The space between places.

While putting together a soundtrack to my life, my mind wandered, and I imagined moments in my life as if I were in a movie, camera angles and lighting just so, my actions infused with importance and meaning. I was struck by two simultaneous and contradictory reactions...

My first reaction: Tears welled in my eyes as I saw myself in this empowered moment. It was as if I was watching theatre and was moved by an intense and iconic moment in which I had the leading role. That moment evoked a word: Sacred. I realized that my life was full of these moments from as far back as I could remember, and they were very important to me. And that realization made me feel different, as if for a moment I was separated from other people, seeing the world from an alien perspective.

The second reaction was to ask the question: "Why do I feel different?" I began to think about the concept of 'sacred', how rarely we use it to describe our experiences, and how it is so often relegated to organized religion - as if we need some sort of governing body to give us permission to tap into its meaning. How often does the sacred come into our daily lives? How often does something we think of as ordinary, like that perfectly-heated Double-Latte, become a truly sacred experience, passed across the counter by a solemn barista, as if we were being knighted for a lifetime of extraordinary achievement? Birth and death both grant us sacred status, but what about all of the moments in between?

The question: "Why do I feel different?" presented itself to me once again, shifting slightly, and I once again saw myself wrapped in the intensity of a sacred moment - the kind experience that makes us beam when we see it expressed on the face of a child - but this time I saw myself through another's questioning eyes, and felt the impulse to laugh it off:

Someone: "Whoa, what were you thinking there? You had this intense, almost crazy look in your eyes when you as you sipped on your drink."

Me: "Ha ha, um, it was nothing... [insert distracting joke here]"

It was something, but I was afraid to feel separated, to see that look of: "Do I really know you? I thought you were more like me..." in that person's eyes. Laughter and wit become the answer. But I do feel a slight pang of sadness that I've betrayed the moment. Next time, I may just keep my expression a bit more veiled. But the reality is, those moments are far more important in my life than the judgements of others.

The moments are usually composed of simple things: the sun beaming through a tree, seen from just the right angle, at just the right moment - and in those moments, I feel very, very alive. I am filled with a feeling of clarity. Most of all, these moments remind me of what it was to be a child. Where everything around me was full of magic. Where so many moments were important and meaningful without reason. Explanations were unnecessary.

When I think back to my childhood, it seems to me that I was more often ME than I generally am as an adult. I would run when inspired to, play for for the sake of playing, laugh with purity and cry without shame. My curiosity knew no bounds. The beauty of life around me inspired my actions, without being overwritten by the limiting concept of "should". The concept of playing a role was foreign to me. My actions were always sincere. My concept of self had very few limits.

But as a child, life was like a dream, so vivid and intense, but also blurry and out of control. I was infused with happiness as much as I was deflated by sadness. All of my emotions and perspectives came from the world around me, drawing me along with careless puppet strings. I had very little sense of self-determination; I was a slave to the most primal of my desires and fears, much like I am when I dream, when I go through life never missing a beat of my carefully composed routine.

In my dreams, I feel things more vividly than I do in most moments of 'reality'. Each moment of my dreams is a simplified version of something from my waking experiences. But in my dreams, I'm virtually always being pushed or pulled along, and I always seeming to be running towards my desires or running from my fears - always running because of something that is happening TO me.

In each situation, I am guided by an automatic reaction. Something from the outside reaches inside and pushes a button, and I move, I talk, I dance, I rage, I cry. It is always a reaction; between cause and effect, I am the effect, and not the cause. It may be a beautiful, joyous moment, or it may be a moment of darkness. But it isn't something that I am choosing to manifest. In those moments, there is no conscious act of creation; I am not the artist, merely the observer.

And similarly, in my daily life, it is as if there is a faint, silvery cord attached to my forehead, pulsing thoughts into my mind that drive me into motion from one moment to the next. My days are often mapped out so far in advance that I jump from obligation to obligation without quite knowing how I got there, or the details of what I was doing. Sometimes I get behind the wheel, and end up at my destination and have to think back to which route I took to get there. It's as if each moment of my life is spent keeping up with where I SHOULD be, and that place isn't necessarily where I WANT to be.

Years ago, I had a unusual dream that was very intriguing, and would later on change my perspective on my waking life. It was the first time that I had ever experienced a lucid dream.

In this dream, I was sitting in the cafeteria in the AMS Student Union Building at UBC. This particular dining space was located in the basement next to the arcade. Sitting at the table, eating my lunch, I decided to look around at my friends who were seated with me. To my surprise, many of the people around me had graduated from the same high school as I did - which might not be a big deal, except for the fact that the school was in Ohio, over 2000 miles away. It seemed to be too much of a coincidence that all of these people ended up in Vancouver.

In that instant of apparent contradiction, I began to do something I hadn't really done in a dream before: I began to question the nature of this reality. I pulled the thin, shimmering tethers from my head, and took conscious control of that moment. It dawned on me that I must be dreaming, and a curious thought popped into my head: "If I pinch myself, I wonder if I'll feel anything." So I did. I reached down and pinched my leg, and felt nothing. I was filled with certainty that I must be dreaming. I realized I was wandering through the depths of my own imagination, and I was intrigued at the opportunity to explore this space that was both familiar and not-fully-known.

For a while I watched the interplay of imaginary friends from my past, intrigued by the conversations they were having, knowing that they were a part of my creation, and yet I couldn't predict what they were going to say. Eventually I became curious about my surroundings. At the time I was the President of a volunteer organization, and my office should have been just around the corner. I stood up from the table, the people melting from my consciousness, and walked down the hall. Sure enough, my office was there, as were all of the other offices I'd expect to see.

But in that area, there was also another hallway that I had never before seen. I wandered down this new corridor, curiosity growing stronger by the moment. The hallway twisted and turned, thrusting me back into the unknown recesses of my subconsciousness, and eventually I was lost back into the dream. But when I awoke, I vividly remembered the experience, which would become the first of many lucid dreams I would come to have.

Each dream instilled upon me the feeling of breaking free from the cycle of cause and effect, becoming unexpectedly aware of the moment, and being able to plot my own course, even if just for a brief period of time. Eventually that amazing experience of lucidity crossed into my waking life. These moments of awareness would most often occur when I was lost, between places, jarred from my pre-determined tracks of thought - not acting out a role, but for unexplained reasons, truly in that moment.

I've come to look forward to those moments of lucidity. The space between places, where streets have unfamiliar signs, where the world unfolds around us for the first time, we see things anew, with an unexpected clarity, and our automated-self continues on like clockwork, down the street, around the corner, silvery threads leading the way, leaving our lucid-self standing in a place that begs us to recognize its magic.

For me, this piece of writing is an extension is one of those lucid moments between places. Defying the mundane, I sit here in an old wing of the airport, listening to a recent iTunes playlist titled 'Mo Feelin', intently typing away on soft plastic keys, tears blurring everything around me. This moment is both special and unexpected, like so many moments in my childhood. I didn't laugh them off as a child, and despite the reflexive self-consciousness of being an adult, I won't laugh off this moment right now either.

Like my childhood, my concept of self is once again becoming less and less limited. Like my childhood, I am noticing once again that the world around me is full of magic. I don't need my structured logic, the cultural norms, a spiritual leader, or any other form of explanation to back this up. The world is more than the sum of its parts, and some moments defy their simplicity, filled with unexplained meaning. These moments truly are sacred, and worth sharing with others.