Infinity and Paradox

You realize that you have spent decades identifying with a biological machine that is, in reality, a sophisticated anchor. This is when the anchor lifts.

I felt myself peeling away from the mattress, as a ghost or a vapor, as a point of pure observation. There was no skin, no breath, no gravity. I looked back and saw the man named Manuel lying there, a shell of meat and history and imagination; I felt a profound compassion for that collection. The man was so small, so bound by the laws of thermodynamics and the linear march of time. From the ceiling, the room transformed into a landscape of geometric potential inside my spherical 360º view rather than an assortment of furniture.

Movement in this state is dictated by intent rather than muscle. If you think of the door, you are at the door. If you think of the sky, the roof ceases to be an obstacle. There is a lucidity here that puts our waking life to shame. We spend our days in a filtered reality, processed through the narrow slits of our eyes and the clumsy translation of our nerves. Without the body, the filter is gone. The light has a texture, and the silence has a color. I floated through the walls of that apartment, feeling the structural integrity of the bricks as a dull hum of energy. I was no longer a person in a city — I was a witness to the underlying architecture of existence.

There is a benevolence in this expansion. It is a reminder that our suffering is largely a matter of perspective, a byproduct of being squeezed into a form that is too tight for the spirit. I understand that the separation is not a divorce but a temporary relief. The good of this experience lies in the return. When the silver cord pulls and the awareness is snapped back into the heat of the body, you do not return the same. You carry the infinite back into the mundane. You wake up and feel the weight of your limbs, the itch of your skin, and the hunger in your belly, but you treat them with a new kind of tenderness, although your wonder remains wandering from where you came.

You become an explorer who has seen the horizon and realized the body is a beautiful, temporary house — but it is not the dweller. Consciousness is.

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