I Am That I Am
What happens when we die? What happens to me? Myself.
Myself? Myself? That’s the problem. That’s the whole problem with the whole thing. Myself. Self. That’s not right. That just isn’t right. That isn’t. There is none.
The body stops a cell at a time. But the brain keeps firing those neurons. Little lightening bolts, like fireworks inside. And I thought I’d despair and feel afraid but I’m too busy in this moment, remembering.
Of course. I remember that every atom in my body is forged in a star. This matter, this body, is mostly just empty space after all. And solid matter is just energy vibrating very slowly and there is no me. There never was.
The electrons in my body just mingle and dance with the electrons of the ground below me and the air. I’m no longer breathing and I remember that there is no point when any of that ends and I begin.
I remember, I am energy, not memory. Not self. My name, my personality, all came after me. I was before them and I will be after. Everything else is pictures picked up along the way. Fleeting little dreamlettes, printed on the tissue of my dying brain. And I and the lightening that jumps between. I am the energy firing the neurons. And I’m returning just by remembering. I’m returning home.
I’m just like a drop of water falling back into the ocean of which it’s always been a part. All things a part. All of us, a part. You, me, the little girl, my mother, my father, the puppy, everyone that has ever been. Every animal, every plant, every star, every galaxy, all of it.
There are more galaxies than grains of sand on the beach. And that’s what we’re talking about when we say god. The one. The cosmos and its infinite dreams.
We are the cosmos dreaming of itself. It’s simple a dream that I think it’s my life, every time.
But now, in the split second I remember. In the moment I remember. The instant I remember, I comprehend everything at once. There is no time. There is no death. Life is a dream. It’s a wish. And again, and again and again and again and again, and again on into eternity.
And I am all of it. I am everything. I am all. I am that I am.
Midnight Mass, 2021