I spent one night and a day in Februrary as another self. I didn’t tell anyone this had happened. This is the story of what it felt like to wake up as another person — who was also me — that walked around inside my body, inside my life, for about 20 hours, and what it taught me about the soul, the self. Our many, many selves.
This experience defies language. I will do my best to describe what it is like, but I’m going to be playing fast and loose with pronouns here. Do your best to feel the story behind the words. Experiences like this make it clear that we need new language to describe the myriad components of conscious experience.
His very first impression of my life, once he was lucid, was surprise. He was obviously as surprised as I was (…would later be) to be there at all. I, as him, woke in my bed. I’d been doing something just before this. Something amazing. I struggled to remember. And oh… Oh, did I remember.
I was dancing starlight. I was playing with the stars. Multiple stars. I didn’t just remember. It had been happening. I remembered in the same way you can remember what you were doing five seconds ago. It was five seconds ago. I had just been doing it and now I was laying like a lead weight in some bed in a dark room.
I frantically tried to recall everything about the experience and the transition to this point. I knew it was important and, like waking after the most beautiful and vivid dream you’ve ever had, it was rapidly liquifying and I could feel it draining away from me. I grabbed what little I could of the experience I could puddle into the palms of my grubby human hands. The rest slipped between my proverbial fingers and is lost to me now. Here is what little I could retain about how it feels to be dancing starlight playing with the stars themselves. It is as good, better maybe, than you will imagine. Just take that perspective. Yes, it really is as amazing as described.