computer programs. Some of these programs were big but so many of them were very tiny swirls and they all interacted to create the whole package. What we were doing was changing all of the programs, every one. It was our mission. All of them would change. I felt confident about that.

Fractionally my thoughts shifted and I remembered we were not changing all of the programs, we were only changing all of the OLD programs. We could not change the new programs, only the old. The programs that were intermediate in age would be effected in some intermediate way but exactly how didn’t seem important to me now. Minor details! What mattered was the old programs would all be changed and the new programs would not. The rest would sort itself out.

My perspective shifted again and the brain was all around me now. I was using it, thinking with it. I noticed it felt the same as it always did. My thoughts and consciousness still felt the same. I wondered if perhaps that was because I was in the part that was new programs that had not been changed.

I felt myself traveling upwards towards wakefulness and shortly after one last big shift, I was there in my bedroom awake and pondering the strange dream. I would have to write this down surely, I was thinking, but soon I was drifting off again, only to be woken again rudely by the sound of someone pounding vociferously on some sheets of plywood. Except I realized there was no plywood. The sound and the plywood were all in my mind and I had a strong feeling it was an effort by my mind to convince me to wake up and remember the dream about my brain. It was important somehow.

Eventually I drifted off again anyway but did manage to suddenly remember the dream halfway through the next waking day. Maybe the plywood interruption was just enough to do the job.

I have felt a bit strange lately. I wonder if my old programs really are changing.