A reader sent me a question today on a subject I know oh so well: The fear of doing it wrong.
“It” being spiritual practice, of course.
Back when I first started meditating, I could never get over the idea that I was doing it wrong—and that thought filled me with anxiety. And since I was pretty sure heightened anxiety was not what I was supposed to be feeling during meditation…well that just proved the point. I must have been doing it wrong. Right?
Well no. Not really. It just took time and some very determined practice to get past the stage where my ego mind could keep blocking out all peace by shouting its messages of failure.
The aforementioned reader talks about trying a form of meditation and visualization mentioned by Gary Renard in The Disappearance of the Universe. It involves picturing a circle of light, and then allowing that light to expand freely. It’s a beautiful meditation that’s all about Oneness with Heaven.
Except she don’t see no light. And she’s therefore sure she’s doing it wrong.
Not.
See, this is the main thing to keep in mind: Every human being is 100% equipped to join with Heaven in perfect peace and Love, exactly as we are right now. No ‘extra’ abilities are needed. And it doesn’t even matter whether we want to be equipped for it or not. Perfect divine Love is what we are, and we really have no say in it.
Oh sure, it’s fun to be ‘spiritually talented.’ To see visions and hear voices and dance in waves of celestial woo-woo. But it isn’t necessary. And it’s no reliable yardstick of spiritual advancement, either. It’s just a talent, like juggling or whistling is a talent. And just like juggling or whistling, the ungifted can practice assiduously until they’re pretty skilled at it too, just like the ones who came by those gifts naturally.
So, Dearest Reader, this is my message to you:
So you don’t see lights when they tell you you’re supposed to. No biggie. Concentrate instead on the important part: Do your best to feel the Love and the gentle expansion of freedom that is the true point of that meditation. If you can get focused enough to ignore your ego mind’s critique of your meditation skills, I’m willing to bet you’ll begin to feel that endless Love.
And if you don’t? Ask for Help, and then keep trying it until you do. You’ll get there, guaranteed.
Because no spiritual master who ever walked the Earth has anything on you. You’re the complete package, the real deal. You just don’t remember it yet.
(endless) Love,
Carrie
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.
Postcards from the cutting room floor
I thought it might be fun to share with you a snippet of the creative process from the 3 years I spent writing, editing and polishing this book.
Lots of perfectly good essays did not make the final cut. Usually it was either because they didn’t move the overall story along, or because they illustrated a lesson that was already covered elsewhere in the book.
This piece was one of my early favorites, and I was kinda sorry to see it go. It begins with a diary entry taking place shortly after the Dinnertable Awakening, and I’ve just quit my Buddhist practice of 20 years:
ON FOLLOWING THE LEADER
July 23, 2005
It still feels a little like freefall. Or no—not freefall, exactly. More like I leapt off a cliff without my Buddhist practice to protect me, and am now floating gently suspended in midair. Destination unknown.
Although I have no idea where I’m headed, I do know this: It’s time for me to chart my own course, to stop being a follower of the teachings of an enlightened human being.
Any enlightened human being.
Nothing against the teachers or their teachings—but ever since that brief taste of direct spiritual communion back in May, I can’t escape the feeling that human words are just a collection of inadequate symbols, wholly unsuited to the task of expressing the living truth of spiritual experience. Even the most gifted communicator, the most eloquent and enlightened teacher, can function only as a finger pointing at the truth; it’s impossible for them to transmit the truth itself.
I’m sure they would if they could. An enlightened teacher surely must know the perfect, glorious truth in all its fullness, yet would have no direct way of passing that knowledge on to others. Because spiritual truth can only be experienced firsthand.
_______________
I was deeply grateful for all the pointed fingers that had brought me to this point; those enlightened teachings were exactly what I’d needed. But hard as it was to bid farewell to my Buddhist practice, I knew I had done the right thing. Having briefly experienced my own glimmer of firsthand communion, I knew I could never again content myself with gazing at pointed fingers. Besides, I knew there were definite pitfalls inherent in finger gazing.
Pet lovers might recognize this scenario, which illustrates those pitfalls:
You offer your dog or cat a tasty treat. You show it to her and then toss it in her bowl. She didn’t quite see where the nugget went, so she brings her gaze back to stare expectantly at your hand, thinking you still have it. You point at the bowl; she stares intently at your finger. You gesture and point more emphatically at the bowl…and she watches the moving finger with ever-deepening concentration.
It simply doesn’t occur to her to turn her head to look in the direction the finger is pointing.
In matters of spirit, we’re not so different.
We choose a teacher whose finger points eloquently at the truth—and we stare slack-jawed at the finger. We dress that digit up in jewel-encrusted costumes and set it on a pretty pedestal while the truth waits patiently off to the side in perfect peace, plainly visible if we would only turn our heads to look at 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.
The Meaning of Christmas – random thoughts from a Jewish Buddhist Voice-Hearer
Let me state this right up front: My relationship with Christ has always been complicated.
Messed up, really.
I was born into an Orthodox Jewish family that was still very busy mourning the effects of World War II when I arrived on the scene in 1958. Christ was a complete stranger in our household, Christianity seen as nothing but a dark catalyst for terrifying world events.
My resulting relationship with Jesus is summed up in this story (from the book) called He Who Must Not Be Named:
…On the one hand He looked like a nice enough guy—His blond, blue-eyed portrait smiling down on my sleepovers at the neighbor kids’ house. And of course it was widely known that if you believed in Him, Santa brought you all kinds of magical swag on Christmas.
Yet He was also the reason I wasn’t allowed into some of the other kids’ houses. I was a dirty Jew, or so their mothers informed me, and Jesus wouldn’t like it if I spread those cooties around.
Meanwhile, school brought a whole different kind of challenge. I learned nothing at all about Christ or Christianity at home or in my Hebrew school studies, except that He was somehow associated with unspeakable evil, and so the name of Jesus was never to be uttered aloud.
“Why? What happens if you say it?” I figured it must be bad because nobody would ever tell me. Maybe saying Jesus’ name was what killed those six million Jews?
This was back in the day when public school kids were routinely made to sing religious songs, so for these occasions I was forced to adopt a weird sort of ventriloquist’s dummy approach:
Wag-wag(soundlessly my jaw moved up and down)
Loves me, yes I know
For the Bible tells me so.
…………………….Yeah.
Does it seem insane to you that anyone would teach a child to equate Jesus with Voldemort?
Well, you’re probably right about that. But cultural context is everything.
The Jews who taught these lessons were not the slightest bit nefarious in their intentions. Just scared. Traumatized. And deeply worried that their bacon cheeseburger-loving American offspring were in danger of forgetting recent cataclysmic history.
Now fast-forward several decades to our post 9-11 world, and that 2007 story about the Muslim Mickey Mouse with his own TV show. And we think: How could anyone be so evil? And are they insane, using Mickey to teach children to hate and murder?
Well, yeah. They’ve already proven they’re at least a little insane, if only by ignoring the global reach of Disney’s fearsome legal team.
But the very embodiment of evil? I’m gonna go out on a limb here to say: I don’t think so. I think maybe they’re just wounded citizens of a deeply damaged world, trying to pass their belief system on to their kids.
So. Back to the meaning of Christmas. (Or maybe it’s the meaning of Christ that I’m really after.) It’s taken me a half-century to undo all that well-intentioned cultural conditioning from my early years. But I don’t regret any of it, because that outsider status has allowed me to approach the subject with fresh eyesight.
For what it’s worth, here’s what I think:
There’s no such thing as pure evil. There are only degrees of damage and desperately misguided ways of coping with it.
And let’s face it, we’re all at least a little damaged and a little misguided.
So my personal practice – all year long, but especially now during the Christmas season – is to overlook the damage and the mistakes as best I can, and try to see only the Oneness and perfection that lie deep within each person. I’ve been told (and see no reason to disbelieve) that everybody who’s ever lived is equally perfect and worthy of unconditional love. So, what the hey, I’m giving it my best shot.
Do I slip and forget? Constantly. That’s why they call it a practice. But on the days when I manage it, I’m enveloped in peace and joy and a sense of…holiness, really, that feels like warm cocoa wrapped in a cashmere blanket. Or something like that. To be honest there are no words to describe the feeling, except to say it’s real good.
So I think that’s the meaning of Christmas. Joy. Oneness. Letting the world off the hook for its collective “sins.” From that guy in the SUV who steals my parking spot at the mall (dammit, he SAW me waiting), to the Muslim Mickey who teaches hatred to yet another generation of children.
I’m hoping to let a whole lot more people off the hook as the season progresses.
Because practice makes perfect, you know?
Holy Dirt part 2 – The awesome power of the Travel Channel
I never forgot that church docent’s enigmatic invitation (‘YOU can come back anytime…’) so when Kurt & I returned to Santa Fe 7 years later, in the fall of 2006, we made a point of trekking back up to Chimayo.
To say the place had changed would be putting it mildly. In the years since our last visit, Santa Fe and its environs had been featured on a number of cable TV shows, the kind that focus on travel and the unexplained. ‘History’s Mysteries,’ that sort of thing. And those shows put Chimayo on the map in a big way.
We didn’t even recognize the place as we approached, and had to drive back & forth past it several times before assuring ourselves this must be it. Half a block away we found the parking lot expanded to 5 times its previous size to accommodate the scores of tour buses and cars driven there by eager pilgrims.
Sadly, on approaching what was now a huge complex of buildings and vendor stalls, we could find no trace of the Holy Chile or the shop that once housed it.
In the church I could find no sign of that docent. And I was deeply disappointed to discover that there was now no folk art.
Oh sure, the 19th century pieces were still there. But all the sad, funny, wildly tacky and heart-breakingly sincere stuff contributed by local parishioners had been swept away and replaced by shiny new plastic Kmart treasures, bland and mass-produced and completely without character.
I couldn’t help mourning the loss of the winking Jesus and the papier mache rosary and all the rest. http://twitpic.com/qe4pd
But oh, that Holy Dirt. The Holy Dirt sits just beneath a smallish hole in the church’s floor. On our first visit the hole was cordoned off on 3 sides with a sign warning not to step in it. (Again, oops.)
But this time the hole was thronged 3 deep with devotees patiently waiting their turn to scoop out buckets of that Holy Dirt into baggies or jars or Tupperware containers to take home with them.
OK now, really. If that were truly the original Dirt in that hole (the very foundation the church was built on)…at this rate of removal the Santuario would have collapsed in on itself long before this. Besides, while the Dirt looked like dirt on our first visit, this time it bore a serious resemblance to clean, commercial-grade sand from the hardware store.
I’m just sayin.’
It may sound like I’m mocking the faithful who scooped that Dirt, but I’m really not. I was serious when I named this story The Awesome Power of Belief. In 1858 one person had an authentic revelatory experience at Lourdes, but countless others who later heard her story have also experienced miraculous healings there. Why?
I don’t doubt the initial revelatory experience that happened at Lourdes (or the one at Chimayo). I can say from personal experience that revelatory experiences can and do happen anywhere. I’ve had some of my best ones while driving an offroad jeep in Sedona; in a Parisian clothing shop; and in the ladies room of Wuksachi Lodge in Sequoia National Park, to name just a few.
And I’m not saying it’s the power of suggestion that makes the Healing Waters or the Holy Dirt work for all these later people. It’s way more than that. Belief is a truly awesome (and underappreciated) force.
Let’s consider this for a moment: That we are all One infinite being of unlimited creative power. But that’s a very tough concept to take seriously while we still believe we’re separate minds housed in separate bodies, living in the 3-D world of form.
When we’re awakened to the memory of our perfect Oneness, then together we’re able to exercise our divine creative powers. But we can’t access that unlimited creativity if we believe we’re not One. As separate individuals, our unlimited creative abilities can’t be used properly, so instead we funnel all of that awesome unused power into belief.
If we believe something fully, in other words, it becomes 100% true for us. (All those fans of the Law of Attraction out there would no doubt agree.) And if all us individuals believe in something together, then that thing becomes collectively true for all of us. Sickness is real only if we believe in it; spontaneous healing becomes real exactly the same way. Regardless of whether your Holy Dirt comes from the Santuario de Chimayo or the hardware store.
So I guess the moral of this story would be to always take a good close look at what your beliefs are.
Awesome, powerful you.
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.
Adventures in One-derland
I was going to tell you about my visits to the church at Chimayo with its crazy little patch of miracle dirt – I’ll save that story for next time, it’s a good one. But today I have something better to talk about. (Yes, even better than miraculous dirt. I know, hard to imagine.)
I was meditating this morning, trying as usual to put the principles of A Course in Miracles into action. Meaning, in this case, that I was attempting to overlook the illusion of separation by merging my own mind in Oneness with the minds of others.
These others were chosen more or less at random; my husband, because he was wandering through the bedroom at the time, looking for clean socks; Baxter the hellcat, because he was yammering about nothing at all, having just been fed. To these I added a friend many thousands of miles away, and, last but not least, Spirit (who is always included in these Oneness exercises – being the only expert in the room, so to speak, at how it’s done).
Now, I should back up & tell you this, if you’ve never tried the Oneness thing: You won’t like it. Your mind will fidget, your body will twitch, it’ll feel like sandpaper is roughing up your last nerve.
That’s because our ego minds have quite a lot invested in our belief in separation. And it takes some serious effort to retrain the mind to start accepting the idea that we’re all One. (Oh, it might sound good as an abstract Bob Marley-esque concept – One love, One heart. Let’s get together & feel all right. But now try putting it into actual practice and see how it really feels. Not all right. Sandpaper City.)
Long Time No See tells half a dozen stories on the subject of minds joined in Oneness. 3 years ago, when Spirit first proposed that I try joining, (in a story titled, “If you let me, I’ll show you what you are”) I did everything I could to avoid becoming One with Spirit. It was only when I realized I had no choice in the matter that I finally gave in. And I wasn’t what you’d call gracious about it, believe me. See for yourself in the following excerpt from that story:
…“This is a very powerful spot,” Fran informed me. “By sitting in this round opening with one foot inside the cave and the other foot outside on the rock ledge, it’s possible to straddle two dimensions at once. Go ahead and try it,” she suggested, climbing out the hole to meditate on the ledge overlooking the canyon.
I positioned myself in the opening, yet couldn’t relax. Although seated very securely with my back supported against the curved opening and both feet planted on solid rock, every time I closed my eyes I had the uncomfortable sensation of falling sideways out the hole, jerking myself upright over and over again. I tried and failed to meditate for at least ten minutes before giving up in exasperation.
This is a complete waste of time, I thought crankily, I don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing here. I climbed out the hole and joined Fran on the ledge. This felt a little better.
Closing my eyes, there came an immediate invitation:
If you let Me, I’ll show you what you are.
I considered for a moment. Even though the offer was plenty frightening, I probably did want to see what I was.
“Yes. Ok.”
Soon we were flying along hand in hand over the canyon, me on the left and Spirit (a vague and non-specific entity) to my right.
What are we supposed to be wearing? I fretted. Shouldn’t we both have some kind of white robes or something, flapping in the breeze?And a moment later we did.
Looking to my right, I saw Spirit’s free hand dissolve into a shower of shimmering light, like a gentle, glowing birthday sparkler. The ball of light climbed up the right arm, dissolving as it went, across the body and down the left arm until only sparkling light remained. It paused where our hands met, asking wordless permission to continue. I could see where this was going and didn’t like it a bit, yet after a long hesitation I agreed.
The light dissolved my hand, arm, body, other arm, hand. I jerked away reflexively and we became two individual balls of glowing, sparkling light. My ball sped crazily around the other, repelled yet drawn like a maddened bug to a candle flame. As my ball zigzagged its agonized orbit, the other ball remained absolutely still, waiting patiently.
I knew what was being asked of me—I just didn’t want to do it. The game wore on for another excruciating minute before I finally hit my limit, unable to stand the discomfort of resistance any longer.
“Oh, all RIGHT,” I said testily, pausing at last to allow our two balls of light to merge gently, softly into one…
It ain’t easy, getting used to that ‘joining in Oneness’ thing. At first blush it feels like the complete loss of individuality, & who among us would sign up for that?
Well, those of us who want enlightenment would sign up for that. And it’s taken 3 years, but my mind is getting sort of used to the idea of Oneness now. Sort of.
Except I’ve been so wordy that I see this story will need to be continued another time. Join me then (!), won’t you?