After my first heart attack and second wife's departure, and after having had extra-ordinary experiences, caused I suppose by trauma and spiritual practice and instruction, I visited my sister, and in the course of keeping her company as she went about her workday, we met someone she knew. I wasn't introduced but had a kind of clarity of seeing as I took in the image of this person, as if my perception enveloped her. Facing me, her body head to foot became one for me including the line of her profile plus a few inches, not an aura-light or that kind of thing. She was this cutout object, as it were, and it stood out such that all the rest of the place disappeared and I saw only this, and my feeling was that I was seeing this as-suchness and through this suchness, around her to the limits of her physical self plus profile from behind. I asked my sister who this person was. She told me someone I didn't want to know, she had unspecified problems. I said without thinking that I had seen through her to the limits of her presence, as if I was seeing something like some mystical person might. At the time and upon reflection I don't know what I experienced and what or why I even said this. It must have sounded strange or some kind of fabrication or prelude to being captivated by this person, getting to know who she was. She had an effect on me, unmistakable. But to this day I have never again had such a kind of seeing through comprehensively like this, a physical not metaphysical thing. I suspect it was not her but me doing something. Perhaps it was an awkward expression in a moment as a result of months of silence and suffering and trying to connect again with the world. I don't know.
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It is impossible to know another person, that is to know him or her fully inside and out. Of course, we say we do, after some time and experience of and with that person; but that isn't even the half of it. Others can tell us about our person of interest. But these are isolated stories, snippets from a life lived and perceived in parts by others. And what do they really know?
How can we access more of what we would like to know? And what would the person you are interested in like you to know about him or her?
I suspect some of that more that we would know could come from media--print and other media, perhaps like film or recordings. And what would these capture? In my case: Words. Perhaps lots and lots of what the subject-person said or fixed in media that we can visit and re-visit to try to say, in the end, hey, I really knew them, perhaps more than anyone else would care to know.
Finding out who I am, or was, is through words. I have left them here and there. A place to start is here.
