" I always thought I was me - but no, I was you and never knew it ... " ~ Rumi
There was a time where I might have thought I knew what this quote meant ... but it was not until an experience in June 2015 where I truly understood the depth of this quote and even then - it took many many moons to process it.
In June of 2015, I had something similar to a near-death experience - except, I didn't nearly die. An organic experience where I went "home" - and what a profound and loving place that was. Love in a way that we are not even capable of touching on this earthly plane, it was so all encompassing and beyond words.
I was not sick or fevered, nor had I taken anything medicinal or had a sip of drink. To this day I cannot tell you how or why this experience happened except to say that maybe Creator, God, Source, the Universe, whatever name you might choose for that magnificent Higher Power - that maybe they thought it was time for me to remember something important, profound, to understand who we really are, the immense capacity and depth of our soul ...
I was to experience something that I was not capable of ever dreaming, imagining or even beginning to make up. I was not studied in deep mysticism topics nor physics. Without a doubt though, I knew I was "home" ... the soul place, heaven, the promised land ... whatever term you might prefer for that.
I like to amuse myself and think that Creator left the back door open and maybe I snuck in for a peek - but truth be told, I do not know how I got there nor do I know how long I was there. Somewhere in the span of 25 minutes, I was there and back again.
It could have been a nano-second or something that spanned minutes. I will never know. It felt like I was there for a while though, longer than the clock would register if that makes any sense - and I will be forever grateful.
Everything in my life changed in that moment.
It was love, it was light in a way that we cannot even imagine seeing light here. It was harmonic, it was multi-dimensional in a way that even 7+ years later, I still have no words for.
I was there. You were there. Everyone was there. Even the ones that might chafe us or break our heart on this earthly journey. I know that can be hard to imagine, it might even sound crazy to some, and I am okay with that. It can be hard to imagine such depth and magnitude and greatness to our soul as we inhabit our body and our busy lives here.
In this place I did not see us in bodies, we were all brilliant beings of light, frequency, energy ... Our soul expression ( or our personality ) distinguishable by our unique Essence. My favorite part of this experience was that we did not have gender, class, race, religion, or all of those other things that divide us on this earthly plane. We were just pure beingness, knowingness - and with that , pure love.
It made me realize I have never met a stranger since. It made me realize that this journey here is about experience. We come here to have experiences and we come to share this evolution with others - we are here to strive, grow, evolve ... and bring those lessons "home".
For a fraction of a second I had the exhilarating sensation in that place that I had the answer to that great question "What is the meaning of life" ... but of course once I was "back in my body" and in earth-bound consciousness, the answer seemed to elude me.
I also feel like I understood without a doubt, that there are no accidents or coincidences. We are trapped by our own perception and unable to see the bigger picture. Like the analogy of 4 people witnessing an accident and all four have a different description due to their unique point of view, their own perception.
You are so much bigger than you remember. You have an immense soul family ... There are some you might recognize by how you resonate like a cherished friend or an old Aunt or Grandfather you are exceptionally close to.
Some soul family can also be in disguise, like that ex-spouse or a cranky co-worker that brought so much angst and heartache ... there is the possibility that they stepped up to be your 'bad guy' - your master teacher in disguise. Most people would not call them a master teacher - I just happen to be in the camp that they are the ones we tend to learn the most from - even if we are simply learning that this is not how we want to be. Or maybe they taught us to stand up for ourselves, stand in our own light ... strangely enough, some of those "bad guys", male or female, can be the source of some of our most profound learning along the way.
So this brings me back to the quote by Rumi :
" I always thought I was me - but no, I was you and never knew it ..."
As my journey evolved, I realized that no matter who I met, I no longer felt I was meeting a stranger. I saw me in them and them in me. Our humanity. Our essence. We were simply at different places in our journey. Interestingly, I do not see that journey as a linear path either where one might be ahead of another. I actually see it as a circle and we are all at different places in that circle, there is no beginning and no end ...
Our soul's journey is not necessarily linear. Maybe on another timeline or past life if you will, we were a feared king but in this life we are a brick layer with a huge beloved circle of family and friends surrounding us - or in another life we were a monk who preferred solitude but in this one we are an outgoing charismatic CEO of a large company. Our journey is much more immense than we can ever perceive.
It is simply upon coming in, that darn veil of forgetfulness is dropped down and we arrive here forgetting who we really are. And maybe that is part of the experience, to find ourselves again - come back to our Essence.
And if we look at each other through that lens - we begin to perceive each other differently. We will see that taking away the earthly costumes and things that divide, we are in fact at our core, a part of that group of souls I so briefly witnessed, we all share the same home. While we are having our own individual experiences, we might not necessarily resonate with some of the individuals we encounter. But - at our core, if we remember that they too come from the same place and that they also have a unique path and experiences that they want to participate in, it changes how you see your journey - and theirs.