Expanding Beyond The Void | The Resurrection of the Traveler Within
When J-R dropped the physical body we all knew and loved so much, I was living at Prana. It was a wonderful place to be at such a momentous time. The community was so loving, the togetherness was immediate and palpable. That morning of October, 22, 2014, we pulled together hundreds of people in a matter of hours to join at Prana to celebrate and experience the loss (and gain) of our beloved John-Roger. The energy and solidarity among us was alive and thriving. Of course many were sensitive, crying, solitary, hugging, holding, remembering. It was a beautiful time. I especially recall sitting in the large seminar room at Prana after John had shared with us that morning. NOW Productions was playing the beautiful MSIA song, āThe Master Calls,ā with the accompanying video of a young and sprightly J-R on his various sweet adventures around the world, particularly in Israel and Egypt. It is a beautiful piece, and if youāre interested you can watch it Ā here on youtube:
When this video and song came on, I for one felt the beauty and love of all of who J-R is and has been for me all these years (beyond lifetimes even!) ļ¬ood over me and through me. The tears ļ¬owed freely and happily. The thought of him gone and me not being able to see him again (in that form) was a punch deep into my gut. I felt it hard in my throat. My tears cooled and calmed me down, brought me peace and solace. I know heās with me. I know how much he loves me. I know. And truth be told, I was actually extremely ecstatic for the manāthe great man and best friend of mine for all my life and beyondāI was so happy and joyous for him that he ļ¬nally got to graduate and eat his cake too. He deserved it as far as Iām concerned! So at his passing it was a time full of greatnessesāgreat love, great loss, great fulfillment, great emotion, great togetherness.
Interestingly for me, it wasnāt for another couple of months be-fore I started to actually experience myself being āawayā from J-R — as though the energy — the great, great, incredible energy — that is J-R started to feel distant and gone or used up and far, far away. It was as if there were levels within me that were still very much connected to the physical John-Roger whom I know and love so dearly, and it took a few months for those parts of my consciousness to really experience the loss of the physical part of him. There was an emptiness and a perceived void which began to overshadow parts of my personal life and in the way I was perceiving much of the world around me.
And thenāand this was the most frightening and shocking of allāI began to notice the overshadowing within myself! Inside of me I began to sense a dropping out, a fading away or a falling short of some kind. As though somewhere inside of me the place that I always āknewā and could āretreat toā and ļ¬nd sanctuary and solace — that place where J-R and I would always go to and meet up together like two lovers in a secret gardenāit was as if that place vanished and no longer existed. As though the FBI and the CIA and Secret SWAT teams had come in and ransacked the place clean. The most interesting thing to me about all of this was it wasnāt a dirty or messy or negative experience within me — in fact quite the contrary, I was more loving and happy and grounded in my Spirit than ever beforeābut it was deļ¬nitely diļ¬erent and unfamiliar, new and unusual. It was a void of consciousness, an emptiness and clear awaken-ing that something I had known and loved so deeply and truly, and to some degree took for granted, was now truly gone. I was now catching up to the stark, cold fact that truly I am the one responsible – I am the one present and here now.
Of course that could be seen as a rather dire pic-ture to paint, donāt you think? Well at the time I sure did! And boy did I put myself through a number with that one! I was so discombobulated and disoriented inside that I didnāt even know what to make of it all — I wasnāt able to articulate or label or isolate or identify the experience I was having. It blew away all reference points I had that were familiar to me. And so thanks to many loving and incredibly bright and patient and perceptive people very close to me in my life, to whom I am eternally grateful, I began to process deeper with myself. I charted new courses further into this void, to see what was there for me. What lessons were being shown to me? What was I experiencing with all of this?
You see I was getting hung up on the āformā of my beingness and the ways I could serve my Spirit. I was attached to āouter shellsā as means and ways to participate with Spirit in my life. Somehow just knowing J-Rās body-form was alive and doing some-thing (anything!) on this fair earth made a diļ¬erence to me and my consciousness — his physical presence grounded and reassured me that all was okay, all was radiant. And now that his beautiful body was gone, levels deep within me that I wasnāt even fully aware of were capsizing in confusion and disorientation. What do I do now!?! How do I relate to this form now? What is the spiritual way? How can I be more like J-R too? Do I devote myself to serving the church? Do I dedicate myself to my own personal life? Or perhaps to the lives of others in need? Or even to a life of art and beauty? To be honest, none of those options seemed to prove fulļ¬lling to me in my consciousness. I was on a quest for how to really relate to this outer form – I was searching for how I too could be in my ļ¬esh the way J-R was in his ļ¬esh – and his passing was the only way to bring me into this next profound and sacred communion.
And so as I began to observe and to perceive my experience, I began to unravel the mystery of the Spirit as I saw it moving before me and within me. I began to witness and to glimpse into something all-pervasive, something beyond forms and organizations and bodies and modes of thought or behavior. I began to see into the Spiritāāthat which isā as J-R loved to refer to it. The Greater Estate. Available to all, always and forever more. Ever-present and closer to us than our next breath. Here it is! Here we are! A magical and mystical conļ¬uence of power and matter, Spirit and humanity! Divinity and Grace. As I began to unwind further, I fell back into myself, rediscovered truths I already knew, now deeper, now more pervasive, undulating ever further into me like the gentle persistence of water. All is gorgeous. All is here before us now. All is to be blessed by each of us particularly. We are all equal. No one and nothing is greater or lesser than anotherāin any respect. We are all one and the Lord reigns supreme. From this place I opened up into a greater Spiritual realm and found my larger self before me, I found all of us there alongside my sisters and brethren — and it was good. And lo and behold who else did I ļ¬nd but my dear and beloved J-R — the great Traveler and wayshower for so so many — my dearest of friends and beloveds. The homecoming is always so sweet.
One of the greatest values of walking in valleys and shadows is how much we learn to appreciate and prize the views and vistas atop the mountains we ascend, and the great Lights we witness. It was then that I began to be shown that this void I had thought was J-R leaving me was actually in fact J-R once again so close to me — so alive and present with me in such deep and intimate ways that he was in fact creating and holding and supporting me to experience the very same void that separated me from him! He was propping me up in my own limited awareness and expression so that I could go into it more fully and experience it and clear it and move thankfully through it into a greater experience and oneness with the Traveler, and with J-R and most importantly with myself! And so here is where I thank J-R for all that he has taught me and done with me and with all of us for all these years (and beyond!). And I thank myself, and all of us too, for all that we have learned from all the teachings and the works of the Traveler as they are etched before us in all the hearts and minds of everyone around us, within everything we encounter, and al-ways with all the love and truth we are all so blessed to be able to experience. So hereās to you J-Rā and most especially hereās to the Traveler within every one of us – our Phoenix arising within!
By Mario Tenaglia
Mario has been devoted to spiritual practices for over 15 years andĀ counting now. He is an active initiate of the Sound Current and aĀ minister in the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness. Mario owns andĀ operates MT Services – a bookkeeping and admin services business in theĀ greater Los Angeles area. He also holds a degree in English Literature,Ā one of his greatest passions, and has a blog at the Huffington PostĀ which he wishes he could contribute to more regularly. In his spare timeĀ he can likely be found on a mountain somewhere in the tri-state region.
