Life handed me just enough dead end roads and starting over scenarios to break me open. Fortunately, through the tiniest crack in my head-strong, sure-fire approach to life, just enough illumination got in to ignite a passion in me for more. The expansion of consciousness that spiritual insight offered in the way of heightened intuitive awareness is, for me, compelling, to say the least. However, when I speak of spiritual insight, I’m not only referencing palpable revelatory experiences that, in and of themselves, are quite captivating. The ‘experience’ is not what compels me. It is the expansion of consciousness that accompanies these mystical experiences and then continues to teach and guide along avenues of new awareness that I am called toward. It is the realization of my infinite nature, ever unfolding as I align with it. Connecting deeply and sincerely to my core with one consistent mantra or prayer was my avenue! ‘Lead me into all truth’, was the foundational request beneath all I sought to know. The sincere expression of that request brought about my second clairaudient experience; a mystical experience indeed!
As a daughter, grand-daughter, niece, cousin, friend and significant other to countless alcoholics in my life, my choice to go into the field of counseling, intervention and education was well foreshadowed. However, it was my own co-dependent approach to helping those I loved, long before my career choice was made, that landed me in 12 Step circles. The third step in The Program reads: “Made a decision to turn my will and life over to God as I understand Him.” While I longed to turn my will and life over to anyone who could do a better job, it was the “God as I understand Him” part that gave me pause. I vividly recall my immediate innermost response to this step being…’That’s the problem…I don’t understand God… at all! Meaning, I don’t understand how God could let the things that happen, happen. If God is all knowing and all powerful why then, do good people suffer? And how does evil even exist if God is in charge? I wasn't alone in these perspectives, and such questions turn many away from all manner of spirituality. But not me. I didn’t believe there was anything I couldn’t know if I sought diligently enough.
I was raised and confirmed in the Lutheran religion, so I was taught about God. But even the Pastor couldn’t satisfy my 13 year old questioning mind during catechism class, so I was never that impressed with church, doctrine or conventional spirituality. As I reflected on this whole “God as I understand Him” reference in the 3rd Step, I figured getting an understanding was as good as any place to start.
It is funny now to reflect back on my naiveté but, thinking outside of western religion was not even on my radar. I called my Uncle David, who, as a Pentecostal preacher was about as far from traditional religion as I could imagine in those early years. I kid you not, I was seriously reaching out to what I believed was the highest spiritual authority I knew. We didn’t have a personal relationship that extended into adulthood, so reaching out at twenty-eight years old was a stretch for me. I loved my childhood Uncle Punk, and my relationship with his boys had always been close, but he and I didn’t really know one another anymore. In fact, it was a sincere talk with his second oldest son, Michael, many years before, that even prompted my call. Mike and I had stayed up late one night talking about life and faith. He had said that regardless of how off track his life ever got, his last breath would be to reach out to Jesus, so I figured he must have gotten something from his church that mine wasn’t offering.
For the next three years I was front and center at the local Pentecostal church. Not only was I there with my two young children in tow every time the doors were open, I was also tuned into Christian TV, bible study, and Christian music, which had replaced much of my ‘secular’ choices. I was on a quest, to say the least! I frequented Christian book stores. I bought tons of reference books and spent all my free time studying like a biblical scholar. Apart from crashing my life on the rocks one too many times, religion on turbo-charge was my starting place.
I felt good during this time and my life truly opened with possibilities never before imagined. I was lighter and happier and the havoc that had spread itself across my earlier years began to fade even from memory. I was indeed made new. Then it happened…. almost three years into this journey I was sitting in church one day listening to a sermon when I realized I didn’t agree with what was being interpreted from scripture. The pastor was going on and on about something that my heart of hearts was completely at odds with. This had been happening more and more as I moved deeply into my own spiritual study and understanding. That’s when my mantra/prayer practice kicked in. I slightly lowered my head, closed my eyes and began silently asking to be “lead into all Truth”. So deeply sincere was my desire and so profoundly dedicated to truth was my request that I received an other-worldly response.
From the center of my being, rising upward from within, a powerful voice filled with clarity and direction, loudly spoke the words, “Be Still And Know.” So jolting was this experience that my head snapped up and my back became ramrod straight against the hard wooden pew. Eyes wide and stunned, I looked around the sanctuary to see if anyone else had heard the powerful directive. The preacher was still preaching and the congregation was still nodding and amen-ing along with him as I realized I alone had been given a brief, yet all encompassing, four word sermon.
Along with the words, this mystical clairaudient experience came with a revelatory expansion of consciousness that imparted much more than the words themselves could convey. It would be the first of many communication experiences of permeating revelation. Like an infusion of complete unwavering understanding, I was instantaneously made aware that the nature of Truth waited for me deep within stillness, not in books or religions or anything outside myself. But what was stillness apart from non-movement? This was my new quest.
I embraced stillness as the next pearl of wisdom cast before me in a never ending series of lessons that have marked my spiritual journey. I didn’t attach my experience to church or religion, or to the man preaching the sermon that morning. Instead it moved me beyond all those things; indeed beyond all religion or philosophy. It was very clear that the directive I had received that morning was telling me that in order to understand God, I would have to move beyond all of the structures man had made to define God, and move instead deep into the core of my being. That was the place that now held “God as I understood Him.” The God I followed, the aspect I asked with sincerity to “lead me into all truth”, was not in that or any church….it was, quite literally, in me!
I came to realize that stillness is not the same as non-movement. Stillness is a palpably alive awareness that has no division within it. It is an all-knowing oneness that contains whatever it is I seek to know or understand. All that ever blocks it is my belief that I already know something. Stillness birthed a conversion reaction in me so strong that I dropped everything in search of learning more from it. It became both my practice and my place of rest. I find it more and more as I free myself from the limited world of perception through the practice of compassionate non-judgement toward myself and others. Stillness continues to find me and surprise me as I surrender to it with all that I am. It is the most profound way to live that I have ever experienced, and within it truly lies the peace that passeth all understanding. Undoing what I think I know and stepping moment by moment out of the limiting boxes I create for myself is my ongoing journey into the ever-expanding wisdom within stillness. This is my spirituality!
Creative energy is the vehicle I most use to tap into this stillness! As the desire to create comes naturally to me, I kind of stumbled across it as a path into stillness. Where many use sitting meditation to tune themselves inward, I use creativity. I find it is a great tool for both detaching myself from the snags and tangles of distraction, and expressing the revelations I find beyond those limitations.
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