Hello, my name is Ooooh. It is redundant, I know, to tell you my name. But since I am introducing myself it just feels like something I need to do. Just humor me, please. By most indicators I am having a remarkable experience of human life. The point here is not to brag, but to establish that my experience of life is outside most human norms. Some people might call me a mystic, personally, I call myself a fruitcake. I am also OK with weirdo, whackadoodle and any other number of pejoratives people might use. Sticks and stones, and all of that…
Music to set the mood:
I do have some things to share about human nature and the larger questions of life that people might find interesting, but I am in no hurry to get into that. It is more important first, I think, for people to understand the kind of life experience that forms those ideas. So just to be clear, before I start saying things that might make you shake your head like a dog and ask "Did she really said that?" I'm going to share some things about myself, that quite frankly, are just goofy at the low end of the scale and effing unbelievable on the other end.
Starting about twenty years ago, the experiences began with seeing colored lights and hearing electrical arcing noises as I lie in bed at night. Thinking it was outside myself, and outside my house, I consulted an electrician who pointed out there was no electrical infrastructure outside my bedroom window. Since it kept happening, along with some frightening premonitions that also came true, as well as other unusual phenomena happening with my mind, I wondered if I was experiencing some kind of psychotic break and consulted a psychologist. There I received an assessment and the information that there is a difference between hallucinations and premonitions. Oh, and a bill, I received a large bill, too. Today I think it is absolutely hilarious that I actually consulted an electrician and a psychologist, so feel free to laugh at me. I do it all the time.
One of the things I've learned since becoming a fruitcake is if we are paying deep attention to our immediate environment, we are supported in many subtle and not so subtle ways. Or put another way, there is something in or about this natural physical environment that is always trying to communicate with us. The problem, of course, is I am just as unconscious as any other human. Which is why, in August of 2006, I found myself more or less stranded at the top of a set of rough hewn steps on the path to Boulder Falls, just outside Boulder, Colorado.
Perhaps some folks might be familiar with it, you park alongside the creek and cross the road to a set of about a dozen steps down from the road grade. From there you proceed up a path of uneven steps cut from rocks interspersed with gravelly dirt and then on back further a short distance to Boulder Falls. I spent an hour or so at the falls, talking with people and enjoying the natural beauty. Someone took some photos of me wading in the creek with my camera. It was one of those peak experiences people are always going on about.
When I was ready to go back to the car, I sat on a rock, dried my feet off as much as possible and put my flip flops back on. Here is the unconscious part: I have the Ooooh family gimpy feet. Really. I should always be wearing clunky athletic shoes with orthotics in them. But that morning my feet felt really good, and I had pretty new polish on my toe nails too! I slipped sandals on in my hotel room in Denver and took off for a day along the front range. On my return to the car, as long as I was traveling upward I was steady as a mountain goat. But once I got to the top of the hill and looked down, well, I couldn't figure out how I was going to go down those steps. With nothing supporting my arches, going down the large rises between the steps made me extremely unsteady. I went down one step, and hesitated to get some stability under my feet. I went down another step, hesitated a bit, and called myself some choice names. Truthfully, the path is not much more than a few minute stroll back to the falls, in a real pair of shoes it would not have been an issue, but at that rate it would take me the rest of the morning to get back to the car. (I exaggerate only slightly.;)
There was a huge dragon fly that kept lighting on the step just below the one I was on. With the lack of control over my gait I was afraid I was going to step on it, and that just added another stressor to my discomfort over the situation. Suddenly I just had a feeling I should follow the dragonfly, it seemed to be landing on the sweet spot of each step. The rest of the way down those steps I aimed my leading foot at exactly the spot the dragon fly landed on. The dragon fly lit on each and every step until I made it to the bottom of the steps, and from there it hovered even with my face for a few moments. Honestly, I was kind of speechless, which was probably OK, because there was nobody to talk to except the dragonfly. "Namaste," I thought.( Well, what would you have thought?) And then the dragonfly flew up and away towards the road, leaving me to go up the short set of steps back to the road on my own.
It is experiences like this that make me think we are so well supported in human life; if we are paying attention some kind of guidance and support is always available. For the sake of clarity, please don't think I am proposing the dragonfly had an awareness that produced thought like, "I better help that stupid tourist back to safety," or "Ooooh's in distress, I better help her out." Actually, I don't need to make any projections about it all. The dragonfly led me down the steps, when I got to a place where I could maneuver easily on my own, it flew away. The experience left me with a profound sense of gratitude, a sense of union with everything, and a sense of extraordinary connection with Nature.
So that is the first installment of weird-Ooooh's oddball experiences. There's more where that came from. I hope even if you are of a more mechanistic nature and think I am full of crap, perhaps you might have at least found a few moments of entertainment here.