Changing Quantum Coordinates

Photo by Maria Allred

As a child I was afraid of many things. My passionate fear of insects could conjure hallucinations of beetle armies stampeding me as I perched petrified on a pillow in the center of a forest cabin during a family expedition. In essence I was afraid of everything about the woods. I grew up in urban NE Portland and as a kid was comfortable walking alone along any city street at night, but the darkened forest threaded an existential fear through my soul.

Ironically, at age 15 I planned to hitchhike across the country, camping wherever I went, living primarily in the woods. To take this wild leap, I had to face my deep fears. I prepped for the journey by learning wilderness survival skills: wild edibles, building shelters, starting a fire without a lighter or matches, sleeping exposed with the bugs. I stayed for days in nearby trails and rugged national forests with few rations or supplies. By practicing exposure therapy, I faced and conquered my fears.

And I was ready to set off into the unknown.

While on the road I learned the scrappier survival skills of dumpster diving and “spanging” (asking for spare change). Primarily, I learned to live with a lot less. Yet, it’s hard to divorce oneself from the urges of comfort, security, survival. These are instincts not easily shaken.

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Six months into my travels I was camping at Cougar hot springs outside of Eugene, Oregon with my younger sister, Amanda, who had left home after me. I had hitchhiked with a friend as far East as Missouri and then headed back West, where I joined up with my sister.

She and I journeyed up and down the West Coast. We had been at Cougar hot springs for about a month. We would get food two ways: one, from a group of travelers also camped at the springs who formed a kitchen, preparing food for themselves and fellow nomads; and two, we would hitchhike into Eugene, spare change, buy some groceries, and then hitchhike back.

One day I hatched a plan to create a bit more stability. I was the older sister after all, and felt in some ways it was up to me to be “responsible.” We had a friend, Joseph, from the hot springs. He was a biblicalesque figure with a silver mane and fervid blue eyes who’d become so enthused by his own stories that he’d rise from the hot pools, arms spread, steam creating an otherworldly halo around his looming naked body as he preached whatever truth was coming through at the moment. He also let us into a secret that he had a pot crop in the woods behind his house, which was down the hill a few miles.

So, my plan: we would go on a mission to find his crop, take just a bit, not enough to really make a dent, and then hitchhike into town to sell it. Well, this plan was not very viable—the wilderness is vast, and a pot crop is a needle in an evergreen haystack.

We hunted for hours and then, defeated, headed back to the springs.

I was in a prickly mood as we walked along the sun baked country road. I was tearful. I think I was hungry. We were living day to day and always had enough (barely), but old habits die hard. Even though we were joyful, alive, free, I wanted more of a sense of stability. Or at least perceived stability.

Amanda, who at times would play the shaman role, much to my chagrin (but also gratitude), turned to me and declared, “Maria, it’s time.” “Time for what?” She responded prophetically, “It’s time to let go of money. We don’t need it. We need to trust everything will come.”

I was pissed because I knew she was right and that it was the next level of this life game I was playing—a deeper surrender being asked of me. I teared up and glared at the pure blue sky. I tried to retort but couldn’t, so instead just huffed ahead of her contracted with the tension of my resistance.

But the tension released and I felt a sweet surrender with a flavor of security that is only available when you really let go. “You’re right” I called back to her.

And so, we began to live without money at all. For the remaining months that we were on the road we never spare-changed again and everything we needed came to us. We even began to get creative and put out specifics of what we wanted: a pocket knife, books to read, sweaters as the season began to turn. All of it came. And it came quickly. For a period of my life I experienced something that is quite rare in modern society: living completely without money, as well as without fear.

At that phase in my journey, at age 16, I was receiving dreams and visions of a time that was to come. A time I was preparing for when my survival skills would be put to necessary use. But what I was shown is that at that time, the important skill wouldn’t be so much physical survival, but spiritual survival. When it comes down to it we can all learn to survive in new and unknown circumstances, we’re hardwired for it, but it’s the inner strength and stability that has the highest value.

Illustration by DAVID S. GOODSELL

My attention turned back to this memory when the coronavirus made its way into the collective body and mind of humanity. It all happened so fast, within a few weeks our entire global societal context shifted and is ever-shifting every day since.

And how glorious that is.

It is such an exquisitely rare opportunity for the status quo to get so disrupted that we’re forced to question, ponder, feel our vulnerability, our fear, and our strength. To ponder our daily existence and what it’s comprised of (in the face of the rupture of our routines), to ponder the nature and meaning of our lives and of humanity’s place on the planet. To tap into the part of us that is untouched, untouchable, even in the very face of death.

Instead of mourning a loss of the norm, I suggest we could be rejoicing. Not only for the powerful catalytic potential that this holds for our individual and collective evolution, but also because the norm is not normal.

IMAGE SOURCE: https://engoo.com/app/daily-news/article/air-pollution-as-bad-as-smoking-for-human-health/_cPhCGICEemSAweGA22eIQ

4.6 million people die every year from air pollution, 1.25 million people die every year from car accidents. This is “normal.” That’s a lot of deaths. Those are deaths created by humans. We are not freaking out and staying home because of pollution, but we know about it. We’re not alarmed and abstaining from driving because of car crash fatalities, but we are aware of the danger.

We are choosing to make the coronavirus phenomenon into what it is because humanity is ready for a change. It’s not conscious, this choice we’re making, but some deep force from within us and directly from the Earth herself, which actually is us—we are created from her, born from her, we are her intelligence manifest—is choosing to stop. To finally just stop.

To pause. To look around. To look within. And to evolve. And instead of responding from a simplistic fear of survival to take this opportunity to deeply feel:

Photo by Maria Allred

Death is a doorway.

Maybe in your beliefs it is not. Maybe it is neither—a doorway or not—maybe it is both. Maybe it is quantum. But once we decide to treat it as such we are able to make choices that are actually choices, rather than choices that are survival instincts running their program through us. When we liberate ourselves from the bondage of the fear of death we are free to evolve to the next level of our potential.

Our freedom is not exclusive of our mortality. Our freedom—our immortality, exists concurrently with our mortality. It’s actually mortality that gives us the taste of immortality because as we age I believe we all feel a strange split between the part of us that dies and that part of us that is immortal. Our eternal self become even clearer. As children that immortality is more brazened into our bones, our sinews spark with the sense of everlasting life.

Instead of mourning as the hands of time begin to decompose our earthly vessel, we should celebrate, for it gives us the opportunity to feel our limitlessness in the face of limitation and to understand that we have chosen to be in these mortal, destructible bodies in order to know ourselves as eternal, timeless, and indestructible.

Limitlessness embodying limitation in order to see itself, to know itself.

It is the same with separation. We are not actually separate from anything. This is not an esoteric idea. As Einstein said:

“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest—a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness…Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

Photo by Maria Allred

We are not separate—from anything. I am but a particle in a cosmic body that is much grander than my singular identity in one unique body. Yet, we are experiencing this “optical delusion” of separation because it is a huge part of our evolution, of our cosmic play and exploration. Time and space are used for a vehicle of understanding and education. And right now time as we have known it is over.

Now it is time to turn our attention to our true nature as the whole, that is both reflecting the particle and is the particle itself. As my good friend, brilliant author, Paul Levy says, “our psyche is not inside our skull, but rather we are inside our psyche.”

And as described by Bernardo Kastrup in Scientific American, “at bottom, what we call “matter” becomes pure abstraction, a phantasm…solidity and concreteness are qualities of our experience. The world measured, modeled and ultimately predicted by physics is the world of perceptions.”

We are manifesting this virus, this horrific and beautiful and profound moment, because we are trying to tell ourselves something crucial: that we need to heal. We need to heal individually and collectively. And those two things are one and the same.

We are at an evolutionary crossroads and it is a blessed time to be alive.

You may think, ‘easy to say when you’re not infected or affected by the virus,’ but what I speak about is finding a peace within that is indestructible, even in the face of death. As all contexts change and phantasmagorically shift from terrifying to beautiful and back again, there is a watcher within that watches with a pleasant smile, because it is free and invulnerable in the face of all phenomena.

Photo by Maria Allred

I believe it is time for us all to tap into the strength, stability, and freedom within ourselves. The joy without reason, the lover of the divine drama, taking pleasure in both life and death, taking pleasure in all the sensational experiences one can experience in this current form, on this current planet, in this fleeting life, that will be over in the blink of an eye. To tap into that which remains.

I began this blog with a story about living money-free for a period of my life. That was an experiment with the rules. What it taught me is that the rules are bendable, and that we can create them. We were tapping into a place within us that is free from the restrictions of living from and for mere survival.

You only live as far as your beliefs will let you. Outside of the confines of societal and learned norms exists a world of possibilities.

Photo by Maria Allred

Once we begin to shake loose of everything we know, expect, and have been taught we open ourselves to a creative realm of what this world can actually be. We are creating this pivotal moment together. This is a deep dream that we are dreaming and it’s a profound opportunity, a rare gift.

What we can do is open to what it’s giving. To allow our fear and have compassion for it. To let go of our fear realizing the place within us that is indestructible, eternal, and playful. A playful creator having fun with this life game in all its sorrow and glory. And we can begin to create consciously, to choose new rules, to realize the rules we have come to accept are not concrete. The norm we have come to know is a fabrication and not necessarily normal.

And the final frontier: to face death, to know that it is but a doorway to the next adventure. And when you begin to live creatively as a conscious creator instead of reactively as an animal running from the fear of death you are taking a leap into a new level of consciousness, into a new evolution of our species. And if you take this leap individually, you will see….

…everyone and everything took it with you. 

Written by Maria Allred

Fully Living • Fully Dying

I wanted the plane to crash.

I was flying to Southern Spain for the world premiere of my first feature film, The Texture of Falling. Enveloped into the hard-bread-cushioned seat, I was overwhelmed by the strangest and strongest longing for the plane to crash—strange because I was not depressed or suicidal, the urge seemed to appear out of the blue. I immediately felt guilt; if the plane crashed all the other passengers would die too. I let go of my death wish, until an involuntary bolt of yearning ran through me at the first sign of disturbance.

I believe this irrational impulse at that particular time was my psyche preparing me for a major internal death and rebirth I was about to experience. I will delve into this in a subsequent blog. In short for the moment: at the film festival I fully awoke in my own life dream, which at the time felt more like a nightmare. Yet because of my lucidity I had a deep humor about it all and have never felt freer.

The days leading up to the film festival I could feel it coming on…something major. I entered a small depressive state, which is always a sign to me that vital change is imminent. So I softened my stance, a deep weeping in my heart as I swam through the cerulean seas. It didn’t match up—my emotions and the golden glow of the Casa del Sol, but perplexingly, I wandered like a lonely ghost through the vibrant new land.

In my experience with depression it has revealed itself to me as the companion of death—the small and large deaths throughout life; deaths of our identity, our ego; the security of the known; deaths of relationships; physical deaths of loved ones. If we allow the death-rebirth cycle to run its course the depression is a temporary gatekeeper. If we resist the change depression can become a sort of new identity we cling to. (Note, I am not including chemical imbalances in this statement, which are to be addressed for their biological roots, though even biology has psychic roots, in my opinion).

As I lay in my Spanish bed at night, compulsory images of various modes of dying flashed in my head. With life juxtaposed against death that closely, though imaginarily, I sensed that choosing to live was also like jumping off a cliff.  It is as radical of a choice as dying. The desire for death actually indicates the desire to be truly alive. In fact we are always fully living and fully dying. Paradoxically, death and life are one.

I have known this for a long time, at least cerebrally, but my mental exposure therapy to dying was revealing more deeply how my avoidance of uncomfortable experiences—the humiliation of rejection or failure, the nakedness of fame, the unfamiliarity of success, the possibility of social annihilation—stemmed from my fear of death. It was unleashing courage to face all the unnerving sensations that kill my small identity. Because, why not? If choosing to live is as wild a choice as choosing to die, I might as well jump off of the proverbial cliff and actually live. I felt as if there was nothing to lose.

When you realize you are the observer watching everything, and that "life" as we know it is simply sensation coupled with thought patterns, all sensations become ok, further, they can become pleasurable. This is what allows me to enjoy my dentist visits—a perfect petri dish for practice. 

Aging is a cruel joke that plays itself on everyone. The naivety and pride of youth are not enviable, but rather, foolish. The purity of ageless consciousness is where true wisdom and freedom lie. The more you experience “time,” which according to the theory of relativity does not actually exist in a continuum but is an inextricable part of four-dimensional space-time, the more you can feel that which is timeless.

A common refrain I hear from people who have aged to some degree is that they don’t feel their age. The body ages, but there is a watcher who does not. You can feel the nonexistence of time by experiencing the existence of time. You can sense that you are not your body when your body involuntarily, without your volition or control, changes of its own accord and those changes baffle another aspect of your being that is not doing that aging thing at all. As Einstein stated, “People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

When you can feel this contrasting juxtaposition between a part of you that is timeless—the observer that does not age and is perplexed by physical changes—and the part of you that is time-based—the corporeal you, you can sense the relativity and illusion of time, and more importantly, you can sense your freedom. You are not bound to this body. You are not even fixed to the particular point of reference that identifies as, or in, this body.

One of my favorite quotes comes from The Elegance of the Hedgehog, it reads:

“Beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it. It’s the ephemeral configuration of things in the moment, when you see both their beauty and their death...Does this mean that this is how we must live our lives? Constantly poised between beauty and death, between movement and its disappearance? Maybe that’s what being alive is all about: so we can track down those moments that are dying.” –Muriel Barbery

I believe there is always a choice. A choice to be dead while alive, a choice to actually die, or a choice to undergo the many invigorating ego/identity deaths that come with being fully alive. 

All of the consensual societal norms that people take so seriously are just agreed upon fabrications. When you perceive how absurd this amazing existence is (why are we even here for god’s sake?) you realize you can chart your own course and risk...

...all of the electrifying results of that. 

Image by Bryon Phillips

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