brief uncommon ecstatic and revelatory period  in which we're able to loosen our hold on our  

characteristically narrow ego-specific concerns  and can identify with a totality that is larger  

older greater deeper than we are and feel  intensely unburdened and liberated thereby  

we might have a transcendental experience early  on a summer's morning looking at the Mist starting  

to burn up in the valley below us or late at  night with the galaxies above us we might go  

through one in a plane crossing the ice fields  of Northern Canada or at 3am alone in a foreign  

Hotel bedroom contemplating Matters from a new  Unbound perspective nature is especially good at  

prompting transcendental moments as are Knights  Solitude the sounds of flutes sitars and harps  

airplanes fevers William Blake roomy mountains  and psilocybin and mescaline in the grip of a  

transcendental experience it matters very slightly  less who we are the mistakes we have made and how  

halting are uncertain trajectory has been we  willingly let go of the compromised eye and  

all its often Petty and mean-spirited obsessions  in order to become for a privileged while a part  

of the Timeless beatific whole we are the clouds  the Rocks the beetle climbing arduously up the  

bark of a tree a baby being born on another  continent a non-ogenarian breathing their last  

a line in a poem and a star expiring in a distant  Galaxy we don't care that we've been betrayed in  

love we're defeated at work and roughly handled  in childhood our own death becomes a matter of  

utter indifference we feel honored to be occupying  such a small space in the order of things and that  

we will soon disappear Without a Trace we let go  of it all in the name of an identification with  

the totality of existence we willingly exchange  ourselves for engulfment in otherness no we've  

not gone mad we'll be doing the school run or the  accounts again in a few hours but what counts is  

that we've accessed and can now bookmark a kind of  experience that will always be on hand in memory  

as a rebuke to our most frantic frightened or vain  moments it's the greatest privilege accorded to us  

by our complicated Minds that we don't always  have to be simply and punishingly ourselves