When we combine soul-searching and the desire to understand the meaning of life with creativity, we open a type of portal between our physical and non-physical self. Without realizing it, as this story demonstrates, I had done just that. Though it would take another profound creative experience some years later to anchor this as an ongoing practice, I’d like to share the first of these ‘wake-up calls’ as I have come to see them. I was in my late twenties, the single mother of two, and my life was once again coming undone! Thank goodness!
The first half of my life was a train wreck. It was not until my late twenties that I began to truly find direction and purpose. And even then, there was so much residual dysfunction overlapping my newfound revelations that it took a few years for my outer circumstances to begin to align with the internal changes I was experiencing. As a single mom of two young children, I lived in a house that a relative was remodeling. Because of the ongoing construction, I paid a reduced rent for a large home on the outskirts of town. While it wasn’t perfect, it was affordable….and in the countryside, which I loved! Construction on the house took place while I was at work and the kids were at school or daycare. Evenings and weekends it was quiet and peaceful.
The house was a very old, very large two-story which was built in the early 1900’s. It had fourteen foot high ceilings, large handmade glass windows, shiplap walls and hardwood floors. But before you get a beautiful HGTV vision in your mind, let me point out that the place had never been updated or remodeled! It was solid and strong but it was not a testimony to modern renovation. The living room was divided by two massive pocket doors and this allowed me to use one side as a bedroom for myself while the kids slept on the second story. My ‘bedroom’ was huge and the high ceilings and large windows gave it an added feeling of expansion. I often left the pocket doors open at night in case the kids needed something, because it was easier to hear them call from upstairs. I had a dresser and a full size antique iron bed in the corner and not much else in the space. It was in this room, in this bed, that a wake-up call unlike anything I had ever experienced got my attention.
During this period of my life I was doing a lot of soul searching; exploring religion and questioning the meaning of life. The phrase “Lead me into all truth.” was a constant as I sought to know and understand a God that religion had yet to adequately reveal and philosophy failed to interpret for me. Therefore, introspection and spiritual contemplation were the norm for me. This pre-occupation spilled over into the kind of things I chose to read or study, and made up many of the conversations I had with others. Having always been an artist and a writer, each night after the kids were in bed I would sit up and paint or write until I got tired. Creativity had always been a large part of my life. It was a constant and fulfilling aspect of my being and I truly indulged myself. At this time in my life I was completely unaware of the powerful portal we open when we combine creative contemplation and soul searching. It is profound to say the least!
Each night after putting away my notebook or paint brushes I’d crawl beneath the comfy covers and snuggle in. I loved this old house and I loved living in the country. One night as I was drifting off to sleep I heard my name called out from a distance, ever so faintly, but clear as a bell. I opened my eyes and lay perfectly still as I waited, listening. When I heard nothing more I wrote it off as being tired and simply ‘hearing things’. When this happened again the next night, I was a little more perplexed because I knew I wasn’t imagining anything, nor was I dreaming. For the next couple of weeks, as I lay down each night, I intentionally stayed mentally alert. Night after night, in the dark stillness, just before drifting off, one brief utterance of my first name, seemingly called out from a short distance, filled the room where I lay. Slightly louder than the first night, it left me more and more anxious until I couldn't take it any longer. One night in response, I sat up and yelled as loud as I could into the empty room, “What?”
As the echo of my frustration faded, the room grew silent. I never heard the voice call my name again, but I didn't need to. It had gotten my attention and anchored my curious journey even deeper into the mystery of life. I made many positive changes during this time and have always considered this experience a pivotal point...a wake-up call of sorts. Yet this was not to be my last clairaudient experience. As I share in the story Stillness Speaks, the next one would so profoundly awaken me that religion could not contain it nor could philosophy explain it, though it stemmed from both. I say this to emphasize that it doesn’t matter where we are on our path. Religious, atheist or somewhere between the two, if we are seeking truth from deep within ourselves truth will find us. This is because we are the truth we seek. Not our personality self, but our divine, limitless, eternal self! It will quite literally call out to us if that is what it takes to get our attention!
I learned that the quickest way to connect with this truth is to drop everything I had ever been told about what it is or how to find it. I learned that there is no ‘one truth’ in a world of duality and perception. There is however my truth….waiting deep inside of me to reveal itself. Deeper than I had ever been taught to look! I learned that this is how it works for each of us, and this is why truth, what most call ‘God’ can’t be contained, experienced or explained communally. Unbeknownst to me at the time, creativity had operated as a sort of meditative space that expanded me; opened me up as a receiver and made me more sensitive to the frequencies which were not typically on my radar. I wouldn’t fully understand this until years later but once I did, creativity became fundamental to my spiritual journey of realization and awakening.
Eventually I abandoned the paths others had given me to follow and introspectively tuned into my own questioning heart with sincerity and integrity. I then simply followed the synchronistic breadcrumbs that showed up, unraveling the mess I had made of things from being outwardly directed. Today I know I came here to explore my own book of life, not read from another’s. I didn’t come here to do anyone else’s plan for my life. I didn’t come here to look good, fit in, or win approval. I came here to come undone! To free myself from ancestral conditioning and experience myself as an infinite being. I now understand that I am my own self-help manual. All I have to do is un-do the things that keep me from reaping the rewards of this great design. But thankfully I don’t have to do this all at once. That would be impossible. I have spent the last thirty years consciously un-doing the previous thirty years of conditioning, so this I can promise..… it gets easier and easier, until it becomes a joy ride of unimaginable proportions revealing the true, eternal nature of our lives in palpable clarity.
In the years since this experience I have come to realize that the calling of our name is sometimes a precursor to the nightly out-of-body excursions we all take as our physical body sleeps. This, or a vibrating sensation, which I have also experienced, is how we sometimes disconnect from our physical ‘container’. The expanded, multi-dimensional awareness that we truly are is not confined nor is it limited to the dense nature of our physical experiences. Hearing my name called out in the dark of night was just the metaphysical nudge I needed to begin to explore the fullness of my being beyond the limits of all I’d been told and taught about who..…and what, I am!
Today I realize that I am an infinite being experiencing a limited framework. This framework expands beyond its limited nature as I follow my intuitive nudges with curiosity and introspective wonder. It is this ever unfolding journey that has my full attention, and informs all that I engage. My art, my work, and my play is born from and returns to this endeavor. Not because I am rigidly trying to become more, learn more, experience more, but because I have realized I am more….more than I was led to believe by the conditioned outer directed world. And it is a great joy to play in the depths of this more-ness that I am!
