I learned this evening that my friend, and companion on the mystical path, Ashley Alvis, passed away from a heart attack in his home in Atlanta, Georgia. Ashley is one of the few souls I’d met who embodied both joy and mystical passion to an extreme degree. I will miss his words of wonder – though on deeper levels I think we are more connected now than before.
I was speaking to a friend about Ash, who made the comment that he now felt “beyond the veil” due to his passing. This caused me to reflect on the nature of this life, and how sometimes it seems that the real veil is not the one between life and death, but the obscuring perceptions that divide us when we seem, outwardly, to be nearest. Like a mystical paradox, those who seem near can be the most far, while those now gone may be the most present of all.