About Omnipotence

I wrote this essay/story a long time ago! The dream described is one I actually experienced. That dream made a profound impact on me... changed the way I experience reality. 

He was driving along Moorpark in San Jose, near the Valley Medical Center, near where he got a ticket a few weeks earlier, and as usual, going too fast. He saw a shiny green Mercedes Benz pull out from the parking lot. The driver didn't even look, as if just pulling out into traffic in a Mercedes was enough to protect him from harm by any lesser vehicle (which is all others). He thought about how if he were in that lane he'd be pretty pissed off.

He had his hands full with the small truck ahead of him that was braking a block before the stoplight. A sticker on the back window read "I Love America". The driver had two small children in the cabin with him … looked like the guy and the kids just came from El Salvador. He thought to himself, "Good, now go back where you came from and learn how to drive."

Then it hit him. His entire body exploded into a beam of light, and he became omnipotent. No, he wasn't God (hence the lowercase "he"), but he was damn near close. The difference was that God doesn't really care that much about the little things because He's so busy. There's plenty of room in the universe for all kinds of omnipresent, all-knowing beings … just as long as they all keep in mind who's the Boss. Besides, God thinks it's good to share the burden of command and control with other entities who've figured things out too.
    
For a second he wondered what happened to his body. Did he cause an accident? Did his foot suddenly press on the accelerator and cause his lesser, dirty 11-year-old Toyota Corolla liftback to go careening into the green Mercedes? Did he continue to live a full life in a parallel time line; the other part of himself unaware of the somewhat drastic change in his awareness? What about his girlfriend? Was she really a beautiful African queen in another life? But he didn't delve into these questions. He was more concerned about how he got to be omnipotent, and what that means. Of course, he already knew, but it was difficult to let go of his old way of thinking. So like a baby just weaning, he gave himself permission to omniknow on only one channel.

He visited his girlfriend, whom he had left just minutes before. She had been cleaning her apartment listening to Grover Washington on the radio. She obviously wasn't aware of either him or his condition. It really didn't seem at that moment she'd want to be bothered with the knowledge of his change because she was tugging at the cartridge to her CD player in the way only she could manage to do. She had that very intense don't bother me, I'm busy look screwed to her face. So, even though he was omnipotent, he knew better than to mess with her while she was wrestling with her CD cartridge.

He relived portions of the night before, while the two of them were sitting on her living room couch. "If you don't agree with them, and you don't like what they're saying, why do you watch them anyway? And why are you recording it?" she asked. "Because I like to understand what their arguments are. I'm recording it so the next time I talk with a Fundamentalist friend about this subject I can show them what I'm talking about.", he countered. She turned her head and stared up at him for a few moments. She finally said, "I'm just going to reserve my comments." He laughed and asked her why she said that. In the way that she had countless times before, she said "I don't want God to strike me down for the things you say in this house." Still, even she had to admit that the TV show they were watching claiming to offer conclusive proof of the existence of Noah's Ark on Mount Ararat in what is now Turkey, couldn't manage to provide more than a few fuzzy photographs for evidence. When he pointed out that the people who participated in a helicopter expedition to the site in 1990 didn't bother to videotape any of the eleven ascents they claimed to have made (and could only provide one fuzzy still photo), she had to agree that the story was pretty incredible. When he further pointed out how unbelievable it is that the one man alive who claims to have actually gotten inside the Ark with the help of an "expert" climber friend of his in the 1970's only brought back with him a tiny piece of wood as a momento. This is because his friend unfortunately fell to his death off a cliff while backing up to take pictures that would prove their historic accomplishment, taking the single camera (and presumably the one roll of film they took with them) to his demise. She actually did manage to laugh a little with him about that part.