My Wake Up Call: I Am The White Light

Prior to this particular experience, I had been practicing meditation for around 15 years. In the weeks before, I had been coming up against a lot of physical discomforts after about 30 minutes of meditation. One day, I resolved to stick it out, staying with it for as long as it took to get through the pain. After 45 minutes or so I had broken through the physical distractions.

Within the meditation, the idea of working through all personal attachments came to me. I visualized everyone I had personally known in my life. One at a time I held them in my awareness until I felt no hold or pull toward or from the person. This took some time. I would now call the state I eventually reached when this was done to be one of equanimity.

After enjoying this state for a bit, I then intently focused my attention toward the smallest particle of matter I could imagine. Going further and further, then faster and faster into this single point.

I was then unexpectedly overtaken by a white light that seemed to originate from within my body. The light shot up through the center of my body and out the top of my head in a single column, taking my awareness with it. There was a sensation of movement and traveling up and out of the body and even this reality. There were many visual impressions along the way. And then, there was nothing; no objects, no center, no perspective, no thought, no self, no darkness, no light, no source. The best I can describe this experience is that it was one of just beingness in of a vast infinite clear illumination of awareness. But it was not my awareness, as there was no individuation.

This was not the first or last mystical experience that I have had. There have been other experiences I have that could be referred to as the void, emptiness, no-self, non-dual or pure awareness. But this experience was somehow different and felt beyond all that.

In reflection on the experience, If I were to say there was anything there at all it would be that there was an invisible presence that permeated infinity. While there was nothing that could be observed, there is also a sense that there was nothing that was not included.

Any qualities that I use to describe this experience feel like a projection after the fact. Yes, it was love in the sense that all was at one. It was profound, there was clarity, it was boundless, it was pure and complete. But all of that was just known and not observed in the moment.

Since the experience felt timeless, I have no idea how long this it lasted.  The last thing I remember was the faintest suggestion of a feeling or thought of astonishment. And then, I was pulled back into my body before that thought could even be formed.