The Earthly Grip

What keeps us tethered

The story I never tell my students is one of the most influential events in my life. I’d love to tell them but alas, I am a public servant and the story is a tale of unsanctioned shenanigans from when I was twenty-one.

Yet here I am telling it, albeit a bit cryptically. Hopefully you can understand why.

It was spring break for us University students and we four friends decided to camp in the Redwoods of Northern California. After driving down, we found a spot on the beach and set up our tent.

How cool! I’ve never actually camped ON a beach before! What must it be like?

We were to find out.

We threw our sleeping bags into the tent and then readied ourselves for a magical trip courtesy of a friend from a different Kingdom.

These trips often lasted several hours. On a previous journey, my friend Ben had taught me to stuff my pockets with things like tissue and chapstick to care for my body’s needs during the trip- you know, a leaky nose and whatnot. So stuff my pockets I did, and then I took my medicine.

I could try and describe the wonders we experienced, but I suspect it would be as interesting as listening to someone tell you about their dream from last night. You just can’t convey in words, the dream landscape. So it is with this.

There was a point where it started snowing and that seemed pretty magical at the time, not yet comprehending the impact this would have on our sleeping arrangement.

On these types of journeys, I’ve been known to fly really high while my friend said he preferred to ‘keep one foot on the ground’.

There was a point where in my mind’s eye, I was floating skyward and looking down at the beach scene. Cars looked tiny and I couldn’t really see my body at all.

I heard a voice in my head: ‘What just happened?’

Another voice answered: ‘Rachel just died.’

I thought to myself, ‘Oh am I dead? Well this is fine up here!’

I pictured an ambulance coming to pick up my body and I thought about how other people would see it as a tragedy and not understand that I was content and that there wasn’t anything to truly grieve.

I did, however, foresee the suffering of my friends and family and felt bad about that.

Meanwhile back on Earth, my friends heard me mention being dead and they were now concerned and doing their best to bring me down from whatever crazy plane I was on.

That was also right about when we realized that our tent was filled with water and our sleeping bags were soaked. Surely my body was freezing, but to my free-floating mind I perceived no such thing.

My awareness pinged between the two worlds- the Earthly plane and the Ether…sometimes talking with my friends about wet sleeping bags and sometimes focused intently upon any other thing.

I put my hand in my pocket and felt something inside and pulled out the tissue I had put there at the start of the trip. I said aloud to myself ‘Why is there tissue in my pocket?’ Then I moved onto some other attraction.

My friend, however, in trying to bring me back down, grabbed onto this question and asked me ‘Why did you put tissue in your pocket?’

I said I didn’t know.

She moved her face into my vision and asked me again ‘Why did you put tissue in your pocket Rachel?’

I was tripping out on something and said I wasn’t sure.

She persisted, asking again with her eyes locked onto mine.

Mmmnn… I don’t know.

Finally, when she asked me a fourth or fifth time, I attended to the question (to get her to stop badgering me).

I stopped and thought about it. Why was there tissue in my pocket? I recalled that I put it there earlier.

But why?

Then I remembered, so I told her,

‘To take care of my body’.

And just like that I felt a swooping sensation of my soul slingshotting back into my body, like an elastic band returning to its original form. I also felt instantly warm, like a home with its tenant back to stoke the fire.

I think that I was likely at risk of hypothermia in my oblivious dreamstate and if I were to have died then, that would have been the cause.

Instead, we packed up, drove to a hotel and dried our belongings in the dryer.

My dad has such a firm grip on this Earthly plane; it is admirable to see him pursuing his interests to the very end. He would go days without eating or drinking and then come out of it and want to learn German on Duolingo! One day he would be gasping for air and the next he was badgering me to make sure he didn’t miss Jeopardy. (I called him YoYo Da for this up and down behavior.)

His strong, earthly grip did start to make me wonder if my dad had ever developed any relationship to the spiritual plane.

So for the first time, about two weeks ago, I told this story to my dad. I was trying to convey to him the notion that there may be a spiritual plane beyond this earthly one; that when we die, the mental, emotional and physical suffering that comes with having a body, is baggage that seems to get left behind with the body. Perhaps there is nothing to fear on the other side.

Barbara Karnes, a hospice RN and author, says that dying is labor:

At some point… we truly know within the core of our being that indeed we are dying. With that knowledge labor begins. I call this time labor because we are like a little chick trying to get out of a shell. The chick’s shell doesn’t just open and out pops the chick. It must work to free itself and that takes time. For us humans it takes one to three weeks to emerge from our physical shell.¹

Four days ago, my dad completed his labor and became free of his shell.

Congratulations Da. I’m proud of you.

You lived large - now enjoy the freedom from human suffering.

I love you.

Karnes, B., RN. (2014, February 18). Labor of the Dying. Barbara Karnes Books. https://bkbooks.com/blogs/something-to-think-about/labor-of-the-dying

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