An old Chinese fable tells the story of a frog who lived all his life at the bottom of a well.  Having never seen the outside world, he couldn't conceive of anything beyond the rocks, water, and moss which surrounded him.

A bird noticed him and flew down, offering to show him the vast world beyond the well, but the frog only laughed, saying such a thing had to be impossible.
 

When I started meditating I experienced a handful of unexplainable phenomena, but none were as significant as the one which showed me the world outside the well of our normal, everyday consciousness.

Sitting at my desk one day, the sky itself seemed to open up, and a complete inversion of my awareness occurred—instead of feeling like a small "I" in an infinite universe, my consciousness expanded until it seemed infinitely large, and the universe receded into almost nothing.

All of spacetime, from the beginning of the universe to it's end appeared to be nothing more than a small, iridescent bubble blowing across an infinite expanse—beautiful, fragile, and yet totally insignificant compared to the scale of consciousness surrounding it—a consciousness which I was now a part of.

The drama of the human species was so minor from this vantage point as to become almost comical.  The idea that we were somehow special or unique was washed away by the oceanic scale.  Our universe was a splash of paint, a playful brushstroke who's purpose—if play can be said to have one—was for it to be enjoyed. Anything else seemed to be missing the point.

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