0- An Introduction To My Stories

0 - An Introduction To My Stories

My identity has never been tied up in career or achievement.  While I have primarily worked as a counselor, educator, and artist, these professions actually came out of my true passion; what I would call my life’s work; personal/spiritual alignment. For more than thirty years I have consciously and actively worked toward aligning my conscious awareness with my spiritual essence.   This, I believe, is the definition of choosing love.  The previous thirty years were filled with riotous self will.  This was primarily due to the fact that I made poor choices based on faulty beliefs along misguided paths that I was unknowingly conditioned to follow.  Today I am grateful for each and every one of those choices.  I have found that retrospect fosters understanding and relieves guilt when viewed with a sincere heart.  I have realized that the first step toward the compassionate non-judgement of others lies in applying this to oneself. Not in an egotistical fashion but sincerely and with much soul searching.  Compassionate non-judgement has become my primary spiritual tool.  It was born of a sincere desire to truly understand the meaning of life.  Who we are, where we come from and what we are doing here were questions born of life bringing me to my knees…..and the desire to stand on my own.

“Lead me into all truth.” became the mantra I live by.  As a result I have, over the last thirty years, been spiritually guided to explore the origins of spirituality, world religions, eastern philosophy, traditional and energy psychology, various energy work modalities and other studies too numerous to mention. The masks of religious, political and educational systems designed to foster unimaginable agendas have fallen to the degree that I am no longer misguided by the those who shape such curriculums or systems. Revelatory metaphysical, intuitive and mystical experiences have peppered themselves along my path.  These have informed my journey from an esoteric perspective and awakened me to the nature of duality.  I have come to see through the illusory worlds of matter, energy, space and time and touched those realms where Self-realization truly resides, beyond traditional concepts of karma and reincarnation.  And while all of this was more than I could have imagined at the onset of my quest, the close of 2012 ushered in a shift in my personal reality so life changing that I am continually amazed at every turn.

The shift I am referring to is the unexpected and sudden passing of my husband of 22 years, the day following my Dad’s transition from his long struggle with cancer.  And, if the combined loss of the two most important men in my life wasn’t enough, the terminal diagnosis my husband received and suddenly succumbed to in a matter of weeks, was also handed to my girlfriend of more than 20 years, only one week following his diagnosis.  I alone, had been with each of them, in the same building, in the same post-exam room, only a week apart as their respective doctors pulled me aside, to the exact same spot in the hallway, to share the exact same cancer diagnosis that I would then share with each of them.  Their reactions could not have been more different, nor could their journey’s, not to mention mine as their primary caretaker.

While it’s easy to imagine the ‘Twilight Zone’ surrealism I felt surrounding the events I just described, not even I could fathom the revelatory experiences I would encounter. These heightened experiences led me to reflect upon all of the extraordinary, mystical, and life altering experiences scattered across my life.  As one who had sought the meaning of life most of my life, I often marveled at the profound navigational assistance I received as I followed my intuition…. and the devastating results when I didn’t.  I wondered about my insatiable appetite for understanding the nature of reality and my purpose in it, and I was perplexed that everyone wasn’t drawn to explore this ever unfolding mystery we call life?  The desire for deep, introspective awareness follows me through life and greatly informs my journey.  With my father, husband and girlfriend suddenly removed from my everyday experience, I found myself questioning life from an even deeper perspective, which resulted in even more profound experiences and revelations.

Apart from religion, philosophy, psychology and science I discovered a thread woven into the very fabric of life.  As I tugged at it, my life and the world as it had been presented to me came undone while seamlessly knitting itself back together, revealing that we are each the mystery we came to solve.  When I embraced my personal responsibility to awaken to the truth of my individual soul, my soul extended itself to me in unimaginable clarity.  My intuitive abilities naturally heightened as I aligned them with my quest for truth and my physical life became a metaphorical reflection of the distance between who I thought I was and who I truly am. I believe this revelation awaits any who desire it and are willing to step into an adventure where the traveler and the journey are one and the same.

The stories I personally share in this writing build upon one another as they are read in the sequence offered.  Primarily chronological, it is my hope that they reveal the guidance and opportunity that is equally available in the depths of dysfunction as in the heights of awareness.  I have learned and hope to share that the degree to which we choose to embrace the darkest aspects of ourselves, is the degree to which the light of who we truly are is revealed.

1- Beyond Baptism

1- Beyond Baptism

This experience rendered me free from the fear associated with any idea of death.  I have also  personally resolved the question about the existence of life beyond death.  This is because I know first hand of the freeing experience it can be to leave the body and maintain Self-awareness.  I believe if we were raised with the truth of our infinite nature we would not fear death or experience such intense levels of grief when a loved one dies.  If we understood that this thing we call death is really the trading in of one perspective for another, we could better understand and navigate our journey through this physical experience we call life.  This awareness might eventually lead to a mainstream understanding of the higher realms that lie beyond those governed by matter, energy, space and time. In this we could all embrace the importance of connecting deeply to the intuition from our own non-physical aspect of consciousness.

It was a warm summer day and my mother and her friend had piled their kids into the car for a beach trip.  A man made beach, that is.  Today it would be referred to as a water park, but in the mid sixties there was no such term.  As the oldest of the kids I remember sitting on the blanket in the sand as the younger ones splashed near the edge of the water in front of our moms.   There was a huge slide just down the beach with a long line of kids waiting their turn to climb to the top so they could fly into the water below.  This was my destination!  I remember asking and pleading and begging to join those in line, but my mom was reluctant.  Keeping us all close was easier and it was a very high slide.  But, like any self-respecting oldest child I had learned the path of least resistance when it came to getting my way: annoyance!  As mom and her friend chatted away I kept interrupting her for this, that and then another thing until she told me to go play in the water with the other kids.  That was when I hit her with the slide request again.  Much less pleading and begging finally resulted in acquiescence and I was off in a run down the beach toward the slide.  

I stood in line for what seemed like a long time with kids that were much older.  I remember looking up at them and feeling awkward on my own as they talked among themselves.  But the adventure ahead over-road any self conscious anxiety and I excitedly waited my turn as the line inched forward.  Finally on the ladder leading to the long awaited top, I climbed rung after rung as they were vacated, just as those in line behind me did the same.  A vertical line of anxious kids now inched its way upward.  This is an important aspect of my story because as impractical as it was, there was a lifeguard at the top of the slide making sure height requirements were met by those of us in line.  As it turned out I was told that I was too young and too small to be on this particular slide.  With a perplexed look at the crowding children hanging on the ladder beneath me, the lifeguard told me to go ahead and slide, but not to get back in line afterward.  Delighted, I agreed and scooted myself onto the water drenched area of the large metal surface.  Pushing myself off I flew down the slippery silver slope and hit the water with a force so powerful it pushed the air from my lungs as it thrust me deep into the water.  Time stood still.

Breathless, I began struggling against the depths, clawing at the water toward the surface.  The next thing I knew my consciousness was focused outside of my body, above the entire scene.  Back and forth, my awareness moved between the panic ridden, struggling, oxygen deprived physical ‘me’ that was in the water, and a non-physical self-aware ‘me’ that floated high above the entire experience, free from all panic or concern!  While consciously ‘inside’ my body, the struggle to survive was fraught with panic and absolute terror.  The deafening silence from being underwater further disconnected me from normal reality, intensifying my fear.  I was alone and drowning and I knew no one knew.  When consciously focused outside of my body, I was still myself but completely detached with little or no concern about any of it.  I simply watched in complete awareness of what was happening.  Like a somewhat removed spectator, I simply observed, emotionless.  At one point, upon realigning consciously with my body, I clearly remember the words “This is how I die.” calmly coming to me. It was as if my physical and non-physical aspects merged in a moment of peaceful communication.  A profound acceptance of impending death seemed to calm the drowning me even as I continued to make my way toward the surface.  Then, consciously separated from my body again, high above the scene, my non-physical awareness seemed to access a future scenario.  I experienced my mother at the edge of the water, panicked as she searched for her missing child.  Her palpable distress filled my consciousness as I knew she would soon learn of her child’s death.  I literally saw and felt her anguish at the waters edge as she was told of her daughters drowning.  In that instant I experienced complete conscious integration with my body and I surfaced near a buoyed rope that I instinctively latched onto.  Gasping for breath and grateful to be alive, I clung to the rope trying to recover.  The lifeguard, completely unaware of my harrowing experience, hollered from high atop the slide that the ropes were not for hanging on and motioned for me to ‘move along’.  Initially ignoring her I gradually inched my way along the rope to the shore slowly catching my breath.

Eventually I made my way to my mother. She had apparently remained on the blanket talking with a friend throughout the entire event, completely unaware of all that I had experienced.  Exhausted I sat near her on the blanket, quiet and reflective.  After a bit I explained to her that because I was allowed on a water slide designated for teens and adults which emptied into the deep waters, I had nearly drown.  I clearly remember her not understanding the gravity of my experience; dismissively saying, “Well don’t go over there again.”  I knew she didn’t ‘get it’ but I had no energy or ability to explain what, at my age, was clearly unexplainable.  

The rest of the day is lost to me.  The years in between were not filled with this memory and in fact it wasn’t until I attended a NDE (near death experience) meeting more than twenty years later that the event even came to mind.  In the meeting, as I shared the surfacing memory, every detail was vivid and clear.  It wasn’t however until the facilitator said, “You had a near-death experience.” that I even had a name or a label for what had happened to me as a child.  Now, many years and countless expansion experiences later I have a better understanding of what truly happened to me that day.  

I simply experienced that my consciousness perceives through, but is not attached to or limited by my body.  I have learned that who I truly am is infinite and limitless with countless perspectives, in and beyond the worlds governed by matter, energy, space and time. Either my surfacing, or a possible timeline connected to my mother’s devastation at losing her child, realigned the two aspects of my higher and lower self.  I don’t know which ended the conscious distinction between my higher and lower awarenesses.  I just know that not only didn’t I die at the beach that day, I would in fact, never die!  I am a conscious and consciousness is alive!