Purple Couch

It is a beautiful spring day, and all I want to do is pray.

In my quirky way, I sat on the couch where the cushions did slouch. I then unzipped my drawing pouch. With my assortment of pencils, markers, and such, I started sketching an image of guess who? It was you!

I didn’t get very far before there was a stillness of thought. It soon covered over my creative mental spot. Quietness surrounded me. Everything seemed blank. At that moment, my intellect sank. It felt universal, like spiritual bliss, but I could have been experiencing a mental slip-and-miss.

Like an endless hole in the ocean floor, it was a feeling that compressed me more and more. I drifted away from my chronicle of life as I knew it to be, and something awaited for me. It hailed me as if to say, “Goodbye time, matter, and space.” I wiggled the toes in my shoe, and that’s when I knew it wasn’t a prank from the deep blue. Onward I went with my sketching of you.

I drew your eyes without any strife. I could even see part of me in your life. It was more than a picture, and I wanted something true. I tried to embrace you with each line that I drew. When I finished the neckline and your puffy lips, I had an emotional pause that seemed like a trip. I found myself gazing clueless and still. There was a slight chill. I felt someone coming nearer. I had to stop and look. I examined my space just like reading a book. There was an emotional drift. A calming presence that swallowed me whole.

It was a feeling of loveliness with a warm glow. It was full of spirit and something slow. I hadn’t a clue what to do, so I reached out to find nothing resembling me or you. I felt a connection with everything around me. I glanced at my drawing and wanted to speak, but no words came out, not even a creak. The feelings inside were quieting down. I couldn’t distinguish one energy from the next. It was a moment full of perplex.

I sat on the purple couch like a motionless fawn. There wasn’t anything arising, not even a yawn. I let the feeling overtake me like a wave to the shore. But, soon, there was a knock at the door.

Without realizing where I was or where I had been, I rose out of the mist to be human again. When I got to the door, it was a person, indeed. The visitor sat and told a tale full of loving feed. It was the saga of her boyfriend, who admired her features. She went on and on like he was a mystical creature. Her story’s spirit was joyous, but I didn’t know why she shared it with me. Soon after that, the visitor rose from where she sat. She left with silent steps to the room where her friend was at.

It was then that I returned to the drawing at hand. How nice would it be to show you the drawing before we met? But before the thought set, another shift came my way. In an instant, it seemed, I heard a scream. “Help me!” the visitor exclaimed with a painful shriek. It was an array of emotions that felt big and bleak. Without hesitation, I leaped from my seat. I ran to the room, where I found an aura of gloom.

When I went to the door, I saw that the visitor’s friend was on the floor. Her friend wasn’t breathing, and something more. I was the only one there that could help with resuscitation. As a medical responder, I knew what to do, but I had no thought at this moment of code blue.

I pressed my mouth with a seal against the partly living person’s face. I funneled my air at a particular pace. After the compressions, I had a brief pause. Soon it became repeat, repeat, and repeat again. There was nothing more to do but dive deeply into the pace. Somehow it felt like a mortal race.

When the ambulance arrived, there was a helping shift. They began triage support. At that phase, I left the room as if in a daze. I walked to the kitchen to place a call. I remember feeling like I was going to fall. I dialed the number, and an answer came on. I said, “Your partner isn’t breathing…” and it was the best I could say. I shared that a dear friend was willing to stay. Over the phone, silence came through, and I then heard a sound that felt full of dread. Next came a question, “Is my love dead?”

I felt the love and sadness over the phone. It was a beginning and an end that I couldn’t explain. My words were jumbling with grief and self-blame. Inside, I felt I had caused all this pain. It became clear that someone’s partner was transitioning to a bodiless state. I felt an unavoidable fate.

Just a week earlier, I spoke over the phone with the person that was entering the ethereal zone. During the call, I heard their relationship was gaslit with abuse. My help was requested in the most direct way. I wish I knew then what to say. I could have diverted this moment for a brighter day.

Somehow, my experiences all strung together. I could view how a person averts stigma or abuse by ending their life. It is a common theme of relationship strife. It is a social taboo that no one wants to hear. I write about it because the grief of this sort always seems to be near. I cannot escape it. The pain collectively interferes. Even so, there isn’t sadness for a spirit to be free. It is the direction for you and me. Yet, there is disenfranchisement when vulnerable people are being held down. Especially punitive domesticity, and much is easy to deny. It makes me frown. It is so pervasive that it can be found in every town.

Abuse is more than a perpetrator thing. It is a dominating cycle that squeezes everything. It is permitted by some who get off by harming another with hurt, while some do not, and get jailed like dirt. Whichever the case, it is a festering plot. To be free of abuse is a perplexing thought. I’ve been told the answer is control, but I know it is not.

A mystical path encounters many things. It is a path that often collides with a variety of beings. There is maturity and immaturity, inside and out. It is like being a bird that wants to sing out. Instead, there isn’t room for a loving tune. Its wings are clipped, and it’s put in a cage. The metal rings all around are to bury its sound. Of course, this is my estimation of the world I see. It is based on experience that is inside of me. No matter how much I cry or ask it to stop, it usually ends in a mystical flop.

To be free from abuse is a conscious state. Call it awareness or wisdom, it is our natural fate. Even in moments of doubt, this stuff can transform into a beautiful bloom. There is infinite healing deeply seeded in everyone I see. I often wonder what life would be like if awareness was set free.

Even if most can’t listen or hear what I say, the loving energy drifts in every which way. From what I have gleaned from abusive stuff, anyone can rise above it. What makes life profound is sound healing. It unfolds into joys that reach beyond earthly bounds. Even as life offers a bumpy ride, I know there is a purposeful guide.

What I want more than anything, is to share my light. It is pure and loving, but I know there is fright. There is also crudeness that I’m refining throughout. It is a purification of consciousness, no doubt. An innate ability that has to come out. Resurfacing from the ashes is what people do, I’m not the first or the last. But then, how about you?

You have some facts to tell and things that have been done. There is purity in you if you give it a run. Of course, there isn’t anything I can do to show you your light. You find it yourself through your wisdom-based sight.

I’m anxious to meet you when you find your pure glow. I’m a bit revved up about it, I’m sure you have sensed. Maybe this is old news, like a worn-out sixpence.

The universe is calling with a spiritual song, and I’m listening heartfully while singing along. It’s a song and a prayer, all bundled in one, that the days of gloom will return to its tomb. Yet, in case my words get too grey, let me put it another way.

There is a glow within that will forever be. If you want to see me, I’m just beyond my deformity. Into me, you see, there is purity. It is a profound remembering that makes forgetting disappear. This is how you and I become very, very near. It is glowing so bright it outshines individual light. Oneness comes when letting go arrives. So, I’m letting go of everything with all my might. I pray, in every way, that soon this day will come. It is an energy that is likely under every thumb.

My words are nothing more than translated feelings. It is an intimacy that I share with you. By the way, you are everything I think isn’t me. With that, all my love to you from me.

“When everything is alive, death no longer exists.”

Life is more about feelings than words.

Special note:

Every discipline has an answer. For psychologists, the answer is in thought. For a spiritualist, the answer is in philosophy. For a pastry chef, the answer is dessert. But, unlike these, the mystical doesn’t need an answer because it is alive everywhere.

I wish I knew something profound, but alas, I have limited knowledge, no power to pursue, and no authority over anything. I’m drifting along this life with as much stride as I can muster. Before birth, and even to this day, love is the only way. I feel it and give it, and it can be intense at moments. Beyond the murkiness of me, there is love, and I hope you can see it. If not in me, at least in everything else, and then it won’t matter. It can be happily hereto and each ever onward. Thanks for reading.

Originally published at https://ericzuniga.com on June 1, 2023.