(Continued From This Post)
Hey
@Jazzer, I wrote most of this post last month, and then got caught up in educating myself on the coronavirus, and how to best protect myself. I now find myself enjoying your conversation with
@Mister Muso, and thought it might be time for me to "dust off" what I wrote a month ago, and post it here. When I first wrote it, I kept thinking "this is my last installment", but then I remember more of what I was thinking and going through during a tranformative period of my life. I then begin to think my story wouldn't be comprehensive if I didn't include "a few more details". So even though I thought this post would be the last "installment, it looks like I need at least one more after this--
if anybody's interested. You have told me you're interested in hearing more, right?
So, to continue: -- By the end of my last post, I shared how I'd discovered Western Religion didn't suit me (by a long shot), Eastern Religion didn't suit me either, and on an experiential level, meditation turned out to be quite detrimental. I ended my post with the query, "Now what?" -- Moving on from that point in my life: With no real plan in mind, I maintained a strong curiosity for just about anything I thought might give me deeper insights into life.
I regularly asked friends what they've been reading or delving into. If I was visiting a friend, I would often ask if they minded if I looked at some of the books on their bookshelves (they never minded). I also looked into rather obscure things that might be in the library. Ran across all kinds of new and interesting things, such as astrology, astral body, astral travel (seemed a bit "out there" and a bit "scarey" as well), dreams, "dark night of the Soul" (Oh boy
), "seeing the light", auras, etc.
Especially intriguing to me were references to "Audible Life Stream" and "Music of the Spheres" which were apparently the same thing. As fascinating as I found those references to be, there was (frustratingly) little information to be found on them.
At one point, I checked out a book on auras, and ran across a most intriguing account. It was by a woman who described the moment she first began to actually see auras. She'd been at a basketball game, and the lighting where she was sitting was unusual, and created a kind of unusual "shadow". This phenomenon opened up a "window" for her to see things she'd never seen before. She could actually see the auras of the basketball players as they played. Perhaps more accurately, she could see lines of light (and energy) running between all the players on the team.
She could
clearly see who the leader of the team was (Rick Barry of the Golden State Warriors). Team play essentially emanated from and had its focal point in the leader. This was quite fascinating to me, because I'd been a basketball player (quite a good one), and in a position that usually involves becoming the leader of a team. But for reasons I didn't understand at the time, I shyed away from a leadership role, as I'd never felt I had a good sense of what being a leader entailed. The account by this woman gave me greater insights into an important past experience of mine.
I found this account about auras to be quite believable. It also seemed to be somewhat of a catalyst for stirring some things up within me. I began to notice a certain frustration within myself as I contemplated the extent of how many non-physical things I was naively oblivious to. -- I became more interested in the phenonomen of deja vu, as I experienced it quite often in my life (sometimes unsettlingly so), and I noticed a pattern to it. I wouldn't experience it for quite some time, then all of a sudden, I would experience it many times over just a few short days. What I eventually realized was this would occur just before a big change in my life--almost always a change I'd never anticipated. So, some invisible forces seemed to be at play in my life, and I wanted to know more about them.
Dreams was another topic I wished I had greater undersandings and insights into. I'd had a few dreams that seemed to have a big impact on how I felt when I woke up. I eventually got to the point where I couldn't shake them off so easily as I'd had in the past as it being "just a dream". I began to consider whether those dreams were actually touching on past lives, something I'd begun to give more than passing consideration to. I'd perused books on dreams, but never could conjure up a strong enough interest to do some indepth wading through all the symbolism, and other interpretations. Part of the reason for that is those books almost always seemed to contradict each other, and the symbols they talked about didn't seem to relate to me or my dreams. -- So again,
I felt I was on my own.
Dreams that possibly touched on past lives were especially intriguing however, and at one point I remembered a long-forgotten experience I'd had when I was in grade school. I was getting ready for bed, and with my eyes in a tired-like state, noticed the reflection in the mirror seemed a bit off. So I kind of played with it a bit, and noticed my off kilter eyes kind of creating crazy little images. Then all of a sudden, I saw a clear reflection of an Indian chief with a decorated headdress looking back at me. I was pretty startled, and decided I'd had enough of that, and went straght to bed. But even at that time, when I was barely familiar with the concept of past lives, I did wonder in a curious sort of way whether I was an that Indian chief in another life.
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By my early 20's, I'd determined I wanted to become a chiropractor (because of I had gotten the most help with my health from Chiropractic). But my profound lack of energy and other health issues continually prevented me from being able to achieve my goals. Because of those ongoing frustrations, I became quite interested in reading stories about success, to possibly discover what I might be missing. I'd experienced probably more than my share of success earlier in my life, with a natural dexterity for virtually all things of an athletic nature, and a relative ease with any class or school work that came my way. But after my accident at 15, those things that had been so easy for me began to become more and more difficult. [As I mentioned in an earlier post, I had an increasingly hard time focusing, and was constantly reeling in many different ways from what I now believe to have been chronic brainstem compression in my neck area].
In my desire to become more successful at
whatever I attempted in my life, I began to intensely search out books on the principles of success. Was there a possible connection between those principles and the principles of spirituality? Turns out (surprisingly to me), there seemed to be many. The one that most caught my interest was the principle of love. The success books almost always emphasized that to be successful at anything, you needed to find something you loved. If you didn't, you were more than likely bound to fail, or come up short in your expectations. They also (surprisigly) talked about the importance of loving relationships being integral to success in all areas of our lives. I was rather astonished by how many highly successful CEOs unabashedly shared how they would never have achieved their success had it not been for their wives' support (at a time when almost all CEOs were male).
I thought a lot about this, especially after reading uncannily similar "philosophies" time after time from a variety of successful people. It was a catalyst for me to reflect on how much I'd loved playing basketball, and how successful I'd been, and it made a lot of sense to me. The more I considered it, the more I felt love was likely the most important "principle of life" and I should give it much greater consideration, especially on how I might incorporate it more into my life. Along these lines, one thing I'd been noticing during this time was that I seemed to be able to relate quite easily and naturally with animals, children, and older adults, but not as much with other adults. I then began to wonder if that natural affinity was actually a natural sharing of love that was easy for me with pets, hildren, and the elderly.
At this juncture, I'd been on kind of an intense search for about three plus years. Not sure exactly why, but I decided it was time for me to become "less intense" about wanting to know about things in life that "may" for the most part be "unknowable". I felt I'd looked over so many different religions and philosophies, and nothing really seemed to click. As I related earlier, I finally came to the conclusion that most religious leaders and authors of religious and philosophical books were "all guessing" (at best). Looking back, it was a rather audacious conclusion to reach for a twenty-some year old. I'd long felt I probably needed some kind religion or philosophy to base my life on. But (surprisingly) what seemed to suit me best were those principles of success I'd read about. And the main principle of virtually all those success books was that of love.
So I reached what felt like a turning point, where I determined I would "just relax", and go forward in my life with love as my guiding principle. It felt "right", but I still couldn't quite shake a "mild" sense of disappointment over not finding what I thought I'd been looking for. For the most part however, I thought my "search" was over, and felt a welcome sense of relief about that. -- And then, just as I was ready to get "settled into" my new philosophy, my new neighbor at the time brought me a copy of her daily newspaper, wanting to show me a letter to the editor she'd sent in on her (very strong) athiest views. I found it interesting, but I also noticed an article on the front page that caught my interest. It was about a rather obscure spiritual group that was opening up a local center, and was going to have an introductory talk the following evening. It didn't say a lot about their philosophy, but it did mention the term "Soul Travel".
What? I thought. In all my past searching, why haven't I run into this before? More importantly, did I want to jump back into my "search" mode, right after I'd begun to relax about my search being over? Part of me wanted to just "let it go". But my natural tendencies (the audacious and tenacious parts of myself) rebeled at so readily passing on some possibly very interesting, and perhaps insightful information. It didn't help however, that this group initially appeared to be some kind of (perhaps flaky) Southern California cult. So, with a a
great amount of accumulated skepticism, but also a relative openess to anything that might align with my newly found life philosophy(s), I decided to "go see what they had to say". I anticipated I would likely come home and check one more thing off my long list of so many other things I'd checked off.
Little did I know going to this talk would lead me into one of the more "disquieting" times of my 26-year old life. Though so much of what I was to hear then and in the coming days was quite unique (and incredibly fascinating), it was also a catalyst for me to more fully realize (and experience) just how deeply the dark claws of my former religious upbringing had burrowed their way into some core parts myself. And those claws were not ready to let go without a rather fearsome battle! What transpired brought up things within myself I had no idea were there, and the amount of anger and rage I felt was pretty shocking. How on earth do I reconcile this "rage" with my bright shining new ideal of living my life "based on love"? --
More Later...
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