The Light I Stopped Explaining — and Started Sharing

The Light I Stopped Explaining — and Started Sharing

“A moment in the Wind River Range, an encounter with something I can’t define, and an invitation to share the analog experiences that draw us closer to the unknown — and to something we hope is there.”

Photo by author, modified to illustrate an aura similar to what I experienced.

I didn’t expect the response.

In my last piece, I stayed close to what could be measured, discussed, debated. I kept parts of myself out of it — intentionally. Not because they weren’t real, but because they didn’t fit neatly into language that feels safe to share. And yet, what came back to me powerfully from others were experiences and shared feelings. Quiet ones. Personal ones. Analog ones.

So I’ll say this plainly — I was shy. I held something back.

And I think it matters that I don’t anymore.

—

It was a day hike in the Wind River Range, north of Cora, Wyoming. The kind of place where the air feels thinner not just in your lungs, but in your thoughts. I had wandered off the road, found a slight rise with sagebrush and scattered rock, and lay down facing a lone pine — limber, wind-shaped, standing with that kind of quiet resilience you only see at elevation.

I wasn’t searching for anything. No experiment. No expectation.

Just stillness.

At some point, I slipped into a meditative state — not forced, not practiced, just… allowed. The kind where your body settles first, then your thoughts follow, and eventually something softer takes over. Time stretches. The edges of things blur — not visually, but conceptually. You’re still there, but less defined.

And then I opened my eyes.

The tree was there, exactly where it had been. But it wasn’t just a tree anymore — not in the way I was perceiving it. Surrounding it, not sharply outlined but unmistakably present, were colors. Blues, pinks, purples — soft, luminous, almost like a field rather than a surface. Not projected onto it. Not separate from it. Just… there.

It didn’t feel like I was “seeing” in the usual sense.

It felt like I was participating in something.

The moment I noticed it — really noticed it, with that familiar shift back into analysis — it disappeared. Instantly. Not fading, not dimming. Just gone. And I was back, looking at the same pine tree, in the same place, with ordinary sight.

—

I’ve thought about that moment more than I expected to.

Not to explain it. Not to label it. But to understand why it felt so… coherent. So complete. Not like something added on top of reality, but something revealed within it.

I don’t need to decide what it was.

What I do feel, more strongly now, is that experiences like this — whatever we call them, or don’t call them — are far more common than we admit. They just don’t get shared. Not because they aren’t meaningful, but because they don’t translate well into the frameworks we rely on to communicate.

They’re analog.

And analog experiences don’t compress easily into categories without losing something essential.

—

If there’s anything I’d ask, it’s this:

Share them anyway.

Share them without worrying about the form. Without trying to make them fit into a structure that feels acceptable or explainable. Write them as they come — raw, honest, unfinished if they need to be.

Share the moments you’ve had — the ones you might call analog sensing, the ones others might call spiritual, meditative, or metaphysical. However you name them, or even if you don’t name them at all. Just share them with all of us.

Not as conclusions. Not as claims. Not as things that need to be proven or defended.

Just as they are.

Moments where something shifted. Where perception softened or expanded. Where you felt, even briefly, like you were part of something rather than separate from it. Whether it was in nature, in stillness, in light, in sound, or in something you can’t quite describe.

We don’t need to agree on what they mean.

We don’t even need to understand them.

But there’s something that happens when they’re spoken out loud — when they’re allowed into the shared space between us without being forced into a box. Patterns begin to emerge. Not rigid ones. Not fixed ones. But living ones.

And maybe that’s the point.

Not to define the experience.

But to keep the space open where it can exist.

—

I held this one back before.

I won’t this time.