Andrew Zorich - Near Death Near Life: A Journey into the Mystic

When I was 18, the experience of cloudiness in the sky was common. My shoes were often navigating a shiny layer of rainwater on the Seattle sidewalks. It was normal for me to wander the streets, the noise of traffic an ever-present ocean rumble in the background. I lived in a small Capitol Hill apartment, while my second home was a coffee shop on the corner of Melrose and Pine.

I would order my coffee, a double latte, and a pack of American Spirit cigarettes. Wandering upstairs, I would find a seat in the dark, smoky second floor. Morrisey or some other moody artist would be playing over the speakers. I would sit in a quiet corner where I could do my art while people-watching. I would pull out my large drawing pad; just another day of writing poetry or drawing something obscure. It didnt matter; there was never a time when I was not immersed in my art. The pencil translated my feelings often some angst turned into pictures, some grief turned into words while the coffee was my liquid energy.

Eventually, it was time for me to go to work. I would pack up and head to my downtown restaurant job, a popular and fast-paced place where I bussed dishes. I would put on the daily work role for a while, rushing dishes to the back of the kitchen in this fancy restaurant across from the Paramount Hotel. The bosses loved me. I worked hard, harder than most. I gave it my all and the waiters and waitresses would respond with big tips. The bigger the tips, the more money I had for coffee and cigarettes.

These were my days, living in the heart of the city, driven by caffeine with no rhyme or reason. If I had a day off my friends knew where to find me, with my head sunk into my drawing pad.

Though this mellow lifestyle outwardly appeared easy, it was unsettled, and the underlying mood I often felt was one of discomfort. Each day the darkness of the cloudy city would engulf me a tiny bit more. Each day the smoke from those cigarettes would sink a little deeper. Each day the coffee became less a pleasure and more of a need. Each day I began to sink deeper into my art in a way that gave no escape, darkness enveloping my attitude, slowly absorbing any childlike joy I carried inside me.

When I was a child, I would have occasional pains in my abdomen, at random times a sharp, stabbing pain that would pierce through my body. Brief but painful, these pains would occur when I was falling asleep or relaxing, alone, and quiet with my thoughts. They would appear and then, just as mysteriously, disappear. The pain would always follow with a deep sense of grief, an unknown but real pang of childlike sadness. There was always a feeling that the grief was connected to a deeper part of me, an unknown part of me longing for something that I could not touch or reach.

It was just another night. I got home late from my restaurant job. I was pretty tired, so I went straight into my bedroom to sleep. Suddenly the familiar pains in my stomach appeared. I bent slightly over, holding onto my lower abdomen with both hands. The pains were particularly painful this time, and rather than lasting for a short duration they didnt go away. Something was different this time as the pain increased. The stabbing slowly became searing, shooting to the core of my body causing me to bend over, so intense that I eventually curled up in a ball on the floor. In that moment of increased pressure and pain, I somehow knew to the very core of my being that I was about to die. I just knew with every cell that this was the end. As this experience increased the realization came that I had not lived I had not truly lived. I began to cry. In the fetal position on the floor waves of deep grief washed through me, pain increasing, and pressure bearing down.

This unbelievable pressure continued to increase, building and building and building until I unconsciously called, I dont want to die today! I will do anything! I will do anything!

In that instant, as if in response to my call, a lightning bolt of light struck through me and I exploded across the Universe. My entire being shattered into a million pieces and I was gone. I had dissolved entirely into the fullness and emptiness of the Universe. I was space, a pure space of all that is, a space beyond form, beyond light, with only a feeling of endless pure love. In this place, I was there, but with no body and no thought a space of clearer-than-clear light, clearer than the clearest awareness.

In this experience, I heard a voice. You are everything You are nothing And you are the light beyond that The Universe is everything The Universe is nothing And it is the light beyond that. There is no separation between You are pure, untainted love, and the Universe is pure, untainted love. There is no division between you and all of creation. Fear is the only division Fear is the only illusion

I not only heard these words but felt them and experienced them fully as resonant truth in that moment. I experienced myself as pure, unending love. I was one with all that is and all who are.

The next moment, I was above my body looking at myself curled up on the floor. As I approached my body, I could see that I was no longer crying but laughing. I had no idea how much time had passed, maybe hours, maybe seconds, but as I descended into my body, I was laughing a childlike laughter. I was laughing at how seriously I had taken my life, at all the fear and control I tried to have over my reality. This illusion, this pseudo-boundary between myself and all things, was a literal cosmic joke. There was no doubt in my mind at that moment that I was pure love; that all beings were endless, pure love; and that this pure, clearer-than-clear love existed as ever-present nowness within everything.