Everything Underneath Is Moving

It’s always a bit strange, at least for me, when I visit “home.” Not what I’d call my home now, but the place where I grew up (it’s probably becoming more clear why I fumble over asking callers where they live and where they grew up). The house is what I’d call my childhood home. The same one my dad’s lived in for 26 years, and the outside still looks mostly like I remember it, just older trees, that kind of thing. But the inside has changed so many times in so many ways that I couldn’t tell you what it actually looked like when I lived there. It’s a strange kind of recognition, the shape is familiar, but almost nothing inside it is. There’s something deeper about that message but I can’t seem to put my finger on it at the moment.

This visit had some of its own unique weight to it and it’s part of why I came back to Portland completely exhausted. There’s also just something about being visiting for such a short window. You end up running around the whole time trying to fit everything in, because you know you’re not there for long. And before you know it you’re back on a plane.

I’ve holed up the last couple of days since getting back, focused on the podcast, my meditation practice, and reading (two of those three you’re probably sick of hearing about by now). This year keeps giving me these real strong ebbs and flows, more than most years I can remember, and none of them last very long before they shift into something else. I’ve been picturing it as a rowboat lately. Not totally sure what the boat represents exactly, maybe the way I’ve been moving through life, or who I’ve been in my life, but right now it feels like it’s taking on water, and I keep landing on this question of should I stay or should I abandon ship. A terrifying idea for someone who grew up in landlocked Colorado and isn’t a great swimmer. (It probably would help if I knew what that ship represented)

NOTE

I don’t think I’ve ever looked something up in the middle of a call before. I like to stay present, but I’m also a visual person, and there was a point in this one where I just had to see what the caller was describing to keep up. (More on this below)

Going in, all I really knew was that the caller works as a nurse, so I expected something clinical. Practical. Something grounded in what death actually looks like from the other side of the bed. Even with very basic information I still have some expectations of where the conversation is going to go. What I got was almost a complete 180.

The conversation ends up in a place that doesn’t get talked about much anywhere, because it tends to get labeled with a very specific term and dismissed before anyone’s really sat with it. I’m intentionally avoiding introducing the word here because I don’t want you to go into this call with a certain bias. What I can say for sure though is that I haven’t stopped thinking about the call since it happened. And more than anything, I keep thinking about lava lamps.

RESOURCES

I couldn’t leave you hanging too long without giving you some context to the very vague and mysterious description above. This week’s newsletter almost wrote itself with the amount of ideas and topics brought up during the call. It seemed kinda strange to have a different section for each of these so I lumped them all together. Almost like an episode footnotes section for all the rabbit holes you can dive down!

Robert Monroe — The call really starts here when I asked their favorite book. Monroe clearly is a huge influence on the callers beliefs and subsequently on this call.

The Gateway Process — Yes, this is a real, declassified CIA document. Monroe’s work got the government’s attention, and what came out of that reads nothing like you’d expect from a stack of government paperwork.

The Mandelbrot Set — The caller kept coming back to this shape, the same pattern repeating the deeper you zoom in, as a way of describing how they see reality folding in on itself. I got lost watching this for a little bit during the call. (You can also check out the Buddhabrot here)

QUOTE

The idea that came up for me multiple times as I was thinking about this call was Plato’s allegory of the Cave. People chained in place their whole lives, watching shadows move across a wall and calling it reality. But if they just turned around they would realize there was so much more going on behind them.

“To them, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.”

Plato, The Republic

QUESTION

There’s a line in this call that simplifies everything down fast. “You only die with your memories.” It’s sobering in the way it strips away all the things we spend a life chasing, the stuff, the status, the stuff we build, and leaves only what you actually remember and how it felt to live it. It reminds me a little of the Five Remembrances too (well, really just the fifth one). That same plain, matter-of-fact way of naming what actually stays and what doesn’t.

If that’s true, if memories really are the only thing that matter in the end, what does that change about today? What are you actually spending it on?

THIS WEEK’S CALL

Anonymous #41 — If Life Comes from Death, What if Nothing Ever Really Ends? (Listen Here)

Episode Type: Belief & Mystery. For more info about what this means check out the Episode Guide (link)

READING

With the start of July comes a new quarter, and with it, a habit I've kept for two and a half years now without ever fully knowing why: a "long" book every quarter, usually somewhere north of 800 pages. Past ones include Shogun, Lonesome Dove, 1Q84, Centennial, and The Brothers Karamazov. This quarter it's The Count of Monte Cristo, and I'm already fully in it. I should be splitting my time with Dillard’s book for book club and probably a nonfiction/education read, but every time I pick up my ereader, The Count wins.

Just finished: (Nothing finished this past week)

Currently: Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

On deck: The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche

(And if you are really curious you can always check out what I’ve read recently here)

SMILE

It’s the time of year where the fruits (literally) of my labor are starting to be realized. I have my first cherry tomatoes popping up and I couldn’t be happier. This phase will last for about a month and then I’ll be overloaded with tomatoes and other fruits and veggies to the point where I’ll be ready to be done harvesting and planning on what I’ll do next year.

(Any palm readers out there?)

Have a good life.

— Z

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