Death is an Impostor

I am so grateful, God, that you have taken me along this path…and that everything that will happen in the future will happen like it will for a divine purpose and that I am part of that divine plan and that there is an inner light in me that shines forth that envelops me and those around with love…

Scott, March 1990 Journal Entry

Following my arrival in Seattle, Jeff had told me about his friend Terry Muir. Like Jeff, he viewed life as a spiritual journey, and over the years had studied the teachings and spiritual practices of different gurus. “He’s done some really good work,” Jeff said, “and plus I think you’ll really like him.” Accordingly, he had made plans for the three of us to get together for conversation and a beer at Terry’s place later that week. After dinner on Wednesday evening, only hours after meeting with Thunder Cloud, we began the drive up the steep, narrow hillside road to Terry’s apartment. On our immediate right grew a deep forest, tangled and lush, the sharp angle of its upward growth reflecting the steepness and height of the slope on which it had thrived for unknown ages.

As we continued our climb, the headlights bouncing before us fleetingly illuminated a rich range of forest colors often hidden in nighttime shadow, shades delicate and robust, mint green to light gold to deepest emerald. Despite the “rank and file” thickness of the entangled forest wall, a few branches had broken through and arched graciously overhead, delicate foliage gently surrounding. To our left, the headlights cast into silhouette the row of grand old trees perched defiantly on land’s edge, marking the hill’s sudden and steep plunge into the depths of the valley stretching out far below. This lower realm remained always hushed in its distance, and inky black against the nighttime sky, but the higher we climbed the more it seemed as if the twinkling city lights sparkling so abundantly below shone just as the stars above.

At the very end of this street, surrounded only by forest, sat Terry’s apartment. Quite a sight, I thought as we got of the car, starry sky above, the abyss waiting just beyond the road, the warm yellow light of the home’s windows framed liquid in blue darkness. Opening the screen door to his porch, letting light pour out into the shadows, he warmly greeted Jeff and shook my hand in introduction. He had recently broken his foot and hobbled stiffly, his left foot in a cast. Sinking gratefully back into the comfortable living room sofa, he invited us to grab a cold beer from the refrigerator. He was a professional musician, I learned, and his huge cello and a music stand, sheet music flung about, filled one corner of the room.

Terry was easy to like, a soft-spoken and intelligent man. In that comfortable setting, beer in hand, we fell into a discussion about life, great mysteries, and matters of the spirit. He spoke of some of the lessons studied under the gurus whose framed pictures decorated the walls, and the three of us compared notes on our journeys. In a rambling, easy discussion, we talked about the experience Jeff and I had shared that afternoon with Thunder Cloud, the infinite variations on the theme of a spiritual journey, and the purposes of meditation. In a very short time, it seemed as if we had known each other for years.

And we were about to share an unexpected and powerful experience. “The most effective meditation I’ve found,” Terry told me in the course of our conversation, “is the ‘I Am.’ That’s the one that will really put you right in touch with yourself.” At that point, I didn’t make the connection between his words and those I’d heard from the psychic in St. Petersburg almost exactly ten years before. “What you do as you breathe in and out, finding your center,” he explained, “is to take all the ‘labels’ that you might identify yourself with, all of your defining characteristics, and just toss them all onto a great big pile. Give ‘em up. Take ‘Paul the lawyer,’ then ‘Paul the author,’ ‘Paul the man,’ then ‘Paul the gay man,’ and so on, cast them all on the pile. And then see what you have left. The deeper you’re ready to go, the more you’ll be willing to give up.”

“And finally,” he paused, “what is left?” He casually looked my way as if he may or may not have been expecting a response, but none was forthcoming. I found the idea disturbing, almost agitating, and told him so. I quickly retreated to my intellectual mind. “That seems useless,” I complained, “like peeling away the layers of an onion and not getting anywhere.” I was proud of my accomplishments, proud of the reputations I had earned over the years as a man, an attorney, and an artist. I was proud of having been Scott’s lover, and proud of carrying his memory. If I’d acquired all these qualities through hard experience, paid the high price required by many of these facets of my life, should they not remain part of my spiritual search? To my ears, Terry’s “meditation practice” sounded like self-sabotage, even self-annihilation.

I now understand that the practice of which he spoke was oriented not towards the casting aside of one’s essential identity, trivializing life’s hard-bought lessons and discarding precious experience acquired along the way, but rather toward freeing oneself, coming to understand how much more we are than any of the labels or limitations we or any others might have attached to ourselves. The core of the practice was not nihilism, but rather a stripping away of the tawdry baubles that serve only to mask our true glory. I also see more clearly now another reason why the idea so offended me on such a visceral level. Only months before I felt that I had lost Scott forever, and been able only to helplessly stand by as each of his unique qualities and the totality of his wealth of experience was sucked into an infinite black void. And before that all of Rob’s attributes had been similarly lost to the world, and a host of others’ as well. Terry’s innocent suggestion reawakened in me those layers of pain, carried unaware.

Standing in the Shadows of Love P. Crockett

“How come Scott’s on the other side,” I fired back at him in frustration, “and he gets to keep his personality and I don’t? That just doesn’t make sense.” Gentle Terry, somewhat stunned by the ferocity of my reaction, sat quietly for a moment as he gathered his thoughts. Picking up on the tension in the room, Jeff turned my way and interjected with the suggestion that “You might want to think about just giving it a try to meditate on the words, ‘I Am,’ and see what that does for you.” He paused for a moment, glancing quickly over at Terry and then back toward me. “Maybe the feelings will follow.”

At that precise moment, time suddenly seemed to stand still. Jeff’s body seemed to visibly sink down into his chair, his body loosening like a marionette’s and appearing to vibrate, his eyelids fluttering. The air in the room suddenly turned radiant and golden, taking on an almost liquid texture, or that of a thick cloud. As an intense and undeniable energy filled the room, I felt almost unable to move, my entire being vibrating. On one level, I thought “What is going on here?” On another, all I could do was experience the wave now crashing over the room, catching up the three of us within its powerful wake. I could recall experiencing this level of energy only once before, during the phone conversation with Daviea just before the first channeling on Easter Sunday. As within a dream, I looked toward Terry and Jeff and saw them, impossibly far away, vibrating but at the same time frozen in place. Ordinary perception had been turned on its head. The colors, textures and sense of depth I’d always known had suddenly fled, leaving in their stead a bizarre tableaux that might as well have depicted a different dimension, vibrating intensely yet nevertheless fixed in the flatness and distance of a sepiatone photograph.

As if in slow motion, Jeff turned his head toward me, eyes half open, and slowly said “Scott is standing there by you, smiling. He’s put his hand on your head.” Just then I seemed to sink deeper within the chair, surrendering to the overwhelming energy now vibrating strongly within and all around me. Speaking from within his vision, Jeff continued. “He’s trying to reach you face-to-face in order to remove your doubt.” Even as he spoke within that waking dream, I heard echoes of the exact words I’d heard from Denise Molini a few days before back in Miami Beach. “You and Scott chose this path, and are living out your plan.” After pausing for moments that seemed an eternity, he went on. “He will heal you. He will show you the love that is in you, and he will help magnify it. You will come to understand, and then you will be. You will then see together what will happen from that. You will understand what is happening, and be free.“

Though the occurrence seemed to last hours, possibly a lifetime, only a few minutes had passed by the clock. The air within the room was once again clear and still, and Though the occurrence seemed to last hours, possibly a lifetime, only a few minutes had passed by the clock. The air within the room was once again clear and still, and Jeff’s eyes suddenly opened. He knew that something powerful had transpired, but had no memory of what he’d seen or the message he’d conveyed. Indeed, we had all been so physically affected by the energy in the room, the pure power of the presence, that the verbal messages seemed almost secondary in importance. At times, words can indeed be cumbersome.

We talked a little afterward, but all somehow knew that the evening had run its course. Shortly thereafter we hugged Terry, said our good-byes, and headed back home for a good night’s sleep.

To:: Chapter 35