Mystical Experiencer: Woman in her mid-twenties
Submission date: October 25, 2023
Current location: Sweden
Age at time of experience: 19
My heart was breaking over the fact that a distant friend of mine’s sister’s child had died in the womb. I was extremely hungover and stressed out having just been to London for an interview at a prestigious art school and then having had too much to drink afterwards. Was feeling very wired.
Talking to this distant friend of mine (the same one I mentioned earlier, the one with PTSD who used to talk about spirituality sometimes) on my way to the airport. Panicking on the airplane because I couldn’t distract myself from the horrible thought of having to give birth to your dead child. Running off the airplane to the nearest toilet in the airport. Crying. My friend messaging me something like “I can’t even begin to understand what my sister is going through right now.” Me saying, “You’ll never understand exactly what she’s going through. But you can feel with her. Feel the same feeling she’s feeling, and that’s enough.”
I realised in that moment that we would never be able to see inside someone else’s view completely, but that we can feel with people and that no conceptual understanding is necessary when we just feel into another’s experience. This brought me to a state of unconditional love in which space, time, and distance didn’t exist. I was myself, my friend, my friend’s sister, and the child too, and I was none of us.
I realised love is the “glue of the universe”, and that this is where everything comes from and what everything essentially is. This is all there is to it. A voice said to me, “Don’t worry, everything is going to be okay with the mother. She’s going to grow through this. Everything is okay.”
I really wasn’t convinced of this, but something within me trusted this “voice”, which wasn’t really a voice, but more like a quiet message. I had this insight that nothing really dies because the love that we are is always here and it never changes. When someone dies, they change form, but the essence is still there, and the love you once felt for another can always be felt and bring you into unity with that person (and everything else too).
I was experiencing deep grief, heartbreak, loss, and endless love at the same time over a situation that really didn’t have much to do with me. I honestly didn’t know the person I was talking to too well and had never met his sister either. It felt both personal and related to the context and very much not like I had to do with it at all. It just felt like it was time to break open. And besides, I’d never heard about stillbirth, so my mind had no framework for what it meant at all, and, when I understood what was happening, I had no prior experience of it, so I couldn’t compartmentalize it.
My hungover state also made me less resistant to my own emotions than usual. I had also had an experience on acid 3 weeks prior in which I realised my self was completely superfluous and that I was really part of an infinite web in which all forms arise and disintegrate. I realised my self was a recollection of emotional imprints from my past and that there wasn’t much more to this signature that I call myself than there is to a rock or a tree. It’s just part of the environment. It belongs to everything and is part of it too.
This also relates to an experience I had when my father died when I was 5 and the world was very large and very empty at the same time. Everything was quiet sameness.