There’s a scene in Private Benjamin where Goldie Hawn enters an army recruitment office and is shown a beautiful, slick brochure on the benefits of modern military life. She’s so impressed, she enlists right on the spot.
But when she arrives at bootcamp in Mississippi, she’s confused: Quonset huts. Latrines. What the hell? This is definitely not what she signed up for.
“I think there’s been a mistake,” she tells the drill sergeant. “I joined the other army. You know, the one with the condos, and the private rooms.”
• • •
Asking to know spiritual truth is a lot like that. The brochure looks great, and plenty of us sign up for it right there and then. But it’s never what we think it’s going to be. We imagine a perfected “spiritual self” who never gets upset, never has issues. A luminous, blissful peace-bunny spreading divine love and joy to a thankful world.
The truth, it turns out, seems so distastefully alien by comparison to our spiritual fantasies—so upside-down from everything we think we want—that it’s damn near impossible to stand still long enough to even consider it.
At least, that’s how it’s been for me. For years I’ve been patiently shown the truth over and over, and over again. I’ve seen it in videos, I’ve read it in books, I’ve witnessed it in visions. It shows up in my email inbox.
But each time I’ve brushed it away.
Because that’s not the truth I signed up for. I wanted the one with the condos.
• • •
I really want to know God. It’s been an unstoppable urge for a while now. In the last post I spoke of being in the goodnight-kiss-at-the front-door stage of my relationship with God—but the desire to go all the way, so to speak, is a craving that seems to emanate from the depths of my soul. It’s really my one great desire.
And that’s a fairly uncomfortable predicament to be in, when the only way to know God is to get with the program and agree to accept the irritatingly, disappointingly unacceptable truth of existence:
There’s nothing to fix. Nothing to teach. Nothing to learn, and nothing to heal.
Everything is perfect exactly as it is right now, because everything and everybody is composed entirely of God. Joined in perfect oneness with God. No matter what things look like, and no matter what disastrous effects those things may seem to be having on your life, or the world…innocence and safety, love, peace and joy are the only things going on in truth.
There’s nothing to accomplish or do. You already have it, and ARE it. Stop striving to be better. Stop yearning to wake up. Stop trying to escape from your perfectly imperfect circumstances. Your job is just to be. Recognize you don’t know anything about anything. Refuse to judge anything you see. Have faith that it’s all innocent. Disbelieve everything your mind tells you, and instead walk through life snuggled deeply, blindly, trustingly in God.
There is no “you,” no spiritual self who can heal the world. You can’t bring love into this world—bodies can’t bring love to other bodies. You can only see through the illusions this world of bodies presents to you, and find your one true love in God.
Needless to say, I had some wee issues with all that—particularly the business about there being nothing to heal or fix or teach. Also the bit about being just dandy, thank you very much, exactly as I am right now. Come to think of it, I’m not crazy about big chunks of the truth, to be honest. My mind is still spluttering its indignation.
But I got sick of seeing the truth gauntlet thrown down in front of me every time I turned around. And even sicker of stepping daintily over it, pretending it wasn’t there.
• • •
Last night, before falling asleep I finally agreed to drop my resistance to the truth (despite its distasteful appearances), and to try joining fully with All-That-Is.
But on one condition.
A prayer, of sorts: You know everything about me, my thoughts, my beliefs. You’re there when I fart. You’ve seen me have sex. But I know nothing, really, about you. Give me a hint. Show me how you see things. Help me know you better.
I slept as I normally would, dreaming about nothing in particular. But then I woke in the early morning with a strong sense that I was in the presence of a huge entity of some kind. It was vast, deep, powerful. It felt thoroughly benign. No…more than just benign: It was wholly suffused with God.
I felt I ought to recognize who or what this entity was. It seemed somehow familiar, yet I couldn’t quite place it. And then suddenly I realized:
Oh. My. God. This is the devil.
I was seeing Satan—as viewed through a completely sane mind.
• • •
Well, I asked for an example of God’s truth. That was a pretty good one.
Alrighty then.
A radiantly gentle, spotlessly innocent Satan is pretty clear testimony to the fact that I know abso-freaking-lutely nothing about anything. (Not to mention that my lifelong terror of the supernatural is a pointless joke.)
If the devil is perfectly, luminously innocent, you might ask…then what the hell isn’t?
That’s a very good question. Oops-a-daisy. I may have made a teensy mistake here, wasting my time judging and condemning everything and everybody, 24/7…
Because, apparently I’m entirely wrong about everything. I mean, like, ENTIRELY wrong. About EVERYTHING.
Which means my distaste for God’s truth is probably all wrong, too.
Probably. In all likelihood.
• • •
So it’s looking like God might be marriage material after all. Possibly it’s time for me to get serious, and stop playing hard to get.
I guess I’d better start picking up the phone whenever the truth calls, instead of letting it go to voicemail. Because I suspect we’ll probably be seeing a whole lot more of each other from now on.
The Sedona connection – red rocks and spiritual power
A great big chunk of my story takes place in Sedona. The place has changed a lot in recent years; when we first visited, it was sort of a nondescript little town surrounded by staggering scenery. Now it’s much more developed and resort-y, but still surrounded, thankfully, by that same jaw-dropping beauty.
I’m deeply connected to the rusty rock energy of that place. Of all the spots in the world, that’s where I find it easiest to absorb messages from Spirit.
It’s ironic, this deep connection. Before all this happened, I was never what you’d call ‘into nature’, being more the slick fashion and trendy restaurants type. If anybody had told me I’d one day be developing a great fondness for hiking boots, or venturing hundreds of miles into remote wilderness on purpose…well I don’t know what I would’ve thought.
I guess in the grand scheme of things, this newfound outdoorsy-ness is probably the least unusual development of the past few years. But it was astonishing news to me that nature could facilitate profound spiritual experience.
Oh, sure – stillness, beauty, all that John Muir stuff. I got it, intellectually. God’s glorious handiwork in the American West, and all that. I just never managed to feel any real connection between spirituality and nature.
It took that crazy-powerful Sedona vortex energy to shock me out of my city girl complacency. Wide open conduits just waiting for a hookup. Who wouldn’t want to get right up in there and explore?
It’s kind of funny, because these days I practice A Course in Miracles. One of its core tenets is that everything is one. Which means, among other things, that all places are one. No individual place is more sacred or spiritual or special than any other. All are exactly the same.
Spirit sends me beautiful, loving messages of oneness all the time, but I continue to experience those messages, visions and deep synchronicities most powerfully in Sedona. So I get messages about the non-special nature of Sedona, while absorbing those lessons most deeply due to the special nature of Sedona!
I used to feel a little bit bad about that. But now I realize that nobody is able to put the Course’s very challenging teaching of ultimate truth into practice right away. Or at least, nobody I know.
And Spirit is endlessly creative at using whatever tools are available at the time. In this illusory 3-D world, I get a huge communication boost from being in Sedona. And Spirit is happy to make good use of that particular illusion, as it has made good use of so many others.
I'm sorry, and you are…? (Who's doing the Talking?)
It’s taken me 20-plus years to figure out what that Voice really is.
The first time I heard the Voice was when my friend Johnny showed me his Buddhist Gohonzon. Naturally, I assumed it was Johnny’s Gohonzon talking.
And then after I became a Buddhist and set up an altar of my own, I assumed it was my Gohonzon talking. (A Gohonzon is a scroll of paper. But really, is it any weirder to hear a piece of paper speak than it would be to hear a statue, or other inanimate object?)
The Voice didn’t say much at first, and it didn’t speak often. Every once in a blue moon, it would deliver a short declarative statement:
HE JUST WANTS TO BE LOVED.
Or, several years later,
THAT’S NOT WHO YOU ARE.
It was such a rare and random occurrence that I never took the time to wonder who (or what) might really be doing the talking.
After what is now known as the Dinnertable Awakening of 2005, I began to study other forms of spirituality for the first time. As I did so, my communication abilities (both hearing and speaking) strengthened bit by bit. As we eased gradually into actual 2-way conversation, I started to think of this Voice as my Guide. But it wasn’t until I took up the study of A Course in Miracles in 2006 that the Voice seemed to reveal its true identity for the first time.
I should probably back up for a moment and say this: It’s not my job to endorse any particular path, or advise anybody about anything. When I agreed to write the book, it was with the understanding that I only have to tell the story of my own journey of faith in my own irreligious words, and to pass along the messages that I get while I’m at it.
Thankfully, it’s none of my business what anybody does with that information. So although I speak about various spiritual disciplines, and particularly A Course in Miracles, I do so only because that’s the practice that resonates most powerfully for me personally. If you’re into any of these disciplines, great. If you’re not, equally great. We’re good, you and me, either way.
Now, back to the true identity of my Voice. I’ll just quote you a passage from my book that says it all. Let me set it up for you:
My husband and I had just spent the morning hiking in the Sequoias, and throughout the hike Spirit had been pushing me persistently (but lovingly) to leave my own interpretation of the world behind and allow the gentle truth of Heaven to fill my awareness instead. That’s not nearly as easy or pleasant a job as it may sound, and by the end of the morning I was a little bit annoyed about the whole thing…
Back at the lodge I made a long-awaited beeline for the ladies room. As I headed into the stall, Spirit spoke once more:
Every moment of every day, the truth awaits your memory. Why not make it today?
“You’re asking me to give up everything I know, but why should I listen to You? You’re just an imaginary Voice in my head.” Kidding. Sort of.
Oh, My love, think again. I’m the only truth you’ve ever known.
“What does that mean? What are you exactly?” It had never before occurred to me to ask.
I Am the memory of God in you.