Time lingered on the bridge allowing for a rare mystical interlude between past and future, what has been and what is yet to be, for anyone sensitive enough to notice.
Breathless from running, Eric paused to look into the beautiful crystal clear blue that gently swirled beneath.
The young architect was on his usual early morning run through a remote wooded park in town when he felt a sudden urge to hesitate on the same bridge he had run across for the last three years. He felt drawn to it as if time itself had caught him like a fish on an invisible fishing line.
Almost instantly he felt a sensation of love come over him like a soft tropical breeze out of nowhere. It was intoxicating, gorgeous, wonderful. He didn't want to move and worried if he moved, he might move out of it. He remained rapt in that space for what felt like infinity. He felt his entire being suspended and held by a power, a beautiful presence he did not want to leave. He was absorbed in a kind of trance he had never known before. He was fully awake, fully conscious, yet completely unwilling to move. He barely breathed and allowed his mind to flow into and with the inexpressible awe that encircled him as he slipped into the gentle blue universe flowing through the time gap, between what has been and what is yet to come.
Time and space completely collapsed, folding together, merging, revealing an opening, a doorway, into deep space. It allowed him to witness the entire universe spiraling, ebbing and flowing around him in what he could only describe as a watery world of inexpressible breathtaking beauty. He was spellbound and suspended, immersed, in a state of perfect peace and love, what Rumi would call bliss.
He couldn't feel anything, no temperature or motion. He only saw and felt from within his inner being, his heart, he guessed. It was as if he were in a bubble in which he could see but not actually touch.
"I must be in a time tunnel, a kind of inter-dimensional elevator, vertically cutting through our world that expanded on either side of the bridge, into another dimension," he thought, becoming aware that he felt no fear, only peace - an incredible deep, pervading, comforting, courageous peace.
He realized that eternity did not spread out horizontally as we typically think when we experience history in a timeline. It was incomprehensible what he was experiencing, but eternity permeated and transcended all that we know - past and future - infiltrating it in a kind of shadowy, invisible energy that we just never slow down enough to experience. We only experience it in a subtle sense, a kind of sixth sense. He realized he was in an intersection of dimensions, one of probably millions in universal eternity.
"Nothing can touch me. Nothing can harm me," he thought, feeling free, lighter than air, floating in a substance of rarefied gentle fragrance, and completely able to fly. Somehow the fragrance drew him out of the bubble into a pure meadow of light that elevated him into flight.
"Yes. There is a fragrance here that I didn't notice earlier," he thought, indulging in the lovely lavender, rose and lily scents that were euphoric.
"This makes Channel's pricey perfume smell like dirty bath water in comparison," he laughed as he indulged the soft, billowy pastel light around him. He felt like a kid romping in a world of cloud, with no purpose or reason. He felt a great company of divine presence all around him.
"The colors are beautiful. They are more beautiful than a million rainbows, and the floral scents. . . ," he thought basking in the moment. He was completely dazed by the beauty around him which was slowly being infused with tranquil music which softly drifted in.
"What is this?" he thought, and immediately heard in his mind, "This is just one holy moment. Just one."
"What does that mean?" he asked this visitor to his consciousness.
"It means there is an interlude, a space, between past and future, where all human consciousness can stop, arrested from your material dimension, to merge with another realm of higher consciousness, a higher vibration, closer - much closer - to what you call heaven," the inner voice said.
"Are you God?" he dared to ask.
"I am love, the all in all - the substance that drives creation and the creation itself. I am life and the power that catalyzes life out of thought, out of bliss," the voice responded.
"And I love you and all your fellow beings in your dimension. I love the entire creation - yours and the millions of others you have never known or experienced. I am love and I created you out of my love. I want so much, so very dearly, that you would know this. I want so much that all of you would know this and stop trying to reach for something that is nothing at all, to stop and be silent and allow yourselves to enter into peace, and give love a chance. It is all any of you ever wanted and are afraid you won't receive. But, you will when you stop trying to be what you already are - which is very, very loved."
This was different than other engaging holy moments, those sudden bursts of light in otherwise ordinary moments, Eric had experienced in the past.
He suddenly remembered. He felt he already knew this, that he had met the creator before. He wasn't afraid as much as he was absolutely stunned with awe and an overwhelming feeling of love, even greater than the love he has for his wife and their two daughters.
His thoughts for a second drifted back to Cheryl, the love of his life, and he felt his love for her escalate in the rare presence of creation love itself. Suddenly, for the first time in this awesome experience, he felt a ping of longing. He wanted her immediately.
On the heels of his thought, in the distance, far away, beyond the soft music that permeated this rapturous space, he heard her voice. For the first time since entering the bridge, he wanted to move, he wanted to go back.
He slowly moved. Turning toward a glowing lantern he hadn't noticed before hanging on a tree branch by the bridge, he saw her in the distance, running toward him. He suddenly remembered they had been running together in one of their morning runs before work. She had been only a few yards behind him.
He felt as if he was waking from a dream and realized he had slipped into time's endless eternity for only a fraction of a second and returned without being missed.
"What's down there," she said as she caught up with him, standing breathlessly beside him. He couldn't tell her. He couldn't even reveal the degree of love and passion he felt for her in that moment. He looked at her, smiling, and said, "Oh, just a bit of heaven."
"It sure is beautiful - so clean and fresh. So nice to see clean water here. Really," she said, and grabbed him arm. "Come on. Let's finish up and grab some food before we have to go to work."
Together they ran back to their home where the girls were making their lunches for the day ahead. He rushed in and grabbed them, swinging the youngest into the air.
In a second, in his mind's eye, he imagined Creator smiling at him. He knew there was so much to look forward to, today and forever, but right now, in this moment, in this precious single fraction of time, he held everything - heaven itself - in the laughter of his children and the love of his wife. They were the fragrance of love in his life today.
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The Homecoming series begins with Homecoming: Driving a Dream on July 10, 2010. Each part in the series can stand independently of the others, but are a larger story together.
Continued from: Mantra
Continues with A Summer Rose.
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