When you pop out-of-body, what pops? What is left behind to be seen? If what you are is not embodied flesh and blood, or spirit encased in a body, what are you? The very fact that an out-of-body experience is possible opens Pandora’s box to many questions that seem unanswerable, to many answers that are out of this world.

If you are not the body, what is it that is left behind and seen? What is the world that all beings appear in? What is the activity on the screen called life? Is there any way to know?

What if there is no answer?

Is the body, or the world, any less awe-inspiring if it is not what you thought? Lots of things aren’t what we think, in fact most everything isn’t what we think. It reminds me of the quote from Harry Potter — the last book — when Harry died for a little while 😉 and he asked Dumbledore if his experience was real, if all this was happening in his head. The response is classic: Of course, it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?

When I popped out there was no head, no body, no me, simply awareness. Can’t imagine how I would have asked the wizard a question about life being in my head. Amaya was still in the world along with her head. The house was there. So was its contents. Even the television continued to play without me — or what is traditionally called me. Who was running the Amaya show? What was aware? 

We have been taught a skewed definition of reality. We think that what passes for reality is material, physical, discrete stuff made of matter. When we bother to look further, we imagine that the matter is made of something else: molecules, atoms, quarks.

Unless we truly grok the insubstantiality of all that stuff, we don’t consider that maybe it is all made of nothing but imagination, nothing other than collective beliefs and thoughts, nothing other than nothing, at least nothing when held to the standard of reality’s trusted definition. 

Focused on life, on our wants and desires, our needs and hopes, on all that isn’t here right now, we miss the actuality hiding in plain sight. Seekers seek but do not find, not because they are inadequate or unworthy, but because they are focused on an outdated definition of reality, one where the body fits in its reality niche, where the world sits right beside it, along with everything else believable. 

We believe, but we believe in what is not true and dismiss that which is. We believe even though time and again life shows us the fallacy of our beliefs.

What would happen if we dropped it all? Just for a moment or two to start … and built up to a lifetime.

It’s easy. It starts with four little words. I do not know.