Scientific Reality Versus Intuitive Reality

At my recovery meeting today one of my friends brought up that he was now beginning to explore his intuitive, psychic side, after spending his life believing only in the linear, logical, cause and effect side.  I congratulated and encouraged him!  I have a Ph.D. and was trained as a scientist to only really consider that logical, linear, cause and effect side.  One of the primary reasons I moved on from that approach was the realization that science was very practical, but could only elucidate a small portion of reality.  I wanted to explore, understand and live in a world that included things I could not “see, touch, feel”.  Trying to apply scientific inquiry to the intuitive, psychic, faith based side, simply does not work, much of the time.  They each represent different paradigms.  Each is quite real and valid, within its limits.  The intuitive, psychic, faith based side has saved my life and is largely responsible for making my life fulfilling.  I use them both, daily and at different times.

Universal Conduit

Some time ago, I was watching the movie Constantine, starring Keanu Reeves and he referred to water as the “universal conduit”.  That particular line/message really stood out to me during the movie and I knew to pay attention.  I have found water to be a very good conduit to “All That Is’, God or whatever you wish to call it.  I use the hot tub as part of my 2:00 A.M. morning ritual.  I find it really effective for personal healing and connection with God.  Partly because of the time of day and partly because of the conduit property of the water, that soak is my strongest meditation and connection each day.  I look forward to it.

Dealing With Fear

I spent a good portion of the day identifying and dealing with/feeling fear.  I experienced a visceral, almost nauseating feeling that something major, on a broad scale and extremely unpleasant is about to happen.  As usual, my fear is that I will not be able to cope with the change when/if it comes.  I generally refer to my fear as “galloping fear”, since it can basically fasten to anything (finances, relationships, future events, etc.).  Again, as usual, the fear feels very real, and I treat it as real, but the fact is that it has no real substance.  The event may not happen and the fear only happens in advance, when I think about the coming event, never when I am actually going through it. What I do is go into meditation, focus on the fear and let it flood my body, a very unpleasant feeling.  The feeling is very familiar at this point and I just let it go on until it dissipates.  The feeling is very strong and real, it is also illusory.

Connections

I have been carefully molded, that is clear.  In many ways I am different than my peers and in other ways, I am just like them.  I walk in two worlds, this transient one, and the “other side”, the eternal one.  Many people have walked this path before and I thank them for their guidance.  I “play my piano and sing my little song”, meaning I go on being Charlie.
I just met briefly with one of my sponsees.  I was instantly, totally focused and connected with him and God.  It was not something I tried to do.  It happened automatically with no volition on my part.  At other times, I have actually tried to resist this sort of transition, thinking I was too tired.  I could not.  It is a magical experience and profound healing can and does take place.  Others feel it to and respond thinking I am doing it.  I am just being a listening conduit to God.  I also sweat profusely, my nose runs and it is exhausting to do it more than a couple of hours without a break.

Relationships Matter

Today I did lots of connecting and interacting, in a variety of settings.  A wonderful day.  I am reminded of what I learned in early recovery, that “nothing matters very much and very few things matter at all”.  Most material things in the created order fall in the second category, they don’t matter at all, in the long view.  Love and relationships are the only things that matter and they matter a lot.  However, considering eternity and the universal, any one specific relationship is not critical.  I use “Would I care about this if I were on my deathbed” as my measure of importance.

Healing Touch

When I performed a healing yesterday, I accessed the transcendental (beyond words and intellect) love/God energy that I was first taught about in the sweat lodge, when it was used on me to heal a burn.  What I do is recall the feeling of that time, and other similar times, fill myself with that energy, funnel the feeling into my hands and then transmit it to the other person.  I also use the same healing technique on myself, at least twice each day.  The results are quite remarkable, some say miraculous.  On myself, I have healed several conditions that, typically, would require surgery.  On others the results have been similar.  Sometimes the results are immediate, sometimes long-term, sometimes nothing happens.  I act as a conduit and the outcome is not up to me.
When I first began doing healing work, I would access the feeling of unconditional love in the manner described above.  I would visualize various items that evoked that feeling, like babies, small children or favorite pets.  After several years I began to access the powerful, supportive feelings associated with sacred sites I had visited, like Chaco Canyon, the Black Hills, Bear Butte, the Grand Canyon or the San Francisco Peaks.  I found the healing power of the sacred sites to be stronger than unconditional love.  I now use the transcendental energy mentioned above, since I have found it to be strongest.

Achieving Happiness

I encountered a man today that made it quite clear that he was very smart, a doctor and had all the answers.  He knew that the main reason his life was not working, was because others did not understand things the way he did.  He was also not happy and his son was distant, angry and drug dependent.  He was in a trap made for him by his own intellect, a totally miserable place to be.  I have been in a similar “trap”, having done everything that my culture and upbringing said would make me happy, and still being miserable.  I cannot speak for him but I was also bewildered and confused, since I had done everything “right” and still felt terrible.  It actually felt like the more I accomplished, the worse I felt, definitely not what I expected!
I did not achieve happiness until I took my intellect off of its pedestal, and put my focus on love, connection, compassion and understanding. That switch sounds easy and straightforward when I write about it, it was not.  The switch to a “softer” way of life took a lot of strength and courage.

Pain, useful but unpleasant

I have experienced a great deal of physical pain since my diagnosis with cerebellar degeneration in 1988.  My level of pain caused me to sweat, have rapid and shallow breathing and caused my heart rate to rise.  I did not enjoy it!  However, the pain did have long-lasting and positive results in that it was purgative and unitive, as Christians would say. My pain and near death experiences were purgative in that they caused me to let go of my attachments to most (all?) transient things within the created order.  Very cleansing.  I found my pain to be unitive in that my connection (prayer of silence, meditation, contemplation) with God, what I learned and the strength I got was the only thing that reduced the pain and made it bearable.
I have come to rely on infused prayer daily to provide me with the strength and knowledge to keep participating in life and being of service to those around me.  Quite honestly, I don’t think this life would have been possible without the pain or the “dark nights” that St. John describes.
The resultant connection with God and my current way of life, cause me to think that my pain was worth what I went through.  My pain, near death experiences and dark nights of the soul have been very effective at stripping away everything other than the eternal truths of selfless love, compassion, inclusiveness and the oneness of all things.  I don’t think my realizations and increased connection could have been accomplished any other way, in my case.

Balancing Male and Female Sides

There is a general imbalance of the male and female side in most people and that imbalance causes a lot of difficulty. What I have learned as the male side is very logical, linear, fairly concrete, aggressive and likes material things. The female side, on the other hand, is full of feeling, diffuse, intuitive, fairly passive and likes relationships. Our culture tends toward the male side, and so did I until I was around forty. My own imbalance caused me to feel incomplete and a bit hollow inside and I had no clue why since I kept pursuing what my culture told me would make me complete. Right now, I embrace both. I have learned to take delight in my intuitive, feeling, relationship side. I use them both daily, in pretty much everything I do. This approach is messier than the purely male approach, but a great deal more fulfilling.

Loving the Whole Person

A few years ago a friend of mine died.  He wanted to be considered a guiding light and a spiritual leader in our recovery community and, at the same time, he knew that view of him was based partially on illusion.  People then and now idolized him and he loved it when they quoted him at meetings.  On the other hand, I watched him steal some books from the Quaker meeting house where we hold some of our meetings.  I then encountered his anger and rage when I confronted him about the theft.  Later, he asked to work with me since he knew something was wrong in his life.  Through our talk it became quite apparent that he was distorting his past and, in part, living a lie.  He then made it quite clear that he intended to continue living the lie.  A short time after that he indicated that he would like to have lunch with me, but then declined to do so since I would tend to “pop his bubbles”.  In short, he was a very good man and also very complex and human.  I prefer to love and remember the whole man, not just the illusion that he and others would like to promote.  The illusion is simpler but not as real or complete.  I was able to connect with the whole man and, though it made him uneasy, he and I honored that.