‘Unexplainable’ Events as Crossroads of Consciousness
As a hiker, you end up spending a lot of time with your companions covering miles in nature with the chance and incentive to ask really whatever you want — in a situation of rare intimacy in today’s world. On longer adventures, there’s a lot of time on trail, and conversation topics tend to get a bit more in the bushes as the hours and miles pass. Could you convince your significant other to change religions if you had a secret million dollar bet?.. If you had to give up one sense, which one would it be? One of my favorite ‘trail hypotheticals’ is this essentially — if you bore witness to something extraordinary, be it Bigfoot, a spirit, a vision of the future, whatever it is — would you share that experience, or would you keep it a secret? And who would you tell? Would you keep the secret from everyone, feeling nobody would believe you? Would you tell only the very closest people to you? Would you share it more broadly? To me it’s a very interesting question that gives valuable insight into a person.
One story I will share from the trail that’s bit of a grey area in my mind occurred while winter peak-bagging in the Adirondack mountains of New York. Three friends and I drove up, hiked in around five miles and set up camp at a primitive site deep in the (albeit trailed) wilderness. The trails in the area see regular use, but most days you might be able to recall the makeup of each party you’ve passed, since there aren’t so many. The four of us were inside, chatting a little, trying to keep warm, when we heard a loud thump, thump, thump that seemed to be coming from only a foot or two away from the tent. We exchanged a look, one of us said “what the [heck] was that”, but after hiking in with full packs and setting up camp in the dark, nobody cared at that point. But just moments later, another thump, thump thump that sounded very close, and we all swung our heads to the direction of the sound. It sounded like someone was stomping around just outside the tent wall. I spoke up at that point, declaring I was going outside to relieve myself, and would see what’s up. I turned my headlamp on, went outside into the bitter cold, still night, and circled the tent. There were no tracks other than ours, human nor animal that I could discern. No clues at all to my eyes. What’s stuck with me about this incident is, we all heard heavy pounding sounds twice, and having done many similar trips, I’m at a loss what that was.
Some events you can shrug off as ‘weird’, like the one above, but some truly require you to put blinders on if you hope to continue life in your same way. One event in that vein I’ll share that still leaves me baffled occurred at a mentalist show I attended around freshman year of high school. I remember as I arrived a little early the showman was standing in the lobby working the crowd. I joined a small batch of students, and he asked us each to think of a card. He went through each of us, guessing each, one-by-one. I was skeptical until he came to me; “Ten of Hearts”, and that skepticism turned to shock.
Soon the show started, and one bit that still shakes me began with the performer passing pencils, papers, and envelopes out. He asked us to indicate an event from our life in just a few words, write it down, and place it into a sealed envelope. This was my opportunity, I would give him nothing to work with. I thought of a funny story where a friend had posted an obscene illustration on the back window of our school bus, and simply wrote the word ‘bus’ on the paper, sealed it, and someone collected the envelopes and brought them up on the stage. One after another, he picked envelopes from a hat or bucket, and revealed as much detail as you’d like until it was clear he had nailed it. When he pulled my envelope, he burst out laughing and he swung his gaze over to me and met my eyes with a look that left me sure he knew the whole story. He referenced a couple details with apt discretion before he mercifully moved to the next envelope.
After the show, this mentalist let the students again gather around, and I watched him do some different magic and tricks. I waited a while to ask him a question. I’m not sure my exact words, but I asked him basically, ‘how do you do this, is this real?’. He gave me a look, and asked me to hold a rubber band between my fingers on two hands. I looped the rubber band, and he produced a dime. He placed the dime on the loop track of the rubber band, and instructed me to hold it. Moments later, the dime started moving, crossing the rubber band. The dime tracked backwards after it reached the one end, reversing course. By that point my hands were shaking a little. The rest becomes a little blurry in my memory, but all three of those ‘tricks’ still leave a deep impression. Most people may hear these examples and say, there’s always a trick.
You can limit or expand your reality. As an example, lets say you’re at an uncertain point in your life, you’re out on a walk in nature, and you decide to send the intention out, send me a bird flying through the sky if I’m on the right path. A bird flies by. You think, of course there would be a bird here, it’s the woods.. Send me two birds flying together across the sky, left-to-right. You see those two birds cross the sky, from your left to right, moments later. You think, the last bird was going left to right too, I should’ve asked for the other way... I’ve been on that walk, looking for those signs, and questioning them when they do come. I encourage anyone to try something like this for themselves if you never have, and take time to filter whatever happens through heart, body, and mind.
Societal group consciousness has very little interest in the true nature of wisdom, so our urge to stay in the good graces of society can actually steer us directly away from the destination if what we seek is deeper knowledge. The mystic and philosopher Osho ably notes an important distinction:
Wisdom is intrinsically true because it is an existential experience. It is not something known from others, it is not something gathered from the scriptures; it is something that grows in your heart. It is a growth, not an accumulation. It is experience, not information.
Wisdom is experienced and verified through the heart. Even Albert Einstein made mistakes, most famously his ‘Cosmological Constant’, which worked backwards from his assumed cosmology, plugging in a value which would allow the universe to match his assumption that it was of fixed size. Many ‘brilliant’ minds in physics accepted that assumption until it was proven very wrong. Credit to Einstein for having a theory. Those that accepted his ideas without passing them through their own personal filters, as a deferral to his authority, are the ones deserving of scorn. Its a brave choice to follow your own process and look inside for truth. These rare events force us to that crossroads of expansion or contraction. Take each as a true blessing in your life, and choose wisely.
