This past September, I facilitated a 3-day Advanced Healers Program retreat in the Methow Valley. We enjoyed fun community, spiritual breakthroughs and the delicious energy and beauty of Momma Nature. We also spent one of the mornings providing outdoor service to a couple of families who had been hard-hit by fire and flood this past summer.
On this trip I had an intense conversation with Madeline, she has less doubt than I do, more faith that we Are spirit in bodies, playing and creating in this world.
I still struggle with my intellect, in some ways... although so much less than I used to!
We went back and forth, in a friendly and respectful way about this reality, about how 'fixed' it is, how out-of-the-box miracles can be.
Some background:
I finally succumbed to psychic (soul) training after a many years-long chronic illness. It wasn't my first-choice, it was a spiritual imperative. Basically, I finally realized, after much suffering, that I had a choice: staying in my current consciousness and enduring a long, painful death OR being willing to shift my consciousness through psychic (soul) training.
I am stubborn, it took me many years to choose to shift through soul training, but I did choose life, and I did change ; )
I entered Psychic training with a vengeance, unstoppable to heal myself and assist others to heal, as well. But, I had to manage my formidable intellectualizing, my natural body-doubt of all things anti-intellectual, anti-material.
And if there is one thing that is the opposite of the intellect (opposite of all the body defaults: feelings, survival impulses, control games, etc) it is psychic (soul) training - in which we learn to embrace the soul senses, our spiritual information and abilities.
HOW was I gonna do soul-training while my BodyMind was SO in-charge?
I am a schemer, so I made a structure of separation and worked within that structure for a dozen years.
It went something like this: Because:
- Spirit is spirit, and physical is physical - and never can the two fully understand each other.
- Spirit is known by spiritual senses, not body senses; and vice-versa.
- Spirit cannot by measured, quantified, proven/dis-proven by physical means, by science.
Therefore (this is where I went awry):
- All miracles (when things go differently than average/generally expected) have spiritual reasons as well as physical reasons behind them.
- Scientific laws always stay in effect.
- Even when crazy-amazing stuff happens, materialistic cause-and-effect is always in effect!
This system of limitation, based on the separation of body/spirit 'worked' for me.
In the beginning it was necessary.
But, I believe in the long-run it has gotten in the way of opening to fast, easy, miraculous personal healing for myself and in assisting others.
I can see more and more clearly that:
- I am great with healing Process. Amazing shifts within, with incremental shifts externally.
- I am less-great with wildly magical healing, mind-bending leaps, immediately manifest in the physical.
So, on our Methow service adventure, I talked to Madeline about this, I heard her say my scientific perspective was limiting, and agreed. But, her unreasonable faith in the malleability of this reality was not enrolling for me - just as so many other's perspectives before hers didn't shake me.
Under all the spiritual veneer, I was a materialist; and as much as I wanted to open to an irrational leap - I could not, would not.
But, in some new way, the gauntlet had been thrown-down.
Something had to change.
I just didn't know what, or how.
Some background:
I admire folks with a lot of faith/spiritual certainty, but their experience isn't my expereince. I need my own spiritual expereince, to grok fully for myself. It is a pain in the neck to have so much doubt, so much stubbornness. I am like doubting Thomas:
24 Now Thomas... one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. 25 So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”I need to expereince for myself. This isn't all bad.
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.” - John 20
Check out the end of the Thomas story:
26 A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” 27 Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” - John 20This reminds me of the conclusion of the Job saga:
great blessing that is worth the dramatic roller-coaster, IMO:
5“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear;
But now my eye sees You - Job 42
So, anyway... About a month went by, after my conversation with Madeline about the malleability of this reality. Then, I read a chapter called 'don Juan and Jesus' by Joseph Chilton Pearce - and boom!
What he said made Sense to me, it was like I read it AND revelation came. And I shifted around this issue - spiritually, the shift happened fast and immediately - more slowly on a soul-level (where body and spirit dance, where rubber hits road)
Meanwhile, it is slowly integrating for the last 2 months.
And as I look back, A LOT has shifted in two months - hmmm.
The timing of all this is very interesting. I'd had the book on my bookshelf for 5+ years. I'd bought it on a whim, when a local used bookstore closed and I filled a brown bag full of some of their last dregs books for $10. Then I had started actually reading it about a year or so ago.
It lived by my bed, and I would read it intermittently between library books and sci-fi/fantasy novels. The book is Seeing Castaneda: Reactions to the "Don Juan" Writings of Carlos Castaneda, editor Daniel Noel. Honestly, the book did very little for me, I rarely enjoyed it and got little insight from it. Each new time I picked it up, I wondered: Why am I reading this book?
But, I am all about inertia, so I kept reading - it wasn't until the book was almost over that I had my boom-moment ; )
I have no idea if reading the 'don Juan and Jesus' chapter will do anything for you. I don't necessarily agree with all he says, but it was very useful for me, nonetheless.
I believe, when we have ears to hear / eyes to see spiritually, we can get revelation from reading a cereal box.
Meanwhile, it turns out the Original book: The Crack in the Cosmic Egg: New Constructs of Mind and Reality, containing this chapter (9), page 153, is available free at this link - in case you are interested. An the reused book (as well as others by Pearce) are available inexpensively online - I am ingesting and integrating his books slowly over time (eating the fruit, spitting out the pits ; )
I am just starting to grok just how much we can Magically Change Ourselves and our World:
Thanks for reading my story about the most miraculous change of all:
changing consciousness.
When we have a shift in consciousness, we can perceive and create something new - magically manifesting / attracting / co-creating a different experience: other possibilities accessed through non-ordinary (not our usual expereince of) reality.
Fundamentally, we allow-in the blessing of a vibrational shift, and the song and dance of our lives (and all around us) shifts too.
I hope you enjoy your Magical Journey, wherever it leads!
Wendy
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