From Wed October 17 2018
A few nights ago I was talking on the phone with Suzanne Chancellor. Our mutual friend Kelly just experienced another close up owl sighting, and Suzanne was filling me in on what had happened. Kelly was featured in the final chapter of Stories from The Messengers, her account involved getting some close-up pictures of a beautiful barred owl while on a hike.
I've since spoken with Kelly, and there’ll soon be a blog post about her experience—with pictures!
It was a beautiful autumn night, and I walked around outside as I spoke with Suzanne. It was one of those conversations where every thread seemed tangled up with everything else. Elements of Kelly's story were reflected back at both of us. It seemed like every little detail was somehow connected to a frenetic web of synchro-weirdness.
We spoke as I walked around the dark driveway of the old inn where Andrea and I live. It's a narrow dirt lane that curves through a dense forest. There is a streetlight at the bottom of the driveway where it joins the asphalt street. The light is usually on at night, but it seemed to flicker as I made my way down the driveway. It slowly turned on and stayed on as I passed under it and walked down the paved road. There was no traffic, and I headed toward an apple tree alongside the quiet road. It was dark and I managed to find an apple, but it was too sour to eat.
While walking back to the driveway, I told Suzanne how it all seemed so cinematic. The eerie way the lone streetlamp lit the road was like something out of a Steven Spielberg movie. I tried to describe the mood of the dramatic lighting as I walked.
I got to the pool of light under the street light and looked up. The lamp wasn't very bright, it’s color seemed a muted amber so I could stare right up into the bulb.
I carefully tried to position myself directly under the light above me. I moved a little to the left, then a bit the right. It only took a few seconds, but when I was positioned exactly under the the light—it went off!
I had just walked along that road for about a hundred yards, and the entire time I was talking about that light, praising its mood as I approached.
As silly as it sounds, it felt like the light clicked off as a playful thank you for my attention and appreciation.
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So what I like about that story is that it references to very famous allegories with regards the pursuit of knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThere's the metaphor of the man looking for his keys under the cone of the street light's lamp, even though he lost them far away from it --"but here's the only spot I can clearly see!" The light is a clear reference to the scope of scientific knowledge and how foolish it is to ONLY try to understand the things that are illuminated by it, when there's so much more that it's out of its scope.
And the other one is Carl Sagan's view of Science as a candle lighting our way amid the darkness of the "demon-haunted world". The demons being of course our "silly superstitions and our "stubbornness" to believe in UFOs, ghosts, etc. But the funny thing about candles is that they sometimes ENLARGES the shadows and make them even more frightening than they really are.
If you cling to the candle for fear of the darkness, you miss the chance to adjust your eyes so you can look at the stars :)
Hi Mike! This post is so lovely. And it resonates with a lot of experiences I've had, as well as experiences my brother (who introduced me to your blog) has described to me, and experiences we've shared. Specifically (although the overall mood of your story resonates with so many of my other strange memories): in a recent period of our lives that was super concentrated with high strangeness, we would often find lights burning out at home, at work, etc. More than once, I had it happen the moment I looked at a light or started walking towards it.
ReplyDeleteWe were studying Kabbalah at the time, and there was this concept that my brother was reminded of which I think you would appreciate. It's referred to as the "shattering of the vessels." I'll do my best to describe it, although I'm FAR from an expert in this.
The highest God aspect at the top of the tree of life wanted to share its light with all of existence, pouring the light down to the lower sephirot, or vessels. But the vessels at the bottom didn't have the capacity to receive and contain the light, so they shattered (like a lightbulb bursting and burning out). The shards of the vessels created the material world, and there are fragments of the light still trapped here and there, and we are sometimes lucky enough to encounter them in our mundane lives.
So, I see the symbol of lights burning out, in particular, as a reminder of the limits of this world and our little lives, and of the immensity of the higher realities and higher perspectives that we can strive for. It's like the owl on the door that you saw in the hypnotism session-- it's an invitation to go further, higher, deeper! :)
I used to have street lights go out when I came near all the time. I would joke that it was I was so brilliant the sensor thought it was daytime! :)
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