Transcendence

I love that we have a word for the "existence or experience beyond the normal or physical level."

I experienced transcendence when...

I fell in love with Roo;
I gave birth to Pip and Phoebe;
Every now and then, during my meditation practice, I start to feel like a huge, expanding, pulsing ball of energy;
I first heard Krishna Das singing Bhakti yoga;
I was a child and I had my head on my mother's chest, gazing at the lapis heart hanging from a gold chain, listening to the vibration of her laugh;
I smell my grandmother's spirit;
I turn the music up, and allow the energy, created by body and breath, to move me on my mat, without effort;
I jump into freezing, cold, salt water;
I answered the phone, and my aunt told me my cousin had died;
I watched the plane fly into the second tower;
I couldn't find Pip at the park;
I threw myself into the ice-covered beaver pond to get to Gritty Girl;
I saw Stonehenge in person;
My professor set up a camera obscura in a dark room with a pinhole of light, and slowly, the opposite wall mirrored the parking lot outside, with people walking by;
I read Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change;
I lie in bed between Pip and Phoebe, with each of their heads on my chest;
I reach back from the passenger seat to to hold my children's fuzzy leg or soft hand, as my mother once did to us.

The above are, in my opinion, self-evident examples of transcendence; but what about the unexplainable ones? I can think of two times when I have inexplicably transcended my normal experience: the first occurred about 9 years ago. We were driving home to Charlestown from my parents' house in Marion. We had two cars, and Roo generously offered to drive the entire family (2 kids and 1 dog at that point) in our Subaru Outback so I could enjoy a solo car ride in my Saab (the car I had through college, graduate school, and our marriage before kids). I planned to turn the radio way up, and roll the windows way down. I was leading on 195, just before the merge onto 495 (I have always hated merging), when I realized, too late, I needed to get over; I watched our Subaru in my rearview mirror, effortlessly pull in between two cars to make room for me to get over, and onto 495! The whole experience lasted about 30 seconds, but as I pulled in front of our Subaru, filled with the most precious beings in my life, I was overcome with so many emotions I could barely contain myself: my heart rate increased, my skin flushed, my extremities tingled. I felt, all at once, gratitude, love, desire, lust, relief, security, excitement, and alive; I was, all at once, 4, 14, 18, 25 and 33. I called Roo and tried to explain to him what I was feeling, but it was to no avail. I hung up and relished the leftover aftershocks of the transcendent quake.

Roo and I refer to this as "the Subaru experience." He likes to think of it as the moment his wife was undone by her love for him, which is true to a point, but there's more to it. A few years later, again while driving, I was reminded of my Subaru experience while listening to Sister Carolyn Martin, in a Moth episode, tell the story of leaving her fiancé for a life dedicated to God; she describes still loving her first love and finding peace with his physical absence by finding him every time she receives the Eucharist where her heart expands to a greater love that welcomes and accepts everyone God has put in her path. Perhaps my Subaru experience was my own kind of Eucharist where everyone I have loved and been loved by (and lost or feared losing) collided within me at once?

The second experience happened last Wednesday. Our house already felt off-balance with Pip's absence (he's at camp until next Sunday) and Roo was getting ready to drive to NJ for a two-day business trip (none of us are happy about the return of Roo's work travel). Roo was in front of his three(!) screens working on last-minute adjustments to his presentation; I was at my neighboring desk uploading that morning's class to the on-demand library; Phoebe was getting dressed; and I wanted to know if the new Imagine Dragons song I had played in class earlier was the same song Roo had just told Phoebe (a huge Imagine Dragons fan) to listen to while she got dressed: I turned the volume up on my new playlist, and while Roo was concentrating on about 500 things at once, within a second(!) of hearing a sound byte of the song, he confirmed, yes, that's the song, without looking up from his multiple computers. Out of nowhere, I was inexplicably, once again, overwhelmed with awe, love, gratitude, grief, desire, and my humaneness; the difference was that this time, I had the language to communicate my experience: "Roo, it just happened again...the subaru experience...it's happening right now." I said.

"Really?" he asked.

"Yes, really. Oh my gosh, please don't go," I pleaded, not sure if I was talking to Roo, or Pip, or the feeling itself. It wasn't until later that I tuned into the lyrics of Wrecked and realized how perfectly they matched the moment: "Oh, I'm a wreck without you here. Yeah, I'm a wreck since you've been gone."

Existing/experiencing beyond our normal/physical realm are moments to live for, and moments to dread. They simultaneously allow and motivate us to "live beautifully with uncertainty and change." They remind us of the great big universe we are part of, and the many inexplicable forces at play that exist outside our constructs of time and place. Our capacity to experience transcendence endows us with hope, humility and awe.

As always, thank you for reading,
Georgia