Here’s another piece that didn’t make the final edit. This was originally the last story in the book, until something came along that I liked better.
Interestingly, this one mentions my next book, which I just started writing yesterday…
SPEECHLESS
A spontaneous prayer in the middle of the night:
I will trust more and take the next step in faith, whatever that next step may be.
Leave words behind when you listen to my Voice.
Note: For more than a year now, I’d been hearing Spirit not as an audible Voice inside my head (“When you’re ready, you’ll write books,” were the last words actually “spoken aloud”) but instead in much richer, broader, more abstract concepts. Whole ideas were presented at once, complete with references to my own experience so I’d grasp the specific, along with the general meaning.
But as these concepts came into my mind, I automatically searched for the most accurate words I could find to express them, and compulsively put both my silent questions and Spirit’s abstract answers into common English. I did this to make sure I understood everything about the message being conveyed, but also to ensure I’d be able to recall the conversation afterward. I have a notoriously Swiss-cheesy memory* and I was afraid these precious communiqués would slip right out of my mind if I didn’t nail them down into human language while they were fresh.
*Kids, don’t do drugs.
Spirit had asked me several times recently to try to hear without shoehorning the communication into words, but I had yet to take the request seriously. I did remember how glorious it felt to communicate without language during that Dinnertable Awakening so long ago, but that time I was a passive sightseer. A tourist. It seemed awfully scary to consciously choose wordless communication now as an authentic state of being.
This is your next step in faith and trust. Put your ego mind aside and bring only your awareness into our exchanges; trust that I know your questions before you ask them. And have faith that My answers will stay within your mind until all need for questions and answers has been transcended forever.
Do this and notice the difference it makes. At first it will feel as though you’ve ‘lost’ your communication channel, but the opposite is actually the case; abstract thought is what you are in truth, so your attempt to return to this form of thinking will actually help remove another of the blocks that keep your communication channel narrow. In truth, limitless communication is what you are – there is no boundary or channel.
To the degree that you are able to allow your obsessive need for language to recede, your ability to hear and understand Me will deepen and become more profound.
Think back to those earlier days when you first began the Barbara Brennan meditations intended to connect you with your “guides”. At that time, you were able to receive only visual symbols, remember? You knew you were obsessively grabbing these images and forcing interpretations onto them, so eventually you stopped doing that of your own accord.
And at first, without those habitual egoic efforts at jumping the gun, you were unable to see any images at all and it seemed as if you’d lost all ability to communicate. But you didn’t lose it, did you?
“No. Definitely not.”
This will be the same. Trust in Me. Let yourself fall into the abstract unknown and I promise I will catch you.
“I believe you. And I’ll do my best, really I will. But what about writing books? How will I be able to relay your words if I’m not putting any of what you say into words?”
Just trust in Me. When the time comes for the next book, you’ll know what to write and how to write it. But you needn’t worry about that right now. That’s a long way off.
“Yes, of course. The next book is a long way off. But what about this book? How do I write the rest of this one?”
My love, you just finished it.
Learning to communicate with Spirit
I’m pretty sure we all have spiritual abilities we’re not tapping into; I’m also pretty sure we can all develop those skills if we work at it. The unused 90% of our brains, and all that.
But then there are those few individuals who are born with those talents, and they seemingly don’t have to work at it at all. Those are the ones we call psychic or clairvoyant or whatever.
I’m not one of those. (Or at least it doesn’t feel like it from the inside. On the other hand, I’ve been described as ‘an open window between worlds,’ so what do I know.)
I guess what I’m saying is, when it came to communication skills, I definitely had to work at it. I’m still working at it.
In 2005 I was studying Barbara Brennan’s book, Hands of Light, and found in it a workbook exercise designed to strengthen communication with one’s Guide:
Ask a question in your mind, write the question down and then be still to meditate. Write down all images, words, feelings, smells, sounds, whatever, as they come to you. Don’t judge any of it, just write it all down.
So I did. I’m a visual person, so at first I got only pictures. Then I started getting pop tunes of the 60’s-90’s to go with the images. (I left that part out of the book – some of those music stories were amazing, but it’s a book, not a 10-part miniseries. Not everything can make the cut.)
The pop tunes were forever sending me to the computer to google the lyrics, because I often only knew the title or chorus. Every time I read the full lyrics in light of my question asked, it was a revelation – who knew Nights in White Satin could be so deep?
Or that Landslide would play a role in causing me to leave behind my 20-year practice of Buddhism forever? (And I never even liked Fleetwood Mac, really.)
The musical interlude was short lived; I think its function was probably just to get me more accustomed to listening. Within a month or two, the music faded and the Voice began to speak more frequently in those meditations.
Up until then, it hadn’t occurred to me that the Voice and the Guide and the pictures and the music could all perhaps be coming from the same place. Or could even be the same thing.
We were still a year or so away from long, free-flowing conversations. Those began in July of 2006, on the same day that the Voice (which by then I called Spirit) delivered this little shocker:
WHEN YOU’RE READY, YOU’LL WRITE BOOKS.
My immediate reaction was more or less unprintable; sort of a peacefully surrendered WTF, if you will. But I was highly motivated to learn how to communicate back, after that. And motivation is really all it takes.
For you, me or anybody.