So I had that recurring dream last night – the one where I foolishly leave my handbag unattended and moments later my wallet is gone…it happens and then I’m completely lost, set adrift. It’s not so much the money I’m worried about; it’s the driver’s license, the credit cards.
Everything I use to prove I really am who I say I am.
It’s a dream that occurs each time I place another big chunk of my trust in Spirit.
It’s a not-so-friendly shorthand reminder from my unconscious ego mind. A way of warning myself to back off, to quit pushing beyond my egoic comfort zone. To stop trying to see the world through the eyes of Spirit.
Because if I’m learning to trust in Spirit’s interpretation of the world, that means I’m withdrawing part of my belief from the ego mind’s version of the story.
The dream’s details change but the essence is always the same: It’s saying: Better be careful – you’re playing with fire. Get too close to Oneness and you’ll lose your identity for good.
And God knows, that’s a terrifying thought.
But is it true? Of course not.
To reconnect with Oneness is to remember our own truest state. Our real identity. And when we remember what we really are, we will also remember that we are completely safe. Infinitely peaceful. Totally free.
It’s our ego mind that’s in danger of losing the false identity it’s so carefully constructed to hide the truth of what we really are.
But knowing all this intellectually doesn’t really mean anything; when push comes to shove, I for one still thoroughly believe I’m a separate person with an individual mind, living in a 3-D world with lots of other folks in the same predicament.
Until I know and believe in my heart that we’re all One, these teachings of non-duality are all just blah blah blah. And as long as that’s true, then on the deepest unconscious level, the thought of attaining Oneness will continue to be terrifying.
Because who will I be if there’s no more me?
Actually, Spirit has taught me quite a lot on this subject. I freaked out about it in a fairly big way, back when I first realized what a return to Oneness would really entail (see page 190 of my book, in a story aptly titled ‘Freakout’).
That was back in 2006. Since then Spirit has taught me to look closely at the mask identity that the ego provides – the false ‘me’ belonging to each one of us. To really notice how all of us settle for daily unease as a fact of life; to realize that none of us are able to find truly lasting happiness or peace in this world.
We settle, in short, for an ill-fitting meat suit instead of the perfect identity that’s really ours.
There we are. It’s the human condition.
But for those of us who aspire to wake up from this dream of separation, our work is cut out for us: We know we can’t ‘give up’ this individual identity while we still believe in it and find it valuable. Trying is a waste of time – it just doesn’t work that way.
But by allowing Spirit to teach us and gently heal our perception of the world, then our perception of ourselves begins to heal as well.
Until finally, one day we realize that the mask self is nothing at all. It has no value so we willingly let it go – and just like that, it’s gone.
Oh sure, the meat suit is still here, but we’re not fooled by it anymore. We know it isn’t really us. It’s just a vehicle for walking around expressing the truth that we’ve become awakened to: That the state of Oneness is True Self, and no other identity is needed.
Yeah, I greatly look forward to knowing all this with my heart instead of my head.
But in the meantime, has anybody seen my wallet?
More postcards from the cutting room floor
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.
Past-life murder and present day forgiveness: The ultimate do-over
I remember bits and pieces of some of my more colorful past lives. I never get the full story, though – just quick, disconnected flashes lacking any kind of meaningful context.
I know I was once the leader of a secret religious order called Lamb of God. But I only see images of torchlight flickering on roughhewn walls; of long white tunics and heavy crosses worn around the neck. It would be nice to know a little more, but that’s all I have.
And then there’s a shamanic episode a couple of centuries later that took place on Navajo land: I see images of a black horse galloping at me, its rider silhouetted against the sun; I’m raising my arms, and wearing a long cape that seems to be made of shiny black feathers.
In general, I’m not all that fascinated by the idea of past lives, so I haven’t gone out of my way to find out more. I don’t know, maybe that’s because I tend to remember less about past lives and more about past deaths.
I’ve been burned at the stake. Shot in the back. But before I talk about past death, I want to go back a minute and tell you more about that shamanic memory. It took place at Spider Rock in Canyon de Chelly, during an amazing 5 day InnerVision journey I did with Fran in 2008. (if you don’t know who Fran is, see any of the blog entries listed under ‘Sedona’s spiritual connection.’)
We toured a great big loop through Arizona and Utah. It was amazing – someday maybe I’ll write the whole story as an epic 5-parter. We hit lots of well known sacred spots on that trip: Valley of the Gods, Monument Valley etc., as well as some lesser known areas like Mexican Hat.
Fran had long been telling me about Mexican Hat. She was afraid of that place; she knew she had a deep connection to that very troubled land, and that she was supposed to do something powerful there but had never felt ready. She told me the land had been raped – mined for uranium which was then processed at nearby mills, leaving the area with permanently polluted groundwater.
InnerVision journeys are never planned ahead of time. Fran just goes wherever Spirit leads. As we approached Mexican Hat, her description of its painful history grew more heated and angry. I was expecting to see a ravaged landscape, but as we got out of the car the place struck me as astonishingly beautiful, a study in red rocks and green (don’t drink it) water.
Suddenly she stopped in mid-rant. She was remembering she’d been ‘told’ long ago that she would one day bring someone there who would heal the land. And she just now realized that someone was me.
Time stopped and I watched myself out-of-body as I said to her: “To heal the land, we need to love the rapists.”
I wasn’t entirely sure at the time what I meant by that. But the other night I realized that this episode actually connects to another one, a past-death memory. Here’s that past-death story as it’s told in my book:
…The next thing I knew, I was in three places at once. Part of me was reliving my own murder from a previous lifetime, a brutal rape and strangulation. Yet it wasn’t nearly as scary or disturbing as you’d expect, because a second part of me was peacefully watching it unfold from a detached bird’s-eye viewpoint and the third part of me knew I was safely lying in my own bed the whole time.
‘I’m being shown this for a reason.’ This was the thought that filled my mind, and I knew it was the truth. ‘I’m supposed to forgive this guy.’
Yet it didn’t seem to require forgiveness in the usual sense of the word. I didn’t get that I was supposed to be saying, “Oh, there, there, it’s ok that you’re murdering me.”
It seemed I was being asked to remain open-hearted and peacefully present while he did this awful thing. So I did. And as I made the choice to do it, I dimly sensed that this decision to stay loving in the face of hatred was having a big effect, shuffling the deck on my own past or future timeline, although I couldn’t begin to say how.
This past-death experience occurred shortly before I was introduced to A Course in Miracles. Now I recognize that it was asking me to practice forgiveness as defined by the Course: To completely overlook the imagined transgressions of this world – no matter how evil or terrifying they might seem – and to respond only with love.
And what’s the payoff, you ask, for responding with love instead of attack or defense? The payoff is huge. Probably more awesome than you or I can comprehend, in fact.
When I made the choice to offer only love and peace to that rapist-murderer (instead of responding with terror and rage as I had done the first time around), I felt a massive shift that I described at the time as ‘shuffling the deck.’ But it really felt as if time itself was collapsing, shortening my journey immeasurably. I had the strong impression, in fact, that it was rewriting my past or future to leave out certain painful portions because those lessons were learned now.
A Heavenly do-over, if you will. Pretty powerful stuff.
So, back to Mexican Hat. Could that ravaged land really be healed through the simple action of choosing to love its ‘rapists’? I’m thinking yes. If time and destiny fall like dominoes when love is chosen over fear, surely the Earth can be healed by that same gently loving choice.
After all, that’s another of the Course’s basic tenets: We’re all One with everything that is. Which presumably includes every rock and stream. Heal ourselves as we heal the rapists, and in that simple choice the land is automatically healed too. So can you imagine just how powerful love really is?
I don’t know; something to think about.
Forgiveness, Trust and YouTube
I hired this amazing video guy and last week we shot a really cool YouTube video promo for my book. He did a great job, I think. It’s fun, it’s atmospheric, and at the end it says ‘Available wherever books are sold’ and then lists my website, www.unlikelymessenger.com.
Beautiful. The only problem is, the book isn’t available wherever books are sold. In fact, it isn’t yet available, period.
And that website address isn’t even live yet, either. Oops.
But I wasn’t worried, because I figured I’d hold the video for a bit and release it when all systems were go. (Hopefully within another week or 2 the book will be available for preorder on Amazon, and the website will be up as well.)
But the video guy uploaded it to YouTube without telling me. And I found out because I saw it splashed across my Facebook page. And my Twitter page.
Then he needed to tweak the file format for best viewability. So he kept uploading new versions of the video – and Twitter and Facebook kept breathlessly notifying everybody about each one. So people kept going up there to view it.
The first video got 66 hits within just a couple of hours. Then the 2nd video got 29. Then the 3rd and 4th got a few each.
Then he put up a 5th video. And deleted videos 1 through 4, losing me over 100 page hits and some 5 star ratings in the process, and leaving a boneyard of broken links all over Twitter and Facebook.
So it was kind of exciting but mostly horrifying to watch this slow motion WTF train wreck taking place.
But I’ll tell you what, it was a prime forgiveness opportunity.
I’ve been practicing A Course in Miracles for a few years now, so usually a forgiveness situation like this is a no-brainer: Side with the person and not the circumstance. The Course says the person is in Oneness with God; eternally perfect and entirely innocent of whatever crime I think he’s committed. And the circumstance is nothing more than an imaginary fever dream.
All I know is, I feel deeply peaceful whenever I side with the holy innocence of the person. And I feel like hell whenever I don’t. So that’s why I’m usually so diligent about practicing forgiveness and overlooking the imaginary circumstances. I prefer to feel good.
Except here’s the thing: As you know, if you’ve been following this saga from the start, back in 2006 I was informed by Spirit that I was going to write books. Becoming an author was just about the furthest thing from my mind at that point, believe me.
But eventually I embraced the job offer, and have been engaged in this Blues Brothers-esque ‘Mission From God’ ever since.
So there’s a certain expectation of a little Heavenly help, here. And that YouTube debacle didn’t exactly qualify as helpful. So when I sat down to apply forgiveness to the video guy, I found I couldn’t get past the pointless mess created around the video’s release.
I had to stop right there and remind myself that I really have no friggin’ idea of what’s the best way to help my book find its audience. Or anything else, for that matter. I’m still caught up in the fever dream; how the hell do I know if 100 hits and some positive reviews make any difference at all to the effectiveness of that promo video? Or whether that video will make any difference to the success of the book?
So last night I just surrendered the whole thing to Spirit, and trusted that everything has been happening exactly as it’s meant to be. I had no other options, really.
And in the resulting ocean of peace that washed over me, I was able to connect with the divine Oneness of the video guy’s true nature and forget that whole Twitter/Facebook/YouTube mess.
And I discovered in the process that the video guy is holy, magnificent, radiant and totally perfect exactly as he is.
And I’m good with that.
POSTSCRIPT
This morning Video Guy informed me he could restore all my page hits and 5 star ratings to the remaining 5th version of the video. So I’m back up to 115 views, a half dozen 5 star ratings, and no lasting damage done.
I love it when I learn important lessons and it all works out happily ever after. Don’t you?
(to view the 5th and final version of the video in question, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3saOMax3xM )
God's Love and the art of pest control
As a student of the practice of Oneness, I can tell you some pretty gorgeous-awesome-powerful things happen during my meditations on that subject. Beautiful radiant visions of perfect peace and divine Love; the feeling of being connected to everything that Is. No complaints, it’s wonderful.
But remembering to actually believe in these things during normal business hours is the real trick, isn’t it. And I’m not always so good at that. But I’m happy to say I was very good at it once recently.
Last week I had the house to myself; my husband was in Japan for his annual Buddhist pilgrimage.
For several weeks prior to his trip we’d been noticing an unusual buildup in the ant population surrounding our house. Columns and battalions, wave after wave of ant reinforcements marching in busy streams all around our property. Kurt commented on more than one occasion that the first rainfall would surely bring a huge infestation into our kitchen.
And it did exactly that, the day after he left for Japan. Ants on the countertops, ants climbing the walls, cavorting in the cupboards, exploring the trashcan, carrying off Baxter’s bowl of cat food. (well, maybe not that last one. But nearly.)
And at first I went to that place of ‘Us versus Them,’ of trying to kill them all and make sure they didn’t come back. I cleaned the cupboards and countertops, I took out the trash, I drowned as many ants as I could find. And in spite of my efforts, the infestation doubled in size over the next few hours.
Then, miraculously, I caught myself and realized what I was doing. Of my many conversations with Spirit, a significant number of them have dealt with this very subject of ‘Us versus Them.’ That there’s no such thing as ‘Them,’ and no such thing as someone or something outside oneself to be protected from.
So I looked down at the moving streams of ants and thought, “Okay, I’ll find the connection of Oneness that I share with you, and I’ll use it for communication purposes. When I know you can hear me, I’ll tell you to leave my house, and that you should save yourselves by going away peacefully. Because I really don’t want to have to kill all of you.”
(As any student of Oneness knows, that’s a compromise use of Oneness that I was planning to try. In connecting with the eternal Oneness of those ants, I was intending to overlook the 3-D reality of their ant-selves, but not overlook the 3-D reality of my kitchen. A flawed strategy, sure, but I figured it was better than wholesale ant murder, which was my Plan B.)
But as I closed my eyes to begin joining with those ants in Oneness, a remarkable thing happened. I felt them as thousands of individual sparks of divine Love; saw them as thousands of points of holy light. And a tremendous sense of gratitude unexpectedly welled up in me.
Part of me was still thinking: “Ok, you’ve connected with the ants, now tell them to get out of your kitchen.” But I found I didn’t care about my kitchen anymore. The kitchen wasn’t real – the divine Love of those ants was my only reality. So I offered them my love, my reverence and my gratitude for the remainder of that meditation. And I knew that when I opened my eyes and went to check the kitchen, the ants would be gone.
And they were.
Adventures in One-derland Part 2 – Go ask Alice
So last time we talked about the discomfort and difficulty of trying to join in Oneness. That every attempt feels like spiritual suicide at first; like complete loss of self.
Well I guess that’s because it is complete loss of self. Or, more accurately, the complete willingness to leave the self behind forever.
So why would anybody want to do that?
Oh, so many reasons. Because Oneness is our true state. Because the state of Oneness also contains infinite love, eternal peace and perfect joy. You’ve no doubt heard all these things many times before, from far wiser and more learned people than me.
But wait! There’s more. This is the part that people don’t talk about nearly as often: Attempting Oneness is better than any drug you can name. Even the smallest willingness to surrender to Spirit and join just a little with ‘other’ minds brings about a truly amazing high unlike any other. And (I don’t know this part first hand, of course, but it’s hearsay from a very trusted Source) – once that joining is fully accomplished by an awakened mind, it’s way better than sex.
This is what Spirit had to say on the subject of joining and sex (as quoted in my book):
… Sex is a kind of joining; indeed it’s the only kind of joining that you can experience within the 3-D world of form. Sexual union between bodies isn’t real, you know, yet it serves a useful purpose as a symbol to help you understand this concept of joining and Oneness. Sexual joining is nothing, yet true joining is more wonderful than you can imagine.
True joining (which can only be accomplished by the mind) is eternal love and ecstasy; contained within that ecstasy is a perfect memory of Self, a certainty of home, of freedom, of limitless innocence and complete joyous fulfillment. Words can’t describe how magnificent is the joined state of Oneness.
Sex, the illusory union of bodies, is the small and impoverished echo of joining that you allowed the ego mind to devise as a substitute for the real thing. Although you find it difficult to believe this right now, it’s impossible to describe just how worthless is the “joy” of sex. Once you truly understand what real joining is, you’ll never remember what you thought you saw in it.
So let’s recap.
The bliss, the profound peace and happiness that comes from even the tiniest glimpses of Oneness, is like the best drug ever but without the hangover. This I can vouch for personally, having experienced it many times. It’s awesome. And legal. And free. Ecstasy without the Xtacy.
And, as Spirit assures us, joining in Oneness is like sex, only a million billion times better. The Infinite Neverending Joygasm.
So the question becomes: Who wouldn’t want that?
I’m not saying it’s easy to get there from here. Remembering Oneness still seems damned difficult to me, and there are no guarantees any of us will awaken to Oneness in this lifetime.
But, given the rewards, you’d think a hell of a lot more people would be trying to.
Wait – You mean God is real?
Oops.
That piece of news required a major rejiggering of the worldview.
I don’t know about you, but I managed to skate through an Orthodox Jewish childhood and a 20-year practice of Buddhism without ever once imagining that God might really exist.
(In my own partial defense, Nichiren Buddhism doesn’t address the question of God as we know it. Sure, it has a few allegorical gods who show up in the Sutras now and then, but they’re treated more as symbolic functions of the universe than actual deities.)
As I began to learn about non-dualism – the teaching that we’re all one – for the first time in the spring of 2006, I felt the unmistakable resonance of its truth deep within me. But I was knocked flat on my butt by its central concept: God is real and the world isn’t.
Of the 2 halves of that statement, you’d think the assertion that the world isn’t real would have been the more shocking – and in some ways it was plenty shocking. But it was the God part that completely blew my mind. Not only that God is real, but that God is the only thing that’s real. Because God is the only thing. Period.
Maybe this is old news to you, but I sure as hell had never heard anything like it.
This is part of a diary entry (from my book) in which I chewed over these ideas:
April 11, 2006
Leatrice lent me a book almost two months ago, a dog-eared paperback called Realization of Oneness by Joel S. Goldsmith. I didn’t like anything about the look of it. The grimly earnest, band aid-colored cover positively shouted “Eat your alfalfa sprouts!” circa 1973.
She’d said I’d probably find it interesting, but it turned out I just couldn’t get past those visuals. (Yes, I am totally that shallow.) So I slipped it discreetly to the bottom of the homework stack, where it languished for at least six weeks. And then the guilt of keeping the book too long finally got to me. I pulled it out and began to read.
Wow. This ugly little volume turned out to be jam packed with electro-buzz recognition, even as it spoke of completely alien concepts like: God is real and the world isn’t; (Really? Seriously? God is real?) And: We are not separate people who live in separate bodies. In truth we are one Being.
And then there was this one, which seemed the total opposite of everything I’d ever been taught: It doesn’t matter what we do (or do not do) in this world, because none of it is real; only God’s perfect unconditional love is real. And nothing can exist outside of God, because God is everything. So only unconditional love exists…
Freaky, right?
Yet, as it turns out, all true.
I swear, you can’t make this stuff up.