My name is Kyle P. Harper, and my story begins on September 15, 2007.
It was a Friday afternoon and I was at home with my wife, her mother and my 4-day-old daughter Avery, my first child. We were exhausted new parents trying to figure out how to integrate a new life into our relationship when the phone rang. It was the real estate developer with whom I worked. I thought he was calling to tell me my check was ready, as it was payday, and I had taken the week off to be with my new family. What I heard was anything but what I was expecting.
I was told that because of the beginnings of the financial market meltdown, the bank that was funding our marketing had frozen those funds. I was the Director of Marketing and Sales and there were no longer funds to pay me. I no longer had a job. As I heard these words, my heart began to sink, for my exhausted wife who sat in the chair half awake breastfeeding our new child, had just quit her job as a nurse to stay at home with our daughter. I hung up the phone and reluctantly turned to my wife and mother-in-law and told them the news. We all sat in silence absorbing the shock of our new reality.
A few days later, I was determined to make my own way and support my family. I started driving around my state, North Carolina, looking at properties that I might be able to buy and remodel and then resell. This was a very stressful time. My family had no income, and I was leaving my wife and newborn daughter for a few nights a week to be on the road. My wife would call me crying, delirious from lack of sleep and taking care of our newborn daughter, and I would find myself paralyzed by panic attacks as I sat on the side of the road. For anyone who has experienced the excruciating discomfort of a panic attack, they know that it cannot even be remotely approached in words.
As if by divine intervention, I immediately started a personal meditation practice. Over the next three years, my daily meditation practice was far from normal. I didn’t have a dark room with rich fabrics and carpets and incenses burning. Instead, I would pull into gas stations along the back roads or rest stops along the Interstate, turn off my car and sit for 10 minutes, then 20 minutes and over time 30 or more. As my meditation practice developed, I noticed my panic attacks started to happen less frequently and finally disappeared. I noticed my relationship with my wife took on a less confrontational and more gentle and loving tone. I noticed my business relationships seemed to go smoother and I was far less stressed out than I had been before. My outer situation in life had not changed much, but my perception of it changed drastically.
What I was interested in started to change as my rotation of books on CD had now shifted from predominately business with a few spiritual books in the mix to now almost all spiritual. I noticed that the spiritual books helped me in business as well as life more than the latest new business paradigm. I started doing okay financially and becoming more comfortable with the unknown of supporting a family on one self-employed income. As my awakening continued, I started feeling compelled to do more than with my life. I wanted to share my story.
I decided that I wanted to write a book and share my story with others. I had one problem, I had never written more than an email before. How was I going to write a book? I started a ritual of meditating for 30 minutes to an hour every morning and then writing directly after meditation. It wasn’t instant, but it didn’t take long before I was pouring out page after page almost every day. At this time, I thought I was writing a book about financial success, but I noticed the book was taking a different tone than I had imagined it would. I had started writing a book about how to succeed in real estate but now the prevalent story was of persevering through overwhelming odds and finding your destiny in the language of real estate.
Then I had a major transformation take place. About halfway through the writing of the book, on February 16, 2011, as I was meditating, I had what I describe as an orgasmic feeling of Oneness where all thought stopped, and I became the Universe and everything in it. I use the word orgasmic, not because it was sexual, but because that is the only word that remotely describes the ecstasy I felt. After having this overwhelming experience change my worldview in seconds, I tried to capture what had just happened in words. Of course, words could not capture, but they were brush strokes pointing to the experience of the whole. From that day on when I would perform my morning ritual of meditation to prepare to write my book on real estate, I would have words of wisdom flow from me instead. I collected these writings in my journal folder on my computer as I tried to stay focused on the task at hand, the book I was “trying” to write.
After getting my real estate book published and traveling and speaking for a few months, as my personal spiritual writings continued, I realized that I was not teaching the whole truth by speaking about financial success. I also realized I was not being true to my life’s true purpose. I returned home and pulled out all of my journal entries from my spontaneous writings spawned by my new realization of Oneness and the infinite eternity that lies in this very moment. I realized that to do something I did not 100% believe in for one second was to do it for eternity. I decided to abandon the book I had written every day for a year on real estate investing and my history of 15 years of being in the real estate business and try to get my spiritual journal published.
I ended up self-publishing Moving beyond Mind on December 15, 2011. Since then, I have been traveling to small bookstores around North Carolina and reading, teaching from my experience, and leading meditations. I have also visited yoga studios and meditation groups. Although many of the people I meet seem to be genuinely inspired by my open and honest writings, many of my long-time friends and business associates do not know what to think of my new perception.
I have peace in knowing I am allowing life to flow through me. I know that true success is being fully awake in this moment and doing what needs to be done to nurture it, not by something outside of myself. Before, I was seeking success in the fantasy of a long and comfortable life by giving up the eternal bliss that is found in this very second. As I wrote in Moving beyond Mind, “When the ordinary becomes miraculous, the miraculous becomes ordinary.”
I have included two of my writings that will appear in my next book, Melting into Union.
Love,
Kyle
Kyle Harper
910.367.1623
7.16.2012
The infinite begins where the mind ends
The ego knows only that which it can create
We cage ourselves in our thoughts as we shake the bars yelling at the outside world.
We want freedom, yet it can never be reached by building more and stronger bars
The cage is our illusion
The mind protecting us from our natural habitat.
A child is born into the world in pure bliss, and is at the same time completely helpless to the environment
By surrendering our ego the cage melts and we are set free
The mind cannot comprehend the infinite
The infinite exist just below the surface of thought
Feel the mind fighting for its survival in this very moment
Questioning and trying to rationalize that which it cannot understand
You have invested your whole life in knowing a false dream that can melt in one second
Let go of the limitations of the thoughts of separateness
Open yourself to the cosmic oneness that knows all
Leave the narrator of limitations behind
Join the all powerful, infinite joy of peace
There is nothing to fight for
You have all that you need
The mind must be see for what it is
Fear based limitations, an illusion of death in the world of the infinite
All form dies
All matter is limited
Become the infinite formless that lies within matter
Become the stillness below the current of the ego
You live an infinite life in this moment
Stepping over the infinite to find more illustrates the delusion of separatist thought
8.31.2012
I walk along the ribbon of sand in between the formless and form
The vast infinite above me assembles into fluffy white clouds so that the limitations of my senses can be pleasured
The formless of the water that laps at my feet takes the form of waves so that I, in human form, can obtain a glimpse of the forces of the heavenly bodies as this infinite eternal force bows and kisses my feet; hoping I, the human I, can take a hint from the massive power that is submissive and humble, honored that one has peeked slightly in the direction of the true beauty of existence.
The light that creates and reflects all in the material world, as well as the formless, showers its heavenly beams down on my body and my soul. The form of the clouds, the forces of the planets, the purity of the divine, and my perception of it all are made possible by the single narrow strain of cosmic radiation.
The dance of the cosmos is unfolding in this very second. Life is observing this symphony. Death is becoming it. Birth is the light making form out of formless and the cycle continues, awed by itself.
The ocean never sheds a tear for the crash of the wave, it laughs as its beauty is seen and its energy released.
If the wave of my body collapses, if the clouds of my heart disperse, give my ego the strength to shed tears in joy of the eternal life I have glimpsed.
The perception of time distorts
The awakening of consciousness clarifies
The long life of a wise-one is not measured in the bodily years of the form
But the observing of eternity in the millisecond that is now.
All of history and the entire future collapse into this moment, just as the ocean collapses into a wave and the sky a cloud.
Both formed this very second by light that is sourced from millions of miles from earthly existence.
Don’t forget, O great ones, we are the source of light, not just the perception of the reflection, we are the ocean, not just the wave, we are the sky, not just the cloud.
Just as a child builds castles in the sand, we build our ego created lives.
When the tide comes in or our divine self playfully knocks us down, remember your true nature; and that it is you as purity that lets your separateness know it has become too attached to the ego’s fantasy.
When you mistake the form for the formless life is suffering. When you see the formless in form, life is needed no more-death is allowed to move through you.
Without attachment, as your needs are released, you become the ocean in the wave, you become the source in human form and you experience the ecstasy of the crashing of the wave.
The wave begins crashing when it forms, the body begins dying when its born.
Allowing the formless to flow in an out of form without friction, we experience the cycle with eternal bliss. We explore our senses with awe and gratitude as we touch the fabric of existence, rather than running after the biological pleasures of the ego which can never be met.
This deep awareness is the pleasure we all seek, this is the eternal life we pray for, this is living in the infinite loving creation that is now.
Life is nothing more than embracing death-shedding tears of joy and ecstasy-as we drag our fingertips across the face of God and realize it is we.
NOTE: Kyle’s website is kyleharper.com and you can purchase his book ” Moving Beyond Mind at