Epiphany

Image courtesy of NASA.gov

Some years ago, I was in the Villa de Papa (the Pope’s Villa­—and don’t worry, it wasn’t really the Pope’s villa, that was just the name of the hotel), in Rome.

One of the eight airlines I flew for in my past life was a cargo outfit flying A300-B4-F’s (for those of you who aren’t aviation aficionados, it’s an old, big, fat French jet we pilots used to call “The Before-Christ.”) We flew all over Europe on contract with DHL (something called a “wet-lease” because it includes fuel).

Like a typical cargo pilot, I’d just slept away the day in my cozy little room, and I was lying in my bed with that floating post-sleep feeling, when I had one of those out-of-this-world experiences.

I saw a band representing time curve in on itself to form a circle. This circle started to spin, and fused into a man-sized translucent globe of blue light, filling most of the small space in my room. And no, I wasn’t on drugs.

So I walked into this floating sphere and became its epicenter. Everything made sense.

Don’t ask me how, but I knew the experience wouldn’t last, so I started asking myself a barrage of impossible questions.

I’d ask a question and the answer would be yes. I’d ask the opposite question, and the answer was still yes. The crazy thing was that these seemingly contradictory affirmative answers weren’t fazing me in the least.

Like this was some perfectly normal occurrence for a pilot who sleeps all day in the Pope’s Villa, which isn’t really the Pope’s Villa.

(Cargo pilots rarely see the light of day, and like vampires, they appear to have been born around the time Da Vinci drew his first sketch of a glider. I’m glad I only did the cargo-thing for two years, otherwise my nine-month-old son would be mistaking my hair for cotton candy about now.)

So I had this epiphany, but I only realized the intensity of the experience after it was all over. My belief system shaken to the core, I tried make sense of it all—to hold on to some conclusion­­. A treasure I could carry with me in life.

What I took from that experience—my conclusion—was that everything is true from a certain perspective, but that there is only one truth, and that truth can never be comprehended with thought, only through experience.

But ironically, I’d just converted what I’d perceived as an experience of truth into word-based thoughts that amounted to a multitude of partial truths.

When I saw what I’d done, I realized I had to learn to let go. It wasn’t easy at first, but eventually, whenever I’d have an epiphany and I’d think, “That’s it! I’ve finally got the one answer to everything!” another thought would soon follow, “Who are you kidding, buddy?”

Those who-are-you-kidding thoughts were mini-epiphanies in and of themselves, and they’d clear my mind, helping me through the process of letting go. 

Epiphanies are, in terms of the ego, literally to die for. They can obliterate past beliefs and conclusions, leaving the mind temporarily free to experience life without the obstruction of psychological thought.

But epiphanies are fleeting. The experience becomes a memory, and soon most do what I did at the Pope’s Villa: they hold on. And the longer they hold on, the longer they suffer.

Unless we learn to let go of conclusions and beliefs, or alternatively burn them at the altar of inquiry, we condemn ourselves to a lesser experience of existence.

We choose suffering.

Suffering leads to a deep yearning for peace. Some of us hold on to our epiphany-based conclusions, hoping they will serve as a gateway to that peace.

I’ve been on that path. The path of hope. The path of a “better future.” It’s never gotten me anywhere. I always am where I started.

The way I see it, lasting peace is no longer knowing how to hold on.

What is your experience?