Awakening From The Dream

Oh how you burn for me and that’s OK but trust me you’re now seeing through a glass darkly as once was said  The eternal mystery is very much now and will be and you will grow and learn to trust in that.

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

“You Continue to Possess Me Even Now”

Yes we had many great times didn’t we love but what you need to know my dear is that the times are not over In your deepest heart of hearts you and I share communion

Scott, November 1996    Channeled Writing

Following Dee’s suggestion, and Scott’s instruction, I continued reading carefully through his voluminous writings. He had indeed left a rich legacy in the written word, and some of his writings seemed to speak immediately to me in my current state of affairs. I first became aware of one special communication as I watched a video that had been made the day of the memorial gathering. After people had been given an opportunity to speak publicly and the eulogies delivered downstairs, the video camera was made available upstairs for anyone who had more to say in private. Scott’s dearest friend, Laura Beth Slobin, read to me from a letter he had written her early in 1993. What I heard took my breath away.

Laura had played a unique role in Scott’s life, throughout its phases. Originally a student in one of his English classes, their relationship blossomed over the years into one of deep friendship, creativity, and mutual inspiration. He took vicarious pleasure in her creative leaps as she moved to New York City to pursue her talent for writing, and in the adventures she found there. In two of the peak experiences of his life, Scott traveled there to act leading roles in plays she had written. I had never seen him more joyful, nor alive.

Visiting Laura in Amsterdam

Finally, the two co-authored a play called Aftershocks, an autobiographical tale reflecting the relationship between an HIV-positive schoolteacher painfully coming to terms with his disability and a former student dealing with shakeups in her own life, starting with an earthquake that had destroyed her home. Essentially the play dramatized the give and take of an evolving creative relationship, and during the months of its writing ideas and e-mail correspondence had flown back and forth in a frenzy of mutual creative inspiration. Now, on the video, I heard Laura read an excerpt from one of Scott’s letters.

Exactly when I was most thirsting for a message from him, these words reached me for the first time:

I wanted to do this now while I still looked good…not as good as I once did of course, but I suppose that is the nature of the “problem”…anyway…HI, here I am…and you know I never have thought that I would spend any time at all at 33 years old making a last will and testament…but then 33 seems to be a good year for that…Jesus was 33 when he was crucified…Alexander the Great was 33 when he was felled…I’m in good company…Ugh! But death has a tendency to demand profundity…When I take stock of my “stuff” I realize that I have collected more experiences than tangible goods…and I think about so many people who have touched me and impacted me and loved me…boy that list goes on…and all the people I have loved, if only for a night or an hour…the experience has been a sensual one…Obviously, right!…Paul, honey, you have been the most sensual…you know my stomach still goes flip flop when I even think about your body and your smell…It’s kind of stupid really but you make me giddy…I can’t imagine my life without you…It has been such a completing experience…Those moments lying in bed at night before we drifted off to sleep with your leg thrown over me and feeling the rhythm of your breath…it was always so safe and comfortable…like you…my gift…You’ve had all of me and continue to possess me even now…

I found the entire message comforting, but the last sentence especially haunting. Was he now telling me that the spiritual fruits of our relationship continued, reminding me that our journey was still a two-way street? In my heart, I felt that indeed he was.

Despite the recurring dark anguish in my life, it seemed that as my path unfolded I was being given message after message, clue after miraculous clue, a key to every lock, just as I was ready to receive and to use them. I suppose spiritual awareness, like grief, is a process into which one must grow, sufficiently vast to require time for processing and for healing. A few weeks later, on a day that I very much needed to hear the message, I found the following entry in Scott’s journal, dated March 19, 1990. Written shortly after our meeting, penned during class at his teacher’s desk in the classroom he had showed me with pride the weekend before, his thoughts had wandered back to the memory of that sweet sharing. In a free-flowing language of love that I now heard with new ears, he wrote:

Your consciousness pervades and when I look at the floor I see that your spirit remains and smiles up at me and beckons and I come and I look to the corner where you stood and again you are there and pull me into your arms and the room fills with wind and we are linked by the kinetic message of our psyches and the physical embodiment of commingled truth and the impression of your body lingers and tingles…knowing we could renovate the past to a glistening reality in the present and buy the memories of a house to become a home and live happily ever after amen

In this new and rich world of poetry and love messages from the hereafter, neither time, place, nor distance played starring roles. With no regard whatsoever for boundaries, our love for one another appeared to continue unabated. But if we did continue to haunt each other with our waking dream of love, I began to wonder, what was the reason? And where would it ultimately lead us?

To  Chapter 16