Hi Vil
quote:
I was wondering if you remember when you had your first experience of the shine and if you could share it with us if you wouldn't mind.
Three incidents stand out....
1)
I am six years old.....visiting a friend of my parents.....we were going to his cabin in the forest late one winter night. We were all skiing (my parents and sisters).....and for some reason I was ahead of all the others ......sliding through the fresh snow. (I guess my parents were struggling with luggage
![[:)]](http://www.aypsite.com/plus-forum/Smileys/akyhne/icon_smile.gif "Smile")
). ...I can still hear my skiis going "swish....swish....swish". The moon was up....the trees heavy with snow......All of a sudden my chest was filled with an extremely Joyous feeling. The shock of it made me stop and look around.....I remember feeling a loving, soothing, presence....almost like an eye...everywhere I looked, this presence was looking after me. I didn't see it; but I knew it was there. I never questioned it. It was the most natural thing ever. I was so small....but I never forgot. I never forgot the Joy. It wasn't until after the cancer, that I begun to understand what it really ment. Although I never saw the shine.....the loving presence was the same I experience now. That's why i know it really was the shine.
2)
The day I got diagnosed with cancer .....april 17th 1996.....I was walking through a little "forest" close to my house. Everything had stopped for me that day. You know how much energy is used to "spin a future" ? How much time we spend planning, fantasizing, fretting......well; all that had been abruptly taken from me. I was suddenly without a future. I didn't think of these things....I was just heartbroken....thinking about dying from my daughters (they were 4 and 7 at the time)... and with nowhere to escape. Anyway.....I looked at the trees, the fresh green leaves.....the small green sprouts everywhere.....it was incredibly beautiful. Everything was shimmering....glistening.....it was sort of a "dim" version of the shine I see today. It was exactly as if I had been wearing dark glasses all my life - and they were all of a sudden gone. I remember asking......why do I see this now; why now...when I am dying? It hurt! It was beautiful.....but there was so much pain inside. I also remember saying to myself: "This is my last incarnation! " (Which is strange...because i didn't believe in reincarnation). "I cannot bare to go through all this again. I won't suffer a painful childhood one more time. I won't play this game ever again. This is it."
3)
A few years ago - after several years of constant self inquiry (with the help of meditation, litterature, and my work with the patients at the clinic), I was in an emotional crisis concerning a situation in my life.......during this crisis i understood - for the first time - the workings of my mind. It was as if - for an instant - I "broke off" from myself....I could see myself from "outside". I had a reaction to a paragraph in a book I was reading at the time ...I saw myself react...and understood the workings of it.....and it sort of broke the shell I was in. I saw how I protected myself....how I sought pleasures.....how I avoided pain. Well.....for the first time I saw that I was truly and absolutely helpless.
I could not fix my problem.....because the problem was
I. I broke down....crying for a long time (my family was away for the week-end). Afterwards I was empty. I sat still. I sat in the sofa.....looking vacantly at a flower on the table in front of me. I looked......and looked again......everytime I looked I "saw" love. It was shining with love. I fell in love every time I looked at it. Within the next hour, the loving shine was everywhere I placed my eyes. Everything shone......the shine was dim compared to what I see now; but the love......the love was incredible. I thought something incredible had happend to me.....that someone outside of myself was looking after me. I thought I was "visited" by something. . The streets....walls...cars....people...it was everywhere I looked. I was constantly in love. All fear disappeared. I bathed in it for seven days in a row. Then it faded. But everything changed after that. I could not fool myself into not believing in a presence greater than......greater than everything. That doubt was forever dissolved.
About a year later.....the ecstatic experiences started (first in meditation). First locally, then all of the body, then "outside" the body.
The shine (as i perceive it now) came back as a laughter (I think I have talked about it here in the forum?). When it came back (in glimpses) it was the shine itself that was most prominent. Ie: The
clarity is now the most prominent quality.
