Past Writing
Letters To A Spiritual Teacher (2007)
In 2007, I began writing to a few spiritual teachers I'd been following online and whose work I'd been reading. I felt very alone with all that I was experiencing, and quite overwhelmed, and I was hoping to gain some understanding of what was happening to me.
I was especially drawn to the work of Caroline Myss. She had just published a book called Entering the Castle in which she describes the path of the "mystic without a monastery" and the necessity of having a spiritual director or spiritual friend to walk it with you.
Caroline Myss, I felt, was speaking my language. So, I decided to write to her. I sent three letters in total, which I'm sharing below. I did not receive a reply.
Letter 1—March, 2007
David, If you could forward this letter on to Caroline, I would be very grateful.
Thanks very much,
Elizabeth Flint
* * *
Dear Caroline,
I've met you briefly a few times this year, once at Omega in September, at the taping of The Sacred Contract of America, and then last week at the lecture in Washington, DC. I wanted to tell you that you've been a great comfort and inspiration to me. I think you're a true visionary. You probably don't understand fully what a profound and tremendous impact you're having on the consciousness of this planet.
Like you, I recently underwent a conversion experience. It was about a year and a half ago, followed by a pretty devastating dark night. I'm really glad to be alive and sane ... there was a time when I thought this was the end. What a surprise it is to enjoy the day in all its beauty once again. I think of how the poet James Wright described the world as "this ugly place he loves in rapt confusion."
I've been wanting to start writing about my conversion now that I have a bit of distance on it, and finally found an easy place to begin: The "On Faith" feature of the Washington Post's Religion section. People write in with their personal stories about spirituality, God, etc. I wanted to share mine with you since you were very much on my mind as I was writing it. I've included it below.
I could go on with the many things I'd like to tell you about The Sacred Contract of America and Entering the Castle, but I'll stop now and just wish you continued success and congratulations on your new spiritual journey.
With love, Elizabeth Flint
* * *
The Still, Small Voice
Eighteen months ago out of the blue, Jesus appeared in a dream I had. In it, I was trying on a pair of sunglasses that were too big for me. The room was empty except for two mirrors. I tried the mirror on the right but it had no reflection. I walked over to the one on the left, stepped in front of it and looked up. There, inches from my face, was the haggard face of Jesus looking back at me. I was jolted awake.
What did it mean? I was not a Christian. I have never wanted to be a Christian. But I was irresistibly drawn to the man in my dream. I wanted to put my arms around him and tell him how sorry I was. I spent nights weeping over the crucifixion. His silence had been like a question: will you or won't you? All of this from an avowed Buddhist. What had happened to me?
What next, is what I should have asked. To make a long story less than 400 words, I began to hear the still, small voice. Prayer had become a daily thing for me, something I looked forward to. One night, deep in silence, I heard a faint voice that sounded sort of like Shakespeare, was my first thought. When it continued after a couple nights, I began to write down what I was hearing.
Upon thy wall do thou see thine own face? Until thou accepteth what thou dost see upon thine ever more ecstatic wall, thine eyes will show thee only this: thou art not other than thee to which I have given my life. … Goeth forth and announce that thou art mine daughter and thou canst not find without thee hence that this is thine delivery … Thou dost not need for thine eternal charity to understand that which thou hast been asked to do. That is not the way of this entreaty … I lovest thee always, forget that not.
How I took in all of this is a whole nother story. But is this the spirit of Jesus? The voice of God? I believe that it is. Will people say I'm crazy? Maybe. But he is still with me, still guiding me, still encouraging me to understand that the one I saw in the mirror is, deep down, me.
Letter 2—July 6, 2007
Dear Caroline,
I wrote you back in March about a conversion experience I’d recently had that centered around a dream and then some guidance I’d begun to receive. Since that time, I’ve begun having some new mystical experiences that I wanted to share with you. These started up about three months after the end of the dark night I went through last year.
During this past Lent, I began feeling the wounds of Christ in my hands, feet, crown of my head, heart area, and sometimes my lower side. And sometimes, the sensation of tears rolling down my cheeks. I thought this would probably stop at Easter, but it hasn't. And it has grown in intensity and frequency in the last few weeks. I worried for a while that it might become a visible stigmata, but for whatever reason, I seem to be less concerned about that now. Maybe because it has persisted for several months now without any sign of becoming visible.
The first time I experienced anything like this was in January of 2006 when I went to an intensive workshop with Rosalyn Bruyere at the Mater Dolorosa Passionist retreat center in Sierra Madre. I was sitting at the foot of the crucifixion at the station of the cross there and began to feel a deep pain in my chest. It was like an old wound that seemed both physical and emotional. I knew that it was related to the scene that was before me, but I had never heard of anything like invisible stigmata. Later that year, on Good Friday, I woke early in the morning with the same sensation in my chest.
A similar thing happened over the summer while I was in the midst of the dark night I went through. One night I was reading the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ – the passage where Jesus learns about the death of Lazarus – and felt a sense of sadness come over me that I knew was not my own. Thinking that something might be wrong with my sister, I called to check, but she was fine. When I went back to reading, I felt a sharp pain in the palm of my right hand. I looked at it and there was a small red dot that had not been there before. It felt like somebody had jabbed me in the palm with the tip of a knife. The dot and the pain were gone the next day. This time around, it's been completely invisible, but present almost every day and more intense when I'm praying. When I experience it during prayer, it’s often followed by a feeling a bliss, but not always. Sometimes I feel a very sharp, shooting pain, especially in the bottoms of my feet. Often the pain will stay with me, especially on the bottoms of my feet, and the outside of my hands, into the next day.
Beginning in March, I begun to experience what I would call states of bliss. The first one happened early on the morning of my birthday (March 19). I was going into my usual prayer state, which in the months since my dark night, had become a slightly altered state that I would go into quite quickly upon lying down in bed, and which made it quite easy for me to pray, sometimes, for up to two hours. Before all of this happened, I found it hard to meditate for more than 15 minutes!
Anyway, this time while in prayer, I was lifted into this state in which I felt that I was in union with a divine energy. I was overcome with a feeling of complete bliss: in my heart, my soul, my body. This was totally unexpected, and quite wonderful. I must have been in it about ½ hour, though it was hard to tell. I felt myself infused with the love of God. Though I knew something wonderful and new had happened to me, I was also a bit worried because I felt very tired the next day. I was also concerned because the bliss state had included physical pleasure that could best be described as sexual arousal. I couldn’t help but think that this would not be something that would come from God, and that I had been dealing with something not quite so benevolent. After experiencing it a few more times, I came to trust it more, and I have since found in my reading that this is not an unusual part of the bliss state. I’ve had to expand my understanding of what divine bliss might encompass to include physical ecstacy. I am very grateful for these states. How wonderful, too, that I was given the first of these on my birthday, no less. It was my first (and best) birthday present.
The last thing I wanted to tell you about is a bit harder to believe, I realize, but I’d like to share it, nonetheless. I only hope you don’t write me off as hopelessly delusional.
About three weeks ago, I was sitting at my computer in the early evening, finishing up my work for the day, when I became aware of a very powerful energy around me suddenly. I often feel this energy come to me and surround me at odd moments, and always welcome it as divine energy. But this had something very insistent about it. So, I went and lay down in bed, which is where I normally pray. Practically the moment I lay my head down, I was lifted into an altered state which felt very different from my normal prayer state. This did not feel as though it were about coming into a state of loving union. It felt as though it was all business. The energy was much stronger and more turbulent. I felt as though my body was shaking, though I don’t know if it actually was.
In any case, what I experienced next was that I was energetically lifted into what I would call a “face-to-face” meeting with God. The feeling was one of being brought into the presence of a mighty energy that had something to communicate. I somehow just knew that this energy was God. And as I was lifted into this state, I found myself infused with and taking on a feeling of authority, which is very unlike my usual state of humility during prayer. Once I was in this “face-to-face” state, it was communicated to me in a way I can only describe as an energetic “knowing” that I was sent to earth by God, and that I was a part of God incarnated on earth. Once this was communicated to me, I was gently lowered back down into my usual prayer state, and the feeling of authority dissipated. I know how this must sound, believe me. I can only tell you it’s not something I would ever have conjured up for myself. And though, logically, I find it hard to believe, I also know that this is exactly what happened, and I somehow do trust in it. I don’t know what the larger meaning of this experience is, however (or for that matter, the larger meaning of the guidance I’ve received). Which is part of the reason I’m writing to you. Though I can’t say I really know what kinds of mystical experiences other people are having, it seems to me that what I have been experiencing during this short period of time is probably a bit unusual in terms of its suddenness and the variety and intensity of experiences. These, coupled with the guidance I’ve received, lead me to believe that this is a special calling that I need to understand better and begin to act on. My reason for writing to you about all of this is based on my thinking that as a mystic and a teacher and one who seems open to hearing from others about their experiences, that you would not be averse to receiving it. It is, for me, a relief to share this with somebody, even if only in a letter. And I feel drawn to sharing it with you. (I often see your face pop up in my mind while I am praying!) I somehow trust that you won’t judge me. I also wonder if you have any guidance you can give me that would help me to see all of this in a more objective light? I feel that I’m so in the midst of it, and have experienced it in such a vacuum, that I greatly need to get another’s take on it all.
I know that you receive lots of letters and emails and can’t possibly respond to them all, but if you are at all inclined to want to talk more about any of this, Caroline, I would welcome hearing from you -- however little or much contact you wanted. Last -- in that short piece I sent you before, I included a little bit of the guidance I received. I would like to send you more. So, I’ve included the first five channelings I did. I’ve put in paragraph marks and punctuation and removed phrases that seemed repetitive or very unclear. Other than that, they’re pretty much as I received them. Still, because of the language, they’re a bit hard to understand.
I hope that you won’t be too put off by the language. I don’t know why they come through like this, in what appears to be Elizabethan English, or like something from the King James Bible. Maybe so that I would trust that it was not me talking to myself, I don’t know. And it’s true, I had to look up some of the words online. With my almost non-existent knowledge of the Bible and of Christian terms at that time, I didn’t know, for instance that “charity” meant “love.”
I think there is much that is worthwhile in these if you don’t mind slogging through them. There were only a couple more channelings that I did after these before I descended into what was to become a six-month long dark night, in which I was forced to leave both my job and my house. In any case, as you will see, I didn’t really trust what was coming through, or understand it, for that matter. I was very intent on being a healer and this was all I could think of at the time. I also had been told by someone at a Spiritualist church I went to that there was a strong presence around me named Michael, which I hoped might be Archangel Michael – hence the question about Michael.
Well, I have to admit I’m going through withdrawal pains from your radio show this month. The last few weeks’ shows have been especially helpful to me. And thank you for all of your work, which continues to inspire and guide me. I listened to Spiritual Madness quite a few times while I was in my dark night.
Letter 3—October 24, 2007
Dear Caroline,
I am writing to ask if you are available as a mentor, and if there’s any possibility you’d be interested in mentoring me. Given your busy schedule, perhaps this could be a mentorship that evolves over time according to your availability and my need for direction.
Would it be possible to meet and talk about this?
I am seeking someone with whom I can share ideas and concerns, someone who can help me prepare for the spiritual work I’ve been called to do. I feel a great sense of responsibility (and urgency) regarding this calling and at the same time an uncertainty about the best way to begin acting on it.
If this isn’t something you’re interested in, I will be disappointed but I do understand. In any case, please know that I am very grateful for all of your support and guidance over the last several months.
Will you let me know?
Regards,
Elizabeth Flint
Essays Posted Online (2009)
During the first half of 2009, I created a website called "Mystic Q&A" where I posted a number of essays describing my spiritual experiences and musing upon what it means to be a contemporary spiritual seeker and mystic. I eventually removed the site as my life of living indoors and holding down a job was quickly becoming impossible and homelessness was fast approaching.
- Dream of an Accident
- Home Depot
- Jesus Comes to Me
- The Clearing
- The Hungry Ghost
- A Public Mystic?
- The Secret of Forgiveness
- The River of Fear and the River of Love
- The Dying Lower Self
- An Empathic Insight
- Garrison Keillor, My Won’t-Be-Gone Companion
- God’s Embrace
- Where was God?
- The Indwelling God
- Nearing Heaven on Earth
- Healing with Your Voice
- The Dust Storm
- Letting Go
- Looking Ahead
- A Mystic’s Lesson About Trying to Persuade
- A Dream of Earthbound Souls
Dream of an Accident
February 20, 2009
When I was eight years old, I dreamed that my six-year-old brother Ethan was run over by a truck. The dream was nothing special, as far as I can recall. I simply recited it to my father’s clacking keys and let it go like a balloon. He was a writer and professor of English. Most mornings, he was up before dawn in front of his typewriter at the dining room table, working on poems or correcting student papers. When my brother, sister and I wandered downstairs in our pajamas wide awake at 5 am, he’d ask us what we dreamed and then type it out in our exact words, inserting line breaks to make it look like a poem.
It wasn’t until I was boxing up books for our move to the suburbs four years later, that I discovered the dream inside the front cover of a heavy, cream-colored book, along with some artwork, school photos, and the papers from my brother’s memorial service. My brother had, in fact, been hit by a car in front of our house sometime after the dream. My father had placed it there before moving out a few months after the accident.
Given the book’s heft, I’d thought at first it was a bible. Turning it over I saw it wasn’t – we didn’t own a bible. It was simply a sturdy book in whose pages the remnants of my brother’s life would be safe. Coming across my eight-year old words, I was taken aback — had I dreamed my brother’s death? And yet I knew it was mine the moment I saw it – the last line especially: “Daddy, can I say the end? The end.” It was a part of me I’d chosen to forget.
So when three decades later Jesus came to me one night in a dream, I never so much as recorded the date. While I’d lost many things in my 41 years, my habit of taking cool notice of something extraordinary and carrying it along until I grew into it, had not left me at all.
Home Depot
February 27, 2009
One Saturday in the spring of 2003, I was on my way back from Home Depot in Washington, my SUV loaded up with materials for the latest home improvement project I was working on. I had bought a 100-year-old rowhouse in the heart of Washington — a dream come true — and for the past two years had spent every free minute in the evenings and on weekends transforming the house into a vision I had of what it should be. Nothing made me happier than coming home with the materials I needed, a few new tools and books for my latest project, hauling them inside with the help of a willing neighbor, and getting started.
As I made my way home that sunny Saturday, my mind on who might be around to help me unload, I pulled up to a stop light. As I pressed the brake to come to a stop, I suddenly saw myself fly through the front windshield of the car and up into the sky. Even as I was aware of myself still strapped in my seat, I was arriving in another place all together — a place I knew was heaven.
In those few seconds I knew that regardless of what happened to me in this life, that everything would be all right, that the story had a happy ending. The feeling was overwhelmingly of arriving home at last, of having been in a kind of exile that was now over, of being released from the role I’d agreed to play, of waking from a kind of dream. All the heaviness I’d carried with me, the various things I felt responsible for — they were suddenly gone. Of no consequence at all. And it was one of rejoining — dissolving into — the family from which I’d come, a family that knew and loved me perfectly, a family that was exactly like me. It was a hero’s welcome. I was being congratulated on a job well done. But most wonderful, I felt completely safe, accepted, and loved in a way I could not remember feeling in this lifetime on earth.
I understood then that going to earth had been a dangerous journey I had agreed to undertake, that it had required me in many respects to wing it, to do the best I could under trying conditions. But also that, unbeknownst to me, I was all along being watched over and rooted for.
In a split second the vision was gone and I was back in my car. The light turned green, I put the car in first and began driving. I am going to die in a car accident, was my first thought. My second thought was, but I always wear a seat belt. My third was, maybe it was in another lifetime. And on and on. It wasn’t until many months later that I began to understand why this vision had been given to me when it had. My beloved house was not my true home. And very soon, my true home would become the new center of my life.
Jesus Comes to Me
February 28, 2009
One night in November 2005, Jesus came to me in a dream:
I was in a room that was empty except for two mirrors on the wall in front of me: one on the left and one on the right. I wanted to try on a pair of sunglasses that were too big for me, as if made for somebody with a much bigger head. I went first to the mirror on the right to see how they looked but there was no reflection — only a shimmering of light. I then walked over to the mirror on the left, stepped in front of it and looked up. There, looking back at me, was the face of Jesus, sorrowful and haggard. I was jolted awake, my heart pounding in my chest.
What did it mean? I was not a Christian, and not very interested in Christianity, put off as I was by church dogma. But I was irresistibly drawn to the man in my dream. And he had been a man of flesh and blood, clearly suffering. I wanted to put my arms around him, to take away his pain, to tell him I was sorry for what he’d gone through. In that dream’s split second, he had become a beloved brother to me, as real and present as anyone in my life. Something in his silence, his look, had followed me into my life like a plea: will you?
In the weeks that followed, I returned in my thoughts night after night to the scene of his crucifixion and wept, unable to stop. The choking grief that came forth was as unexpected as the dream. Was I there in a previous life? How else could I explain the torrent of emotion rising in me? My connection with him and with that day two-thousand years ago seemed at once foreign to me, and at the same time, deeply intimate — like a suppressed memory rising. It wasn’t long before these feelings began to insinuate themselves into my consciousness and dissapeared below the surface.
Other mystical experiences — dreams, whisperings about past lives, visions — came forth — all of which served to build on the effects of the dream. And the effect was this: it was becoming more and more difficult for me to cling to my limited view of who I was– one that was built solely on the experiences and relationships of this lifetime. I’m sure that to others, especially those I worked with, that I appeared the same, but I was not. I was like a door that in hot weather has expanded past the frame built to hold it. Something had to give, and when it did, my ability to hold onto my identity and view of the world would begin to unravel very rapidly.
What led up to this dream?
In 2005 I was working as a web designer for a healthcare association, and spending all of my extra time renovating the row house I’d bought three years earlier. I was single, rather solitary, lived with two dogs and two cats, and the only family I had left was a younger sister in New York.
It had not been an easy year. Major surgery in February had been followed by a call from a doctor one morning that, unbeknownst to me, my mother had been in the hospital a week and had passed away that night. My sister, who had taken my mother’s death even harder than I, and was raising a toddler alone on a teacher’s salary in New York City, was struggling. I was concerned about them and as the older sister felt responsible for their well-being.
At the same time, I was struggling to make mortgage payments on a house I couldn’t afford and trying to deal with the lingering anger of someone from my past who didn’t want to let bygones be bygones. The anger, I had begun to suspect, had been ratcheted up a notch to something more like a psychic attack. I felt myself sinking deeper and deeper into a hole that I couldn’t pull myself out of, fearful of what the future would bring.
One night in July, in tears as I lay awake in bed and desperate for help when it seemed the world had no help to give, I sent out into the dark universe a call for help: "If there’s anybody out there listening, please help me. I can’t do this on my own anymore. Please." Admitting to myself that I could no longer handle what life threw my way had brought me to a point of humility I hardly recognized.
I wouldn’t have called it a prayer. I was not religious and had never prayed in my life. And this cry of help wouldn’t happen again. Life went on as it had been and I got by the best I could. And then one night, four months later, the inexplicable happened — Jesus came to me in a dream.
The Clearing
March 5, 2009
A dream from August, 2006:
One
I live in a split-level house, but spend all my time in the upper half, which is well lit. The lower half of the house is dark and is full of boxes of things I haven’t gone through in years. It turns out that I need to go into the lower half of the house and move out all the boxes because someone else is going to be moving in, and I will be moving out.
Two
I am in a hospital room, floating up near the ceiling watching the following scene: a man is lying in a hospital bed that is pushed into the corner of his room. He is ill and has small red marks scattered over his body. It is clear this is an excellent hospital, the doctors are the most advanced in their field, and care deeply. They are trying to determine the cause of his illness, but cannot.
Next, I am standing in the hospital room. The man has turned into a baby who is glowing with a golden aura. Someone hands the baby to me to hold and I take the baby in my arms. As I do, I realize that the illness has now been passed to me. I look down and see that I have a red mark in the middle of my chest. It is over my heart, is raised like a birthmark, and is in the shape of a kiss.
As I wake from the dream, I hear a voice say,
“
The region thou hast acquired may in thy stead replace thee.
The Hungry Ghost
March 15, 2009
The energy vampire is a well-known phenomenon. There are people who, to varying degrees, are unable to use enough life force (also called chi, prana, ki, etc.) from the divine source that they must turn to sucking this off from other people. Energy vampires are pretty common. We may feel tired in their presence or after being around them.
Less common are what I’ll call Hungry Ghosts (to borrow a term from Tibetan Buddhism). These are people — energy vampires — who are almost entirely dependent on the life force that flows through other people. Why? Emotional pain blocks the flow of life force through their body. Pain is to a person’s energy system what plaque is to an artery. The energy system of a Hungry Ghost is like a blocked artery. HGs have such deep and pervasive pain that they are unable to bring into their energy system the life force that is available to all of us. Instead they turn to others to siphon off what they can. Unlike vampires, they are very aware of their state and of their need to continually seek out and attach themselves energetically to others to keep the flow of energy coming in. This they do aggressively and without much concern for the impact on their "host."
Hungry Ghosts may attach to people in various ways. One way is by picking up someone’s energy through their written words or through their voice if that is available to them through TV, radio, the internet, etc. A video of a person provides an even bigger dose of that person’s energy and a greater ability to attach to them. Therefore, anybody whose words, voice, or image are widely available can easily become a source for a Hungry Ghost.
Another way is by his having many random sexual encounters – usually one or two-night stands after which the energetic connection is made and the person is then dropped. In some cases, the HG may have connected to a host years prior to a face-to-face meeting, making him or her all the more vulnerable when the meeting does occur.
Feeding sources are not chosen randomly. HG’s select their sources based on a certain energetic profile the HG has. Some of the attributes might be that the person be of the opposite sex, though not necessarily, somewhat solitary or introverted, whose energy is turned more inward than outward on a day-to-day basis, people whose own pain is at the surface or can be engaged easily, people who themselves are quite public or who affect large numbers of other people.
What also makes a person attractive as a source is their placement within a web of others who would also make good sources – preferably those who are within a virtual web as opposed to a face-to-face web. The internet has provided the means for HGs to affect webs of people who are connected virtually and to exploit them for energy in a way that was not possible before the internet. The way he will do this is by attaching to the energy of two or more people who travel in the same circles, and by the very fact of his being attached to two people who are in contact, will have the effect of compounding the energy available to him.
How does he do this? Any friction, any drama, is energy for the HG. When he’s got two or three sources bound energetically to one another, he’s found the perfect opportunity to create irritability within the bonds he has created. The HG is attached to each of them, and has also created an energetic attachment between or among them. These sources are both drawn to and irritated by the other. This creates the perfect feeding ground for the HG and he will do anything he can to maintain these dyads or triads. It is best if they are energetically aware of each other, but kept from direct communication. Isolating his hosts is one of the methods the HG finds most useful. The HG in effect hides behind the energetic friction bonds that he creates and stays in the background.
I’ve described how this can happen through a virtual community. It can also happen in other webs such as within families, especially where people are separated by distance. It can even happen in clusters of people in a work environment. The HG then sits back and watches the sparks fly and takes in a big payoff of energy. While it’s true that life force is the food the HG hungers for, pain, friction, drama, and fear are the preferred seasonings.
How else does the HG keep his sources kindled? By being as public as he can. By making his face, his words and voice as accessible as possible. People he has attached to are going to find themselves drawn to him for reasons they may not understand. And each time one of his hosts connects to the HG’s energy in any way – by reading his words or hearing his voice or seeing his image – they have reestablished the connection, and done so voluntarily, so to speak. So, he has much invested in keeping his presence as accessible as possible.
He might, for instance, post under many different pseudonyms on as many internet sites as possible. That he’s using a pseudonym and may be posting utter nonsense makes no difference at all. All that is needed is for his words to be read by others to keep the connection alive. Words that get a strong reaction from a reader, such as anger or fear, provide a bigger payoff to him of energy. He may broadcast a weekly radio show over the airwaves as well as over the internet, knowing that many of his hosts will be drawn to tune in, even if they have decided by then that they no longer like or want anything to do with him. As soon as they tune in, the connection is reinforced if it was weak, and reestablished if it was broken.
If the HG can implant in a source’s mind an image of himself in their minds, it provides a kind of energetic residue of himself in their energy, and this provides a link to them that he can then feed off, no a lesser or greater extent. To live energetically inside another person all together is the ultimate goal of the HG. To basically ride along on her back, continually sucking off her energy, living through her. In this kind of a situation, he might refer to himself as her "boy toy" or "backpack." As his ability to siphon off of her begins to dwindle, she may become "chump change" and the whole endeavor a "march of dimes" and "never enough."
Deep and pervasive emotional pain, as I mentioned, blocks the flow of divine source. When the HG is deprived of life force, he feels as though he is suffocating. This is a very real feeling similar to how it feels to suffocate from a lack of oxygen. Frightening and life-threatening. You cannot breathe through deep pain if you are not bringing in enough life force to allow you to do so. And so, in the midst of pain that pervasive, that deep, you simply "suffocate" energetically and die.
When we discover that we have been the source – the victim – of a Hungry Ghost, and have unknowingly had our own precious life force siphoned off, sometimes for years on end – we may become angry and rightfully so. This anger must be let go of, however, in order to be able to free yourself from the HG’s attachment. To linger in anger or fear only provides a greater source to the HG and the very means for him to stay attached. It is difficult to maintain a positive and high vibration when you are being attacked in this way, and yet it is the only antidote.
To break this connection and keep it broken, do not, obviously, connect with an HG’s energy in any way, shape or form. Written words, audio, video – keep away entirely from any source through which this energetic connection can be maintained.
Also, do things that make you happy, that make you feel good, that make you feel free and independent. These feelings all help to raise your vibration. Exercise, fresh air, fresh water, the company of other people. Excessive solitude, sadness, being in one’s own thoughts – these all create the kind of energy that makes continual attachment possible. Music, singing, and chanting I have found also raise my vibration and work gradually to cut these energetic cords.
The bad news is, an HG will not stop of his accord. The good news is, this is a self-limiting way of living. Eventually, the amount of pain becomes so great that the sources of energy become gradually inadequate. What was once enough is no longer enough, the existing attachments begin to weaken and finally disconnect all together, new attachments are harder and harder to make. This is because the growing pain (including the pain of knowing the destruction and suffering the HG has caused in the lives of those he has attached himself to) becomes too great to continue living. The only thing left is for the Hungry Ghost to disincarnate and to begin to sort out his pain in the presence of the all-loving, all-forgiving divine source.
I share this with you not to scare you, but to inform you so that you can recognize the signs and do what you need to do. Hungry Ghosts as I’ve described them are probably pretty rare. I know of only one, so far. But a single Hungry Ghost can cause untold harm in the lives of many people.
On that cheery note, carry on … and stay clear of the Hungry Ghost.
A Public Mystic?
March 22, 2009
For the past couple of days I’ve been seeing images of peacocks in my inner eye. I looked up the meaning of peacocks and came across a wonderful description on a website, part of which is here:
In general, the Peacock is representative of glory, immortality, royalty, and incorruptibility. It is a possessor of some of the most admired human characteristics, and is a symbol of integrity and the beauty that can be achieved when we endeavor to better ourselves and better our lives.
The peacock is undoubtedly also about showing one’s colors. This brings up a very timely issue for me these days: whether or not the time is right for me to be more open with people about my awakening, about the mystical experiences I’ve had, about how this has changed my life.
From the time I received the first message from God, I knew that at some point I would be writing about my spiritual awakening and sharing it with other people:
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Prepare unto thee this story of thouest awakening as thou do see fit. (2/1/06)
And later, in different words:
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Speak the story of thine awakening across the borders of thy humanity. (9/18/07)
In addition to the images of peacocks, I’ve had three or four dreams in the last two weeks in which I was happily writing away. Though I am going through a period of time where verbal guidance is not as forthcoming as it was before, I did receive these words a few nights ago:
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Go forth with thy project. Thine awareness is expanding.
So, I think it is probably right to begin this blog now, and to be a little more open than I would like to be.
A couple more thoughts on this question of whether it is appropriate for people who have experienced contact with the divine to share this news other people. I know there are people who believe that these are private moments of intimacy with God and are not to be shared with others, and that doing so somehow violates or diminishes the spirit of the communion. I know others who believe these experiences are not given to a person solely for that person’s benefit, but for the benefit of others. I have gone back and forth on this and still struggle with it. When is is appropriate to speak, when is it appropriate to keep these to yourself?
While I can’t speak for others, I have come to believe for my own self that these experiences are meant to be shared. And that is — even when it makes me uncomfortable to do so. What I know without a doubt is that this very rapid awakening I am being taken through is not meant for me alone.
In a very real sense, the mystic’s life does not belong to her anymore.
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To go on directing thine own affairs as thou doest is not the road for thee. (2/23/06)
This is something that I am having a hard time accepting, that I do not really want, and yet I know is probably inevitable. Mystics who are blessed with gifts of divine union, of divine communication have to know that something is being asked of them, as well. And part of it is that they may have to lay bare their life for scrutiny.
Nobody is perfect, but the life of anyone has been blessed in this way may be turned over in search of every possible imperfection. And yet the existence of imperfections and their display before others are not unfortunate side-effects of this calling. They are at the heart of what the mystic has to teach — that they did not arrive perfect and fully-formed. Your struggles, your failings — embarrassing as they may be — are part of what you have to teach.
And so you accept what is uncomfortable along with what is wonderful, and you understand that your life will become more and more one of service to others, and less and less about following your own desires. What I do believe you find in the end, though, is that in giving in to the agreement that your higher self made, against all the objections of your lower self, that you are also finding the path to your soul’s greatest joy and fulfillment.
The Secret of Forgiveness
March 24, 2009
Why is it that some people are able to forgive a horrendous act by another person, such as a drunk-driving fatality, or the violent death of a child, while other people spend their whole lives unable to forgive an unkind word? Some hurts we can let go of quickly. Other hurts stick to us like velcro and won’t let go.
To understand why this is so, you have to understand the nature of soul wounds. Contrary to our usual way of thinking, hurt that we receive at the hands of another is relatively minor in terms of its long-term effects on the soul. Being a victim to someone else’s hurtful actions, even if those actions are severe or even violent, may leave us with, at most, a kind of traumatic wound in our energy system. But this traumatic wound is really only a nick to the soul. It is relatively superficial.
Harm that we ourselves do to other people is another matter all together. When we intentionally harm another person, we create an immediate and significant division or fissure within our own soul. One part of us — the wisest, oldest part we might call our higher self — knows deep down that it is wrong to hurt another. And yet for whatever reason, we ignore this wisdom and do something harmful anyway. In that moment, we have divided our self from our self. We have acted in a way that did not honor our soul’s integrity. As the saying goes, we have separated ourselves from God, which is another way of saying our higher self.
This division is in actuality a wound. It causes us pain. Depending on the deed, we may be able to go along mostly unaware of this pain in our day-to-day lives. There are, as we know, numerous ways available to us while on earth to distract ourselves from our pain. But the pain is there and it stays with us from one lifetime to another. It even helps guide our decisions about what kind of arrangement, what kind of energy we will incarnate into next. In remains within us as unfinished business, and we now have to find a way to repair this division, this pain, so that we can continue our progression toward wholeness.
It has been my experience that the distractions available to us while incarnated that help us forget our pain are not available to us when we disincarnate. And we are faced, albeit in the presence of an all-loving divine source, with the hurt we have brought to our own selves. It is the pain of grief, and it is the pain of shame. Hell has been described as a place where you burn. This is really only the burning of shame.
What does all this have to do with forgiveness? The only harms that we have a hard time forgiving in this lifetime are ones that remind us of ourselves. They are the hurts that resonate with us deeply, that find something in common with our own soul wounds. That is, they remind us of hurt we have at one time or another in our soul’s long history, done to another person. Being a victim this time around returns us, painfully, to something similar that we subjected another person to in another time.
I do not believe that a hurt suffered in this lifetime automatically means that we did that exact same thing to someone in another time. It does not have to be that literal, though it may be — every soul who is working on being conscious has, you can be sure, tried out just about every experience of duality available. What I do believe is that we have probably participated in an energy dynamic of hurt that is symbolically similar to the one we can’t forgive, and done so as the perpetrator.
So, it may be the case that the only true forgiveness needed is forgiveness of one’s self. You don’t need to remember your past lives to allow this. What you do need to do is begin to see if there is anything in your energy that resonates with the person who harmed you. To put yourself in their shoes. Not in order to understand them, but to understand yourself. Do you have any energetic memory of doing harm that is similar (again symbolically) to what was done to you? Given the depth of old pain like this, it is sometimes hard to locate within yourself. But if and when you can, you can begin to forgive yourself, and to repair this wound once and for all. Then, the specter of the one you thought you needed to forgive will have vanished.
The River of Fear and the River of Love
March 28, 2009
Last Easter I sat for a while in my meditation room – a small white room with sunlight streaming in and empty except for my chair. I closed my eyes and went into silence. As I did, an interior vision of the day Jesus was crucified was shown to me. Two scenes:
The first was of a man stepping forward from the crowd to help Jesus carry the cross after he’d fallen under its weight.
The second was after Jesus had died. The scene was of a landscape empty after the crowds had dispersed. All that was left were a few people, and they were silently taking Jesus’ body down from the cross and into the arms of his mother. It was clear no one knew for sure who Jesus was. There was nothing to indicate that this was a turning point in human history. It was simply the aftermath of an all-too-common scene: a bloodthirsty crowd moved on to other entertainment, a family left in private grief.
What I was given to understand is that there are two invisible forces – like parallel rivers — that have run through humanity’s existence, and which are either fed and strengthened, or starved and weakened, by the actions of each person. Fear, of course, finds expression in all kinds of actions based in anger, hatred, envy, etc. And there is love.
The river of fear, having been fed by the cumulative actions of humanity through time, had brought us to this day of the execution of Love itself. On that day, the river of fear won out. The man stepping out from the crowd to help carry the cross was a small ripple of love within the greater force that carried the events of the day to their conclusion.
Given the atrocities of which humanity is capable, it would seem that small acts of disrespect against one another are negligible. They are not, though. They add to the invisible flow of fear, support it and ensure that it continues and thrives. Any act of harm, however small, says in effect: I vote for the continuation of this energy in all of our lives. I vote that it should triumph over love, regardless of whether it takes away a loved one from me or from you.
Harm is almost treated as something which, once received, must be either returned to its sender, or passed along to another. That to let it come to rest with us is a sign of weakness. It is, as we know, often passed within a family from generation to generation. Long-standing feuds between nations or tribes are like mantles that are passed along to each succeeding generation to be carried forward in the name of patriotism and loyalty. It is as if passing along harm is seen as the only way to find balance, to regain dignity, to heal.
The truth is that there is no shame in being on the receiving end of someone else’s fearful or hurtful actions, and no permanent harm sustained. That is the contradiction of doing intentional harm – you leave the object of your hurt essentially untouched at the soul level – and yet leave within your own soul a wound in need of healing.
Another contradiction is that while we in the 21st century are still ruled by an attitude of might is right, still esteem those who wield power via threat, all cultures hold with reverence and gratitude those who have stood for peace and love in the face of fear – Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jesus and others.
Each of us must begin to understand that an intact soul really and truly is one’s most precious possession, and must be guarded and protected. And in the face of intentional hurt, each of us must find the strength to say, in effect — the buck stops here. No matter what comes my way, I will not pass this along.
The Dying Lower Self
March 29, 2009
I’ve been thinking that in order for a spiritual seeker to leave lower-self functioning and begin to live more fully and permanently in the higher self, that a real struggle ensues. The lower self does not want to give up its place and will do everything it can to foil this coup. The higher self on the other hand is not given to struggle, it simply pours into the available space and allows the lower self to react as it will.
For me it is helpful to picture the higher self as a water faucet that is continuously pouring into you. The effect is that you, still with your layer of sediment quietly settled at the bottom and out of the way, find yourself in a cloud of suspended particles. Where did all this dirt come from? But that’s what happens. A little more of the pure, clear energy of the higher self pours in and another layer of dirt at the bottom is stirred up and infiltrates your entire being. For a while, it’s all you can see.
Little by little, the inpouring water pushes enough sediment up and out the top that you become just a little bit clearer, a little more higher self, a little less lower self. And then the process starts again, and up comes some more dirt. It takes time, patience, and faith in the process.
I also think that in order to quicken the process, to stir up the sediment a little more vigorously, that there will be one or two or three little spoons coming at you from this side or that, as well. All in the name of rapid clearing.
But it begs the question … given that I am spending roughly half my time, or more, in a cloud of upended sediment (that is to say, old pain), maybe I am not clear enough yet to be posting my thoughts on spirituality and the spiritual path online for others to read. Maybe I need to wait until I am a bit clearer. Others may not, after all, want to ride along with me through this.
On the other hand, there is the pressure, always, to move forward. To not take time for granted. Every day is precious, I think. I could go at any time, I think. And if that were the case, would I have done enough? Right now I have to say, I don’t think so. So, these are my competing concerns.
I guess there must be some value in sharing my current view with others, as long as it is understood that I am pretty hard on myself these days, and maybe therefore on others, that I am, on and off, in the midst of a cloud of lower, ego-based, old pain, and that I will try as I go along to be as even-handed as I can be.
So, take these postings with a grain of salt, and please forgive anything that seems unnecessarily harsh or ego-centric. With any luck the water will clear soon.
An Empathic Insight
April 3, 2009
One night in the spring of 2007 I was given an empathic understanding of the suffering Jesus went through on the cross. While lying in bed that night, I was transported — as I often was during those months — into a state in which I was only partly aware of myself in my bedroom, my consciousness being lifted up into an intimacy with God. These experiences would last sometimes two or three hours. During them, I would often feel the wounds of Jesus on my hands and feet, a sensation that was both painful and deeply pleasurable.
On this one occasion, I was shown something more. While in this silent communion, I began to feel my chest being pulled up and back in such a way that it created a strain on my ribcage. At the same time, the pains in my hands were accompanied by the sensation of multiple points of pressure along the insides of each of my forearms, as if being pinched hard. My hands then became numb. I also experienced the sensation of pressure like a tight band around my head and a prickling feeling that I recognized as the crown of thorns. Finally, there was the sensation of tears running down my cheeks.
It was clear to me that I was being given a very intimate experience of Jesus’ suffering on the cross. From the sensations I was receiving, I knew that not only had his hands been nailed to the cross, but his forearms as well, in several places. Also, that there had been a tremendous amount of pressure on his chest. It wasn’t clear to me whether he had died from suffocation, only that it had been difficult to breathe.
After a few minutes, my chest was allowed to relax back into a normal position and the other sensations began to fade. I asked him then if he had been in pain. He replied that the misunderstanding of the people was more painful.
Garrison Keillor, My Won’t-Be-Gone Companion
April 6, 2009
The following is a bit of spiritual guidance received by my friend Sophia (her name has been changed to protect her privacy) in October 2007. Is it true? I leave it to your own intuition to decide. I will only add that Garrison Keillor was a friend of my father, Roland Flint, for many years going back to their college days at the University of Minnesota, I knew him when I was a child, and became reacquainted with him in my early 30’s.
Sophia: I asked for any clarity or insight into the feelings/fears you’ve been having about Garrison, and heard/felt the following:
Guidance: She feels this continuing presence of Garrison in her life and she is right.
Sophia: Does he exist in her mind/memory/spirit only?
Guidance: No. He is mad and trying to get at her.
Sophia: And has he succeeded in the past in the world?
Guidance: : Yes he has. He has written to those who know her and dissed her character.
Sophia: Has he used her internet materials?
Guidance: No. He invented his own and ascribed them to her. In his mind they are indeed hers, but she neither wrote nor thought them, nor would she will them to be even in the privacy of her own mind.
Sophia: And then did he take steps to impart them to others known to Elizabeth?
Guidance: He did.
Sophia: How did he do this?
Guidance: Through the U.S. mails.
Sophia: And was he successful?
Guidance: Yes.
Sophia: Is there anything she can do about this now?
Guidance: She can pray for forgiveness for him. Over time, this has an effect.
Sophia: Is he still trying to do this sort of thing to her?
Guidance: Yes, though the energy with which he has pursued it in the past has been taken over by his ill-will/spite towards some newer woman in his life. He mixes Elizabeth with this new woman’s presence in the back of his mind, but he is consciously fixed almost exclusively on the new name/being.
Sophia: Poor woman.
Guidance: Yes. (Something about …. dangerous)
Sophia: So does Elizabeth have to worry about continued spite manifesting in her life?
Guidance: Yes. This sort of spite is always dangerous. Especially because Garrison considers women to be his natural victims — natural prey who cannot fight back. He saw a lot of this in his youth and it is also his weakness. He cannot forsee how a woman would/could “fight back” because he has never “seen it” meaning “admitted that it can happen.”
However — and this is a warning — this is a man who FEEDS on war. It makes him hungrier, more devouring, stronger. DO NOT feed his lust for struggle and blood, Elizabeth.
We pray that you “fight” him with weapons of which he is not even aware: the “weapons” of peace, blessing and open heart.
We do not, of course, ask you to forgive him for what he has done and you have participated in. We ask you rather to forgive yourself for being caught in this ancient set-up. And we ask you to forgive yourself for worrying about it now, which seems after-the-fact to you, though all events occur in the now.
This “forgiveness” of yourself and your participation in this ancient battle does nothing more than level the field between you. It enables you to make the next steps which are blessing (him and the impulse within you to scream, to hate and to fight as your world fights), peace, and calm. Control your own soul and you control the world as you have never known before.
What she has so admirably done with John Yates would be a very appropriate way to de-fang Garrison. We do not mean that she should go see/hear him. This would be dangerous in its re-awakening of his spite directly at her (rather than a bit muffled by his confusion of her with this other woman). But she has sat in his presence enough that she can call him up and she can see the misery within him now if she just directs her mind/spirit to attend to that. She will see him as a being in turmoil (which he reproduces outside of him) and — if the recent past is any guide, be able to turn this insight into (comparative) peace.
We do not expect you to change Garrison in the world. One must participate willingly in order to change. But it will remove the nourishment of her presence in his mind. He will no longer be able to feed on the energy of her anger (this is gone, we realize that) or her fear — which is also a very strong energy, and nourishing to vampires such as he. (Something about sucking our blood — which vampires are reputed to do — being just another expression of sucking one’s life’s blood…)
She should know that she is a very good girl, doing admirable work. These interior revelations of peace and healing will enable her to continue and increase the effectiveness of her work in the world a hundredfold … a thousandfold.
God’s Embrace
April 8, 2009
After getting into bed early on the morning of my 43rd birthday, I was lifted beyond the deep prayer I’d been enjoying recently into something greater. It was not simply a deeper state of peace. A powerful wave came up beneath me, carried me up and into itself and held me there — in a direct gaze of tenderness and love, of respect and adoration. To be scooped up like a baby into the midst of perfect love so that my entire being vibrated with it … how do you describe it? I was awash in pleasure, my heart so full it was breaking. God’s coming to me this way on the morning of my birthday — when I was unlikely to hear from family or friends — made it especially sweet, and personal.
There was something in me, though, that couldn’t accept the love being offered. Not all of it. I wanted to lose myself in this love completely — to dissapear into it – and yet I wasn’t able. It was like standing on the periphery of the most glorious feast and seeing how all your life you’ve been getting by on crumbs. How much you want to leave everything behind and enter in. But you can’t. Not yet. There is something you need to attend to first.
That thing was my own pain. It was the one thing, I realized, that stood between me and perfect, all-consuming love. I had already done a good bit of work on excavating and letting go of the various hurts within me. But the bright light of this love had brought into stark relief dark corners of guilt and shame I didn’t know existed. These pockets of self-recrimination became glaringly obvious to me when exposed to the pure light of unconditional love. They were like little daggers I was holding within myself, and against myself. God knew me better than I knew myself, and loved me without reserve. Why, I had to ask, did I not?
It was a gift, a taste of what was possible, and perhaps something to give me courage to continue forward through some dark times to come. But the most important thing that it offered me was a direction. Before I could merge into the love I’d been shown, I had to be pain-free, or nearly so. My vibration – to use a different vocabulary — had to resonate more closely with that of God. Much of it was about forgiving myself. I knew that if I could love myself as God does, that I would also begin to love as God loves.
Where was God?
April 10, 2009
Note: I know this is a sensitive subject for many people. Please read with an open mind, and as with all things, keep what is useful to you.
Why is there so much suffering on this planet? Why did God allow this tragedy to happen to me and my family? Where was God on 9-11?
These are questions that get asked everywhere, everyday, by people in the midst of tragedy, loss, and struggle. They arise from a seeming contradiction: How can there be terrible suffering on this planet if God is all-powerful and all-loving? Wouldn’t a loving God prevent these things from happening? How do we reconcile this?
A recent event in my own life brought this question to the forefront. Though I didn’t know it yet, I was about to enter into a rather difficult passage of a few months’ duration. I had at this time been receiving auditory guidance from God for about two years, and was enjoying wonderful experiences of love, insights into reality, and continual encouragement and nudgings. One day as the difficult time approached, I was told the following:
"You will need to ride this out. You will think that I’m not with you. But I will be with you throughout."
"Is something bad going to happen?" I asked.
There was no answer. So, I gratefully accepted what I’d been told and waited. Sure enough, the dark period I was warned of arrived, and as it did, the guidance and experiences of intimacy with God disappeared. I can’t tell you how many times I returned to that bit of reassurance. I knew absolutely that it was true, that God was with me, and that for reasons I didn’t understand, I needed to go through this hard time, seemingly alone.
I wish that I could pass these reassuring words on to each person on the planet who is going through a difficult time, so that they knew without a doubt that God has not abandoned them, that they are loved more than they can imagine, and that strange as it may sound, divine order allows for love and what we call suffering, to coexist. I know that for each person who has asked where was God? there is a more basic underlying question that has to do with needing to understand who God is and our reason for being here in the first place. There are probably, therefore, millions of ways to approach this question.
For myself, what I understood from the simple message was that it was not at God’s direction that this difficulty should come, but my own, and that while God would be with me always in loving attendance, God would not interfere with what I had decided I needed to undertake. What seemed to me unnecessary and unfair suffering was in fact an opportunity for healing and reconciliation. It was a time of repairing divisions within my soul, ones I had created at some point in time.
There was a greater wisdom at work here — clear as day to my higher self or soul — not so clear to my lower self who was trying simply to survive and avoid pain. To my lower self, wholeness meant keeping my life orderly and running smoothly. To my higher self, wholeness meant allowing for experience that might sometimes play havoc in my outer (and inner) life. My soul’s progress was to an extent I had not realized before, self-directed. There was no judge in heaven. Rather, each soul discerned its own state and moved forward accordingly. To some, affording the soul this kind of freedom and self-determination might seem frightening. After all, who’s in charge? For others, myself included, it is reassuring.
Another way to approach the question of suffering on the planet is to ask this question: Why might I have decided to incarnate into a place that I knew might subject me to suffering? Why might a soul existing in a largely undifferentiated and comfortable state, be attracted to Earth? What might Earth have to offer that I could not find otherwise?
Here’s one possible answer: the chance to get to know oneself. Is it not true that we often come to understand ourselves best, to find out who we are deep down, when we are brought into the presence of those who seem different from us? I remember the first time I travelled out of the U.S. and into Europe, how I understood for the first time what it meant to be an American, how being an American had influenced my perception and the ways in which I related to others.
Our interiors broaden, our inner landscape becomes known to us when we experience what seems like "other." In meeting those we consider different from ourselves, we become more finely attuned to who we are. Sometimes this happens in a way that involves conflict. Our rough edges bump up against somebody else’s and in doing so, both of us go away from it a little more refined. These experiences of are from the soul’s perspective, possibilities for deepening, for inner repair. From the perspective of the lower self, they are experiences of tragedy, loss, suffering.
The process of deepening, of being made smooth means that fewer and fewer things catch on us. Very little pulls us off center. We become like glass buffeted for years in the waves of the ocean. Time and experience help us to become, once again, undifferentiated, this time under the veil of duality. We find ourselves to be, after all, the same as everyone else.
One last question that seems obvious to ask — if the aim is to return to that undifferentiated state from which we originated — why then go into the illusion of duality at all?
It’s useful to think of it using the metaphor of a large family. Imagine first a family of two parents and a gaggle of toddlers. Now imagine the same family after all of the children have grown older, gone out into the world and experienced all of what it has to offer: the joy and the pain, the success and the failure, and that they have all returned home for the holidays. In one sense, it is the same family as before. In another sense, it is a different family all together. Experience has broadened it into something deeper and richer than it would have been otherwise.
The Indwelling God
April 19, 2009
In turning away from traditional religions that advocated the need for suffering and deprivation and embracing instead a spirituality that honors joy, fulfillment, and the self, I believe we have inadvertently also discarded one of the strongest means toward coming into union with God: emptying ourselves of our lower selves in order to allow the full presence of the divine within us. While it is true that the destiny of each soul is to find the peace and joy of heaven here on earth, it is also true that getting there requires releasing of old hurts. Like any movement toward freedom, it is both pleasurable and painful. The pain is temporary and is of a limited quantity, the pleasure to be found permanent and infinite.
Many of us have – rightly – rejected the idea put forth by many religions that the person is born sinful and unworthy of God. The fact is that each of us is born – and remains – in a state of perfection. We are each a part of God — not metaphorically, but literally. Each of us is an instance of God’s desire to know itself. To say we are unworthy of God would be to say that God is unworthy of itself. To say we are imperfect is to say that children are imperfect because they are not adults.
As a side note, mystics who are in the final stages of approaching union with God may have agreed to experience in one incarnation what might have ordinarily required two or more lifetimes — to release remaining karma and to speed up the emergence of the higher self. Hence the "suffering mystic." Suffering for God means to me simply suffering on behalf of the needs of the emerging higher self. Nothing more. The belief in a parental God who demands suffering as proof of worthiness is simply a mistake. The suffering mystic is one who is going through the pains of birthing into full awareness the indwelling God, the higher self.
In any case, each of us has within us a fully-formed Christ waiting to be incarnated – that is, brought into the flesh. Our higher self is ever-present and waiting to find a more full expression in our lives. A metaphor I like is of an hourglass – the two halves representing the lower and higher selves with the pinch at the middle like the crown chakra. Not only must the crown be open, but the lower self must be empty enough to allow the higher self to pour in unimpeded. Though we use the term spiritual ascension, it is in my view more like a descension of the Christ into us.
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I suggest to thee that thou art the one thou seekest and thou behavest as though thou hast before thee this graven image of thyself to guide thee. ‘Tis not so. I am with thee always and create for thee the means as thou proceedest with thy cause. I give thee this chance to go forth. (8/11/08)
How does this emptying begin? As it does for many of us, my own turning inward and taking stock did not happen until I found myself in a crisis. But it was this crisis that gave me an understanding of how inner work can become a life-long habit of continuous healing, refining, and opening up. What I discovered, in a nutshell, is this: that the events in my life had conspired to place me in the bottom of a dark hole with an invitation: you can see the light at the top. The only way you’re going to be light enough climb out is if you drop some of what you’re carrying.
At a certain point along the way, there comes over the mystic a great need to simplify, to whittle down every aspect of one’s life that is unessential until you reach that which cannot be whittled away – that being the core that is God. For me, this feeling of a need to arrive at the core of my true self was one that had been growing steadily in me for most of my life, beginning when I was 16. It came to a head shortly after my mother’s death.
My mother was not overly attached to things. But going from the funeral home where I’d identified her body to her condo and finding it still and silent — abandoned in the middle of her life with the frying pan and spatula from the morning’s breakfast still on the stove, to the laborious process of sorting through her belongings, dividing them with my sister, and sending the rest off to thrift stores — had brought home to me once again the futility of a life spent in pursuit of the material. What added to this was that I was myself living in big house that was now bursting at the seams with furniture, books, and nick knacks.
At the same time, I felt psychically heavy – as though I was wearing 100 layers of clothing that I couldn’t get out of fast enough. I remember thinking I wanted to get rid of everything in the house, get rid of the house, and that I wanted deep down inside to die. It was not that I wanted to end my life so much as I wanted the throw off the life I had accumulated. I wanted to rid myself of everything that felt unwieldy and unessential and to do it immediately.
It was a kind of soul sickness. It wasn’t that I didn’t love the earthly world. I did. I loved the color and smell of a city street in the middle of a spring downpour as much as I did the being in the woods, black dirt under my nails with the sound of birds and the lone plane overhead, of peeling off my socks and stepping into a cold creek. But I felt as though I couldn’t experience any of these things with the immediacy I craved until I had come into closer contact with my own essence. Sparseness, simplicity, the beauty of starkness – these are what called to me.
My readiness to release the world was the strongest precursor, I believe, to my awakening. It was in these same few months that Jesus appeared to me in my dream, looking back at me from a mirror in a room that was utterly empty. This was a call that the time had come to recognize my eternal nature and to now actively pursue the further unfolding of the Christ within myself.
I want to do right by you. I realize my ego is still a problem. I want so much to lay down my ego and take up your cause entirely. Part of me is sad for the lost life I used to have. How can I lessen my ego and surrender entirely to you and your wishes?
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I knowest thou art coming to thineself again and again. Forget that thou art Elizabeth. Thou art Christ. (3/4/06)
So how does one go about emptying? Most simply, you begin by identifying every thought, habit, belief, and even relationship that brings you pain, and use pain as a kind of roadmap or door for identifying areas of your internal life that need sorting through and releasing. Pain becomes not something to be avoided or covered up, but an invitation to exploration. Pain is an infallible guide to locating what is inessential in our inner lives.
Inner excavation takes on a very clear pattern: periods of well-being followed by the identification of subtle emotional pains, followed by bringing forth the pain into one’s body and consciousness so that it is fully embodied, and then releasing it. It is like identifying a knot of hardness, teasing it out until it blooms like a flower into one’s whole being, allowing it flow out through your pores and be gone. Following the release, a reintegration to a higher level of functioning takes place, after which a sense of well-being returns. Then the cycle starts all over again.
The same attention can be turned to your outer life. If the things you own, the relationships you have, the routines and habits you’re caught in, have ceased feeling like something that fills you up and have become instead something that drains you, that numbs you, that weighs you down, you have to ask yourself what good are they to you? Do the material possessions in your life support you or do you support them? While it’s true that there are some responsibilities to others we can’t simply drop, it is also true that there is almost always room for lightening and lessening, for less cumbersome balancing.
My guess is that the urge to release, to simplify, to empty ourselves comes upon us only when we’re ready, whe we feel as though we simply cannot stand for another minute to live any other way. If you find yourself yearning for an earlier time when you may have had less money, but also less responsibility and more freedom and vibrancy, when you felt alive and in tune with life, I say – why can’t you? Those longings are a clue to what the indwelling God is calling out for. To use another metaphor, it is easier for a parent to pick up a child whose arms are empty and reaching up than it is a child whose arms are full of toys.
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Have thee not the courage to release from thee that which thou canst not own? (2/3/06)
Nearing Heaven on Earth
April 24, 2009
It is interesting to think about how the transition to a more peaceful and loving planet will happen. Like many people, I believe this is the direction we are headed. That we are not approaching the end of time but the end of a way of being. That we are moving from an ego-based consciousness into one that is more heart-based. From competition to cooperation. From an emphasis on differentiation to an emphasis on commonality. The lines that define race, nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation — will soften a bit, will become more blurry. A bi-racial, androgynous U.S. President from a multi-cultural family — someone who spans and bridges divisions — is, I believe, representative of the world to come.
It is an exciting time, and though the transition will sometimes be rocky, it is really a privilege to be on the planet now, to witness and be a part of these tremendous changes. There has no doubt been a huge influx of lightworkers onto the planet, and more are arriving each day. Each of us is awakening in our own way and at our own speed. And each of us is strengthened and encouraged by the presence and mutual recognition of one another.
I spent last year in what must be one of the most beautiful places on Earth — Sedona, Arizona. I lived a twenty-minute walk from Bell Rock, one of the energy votexes Sedona is famous for, and spent as much time as I could climbing the rocks there and hiking the dusty red trails around them. To find the vortexes’ strongest points, I would sometimes follow a line of twirled juniper trees; other times I would simply walk with my hands out until I found them. The energy there was so palpable, I often thought that if the earth itself had chakras, this must be one of them.
Though I had no plans to go to Sedona until two weeks before I arrived, it seemed hardly an accident that I was there. During my ten months there I was guided to spend as much time as possible at the vortexes and always felt cleared and rebalanced after doing so. At some point it occured to me that the changes happening to each of us individually are a microcosm of those that are happening or will happen soon to humanity collectively and to the earth.
There is no doubt that the veil that separates us from the ever-present stream of six-sensory knowledge is thinning. There is probably no way to measure this, but it seems very likely to me that the numbers of people on the planet who are clairvoyant or clairaudient or clairsentient is increasing. The impact of this other kind of knowing on our planet will be great. The role of one kind of knowing — telepathy — is of particular interest to me.
The time will come — maybe sooner than we think — when more and more people will become telepathic. That is, they will become aware first that they are able to hear other people’s thoughts. That will be amazing and fun until they realize, shortly thereafter, that other people can hear their thoughts, too. This will leave people feeling a bit vulnerable, I would imagine. Privacy of one’s thoughts is something we’ve always taken for granted after all. For obvious reasons, the ability to focus and quiet the mind will become very important. People will have to learn ways to manage their thoughts in the way they they now manage their speech. Meditation and other methods for stilling the mind may become more popular among people who would not normally be interested in such practices.
During my time in Sedona, my guides worked with me continuously on controlling my thought — everything from emptying my mind to stepping easily in and out of the stream of information, to modulating the volume of my thought to sending a thought without using language. I was encouraged to practice thinking as quietly as possible. I was almost always too loud. Attempting to communicate a thought without using words was also very difficult for me. I tried at first to use images and was encouraged to see if I could send thought without either speech or images. I became during this time very aware of fine distinctions among different kinds, or levels, of thought — the subtle difference, for instance, between a sense impression and a thought, between simply seeing a flower and seeing it while saying internally "flower."
Thought, like speech, has an energetic impact on matter. The studies of the effects of different kinds of words (such as loving vs. angry) on water are fascinating. The effects of thought, I would imagine, are similar. The benefits to our planet of each person’s becoming more aware of and gaining greater control of thought will be significant , I believe. It will have a calming, peace-inducing effect on individuals and on humankind as a whole. As people turn by necessity toward greater interior silence, they will automatically come into a greater awareness of the God within. The amount of psychic clutter in the atmosphere will begin to decrease, and this will also bring about a greater sense of well-being for us collectively.
Societal structures will be affected, as well. As sixth-sensory knowing of all kinds becomes the norm instead of the exception, it will be more and more difficult for deceit to gain a foothold. Dishonesty wherever it occurs will be obvious to larger numbers of people. Accountability will become almost instantaneous. Structures that depended on deception to maintain power will either right themselves or crumble — we are already seeing evidence of that.
Truth will come to be esteemed in a way it is not currently, and integrity will replace money as the basis for power. As a result of the new ways of defining power, values will change dramatically and transform every aspect of society. At the same time, people living in the peace and integrity of the stilled mind will have powers of manifestion as yet unseen on the planet.
Healing with Your Voice
May 8, 2009
charka_chartAs I’ve mentioned in another post, I spent most of 2008 in Sedona, Arizona undertaking a spiritual retreat. During my time there, it seemed for a while as though everywhere I turned I ran into books or CDs about healing with sound — a subject I knew little about and wasn’t particularly interested in. And yet every time I went into a bookstore, these books pulled at me as if trying to get my attention. Though it wasn’t clear to me yet, it was the first of several attempts my guidance would make to nudge me in the direction of sound healing, and until I took full notice of it, would find ways to keep reminding me.
During this same time, a friend from back in Virginia made mention of Gregg Braden’s book, The Isaiah Effect. It seemed an odd suggestion, not the kind of book she was in the habit of reading, and for that reason it stayed with me. When I saw a few weeks later that Gregg Braden was going to be giving a talk at the Sedona Creative Life Center, I signed up to attend.
He is a wonderful, engaging speaker, and I felt energized and uplifted after the talk. One part of the lecture stood out for me especially, though. He played a videotape of three Chinese doctors who heal a woman in the space of a few minutes. They did this by holding the intention — while chanting — that a malignant tumor in her bladder was already gone. A sonogram that is running during these few minutes of chanting shows the tumor dissolving bit by bit until it is gone. It is amazing, to say the least. As I left the lecture that night, I knew without a doubt that this video was the reason I was there.
One evening some time later, while doing a combination of praying and meditating in my room, I decided to say the Lord’s Prayer. As I did, I felt my voice change, become more resonant and more authoritative, almost as if someone were speaking through me. As I said the prayer, I felt little pings or pops of energy at my solar plexus. When I had finished, I felt unusually light, free, and joyful.
In my mind’s eye, I could almost see energetic attachments or cords popping off of me during the saying of this prayer simply by using my voice, or rather, tapping into the voice of my higher self, which had spoken through me. The power conveyed by this voice was above and beyond anything available to me in my normal day-to-day voice. To access this voice and the power that it held was, I believe, a big part of the reason I was being guided into working with sound healing.
One last event cemented this new direction for me. An Indian mystic by the name of Karunamayi was on tour in the U.S. and was going to be in Tucson. Since I’d been wanting to visit Tucson, I decided to drive down and see her. It was a smallish, rather intimate gathering and I liked her smile and down-to-earth manner immediately. Best of all, though, was that the event included chanting of Sanskrit, accompanied by music and a drummer who sat on the floor in front.
Though I was not familiar with these mantras and self-conscious about joining in, I did eventually, using the words on the screen in front of us to guide me along. Very soon, I began to feel a dramatic shift occur in my energy and in that of the room. And I felt suddenly very peaceful, relaxed and unselfconscious. This peace, I knew, was an effect of chanting these powerful Sanskrit syllables.
The next day, back in Sedona, I checked out from the library Jonathan Goldman’s book Healing Sounds: The Power of Harmonics and began reading about using vocal toning to balance the chakras. Basically, it is believed that different vowel sounds can be used to resonate with and "tone" the chakras. Though different teachers have come up with slightly different sounds for targeting each chakra, almost all teachers of vocal toning agree that the heart chakra resonates through the sound "Ah." It is interesting to note that the word for God in many religions includes the "ah" sound: God, Allah, Abba, Krishna, Buddha. My own take on the chakra vocal toning chart I’ve included in this post. Since I made this chart, it seems to me — and others may have discovered this too — that there is a separate sound to use for vibrating the "upper heart" area that is somewhere between an "Ah" and an "Eh."
Through my own experimenting, I’ve discovered ways of changing vibration and targeting areas of the body by varying the loudness and pitch of my voice, by changing syllables, by adjusting the position of my lower jaw, the openness of my throat and mouth, etc. It has been my experience that by using the vibration generated by your voice, you can locate areas of emotional pain or blocked energy in your body and begin to gently loosen these and let them go. You will know when you’ve hit a spot on your body in need of attention because it will feel emotionally tender. If you have an illness or injury in a localized area of your body, experiment with changing your voice, using different vowel sounds and different pitches as you visualize that part of your body. See if you can locate that part of your body with the vibration created with your voice.
The best way to do this is to have fun with it. Find a place where you can practice and experiment without being self-conscious, where you can be free to make funny sounds and not worry about what other people will think. You don’t have to be a good singer — I’m not. It’s not about making a pretty sound, but about using sound vibration to know your body and your energy better and to use your voice to change your energy, to raise it, to balance it. Another experiment you might use is to see whether the clarity and resonance of your voice changes depending on how you are feeling and use your voice as a kind of gauge for taking a reading of your overall state of well-being.
About feeling vibration — this gets easier as you go along. We are used to listening to the quality of our voices for singing or speaking more than we are to feeling the vibrations they create. If you find it hard to feel vibration when you vocalize, try plugging your ears with the headphones from your ipod so that you hear less and can concentrate more on what you feel. Another thing to try is covering your ears with your hands. This has a rather interesting effect. Though I don’t know about the physiology of sound vibration, I would guess that sound travels especially well through bone. Cupping your hands over your ears seems to increase the vibration from your skull down your hands and arms. Much of this is about trying out different things and seeing what works best for you.
If you like, you can add, as I have, some simple Sanskrit chants to your meditation, as well. These are easy to find on the internet, including audio versions so you know you are pronouncing them correctly. You can pick ones that support your intentions for yourself. Here are four easy ones that I like to use (PDF for download). One is Buddhist; the other three are Hindu.
There is so much more to say about this topic. But I will stop with a Gregorian chant video from Youtube and a story I really like that has been recounted in various books, from the work of a famous otolaryngologist, Alfred Tomatis. It doesn’t say so in this recounting, but I’ve read elsewhere that the changes instituted to cut back on chanting at this monastery came about partly as a result of recommendations from Vatican II:
From Joy Gardner-Gordon’s book Vibrational Healing through the Chakras:
“
Dr. Tomatis became acutely aware of how important the voice is in charging the body when he was called to a Benedictine monastery in France where the monks were well known for sleeping little, eating a simple vegetarian diet, observing silence, and chanting six to eight hours a day. This monastery had just been taken over by a young abbot who was convinced chant served no useful purpose and eliminated it. Within a short time, seventy of the ninety monks complained of feeling inexplicably fatigued.The doctors who were brought in tried prescribing more sleep and adding meat to the diet, but this only made things worse. When Dr. Tomatis arrived, he promptly prescribed a return to their usual schedule of chanting. Within five months, most of the monks returned to their normal health and vigor.
The Dust Storm
May 11, 2009
This last Saturday night I awoke in the middle of the night feeling just as sick as can be. I went into the bathroom and grabbed a trash can and put it beside my bed, got a glass of water, and eventually fell back to sleep. On and off through the morning I woke up to sip water and go to the bathroom. By late morning I was feeling fine again, and went about my day. I wasn’t sure what had caused it, though I had a few ideas.
When Sunday came and went without any recurrence, I figured whatever it was was gone. Wrong. Today, after spending a few hours telecommuting from the Panera Bread down the street, I returned home and was overtaken by a feeling of dizziness and nausea the moment I walked in the door. Something in the apartment is making me sick, I realized. I kept picturing a dust storm sweeping in, making it impossible to breathe. I’m going to have to get the air quality under control very quickly, I realized. Or I’m going to have to leave …
Letting Go
May 12, 2009
One weekend my uncle Allen and aunt Mary from Maine came to spend time with me, to see my house in Washington, DC, and to do a bit of sightseeing. They both travel quite a bit and have been to Washington many times – Allen especially — who liked to do research at the Library of Congress. During their stay, they were getting ready to go out on their own one day and were asking me about the subway – Allen didn’t want to venture out too far from a subway stop. I jokingly told him that he was like a squirrel that didn’t want to be too far from a tree.
Aren’t we all a little like that, I thought. We pick out a few things in our lives that make us feel safe and secure and, though we may not cling to them exactly, we keep them always within reach. I remember the angst I once suffered over leaving a pen I liked on the seat of a bus – an exact duplicate of which I could buy at the drugstore for three dollars.
A large part of my spiritual awakening has been centered around learning to let go. Though I am thankful for the change of perspective it has brought me, it did not always come easily, and I can’t say that I would have chosen the lessons to come as rapidly and absolutely as they did. Still, what it has left me with – in fleeting glimpses that I have no doubt will become a permanent orientation – is a world that invites me, a world where I am safe and secure everywhere, where I am both self-contained and in everything around me.
Loss does this to us. When we lose what we’ve clung to, we look to something else to take its place. When we lose that too, we look for the next thing. Eventually, it dawns on us that nothing we can hold onto can save us. It is then we begin to look a little closer at how the world is made. We notice something we didn’t before — a note, subdued and constant and held throughout, one that can only be heard when we turn away from the violins and brass. It is the mystery that holds everything together. The eternal. An element best seen while falling.
There is, and has always been, a safety net below us. Until we get this, it is no wonder we live our lives grasping. From the perspective of almost everyone we know — and we adopt it as our own — life is a high wire act. We live each hour, each day, each month trying to make it to the end without looking down. And what a price we pay — how small we keep the world to keep it safe. If somewhere along the way we’re lucky enough to lose our step, we find the net beneath us, catching us mid-fall. Then it hits us – we can’t die!
After that, life loses some of the win/lose desperation of the high wire act and becomes more about texture. It becomes about experience. About appreciation. What do you not do because of what people will say? When you leave the heavy coat of reputation behind along with everything else (not easy), you become truly a free agent. Life then becomes a playground to explore. The more you let go, the bigger the playground becomes, the more fearless you become, the more joy there is.
If you could view a time-lapse video of your soul’s entire journey, you would see every material thing – one incarnation after another – coming and going in split second intervals — with your soul the one constant in frame after frame.
Looking Ahead
May 25, 2009
For many mystics, a time comes when the inner work to which you’ve devoted yourself so diligently for so long begins to level off, and your attention turns to the external world and where you might be of help. I’ve begun thinking lately about the possibilities…
My wish is to start a non-profit, tax-exempt organization — based probably in the southwest, with a home in Sedona or Santa Fe — guided by a small group of people known for their business sense, vision, integrity, commitment to spiritual life, and commitment to planetary peace.
I envision an ongoing series of talks on spirituality, compassion and peace, combined with meditation, prayer, music, and possibly healing. These would be free and open to the public, beginning in the U.S. and moving internationally eventually. In addition, I would like to offer smaller paid workshops that focus on various aspects of the spiritual path.
Since this would be a non-denominational, all-inclusive organization, our goal would be to reach out to all people regardless of religious or any other affiliation. Part of our initial work would be in identifying groups and places that would be most receptive to the program we are offering.
Generally, the organization’s aim would be to encourage spiritual interest and understanding, and to emphasize the commonality of all people and all religions.
The organization would be funded by donations and publications sales. Creating an in-house publications department is something I would like to consider down the road.
Excess revenue would be used in support of social causes that help make concrete, day-to-day living easier. Some of the groups I would like to help include the homeless, the mentally ill, animal rights groups, and groups that support empowering women.
Other long-term goals would be to create ways to support people undergoing spiritual crises, and to identify, encourage and support children who are psychically or spiritually gifted.
A Mystic’s Lesson About Trying to Persuade
May 28, 2009
“
Relinquish those that upon seeing thee infer not what thou doest. (2/2/06)
Of all the guidance I’ve received in the last three years, this message from God has made perhaps the greatest impression on me — probably because it is a lesson I needed to remember.
It is not the mystic’s job to convince people of the realness of her experience. Some people will believe you and others will not. And some will react unkindly. What helps is to remember that these reactions have little to do with you personally. They are, in reality, a reaction to what you represent.
Similarly, the mystic should refrain from attempting to mold herself into something that looks like what others expect a mystic to be. This, too, is a futile endeavor. More to the point, to tailor yourself to another’s specifications is to put more faith in their version of you than in God’s. Something all of us need to remember, mystic or not …
It is the mystic’s job to become pliant in God’s hands so that she can be used most efficiently. What that means is that you have to let go of people you wanted very much to believe you. To linger on in the name of persuading is to lose time, energy, and power.
A Dream of Earthbound Souls
May 31, 2009
A short dream from last Wednesday …
I am flying through the air at night and come upon a parked car, approaching it from behind. It appears to be a car from the 1960s, based on the size and shape, one of those with tail fins. There are four or five people in it, all facing forward. The car is actually more of the outline of a car, less present than those sitting in it. It is clear to me as I approach that these people have been waiting, and they are not sure if this is where they’re supposed to be.
I wake up exhausted and groggy, but it wears off quickly as I get ready to go to work. I realize after thinking about it, that this was the scene of a car accident many years ago, and these were earthbound souls needing to be released. They had been sitting there for close to forty years.
Did I help them move into light? It makes me very happy to think I did.