When I was five I asked my Dad, "how big is God?" His response was to take me on an out-of-body journey into the cosmos for a God's eye view of the Whole.
The "Big Bang" (as seen through the "image-ination" of Cosmic Consciousness) was awesome and had an infinitely expansive feeling.
 However, the "Big Crunch" was a terrifying implosion of all the mass of the cosmos being pulled back together by gravity with "little me" at the center, being crushed into nothingness.
 
I woke up screaming for several nights after that until Dad convinced me that God was a benevolent and loving Being and that the pulsating cosmos was God's breathing out and in, transforming all forms through loving creativity... a perpetual process without beginning or end.
 
I revisited this vision many times over the years and learned that Consciousness always survives the implosion that obliterates all diversity of form, as all forms re-unite into one Mass before exploding again into another round of cosmic diversity. I came to see clearly (in this transcendental epiphany) that this Consciousness is our true identity, not our individual forms.

In ’87 I found a truly selfless teacher, Joel Norwood, who knew this firsthand through his experience of gnosis in ’83. He is founder of the Center for the Sacred Sciences in Eugene, OR. His words immediately resonated with this truth in me that “self” is an illusion. I “knew” it, but it had not yet transformed me. As a living example of Awakening and an “ordinary Joe” kind of guy he de-mystified “Enlightenment” for me and somehow made it more accessible for me.

Yet it wasn’t until “94 that my “cosmic vision” culminated in my final experience as an "individual self.” After 25 years of marriage and parenting (raising our three sons), I took my first major break from "business as usual" and went to Hawaii on a two month Vision Quest or Shamanic Journey.
 
I had been meditating for 25 years (an hour a day) and felt that I was on the threshold of Liberation from the illusion of "self." As it turned out this was true. After a month in the Islands and several spontaneous initiations stripping me of my attachments, a mantra developed within like an echo every time I said or even thought “I” “… “I, Who?” It was “driving me crazy.”

At the end of my Journey, after sitting for several hours on the North Shore of Kauai at Hanalei Bay, I had revisited the Vision and "seen through" all my personal programs. It was obvious that my personal self was just the accumulation of all the roles I had ever played in life fabricated into a false entity called “myself.” The tide had come in and I rolled over into the surf to cool off, as I was well baked.
 
I swam beyond the breakers, floated on my back and completely lost track of time. An hour was an eternity, perpetually NOW. I was one with sea and sky, earth and cosmos. Meanwhile a current had taken me out miles from shore, and when I finally noticed this, I went into the final surrender of my life as this individual identity. I was at peace, at one with the universe as One Consciousness manifest in all forms, so this particular form would be no great loss.
 
My body was wrinkled like a prune when the current finally brought me back in. I felt seaweed brushing against my back and swam ashore. But my illusion of "selfhood" had been “lost at sea." There was no “I” or echoing “I, Who?,”  just the ongoing NOW of immediate experience not separate from Conscious Awareness. The illusion of “self” never returned. Language requires the use of “I” to designate this individual, but no “identity” remains as one separate from the Whole, just a unique individual floating in a sea of Consciousness, the Omnipresent One.
 
On return to the mainland, I founded the Center for Conscious Unity and have been facilitating weekly meditation circles and teaching through my website,
www.consciousunity.org.
Life goes on looking very “normal” in my roles as husband, father, grandfather, son, brother, friend, masonry contractor, land trustee (developing community), meditation teacher, webmaster, etc. But it all seems to happen by itself with no personal volition involved. The “baggage” of trying to “be somebody” is gone leaving “me” free to be nobody, totally present to Now, without  an internal dialogue interpreting everything into its relevance to “me” and “my purposes.”

Plus there is no fear, and it’s all motivated by universal love. It’s all  perfect, even being present for conflict and struggle in a helpful way. I love being “used” in all ways as a helper with no personal needs coloring my interaction.
 
This was indeed the Liberation from the illusion of "separate self" which had been the purpose of my life as a mystic and the object of the Great Quest.

In Love and Unity,
mik I el   (The name was given by the ocean surf against the shore when “i” was “absorbed” into the One “I Am.”)