I think my dead parents are trying to communicate with me.

Obviously, I know this sounds weird. For the first 40-45 years of my life I was a pretty logical person. Then, after both my parents had died, I stepped out of the matrix and have been expanding my mind and heart and soul ever since. I’ve been doing a lot of meditating and reading/listening to many teachers like Jack Kornfield, Ram Dass and Bentinho Massaro.

So here’s the story…

PART I – THE DREAMS

Exactly two years ago I was at a 10-day silent meditation retreat in Argentina. You can read more about that experience here. Two weeks ago I finally felt ready to do another silent retreat, and this time I felt the 3-day option would be plenty. So I drove 9 hours north of my home in Montana to the vipassana retreat center in Youngstown, Alberta.

Rarely do I experience and recall vivid dreams. Historically, maybe once or twice a month I’ll wake up remembering a dream, and they have never been particularly profound. But when I was at the meditation retreat for four straight nights I had (and remembered) vivid dreams. One of them involved my deceased father and one of them involved my deceased (maternal) grandfather. With the possible exception of 1970s baseball legend Rod Carew, these were the two most influential men in my life.

The dream with my dad was super short, maybe the dream time equivalent of 5 seconds. I encountered him somewhere and we had a very brief spoken exchange about sports. This is very similar to when he was alive — we mostly talked about sports because it was the easiest common ground for us, even after I stopped paying much attention to sports.

The dream with my grandfather occurred the same night and was also brief. He was standing next to an 80-something woman who was not my grandmother. He kind of forgot my name at first, giving me a kind of “Hey…you….” like one does when they can’t remember someone’s name. But then he recovered and remembered my name. The woman he was with was heavily make-upped and seemed very sensual. In his life, my grandfather was a very conservative Lutheran businessman.

That was it for those two dreams. I don’t know if there was any deep meaning to them, but like I said, I’ve never seen an ancestor in a dream before. It felt like perhaps they were just making their presence known. It felt like maybe they are some kind of guardian angels or something? I really don’t know. It’s all speculation. And these dreams were clustered in this 4-day package with a couple other vivid dreams that don’t feel as relevant to share here now (one of them felt like I had phase-shifted into a small home library where two very wise people were having a very wise discussion, and then I tuned-out after 10 seconds like a car radio losing a station).

PART II – THE MEDITATIONS

When I returned home from the retreat, I was feeling really good (even though the prime vipassana teaching is to simply be aware of feelings/sensations and to not attach positive or negative emotions to them). Let’s say I was feeling equanimous. Balanced and grounded, but with a deeper understanding of the truth of the greater reality.

And I had a nagging question: Did I have these vivid dreams, in any part, because for each day at the retreat I didn’t drink any alcohol or smoke any weed and only ate two simple vegetarian meals per day. Is it possible that the dreams were a sign of what is possible for me if I clean up my body/antenna? Click here to read more about my body as an antenna. So I decided that I should do a test where I go clean for a few days and see what happens.

But before I could do that, the weed I was smoking was compelling me to meditate. After smoking and while sitting down watching a hockey game, my body was becoming energized, asking me to listen to it — to charge up the energy or calm down the energy or notice the energy. Something. I dunno, exactly. So I sat and meditated.

First, I was channeling the energy from my tailbone up my spine to the crown of my head. The energy was strong and my face would get all scrunched upwards, as if the energy were rising through my cheeks and eyebrows. I honestly don’t know if this was my ego-mind creating this experience or if it was something deeper. But I played with the energies, eventually deciding that I should relax since we don’t see any famous images of yogis or meditators with scrunched up faces. I was playing with the space in between my breaths by lengthening it (i.e. pausing my breath). This seemed to expand an awareness inside of me. I saw an infinite spiraling of angels, as if each one of us is an angel, but we are just at different levels of realization of that truth. I noticed many angels in my recent life who have aided me along this path. I knew that tomorrow morning’s yoga teacher is one of these angels and that I should ask her for advice. I was confused. It kind of felt like my brain was re-wiring to a greater awareness, but I don’t really know what was going on, at least not on that level. I can say that I have felt a lighter sense of being ever since this deep meditative experience last week. I no longer believe that I need to attain some higher state of enlightenment because I feel like I’m far enough along and that it will all unfold in due time.

Part III – THE MIRACLE MATCHSTICK

Which brings us to last Sunday — four days after the deep meditation experience and one week after returning home from the silent meditation retreat. I’m sitting on my new futon (which I fold out and sleep on every night) reading Jack Kornfield’s book After the Ecstasy, the Laundry
which was recommended to me by my aforementioned yoga instructor. It’s all about how the purpose of this spiritual path is not to achieve some level of constant bliss and sit in a cave for 30 years, but to continually grow in love and compassion and share that in the world. It’s about having one foot in heaven and one foot here — helping to relieve the suffering of all beings (as well as to be creative, to pay the bills, to wait in lines, etc.).

As a bookmark, I’ve been using this little informational card that I was given at the local spiritual bookstore a couple months ago. It’s the size of a business card. On the front is a graphical depiction of the 3 parts of the whole human — the lower self that interacts in this 3D world, the higher self or soul, and God. On the back is a descriptive explanation of the graphic.

As I’m reading I think “Oh shit, I haven’t told my sister yet about the dreams where I saw our dad & grandpa! I should text her now.” So I placed the book face down to my right and sat the bookmark to my left, 6 inches from my leg on my new clean futon. I text my sister the story like I shared above and then also text it separately to my spiritual California aunt to see if she has ever had any ancestor dreams.

Then I grab my book and pick up the bookmark to get back to reading.

To my astonishment, underneath the bookmark was a burnt matchstick that appeared to have been torn from a matchbook, lit, and then immediately blown out.

All I can say is I have no logical explanation for how the match got there. It feels like what we would call a miracle. The bookmark was only sitting there for five minutes. I have zero matches in this apartment and never have. The futon goes up and down every night so there’s no deep dark seam or crack like in an old couch. The match couldn’t have stuck to the bookmark from inside the book because I was just reading the back of it, it was sticking half out of the book (as bookmarks do) and if there was a match stuck in the book then it would have acted like a bookmark and I surely would have noticed while turning through pages.

Now I’m still texting with my sister, so I tell her the matchstick story after first clarifying with her that I’m of sound mind and body. Instead of dismissing me, she reminded me of a similar experience that I’d forgotten about three years ago.

My mom (who smoked cigarettes when I was in the womb but stopped maybe 5 years later) died of ovarian cancer back in 2001. In 2015 my father was dying from esophageal cancer (he smoked cigars later in life) and I was living with and taking care of him at his home in Minnesota. My sister was nearby and had her own family to care for, but she helped with my dad as well.

We were coordinating care via text, when a message that I did not type mysteriously appeared in our conversation. It said “mom”.

Again, I have no logical explanation for this. I’d actually forgotten about it because three years ago I was not very open to the idea that my dead mother could be reaching out from Beyond. Fortunately my sister kept a screenshot!

I decided that I would begin asking to hear from my ancestors before going to bed each night. Why not, right? Even though our individualist culture doesn’t speak of such things, many other cultures have deep spiritual ties to their ancestors. I’d never paid much attention to Native American wisdom because I grew up as a brain-centered logical capitalist. But now my heart is opening and I’m realizing the limitations of that particular world view.

PART IV – A KISS FROM MOTHER

This morning I woke up before the sun and couldn’t sleep, but wasn’t ready to get out of bed yet. This happens to me fairly regularly and sometimes I’ll listen to a podcast from my phone until I fall back to sleep. So I reached for my phone and the time was 4:20am. I chuckled because just yesterday I glanced at my phone and it said 4:20pm. I decided to put on a podcast called “The Highlight Real” that was recommended to me by my friend Leah. It’s from a guy who can supposedly channel extra-dimensional beings. I’m a little hesitant to include this part here, but it’s part of the story and I’m beginning to believe that these channelers are legit. At least some of them are. Some could also be charlatans. But that’s not the important part of this part of the story. At least I don’t think it is.

The important part is that I fell back to sleep and for the first time ever saw my mother in a dream. I think my sister Karin and my childhood (and still) buddy Steve were kind of with me in a cave somewhere with astroturf carpeting. I remember my mother just appeared. She looked great, like when she was in her 50s and healthy before she got the cancer. I asked her if I’m doing the right thing (by stepping out of the matrix and following this spiritual path). She responded by giving me a kiss in this loving, understanding and supporting way. Then she disappeared and I woke up, wondering if it was just some concoction of my ego or if this is all really happening.

 

TO BE CONTINUED…

I’ve been wearing the same wool shirt
every day
for eight straight weeks.
A Pendleton that belonged to my father. But it’s tiny holes are from moths or closet critters,
not from wear and tear.

Dad was more of a sweater guy.

The wool protects me from winter winds,
katabatic,
that flow down the valley
to this path I walk in the park. Next to me flows a river,
its icy water unsure of what it wants to be.
Some of it is flowing, heavily, as if carrying a burden. Some is freezing in the shallows.
And some is slushy,
transitioning like me from one state
to another. These words are like that slush in the river
aiming to be something they are not,
phasing in an out,
able to convey only some semblance of
an un-graspable truth. A cold hard wind blows in my face,
but it is not the wind that brings these tears.
They flow beneath squinted eyelids
above the glistening river
because this moment is sublime. They flow because my father’s wool shirt
could have never imagined it would find itself here,
along the banks of the Yellowstone,
where sparkling God-light
reflects blindingly atop ripples of love. But why do I write this?
What is the point in trying to share?
Will anybody get it?
Will anybody care?

 

– Kirk Merlin