Loss of ego

In  Jeffrey Eugenides' The Marriage Plot  there are two rivals for the affection of Madeleine - Leonard Bankhead, a brilliant scientist and Mitchell Grammaticus, a brilliant theology student who is searching for the meaning of life. They were both students at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. One night at a party they fall into conversation about religion. Bankhead initiated the discussion noting that they had both taken a religious course. It is important to understand that Leonard has suffered mental illness and been institutionalized towards the end of college, having stopped taking his lithium. Bankhead tells him of an experience he had on a beach in Europe.

"He was on a beach, he said, in the middle of the night. He was looking up into the starry sky when suddenly he had the feeling that he could lift off into space, if he wanted to...It wasn't at all like a hallucination," Bankhead said. "I need to stress that. It felt like the most lucid moment of my life."

"Bankhead wanted Mitchell's opinion of what had happened. "Was it O.K. to think of the experience as religious, since it felt that way, or was it invalidated by the fact  that he was technically insane at the time? And if it was invalid, why did it bewitch him?"

"Mitchell had answered that as far as he understood them, mystical experiences were significant only to the extent that they changed  a person's conception of reality, and if that changed conception led to a change of behavior and action, a loss of ego."

There are moments when I might ask a similar question. Within the dolly state I let go my free will. I accept commands and obey. I give my trust and in return I am protected. I can fly high. I experience the world in a new way and the experience is light, translucent, joyous. This is an ego-less state; a time of purity and sanctity.

This morning I thought as well about the giving of pain. If one puts aside the element of masochism and sadism and focuses on the giving and receiving of pain as a symbol of trust and an opportunity to fly into a ego-less state, there is something religious, something surreal about this state.

I've flown in both experiences and in both experiences I've been flooded with feelings of love and appreciation for the opportunity to levitate above this earth for periods of time. Each time I've been humbled to have had the opportunity for grace.