Scott, April 1996    Channeled Writing

During the weeks that followed, back home and one foot firmly planted in each world, I experienced an existential crisis of spiritual identity. I knew matter and had tasted spirit, but where was my home? By some measures my life continued as before. I continued to seek my own balance, practicing law, exploring with my paints, and devoting my efforts to community education about the legal issues raised by HIV/AIDS through the writing of regular newspaper columns and frequent lecturing. Externally my life continued to unfold as before, but I had undergone a sea change within. Scott’s passing had suddenly and irrevocably changed me, leaving me no choice but to confront and come to terms with the searing anguish of my heart’s loss.

I had taken my first steps toward learning to live in a world without him, only to grow into a realization that that brutal course was unnecessary. Over the course of time, he had succeeded in reaching me through the pain, reassuring me that he was not lost after all. Though I felt blessed by the messages of comfort, somewhat in awe of the spiritual process I perceived to be unfolding, I became aware of a profound sense of displacement. What was I to do with the love I felt, and the information I was being given? Fundamentally, I wondered “Which is the real world?” If the messages being received by me were genuine, and the process correctly understood, the implications were vast. Of what significance now was my job, the day-to-day drama that surrounded me? I knew there was work to do, that a bottomless sea of human suffering constantly cried out for relief, but had also begun to feel that nothing was exactly as it seemed.

Not sure of much, I nevertheless had no doubt that a breathtaking new vista was being shown me, one opening door at a time. With each sign, each new message, I began to perceive intimations of a vast new reality, one of great beauty and one wholly beyond our experience. I had been pushed beyond the limits of empiricism, forced to begin the process of awakening from the dream of life here. Had he not promised the powerful gift of awakening in the Easter Sunday channeling, pointing out that Our whole experience together was dream reality was metaphor? I was indeed starting to perceive life in a different way, paying careful attention to the layered levels of meaning just beneath the surface. For the first time I found that the invisible, that realm beyond the limits of my five senses, had become crucially important to me. Though the world remained the same, my perspective had shifted on its axis.

Scott had indeed led my heart on a new journey. In the unfolding of his messages I began to perceive that the limits of time and distance, still so real to me, no longer existed for him. I found myself somewhat disoriented, my exact coordinates uncertain, but my intuition offered strong assurance that I was on the right path. Deep within, I trusted the love still burning within me for Scott as my surest guide. Against the bright light of that inner reality, my job and all the other externals of my life seemed to diminish in importance, fading almost to shadow. At the same time, I knew that I was still here for a reason, and that my mission was not yet complete. Your love of life is my legacy, he had told me, and I sensed him telling me to plunge in, to embrace the experience before me with gusto. Far from stripping life of its meaning and passion, my shift in perspective seemed to open up vast new possibilities in savoring its textures. My receptiveness to new connections enriched my understanding, leaving me newly aware and open to new layers of meaning, but created no barriers to my experience.

As I grew to understand and appreciate the ongoing vitality of our connection, my wonder grew as to the mystery of its meaning. In the first channeling, he had assured me that we were still on the growth path together, both where we need to be. Through Denise, he had offered the provocative reminder that we had chosen this situation, elected Scott’s death and my continued survival, for some greater purpose. That decision had been made not here, on the level of the conscious, but according to the purity and ancient knowledge of two souls. Scott, now freed of the limitations here and back in the soul, could once again see clearly and remember the reasons for it all. What had he remembered? And, once again bathed in clarity after such a long, long journey, why was it so important that he reach back to share with me what he had found?

If our experience together of life and death here on Earth had indeed reflected a larger joint venture of the spirit, one persisting beyond the limits of death, could I begin to let go of some of my pain at his passing? If his suffering had represented a sacred gift, serving some holy purpose and in some manner advancing the growth of his soul, could I find a measure of peace with its painful memory? And perhaps I was indeed meant to stay here, to keep on living, as he embarked for glory. I had been filled with pain at his death, and guilt at my survival, but was it not possible that, on the level of the soul, I had made the greater sacrifice in agreeing to remain behind until our plan was fulfilled? In the first channeling, he had communicated that If the tables were turned you know I wouldn’t have been able to do as well as you’re doing. Was that statement more than a simple message of comfort? Might that decision have been reached for a good reason, reflecting a sacred intention and based upon an infinite view now beyond my grasp?

I thought back to Jeff’s trance state that Wednesday night in Seattle. Incomprehensible energy coursing through me, the air in the room fairly golden with the spirit’s efforts to manifest physically, I had heard him say “You and Scott chose this path, and are living out your plan.” If so, what was the reason for this agreement, and where exactly was this “plan” taking place? More importantly, where was it leading us? What was the larger spiritual purpose being served? And why had both Jeff and Denise, strangers to one another and living in opposite ends of the country, been moved to share with me an identical message from Scott: “He is trying to reach you face to face, in order to remove your doubt?” Were his efforts somehow part of this agreement between us? What exactly was I to do with the loaded information I was receiving?

I could not know.

To:  Chapter 38

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

Scott, April 1988       Journal Entry

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

John Lennon  (1940 – 1980)

How could I have known that Friday morning, the morning of the death of my beloved life partner, Scott Richard Gillen, that I was standing on the threshold of a miracle? There in the bedroom we had shared, looking down at his dead body, I had never felt more assaulted, or alone. With his passing it seemed as if love had forever slipped between my fingers, every door been forever slammed shut on me, all light extinguished from my life. I found myself horribly, irredeemably alone, in a world that no longer seemed my home. I knew not where he had gone, but knew beyond doubt or reason that part of my heart had gone with him.

As an added twist that felt like torture, after Scott’s death I could somehow not remember what he looked like, or the sound of his voice.  I did in my dreams, of course, but not while awake.  In a way, I still cannot.  To this day, I do not understand why, though I have some ideas.

With all of my soul, from the very beginning, I burned with a desire to know where this one I so loved had gone. I had always been a spiritual seeker, searching here and there for the divine peace about which I’d read, but suddenly my passion to really know, to look beyond the veil, had been lifted to a new level. For the first time, I had lost to the other side the one I loved most on Earth, my best friend, life partner, advocate and playmate. Even through my pain and sickening disorientation, my mind raced as my soul began grappling with questions that had suddenly become fundamental to me. Where was he now, and where had he gone? Had part of me not been taken with him? Why had I been left behind here on this sterile promontory, so alone and so far from our spiritual home? How could I be in such pain and yet standing here still?
After Scott had stopped breathing, I called emergency rescue on one line and some friends living nearby on the other. He was dead, but had clung to life with such tenacity, and such joy, that the possibility had not even occurred to me. I had never met anyone with a lust for life to rival Scott’s, and it never seemed as if the Dark Angel would be able to get the better of him in a fair fight. So when the troop of paramedics finally rushed in, asking brusquely and matter-of-factly “When was the last time you saw him alive?,” shock broke over me like a wave. All they could do was say “Sorry, he’s flatlined. There’s nothing we can do,” and turn away from the uncomprehending anguish of my stare. There was no way I could have known that day, much less accepted the fact, but it was Scott’s time.
So I asked everyone to leave the room, to leave me alone with my baby. I laid beside his body on the floor, hugged his still chest, and began to grieve from the bottom of my soul as I felt the warmth leaving his body. Crying out in pain, I told him that I loved him and that I always would, gently shut his eyes with my fingers, spoke soft words of love like a lullaby as I brushed his hair, cleaned up his face, kissed his cheek. There was nothing I could do, but loving him was all I could do. As I looked at his body, I knew that this was in no way him, that it had simply been a shell for which he had no further use. No, this really wasn’t him, I knew, but what had become of him?

How could it be, I anguished, that such a soul could be lost to us? It seemed worse than meaningless. He had packed a full lifetime, perhaps overfull, into his thirty-six years. What had become of his memories, the rich tapestry of his life experience, his dreams, longings and desires? Had they all come to naught? Were they all extinguished suddenly in the black void of death? If so, what’s the point of life? How could this be part of any divine plan? Indeed, how could there be a God to allow such a bright light to be snuffed out so untimely?
They finally took the body away, leaving me truly alone. I found myself deeply wounded and sick at heart, with little energy or will with which to face the journey that lay ahead. In the heart of my heart I cried out silently in anguish, but there was no one to hear.