Even for a New Age publication, it seemed like a silly request. "Send us a description of your earliest childhood concepts of God", it read. I could already imagine the scene in the editor's office, a desk buried under countless letters all describing the same classical image -- the Great White-Bearded Partriarchal Scorekeeper watching everything from somewhere up in the sky. As I was pondering the dubious value of such an exercise, my mind suddenly flashed on a vivid childhood experience that had transcended all my previous concepts.
It was during one of our cold clear midwestern winter nights. The backyard was heaped with snow drifts glistening in the light of the full moon. I rubbed my hands together to stay warm and watched as my father removed his heavy binoculars from the case, adjusting them for the narrow face of a seven year-old. It was to be one of those rare "just Daddy `n' me" celebrations, the kind that tickles a little girl's heart.
In our family, we never spoke of things like sacred rituals or rites of passage. You just sensed when something was about to happen and you let it. Even so, I doubt that he understood the immense significance of what was about to take place for me.
He helped me focus the eyepiece on the round cratered surface rising above us. To me, the moon had never been more than a far-off object circling the sky. No amount of childish searching for the face on the moon could have prepared me for the shock of this brilliant white image that came blazing through the lenses.
There for the very first time, was something which had been there all along, an enormous and wondrous sight with dimension, shadows and light, and details of unbelievable beauty. A flood of thoughts and feelings swept through me too quickly to identify. I felt I had just received the first degree of initiation into the grownup world of space and the future, an inner circle whose secrets would never be revealed in second grade science books. At the same time I felt a fleeting uneasy stirring like some vague connection to dark and ancient occult mysteries. The sensations swirling around me were almost too much to bear.
My father was taking great pleasure in having led me to this discovery and for a few moments he quietly withdrew to another corner of the yard leaving me all alone with the moon. I stood there in helpless silence until the awe and wonder of it all could no longer be contained. It was then that something unexplainable broke through.
First, a rush of warmth and stillness, then as if being lovingly plunged into liquid space while some vast unseen lense was brought into focus, all sense of separation between the moon and me dissolved. No more "a moon and a me", but rather a timeless witnessing in which all my thoughts effortlessly ceased to exist.
After what must have been only a moment or two, I became aware of a longing for more and instantly I was back, binoculars in hand, a child looking at the moon. I didn't understand what had just happened or why it had seemed so organic and intimately familiar. I only knew that it had somehow left me feeling naked. Maybe that's why I never mentioned to my father or to anyone else what had really happened that night. What exactly does one say about an experience for which there are no words?
It would be many years before the mystery would gradually begin to unravel. The answer was waiting in the writings and teachings of ancient poets and contemporary masters like Joel S. Goldsmith, J. Krishnamurti, Jean Klein and others. Each imparts the message in their own way but all have realized that there is no observer, that there is nothing to observe, that there is only Observing. Or in the words of the poet Wu-Men, "One instant is Eternity. Eternity is the Now. When you see through this Instant you see through the One who Sees."
Sharon Rockey 1995
Sharon Rockey is Director of On-line Communications for the North Bay Multimedia Association in the San Francisco Bay area and Webmistress for their website. She also owns WebSpin Studios, a website design firm and writes the monthly "On-Line Artistry" for the Multimedia Reporter.