Post 7

I’m split today between writing about the process of finding and owning my own voice and addressing the claim I made that we can have access to spirit regardless of circumstances. Since that indecision is where I am, I’ve decided that’s where I’ll start. If I begin by acknowledging what’s true and real in my body/mind right now, I can generally follow that to the source of inspiration. We are never far from the river of Life, even when things look murky. And often things work out better than we could have planned ourselves if we just first align with what’s true now.

I’ve got a friend who’s incredibly smart, well-educated and charismatic. He’s never afraid to express his opinions and he holds them with conviction. We’ve known each other many years and he was the same when we met. While my own inner experience is its own witness and all the proof I need of the power of Presence, this friend could offer dazzling and seductive arguments that called the source of what I felt I knew into question. The shear confidence of his brainy, half-joking nihilism was enough to send me on a years-long quest to shore up my own position from the intellectual perspective he was wielding. I have to admit I learned a lot about modern critical thought during that time. I also suffered quite a bit as I willingly turned away from the source of my own balance and inspiration to try and understand things from a more mental perspective.

I was willing and able to set aside my own inner sense of truth in part because I had an inner conflict. While I’d had a passion for psychology, philosophy and spirituality since early in life, most of my immediate family, led by my father, looked sideways at these things, if they did not openly disdain them. Very successful in business, as long as comfort and confidence could be bought with the acquisition of more things, the ethereal world of feelings and the depth of spirit was a distraction for the weak minded. Somewhere inside, the part of me that still identified with this half of my family bought this materially biased perspective. The pain of being ridiculed and rejected was too much. Against my own powerful conscious experience of Being, this less conscious part held onto family by identifying with the cynical, materialistic view. When I encountered my friend, deep inside this part celebrated to hear that there may be a way to justify this way of being. Outwardly I also thought that if I could learn his educated language, then I might convince him of my position too.

After this near-decade of seeking in books a new process started. I began to loosen my fixation on the search for a material perspective that could square with my experience of Spirit. As my mind became exhausted and convinced material arguments could not explain the power of Presence, this Presence came to meet me half-way and began to ease my mind. The more I let go and let it in, the more peaceful I became and the less desire I felt to convince myself or anyone else of anything. The difference between the power and reality of Being and pure mental figuring is incredibly striking. The one is satisfying and fulfilling down to the depths of the soul, a visceral presence of wholeness containing peace, love and joy, while thoughts just float on top like debris on the ocean of Being. It is not that thoughts are worthless. It’s more that we get caught in them when we don’t know ourselves and lose our orientation to Reality. When we come to know the experience of our true nature as conscious Being, thoughts can help us understand this and help us become more fully embodied.

I was not without access to Spirit during these years of wandering in the intellectual desert, and yet I held it at bay by bracketing it out in my mind. While at any time I could have turned back and been met by living Presence, my inner necessity to try and justify myself against criticism, or conversely to join the critics, caused me to mostly shut myself off to that comfort. In the end it was for the best but it was a long, difficult period of life, attempting to live by the values and notions of materialism and brain-power alone.

The value in that difficult, searching period is that I can no longer be persuaded to hold Spirit at bay. The force with which the Presence of Being returned to my everyday experience as I loosened my grip on the intellect has been such that I am nearly never without this powerful sense. There is far more room in my heart and mind without the plethora of arguments I had to wade through before.

In the following few years I have followed the guidance of this Presence into this current project of writing and becoming a guide. It too has been a process. In attempting to step into these roles I again had to confront the inner and outer voices of doubt that resound from my family. While I had become intellectually satisfied in how I thought about my own experience, inside those voices popped back up and began to cause me anxiety when I tried to step forward into the trainings I took to begin my practice. Speaking my truth out in public gave me terrifying anxiety at certain times. While I had near constant flow and near zero conflict in my private life, when trying to bring this out in public I met with great inner resistance. It hadn’t helped that when I brought my intentions up to many members of my family as I was stepping forward, I was met with absolute silence.

This too was a very fortunate circumstance. In answering the inner call to step forward and offer guidance to others wanting connection and wholeness, I was also calling forward those hidden parts of myself that still needed healing. Through my coach training and psilocybin work, I was able get beneath the cynical parts that argued with my conscious intentions and caused me anxiety. I was able to see that the materialism, judgment and cynicism in my family stemmed from generational abuse and privation. I was able to grieve this and let the parts still holding onto that identity go. While there has been a normal run of nerves at confronting new situations and learning new things, I am now buoyed in my efforts by the embodied experience of Presence not only in my private life but in my public roles as well.

This is part of the long story of the process of discovering and owning my own voice over many years. And it does come full circle around to addressing my claim that we can always experience Presence in any situation too. Indeed I have learned how to help others access this Presence through the body by staying with difficult emotions and suspending disbelief in spiritual Reality. It is possible to access it through imagination and guided imagery too. Just being in nature can open us. There are many ways. First it has to become a priority. “Ask and it shall be given, knock and it shall be opened unto you.” Sometimes this means becoming desperate enough or wearing out all our other options before we will be willing to turn that way. And when we do turn that way we may be met by very difficult feelings and very stubborn unconscious beliefs that keep us from opening fully. It can seem in these circumstances that it is not possible to experience Spirit. And indeed some guidance and a hand to hold are sometimes very helpful in confronting these difficult moments. But in the end we see it is those parts of us not willing to let go that are blocking the process. It is not that our Being is unavailable to us.