Some of you may recall a blog article I wrote last year called “Infinity.” In it, I described my lifelong fear of infinity/eternity and my first individual session with Panache Desai in which he took me to infinity. Unlike the mind-freezing terror I had experienced late at night at the thought of a never-ending universe, what I felt with Panache was free-floating peace and calm. No real sense of time or space; no thoughts, no emotion. Yet a comforting soft energy surrounded me. I remained in that state for hours, and the experience shifted my consciousness profoundly. The late-night fear did not occur for more than a year and a half.

This past summer, however, the terror-infinity thoughts began to recur, more and more frequently. I gradually realized that I was being prepared for the next phase in the evolution of this deep-seated fear. Consequently, I decided to take part in Panache’s 21-day program of “vibrational activation,” which consisted of daily meditations and energetic transmissions, interactive telephone sessions, and online group support. Each participant wrote an intention for the 21 days, and mine was to walk through my fear to freedom. A friend had recently told me that “terror is the final barrier to merging with God,” which actually helped give me a positive incentive for the journey.

How to explain an inner process that practically defies language? I will try. The first thing I experienced was a subtle shift in the energy around the terror, which allowed me to get closer to it than I ever had before. Usually panic took hold of me completely, and I froze. But one night I was able to access what was an integral part of the terror: overwhelming grief. Was this the sum total of life—a universe without end and an equally endless state of being or nonbeing? The despair I felt was so strong that I shut down entirely. But in a phone session, Panache sent me energy for the grief, and I was able to feel it through completely—days and days of crying at the “painful beauty” of life, then anger at the unfairness, and finally emotional neutrality and an inability to access the terror at all. I was in a holding pattern, wondering what would come next. I wrote online: “I feel as if I’m sitting on the edge of something HUGE—like the Grand Canyon with God in the middle of it. If only I could find a way to free fall into that vastness—or get someone to push me!”

Around the same time, another group member posted this quote by William Blake: “To see a World in a Grain of Sand/And a Heaven in a Wild Flower/Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand/And Eternity in an hour.” I have always loved those lines, but that evening I read them as if for the first time. The words infinity and eternity leapt out at me. World upon world opened up inside me. I realized that I had held Infinite Spirit in the pulsing palms of my hands during sessions with Panache. And I had experienced the Eternal Now in meditation, with my soul as silent witness. What we call God, or Spirit, exists as infinity and eternity and loving presence within each moment. Now is all there is, ever, and my soul doesn’t fear infinity because it is infinity. Only the mind is terrified of something that is beyond parameters, beyond thought really.

The next morning, during meditation in my back yard, I sat silently observing all the dimensions of the universe playing out magnificently within me. Opening my eyes and looking up at the infinite eternal peaceful blue sky, I felt my heart and soul as one with everything. No separation, no duality. I am the Grand Canyon and God. And life is a free fall that includes it all.