The following is a excerpt from “Into the Light” by John Lerma MD (http://www.amazon.com/Into-Light-Afterlife-Pre-Death-Experiences/dp/1564149722). This is from a chapter titled “Father Mike,” who was a 78-year-old, retired, Catholic priest who was well respected and had been president of a Catholic university. He was in the hospice unit to live his last days, diagnosed with terminal cancer. At this time, Dr Lerma was working at that hospice unit, caring for the terminally ill and making their last days as comfortable as possible. This section deals with the final minutes of Father Mike’s life:
“As I arrived at the hospice unit, the lights on the hospice floor were flickering on and off. There was an incredible sense of peace in the midst of the chaos that was occurring. Several nurses and my secretary were present. They had rushed me there to experience an inconceivable event. Every time the lights turned on and off, little feathers fell from the ceiling, drifting down as if they were snowflakes. One fell in the hand of a nurse and disappeared. As soon as they fell, they disappeared. Father Mike’s call light was going off and on. His door, which had been closed when he died, was now open. The secretary and one nurse saw a bright light shining from his room. They thought the lights were coming back on, but the bright light was radiating from his body or bed., Out of that light came this bright sphere that floated out of his body and circled the bed about three times before it soared out of the closed window. Less than a minute later, the lights came back on, it stopped raining and all the feathers disappeared. We all had goose bumps.”
I’ve tried to write this piece several times now. Each time I ended up ranting about the people who refuse to accept the evidence of the paranormal, in all it’s different forms, and I didn’t like that. I kept rewriting it, but it still didn’t feel right. Then I finally got it: The real question is, do I believe it? And the answer is, <ding> I’m not 100% sure that I do. Sure I have my intensions, but can I really accept that feathers can just appear out of nowhere and then vanish?
This now brings something into focus. There is an idea in the psychological world that everyone and every thing you dislike or hate, is part of yourself that you can’t accept. You then project it out onto people or things in the world, both separating yourself from it and unconsciously hoping that destroying it will purge it from your psyche. If that is true, then my issues with hypocrisy and abuse of power stem from my own fears and tendencies in those areas. Guess what? It turns out that I don’t have to look too long to see the truth of that, which some recent incidents have made all too clear. This leads me to the next question: What do I do about it?
I’ve been watching some Abraham-Hicks videos on YouTube. These are about a woman named Esther Hicks channels an energy that calls itself Abraham. (It took me a while before I figured that out.) Usually I don’t watch, I just listen. He/She can be very entertaining, though, at points, I sometimes I wonder why everyone is laughing so hard. (Maybe being in a seminar for 8 hours makes you a little punch-drunk?) Anyway, most of her talks center about manifesting, abundance, getting what you want, the life you want, you get the idea. I listen because these talks resonate on a very different level than someone like Tony Robbins, and give me the idea that there’s something there, if I can just wrap my head around it. In pondering/meditating while listening, the question came up about knowing who you are and what you want. At that point, I realized that I don’t know who I am.
Isn’t that a strange thought? How can you not know who you are? When I looked, I mean really looked, I could see that there is a significant part of me that I don’t have access to. It’s just an indescribable something, that is just there, and it’s completely impervious to my usual techniques to getting a handle on it. I am getting that I need to meditate in a new way to deal with it and move to the next level. I need to get out of my head, with it’s logic, language and symbols, and into something more abstract. Forget what I have been taught and practice just be with certain “concepts.”
I have spent a good portion of my life stripping away layers of conditioning and expectation, a process that has steadily accelerating over the years. At first, it was no big deal. It just made me feel better about stuff and my life better as a whole. But, as I continued, my personality and outlook began to shift. The changes were subtle at first, but over time my tastes began to change, and, eventually, I became profoundly dissatisfied and my choices led to a wholesale life restructuring. That’s a fancy way of saying that I left my career and my marriage, got a new place to live, new job and new friends. Not really on purpose, but things just happened when I realized that I could do that any more.
At this point, it seems like the process has removed most of my cultural conditioning and expectations, those “shoulds” and “should nots,” along with the fears of what will happen if deviate from the norm. I have lost a lot of comforting beliefs and rituals about the world and my place in it. But, at the same time, I have become a lot more open to new ideas. Most people cloak their skepticism in science or faith, but we all know that the simple truth is that they’re mostly worried about “what will people think?” While I wish I was completely free of that, I’m not, but I am about 90% less worried about it than I used to be. I get now that I can never be who a really am, until I can stop pretending to live up to someone else expectations. Make no mistake, we are all pretending, one way or another.
Do I believe that those paranormal things actually happened, really? Yes I am, and I’m willing to take all the flack that that engenders. What about everything else in “Into the Light?” (It has a very Christian focus) I still have very negative feelings around terms like “God,” “Jesus” and “faith.” Probably because I constantly hear those words used to justify the most hateful, hurtful and destructive actions and I can’t understand how anyone would want to be associated with the awful things that are said an done in the name of “God’s Love.” That aside, I can deal with the idea that these concepts have just as much claim to legitimacy as ghosts and guides, so I shouldn’t toss them out due to personal prejudice.
In reality, (funny to say that in connection with the paranormal, but, oh well) all “supernatural” forces are conceptually the same, whether you’re talking about God on high or the things that go bump in the night, and all evidence needs to be evaluated and considered. The waters around these phenomena are muddy enough already, there’s no point in making it worse by buying into artificial distinctions. It’s a good idea to keep my mind open all aspects of the paranormal, for that is the only way to ever begin to draw any kind of comprehensive understand of what’s going on, and what are the implications for everyday life. Then, perhaps, I can stop being upset by the compulsive skeptics.
“Who are you going to believe? Me, or your own eyes?” —Groucho Marx
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
Watching Paint Dry
I expect this to be a short post. I’m going to kick around my ideas about free will, karma and fate.
I one of my MeetUps, the other day, the other person there said that once a true psychic predicts something, it’s preordained fact, it will happen and nothing can change it. He didn’t believe in free will at all, apparently. (He wouldn’t directly answer that question, but he sure implied it.)
I find that so sad, to believe that you are locked into a meaningless existence that you can’t change. (I could say a lot of things at this point, about people using karma, fate or psychic predictions as way to avoid responsibility for their actions and as an excuse to not lift a finger to change anything, but that’s not the point. At least I don’t think it is.)
Let’s take karma. Call it what you will: “What goes around, comes around,” or “What you do unto others will be done unto you:” Who and what you are today is the result of what you did in the past. The classic version of karma says that you work your way up from low life forms, (bugs) to higher, (humans) and then you work your way up the social classes, through good deeds and spiritual enlightenment. But poor choices will put you in a worse condition next time around. My biggest problem with this is it’s only a short step from “You get what you deserve,” to “I’m well off, so I must deserve it, and he’s poor or lame, he must deserve it also, so there’s no reason to have compassion for the less fortunate, it’s their own fault. Ouch! There are other tweaks to the idea of karma, but I don’t buy any of them for they all have suffer from the same problem of saying that your lot in life is, in one way or another preordained. You realize that this idea comes from a culture with a ridged cast system, you can see why this belief would be popular among the upper casts to give justification for the subjection of the lower.
The concept of Fate makes me equally uncomfortable. Here, your life is planned out and you’re just along for the ride. You don’t get to make any choices, because, no matter what you do, everything will come out the same. In other words, no free will at all, just a illusion of free will. To me that says that nothing you do matters: You don’t deserve any credit for any success or blame for failures. It’s all just a video game where, no matter how you play, you always end up in the castle, marrying the princess, like it or not. One thing that fate never makes clear, is who or what decides you fate in the first place? Who writes the script that you are living out and how is it done?
So, with fate, you are just a robot, playing out a script, but with karma, your actions can actually have some meaning, but only in another life. They both seem born out of static societies and designed to keep them that way by telling all the classes the things are supposed to be the way they are, do don’t rock the boat.
What I do believe in? Well, I believe that we come into this life with certain goals, talents and challenges, that we chose for ourselves. What we do with those is up to us. All that I’ve read, heard from my clients, and from fellow practitioners, tells me that the biggest problems we have in life, tend to come from not working towards our goals. It’s not because we don’t achieve them, it’s because we’re not working on them. That’s an important distinction. If, when all is said and done, we don’t achieve our goals, there is no punishment involved. it can mean the we choose to take the lesson over again, perhaps tweaking the parameters a bit to have a better chance of success. Or because we did partially get it, so that part of the lesson needs to be changed.
Repeating the same lesson until we get it can look like karma. But it’s neither punishment or reward, and more like retaking a class you didn’t do well in. And it’s important to remember that our human values of wealth, social class and the importance of being human verses a cat or a dog, are completely meaningless outside of this existence. Your station in life really has nothing to do with your “past performance,” because you can chose anything you want, when you’re planning your life from the other side. It’s all Monopoly money. Beautiful, ugly, plain, healthy, sick, weak strong, smart, dim, all the same. It’s like playing D&D, you pick your characters’ attributes and play the game. When the character dies, you pick another set and go at it again. Most of us have lived so many lifetimes that it all blurs together, all the matters is the experience and the wisdom gained.
Which brings us back to free will. Without the ability to make meaningful choices, we have no reason to exist, we are no more than little robots running our programs. I believe that it’s up to us to make the meaningful choices to discover and honor purpose, overcoming our challenges in the process. I find that is the only way to achieve true peace and a sense of accomplishment. I found this especially difficult because it really seems that I wondered quite far from my path, and it’s taking some wrenching changes to get my self heading in the right direction.
That sounds quite different than how it actually went down. What happened was that I was waking up, bit by bit, and making changes on the inside. Over time, I noticed that parts of my life didn’t fit any more, like outgrowing your clothes, I eventually found it impossible to continue on doing the same things, on the outside. I ignored it as long as it could, but I reached a point where I could no longer adjust, and I had to break the old paradigm, resulting in those wrenching transitions I mentioned. Transitions that I’m still weathering. It’s easy to look back and see how necessary certain trial were and how getting through them seemed the inevitable result of your efforts, but it sure doesn’t look that way when you’re in the middle of the mud, up to your neck in alligators and swim’n for the shore.
I sure wish I had a magic marker that would tell me I’m on the right path, but I don’t. as strange as my life seems at times, I’m getting that it’s only going to only get weirder, in ways that I’m not comfortable speculating about in public just yet. The possibilities are exciting, but I’ve noticed that every jellybean comes with some broccoli. To put that another way, every opportunity and insight comes with a price: responsibilities and obligations. I’m seeing now that no responsibilities means little freedom to do and be what you want. Take on more responsibilities and you get more freedom. I’m speaking in general here, because simple taking on obligations can easily tie you up rather than give you freedom. True freedom requires some personal responsibility, and taking on some obligations, and, if you don’t you soon lose that freedom. One way or another.
I want my freedom, but I’m still balking and squirming at the accompanying responsibilities. My insight for today could be that I’ve spent most of my adult life avoiding responsibility. I wanted the perks but not the obligations of being in charge of my life, and that painted me into the corner that I’m trying to get myself out of today. I wonder if the paint is dry yet?
I one of my MeetUps, the other day, the other person there said that once a true psychic predicts something, it’s preordained fact, it will happen and nothing can change it. He didn’t believe in free will at all, apparently. (He wouldn’t directly answer that question, but he sure implied it.)
I find that so sad, to believe that you are locked into a meaningless existence that you can’t change. (I could say a lot of things at this point, about people using karma, fate or psychic predictions as way to avoid responsibility for their actions and as an excuse to not lift a finger to change anything, but that’s not the point. At least I don’t think it is.)
Let’s take karma. Call it what you will: “What goes around, comes around,” or “What you do unto others will be done unto you:” Who and what you are today is the result of what you did in the past. The classic version of karma says that you work your way up from low life forms, (bugs) to higher, (humans) and then you work your way up the social classes, through good deeds and spiritual enlightenment. But poor choices will put you in a worse condition next time around. My biggest problem with this is it’s only a short step from “You get what you deserve,” to “I’m well off, so I must deserve it, and he’s poor or lame, he must deserve it also, so there’s no reason to have compassion for the less fortunate, it’s their own fault. Ouch! There are other tweaks to the idea of karma, but I don’t buy any of them for they all have suffer from the same problem of saying that your lot in life is, in one way or another preordained. You realize that this idea comes from a culture with a ridged cast system, you can see why this belief would be popular among the upper casts to give justification for the subjection of the lower.
The concept of Fate makes me equally uncomfortable. Here, your life is planned out and you’re just along for the ride. You don’t get to make any choices, because, no matter what you do, everything will come out the same. In other words, no free will at all, just a illusion of free will. To me that says that nothing you do matters: You don’t deserve any credit for any success or blame for failures. It’s all just a video game where, no matter how you play, you always end up in the castle, marrying the princess, like it or not. One thing that fate never makes clear, is who or what decides you fate in the first place? Who writes the script that you are living out and how is it done?
So, with fate, you are just a robot, playing out a script, but with karma, your actions can actually have some meaning, but only in another life. They both seem born out of static societies and designed to keep them that way by telling all the classes the things are supposed to be the way they are, do don’t rock the boat.
What I do believe in? Well, I believe that we come into this life with certain goals, talents and challenges, that we chose for ourselves. What we do with those is up to us. All that I’ve read, heard from my clients, and from fellow practitioners, tells me that the biggest problems we have in life, tend to come from not working towards our goals. It’s not because we don’t achieve them, it’s because we’re not working on them. That’s an important distinction. If, when all is said and done, we don’t achieve our goals, there is no punishment involved. it can mean the we choose to take the lesson over again, perhaps tweaking the parameters a bit to have a better chance of success. Or because we did partially get it, so that part of the lesson needs to be changed.
Repeating the same lesson until we get it can look like karma. But it’s neither punishment or reward, and more like retaking a class you didn’t do well in. And it’s important to remember that our human values of wealth, social class and the importance of being human verses a cat or a dog, are completely meaningless outside of this existence. Your station in life really has nothing to do with your “past performance,” because you can chose anything you want, when you’re planning your life from the other side. It’s all Monopoly money. Beautiful, ugly, plain, healthy, sick, weak strong, smart, dim, all the same. It’s like playing D&D, you pick your characters’ attributes and play the game. When the character dies, you pick another set and go at it again. Most of us have lived so many lifetimes that it all blurs together, all the matters is the experience and the wisdom gained.
Which brings us back to free will. Without the ability to make meaningful choices, we have no reason to exist, we are no more than little robots running our programs. I believe that it’s up to us to make the meaningful choices to discover and honor purpose, overcoming our challenges in the process. I find that is the only way to achieve true peace and a sense of accomplishment. I found this especially difficult because it really seems that I wondered quite far from my path, and it’s taking some wrenching changes to get my self heading in the right direction.
That sounds quite different than how it actually went down. What happened was that I was waking up, bit by bit, and making changes on the inside. Over time, I noticed that parts of my life didn’t fit any more, like outgrowing your clothes, I eventually found it impossible to continue on doing the same things, on the outside. I ignored it as long as it could, but I reached a point where I could no longer adjust, and I had to break the old paradigm, resulting in those wrenching transitions I mentioned. Transitions that I’m still weathering. It’s easy to look back and see how necessary certain trial were and how getting through them seemed the inevitable result of your efforts, but it sure doesn’t look that way when you’re in the middle of the mud, up to your neck in alligators and swim’n for the shore.
I sure wish I had a magic marker that would tell me I’m on the right path, but I don’t. as strange as my life seems at times, I’m getting that it’s only going to only get weirder, in ways that I’m not comfortable speculating about in public just yet. The possibilities are exciting, but I’ve noticed that every jellybean comes with some broccoli. To put that another way, every opportunity and insight comes with a price: responsibilities and obligations. I’m seeing now that no responsibilities means little freedom to do and be what you want. Take on more responsibilities and you get more freedom. I’m speaking in general here, because simple taking on obligations can easily tie you up rather than give you freedom. True freedom requires some personal responsibility, and taking on some obligations, and, if you don’t you soon lose that freedom. One way or another.
I want my freedom, but I’m still balking and squirming at the accompanying responsibilities. My insight for today could be that I’ve spent most of my adult life avoiding responsibility. I wanted the perks but not the obligations of being in charge of my life, and that painted me into the corner that I’m trying to get myself out of today. I wonder if the paint is dry yet?
Sunday, January 17, 2016
The Big Empty
Dealing with loss.
I’m finding that the most difficult thing to deal with after divorce, is the hole that is left where all the “stuff” used to be. In any loss, there is stuff you miss and stuff you are all to happy to see gone. But once it is gone, you have a large blank spot in your life that needs filling. Sure, it’s tempting for me to drink, or binge watch TV, hide in books, or find other meaningless things to fill my time, but I need to face the fact that the time is now empty, and I, sooner or later, will build a new life to fill it.
To be sure, most of that time was filled with time-wasting stuff like TV, and Facebook, and going out just so we don’t have to stay in, so much of what is gone had no real value. But the real point was that I wasn’t alone. There is a lot to be said for not being alone. That part is a loss.
My central issue here is that I never really had a life outside of my family. I was always nervous about meeting people and having friends, so I mooched off of my spouse for friends, family and social time. All of those disappeared after we went our separate ways. Fortunately, for the few years I have been cultivating a life outside of my marriage. It’s almost as if i knew what was coming and I was practicing my “me” skills. Learning to have relationships and be somebody other than “husband” and “dad.”
Reviving my interest in theater was a good idea. I met a lot of people, and, thanks to Facebook, have managed to remain in contact with a few. I miss theater, but my schedule doesn’t allow me to do it any more. Perhaps later I can come back to it. But I find it’s the people and the doing that I miss, not the performing so much. Starting my business also forced me to meet a lot more people, and I find that I like meeting new people. I used to hate it, but I guess that’s a part of me that has changed over the years.
I also notice that I don’t expect much from the people I meet. I used to invest so much in each relationship, no matter how casual, and be angry and disappointed when the dedication wasn’t returned. I was also deathly afraid of the “wrong” relationships. I’m not quite sure what that means now, but I had to stay away from certain people, at any cost. Maybe it had something to do with my fear of becoming “hooked” somehow, so I needed to only hang out with “safe” people, who I didn’t care about so they couldn’t hurt me. Much. In the process I avoided anyone I much actually care for, or worse, might care for me. Which brings up a huge difference that I’m having to deal with: I have no idea how to have a close relationship where I’m not hiding and playing manipulation games. I learned how to have casual friendships, but I don’t know what anything else would look like now. I afraid of what dating might look like because I don’t want anyone getting attached to me while I’m in this state. Or maybe I’ve just haven’t met anyone I want to date or hang out with on a more that a casual basis.
The thing is, I’m in a transition. I keep wanting it to be over, transitions are a process and I’ve just got to let it happen. The say the life’s a journey, not a destination. What I’m going through now is part of my perpetual process of change. I certainly don’t want to be stuck where I am and say “Stick a fork in me, I’m done!” But I can’t help being nervous about no knowing where I’m going to end up, or when. That’s the nature of the beast, but I don’t have to like it much. I know I’ll look back on this time and I’m sure it will make fodder for a good story, but do I have to live through it? Big transitions are like adventures, they’re great things to happen long ago to someone else. It’s called something else when it’s happening right now, to me.
I’m actually surprised to find that I like my new job. In the past four months I’ve made more friends than in the last 20. Sure the pay is tiny and the hours kinda suck, but I like the idea of having virtually no responsibility. Especially compared to what I used to have to worry about. I just show up, do my time, and go home. I’ve learned to keep myself busy, most of the time, so time actually passes fairly quickly. I generally like talking with customers, some can be real jerks, but others are great. The worst cases are those that are letting themselves in for a world of hurt or want to do something just plain illegal, (violating building safety codes) but they “know” what they are doing and you’re not going to talk them out of it. I just tell myself that I’m not responsible for them and let it go. Something that would have been downright impossible years ago.
Right now, the biggest blank I have to fill is, what do I do when I’m not working? I have a lot of free time on my hands and my living arrangements don’t leave a lot of options, other than going out. I’m spending a lot of time looking at houses, doing more reading, and spending more time at the library. I’ve asked for more hours at work, partly for the money and benefits, but also to fill my time. When I was young I resented every minute of work, I’m not sure why, and couldn’t wait to get home. Even if it just meant sitting alone in a cold room. Now I prefer work to being alone: at least I have people to talk to who know my name. Oddly I take comfort in that, at the same time wondering how so many of the other employees know my full name, when we’ve never been introduced and it’s not on my apron. Ah, one of those little mysteries of life. You know what? I don’t want to know, cause that would just take all the fun out of it. It doesn’t really matter anyway, what I really like is the fact that they take the trouble to do it. It makes me feel noticed, like I matter. A little. Isn’t that what life is all about? What is success for, if you don’t matter to someone?
I’m finding that the most difficult thing to deal with after divorce, is the hole that is left where all the “stuff” used to be. In any loss, there is stuff you miss and stuff you are all to happy to see gone. But once it is gone, you have a large blank spot in your life that needs filling. Sure, it’s tempting for me to drink, or binge watch TV, hide in books, or find other meaningless things to fill my time, but I need to face the fact that the time is now empty, and I, sooner or later, will build a new life to fill it.
To be sure, most of that time was filled with time-wasting stuff like TV, and Facebook, and going out just so we don’t have to stay in, so much of what is gone had no real value. But the real point was that I wasn’t alone. There is a lot to be said for not being alone. That part is a loss.
My central issue here is that I never really had a life outside of my family. I was always nervous about meeting people and having friends, so I mooched off of my spouse for friends, family and social time. All of those disappeared after we went our separate ways. Fortunately, for the few years I have been cultivating a life outside of my marriage. It’s almost as if i knew what was coming and I was practicing my “me” skills. Learning to have relationships and be somebody other than “husband” and “dad.”
Reviving my interest in theater was a good idea. I met a lot of people, and, thanks to Facebook, have managed to remain in contact with a few. I miss theater, but my schedule doesn’t allow me to do it any more. Perhaps later I can come back to it. But I find it’s the people and the doing that I miss, not the performing so much. Starting my business also forced me to meet a lot more people, and I find that I like meeting new people. I used to hate it, but I guess that’s a part of me that has changed over the years.
I also notice that I don’t expect much from the people I meet. I used to invest so much in each relationship, no matter how casual, and be angry and disappointed when the dedication wasn’t returned. I was also deathly afraid of the “wrong” relationships. I’m not quite sure what that means now, but I had to stay away from certain people, at any cost. Maybe it had something to do with my fear of becoming “hooked” somehow, so I needed to only hang out with “safe” people, who I didn’t care about so they couldn’t hurt me. Much. In the process I avoided anyone I much actually care for, or worse, might care for me. Which brings up a huge difference that I’m having to deal with: I have no idea how to have a close relationship where I’m not hiding and playing manipulation games. I learned how to have casual friendships, but I don’t know what anything else would look like now. I afraid of what dating might look like because I don’t want anyone getting attached to me while I’m in this state. Or maybe I’ve just haven’t met anyone I want to date or hang out with on a more that a casual basis.
The thing is, I’m in a transition. I keep wanting it to be over, transitions are a process and I’ve just got to let it happen. The say the life’s a journey, not a destination. What I’m going through now is part of my perpetual process of change. I certainly don’t want to be stuck where I am and say “Stick a fork in me, I’m done!” But I can’t help being nervous about no knowing where I’m going to end up, or when. That’s the nature of the beast, but I don’t have to like it much. I know I’ll look back on this time and I’m sure it will make fodder for a good story, but do I have to live through it? Big transitions are like adventures, they’re great things to happen long ago to someone else. It’s called something else when it’s happening right now, to me.
I’m actually surprised to find that I like my new job. In the past four months I’ve made more friends than in the last 20. Sure the pay is tiny and the hours kinda suck, but I like the idea of having virtually no responsibility. Especially compared to what I used to have to worry about. I just show up, do my time, and go home. I’ve learned to keep myself busy, most of the time, so time actually passes fairly quickly. I generally like talking with customers, some can be real jerks, but others are great. The worst cases are those that are letting themselves in for a world of hurt or want to do something just plain illegal, (violating building safety codes) but they “know” what they are doing and you’re not going to talk them out of it. I just tell myself that I’m not responsible for them and let it go. Something that would have been downright impossible years ago.
Right now, the biggest blank I have to fill is, what do I do when I’m not working? I have a lot of free time on my hands and my living arrangements don’t leave a lot of options, other than going out. I’m spending a lot of time looking at houses, doing more reading, and spending more time at the library. I’ve asked for more hours at work, partly for the money and benefits, but also to fill my time. When I was young I resented every minute of work, I’m not sure why, and couldn’t wait to get home. Even if it just meant sitting alone in a cold room. Now I prefer work to being alone: at least I have people to talk to who know my name. Oddly I take comfort in that, at the same time wondering how so many of the other employees know my full name, when we’ve never been introduced and it’s not on my apron. Ah, one of those little mysteries of life. You know what? I don’t want to know, cause that would just take all the fun out of it. It doesn’t really matter anyway, what I really like is the fact that they take the trouble to do it. It makes me feel noticed, like I matter. A little. Isn’t that what life is all about? What is success for, if you don’t matter to someone?
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Supernatural?
Next in my series of educating myself in my new field, plus other thoughts.
I’m almost finished with “Supernatural, Writings on an Unknown History” by Richard Smoley. No, it’s not what you think, but s series of essays on the history of the paranormal as it impacts our culture. I find the book a little dry, but it has a lot of interesting information about significant, and often little known, historical figures and the origins if things like the New Age movement. Which actually goes back a lot further than I expected:
“For any reader, at any level of experience, who has ever been curious about an arcane subject—from psychical powers to secret societies—here is a collection that delivers a complete yet precise, critical yet serious, and always respectful account of topics from the unseen world. Supernatural is a brilliant primer to the occult and magical history of the West.” — from the back cover of Supernatural.
I am beginning to realize how philosophy is a big part of my studies. Philosophers have been asking the same questions for millennia and coming up with various answers, though, the ones that have endured seem to have converged on answers similar to those of Buddhist monks and eastern traditions. I keep being amazed at how much that is now considered really out-there, arcane thinking, was written about by the likes of Carl Jung, and many probably pre-date him. Not to take away from any of his accomplishments. He built on the work of those who came before, like all great people.
Smoley is not a wholehearted new-age type, though I suspect he leans that way. He has no problem poking holes in many of our cultural myths, like Atlantis, the ideas behind The Da Vinci Code, and the Masons, but he has no problem saying “I don’t know” when he reaches the end of what can be truly proved. He is a skeptic in the true sense of the word: “One who questions,” rather then the current view of the term that appears to imply that you must “debunk” and deny all evidence that doesn’t fit your pre-conceived ideas. It’s refreshing to have someone refuse to say that all prophecy must be wrong, fully acknowledging that that would be making their own prophecy about whether or not the predicted event will occur.
I find that studying books like this helps me to understand and interpret the events and ideas that I encounter. People ask me questions and I have to struggle to come up with words to express what I intuitively know. That often means revising and re-revising conceptions that I have already created when new data doesn’t fit. In doing so, I find, in the old masters, that there is truly nothing new under the sun.
Take the story of the warrior Er, related by Socrates and Plato, who dies and battle and then awakens at his own funeral, and recounts tails of the afterlife. Long regarded as a myth, some now say that his tail contains all the signs of a classic Near Death Experience. How much of what we now call metaphysics or paranormal, was well known to the ancients, and now we must turn to them for insights into these human conditions that we have ignored for so long.
Someone asked the question “What would you do if you realized that the end was near and you had not accomplished anything?” There were lots of answers to this, but most of them assumed that, somehow, “accomplishing something” would have value to you after you were dead. That made me notice that our culture spends a lot of time and energy on “planning for the future,” and no time considering how to know when “the future” has arrived, and what you do when it does, other than vague ideas about having fun. My first thought was “Yay! I no longer have to worry about the future! I can do whatever I want with no consequences!”
This has special meaning for me because I have recently transitioned out of the 8-5 career lifestyle. All my “obligations” are now gone, and I only have responsibility for myself. What do I do? Do I still plan for another 30 years, or just do what I want and let the chips fall where them may? The stone cold reality is that I could die at any time, so is it time to stop planning and time to start living? I put no stock in “leaving a legacy:” Your name may live on, but people will quickly forget who you were and what you really stood for, using your memory as a pawn in their own games.
As for accomplishing something, I feel that I should live my life satisfied with every day. Goals are fine, as long as I am not putting off living until I get there. I no longer have time for that. When the time comes, I am more than ready to walk through that door with no regrets. I want to help people, as much as I can, while I am here, but when the time comes, I’m outta here. The biggest problem now is getting past of the groundless fear that something really bad is going to happen. I can see the antidote to that, but it’s taking me time to get there. Meanwhile, I’m comfortable with the thought that once I’m gone, all that happened here will have no more significance than a Monopoly game: Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, then you roll the dice and start over.
I’m almost finished with “Supernatural, Writings on an Unknown History” by Richard Smoley. No, it’s not what you think, but s series of essays on the history of the paranormal as it impacts our culture. I find the book a little dry, but it has a lot of interesting information about significant, and often little known, historical figures and the origins if things like the New Age movement. Which actually goes back a lot further than I expected:
“For any reader, at any level of experience, who has ever been curious about an arcane subject—from psychical powers to secret societies—here is a collection that delivers a complete yet precise, critical yet serious, and always respectful account of topics from the unseen world. Supernatural is a brilliant primer to the occult and magical history of the West.” — from the back cover of Supernatural.
I am beginning to realize how philosophy is a big part of my studies. Philosophers have been asking the same questions for millennia and coming up with various answers, though, the ones that have endured seem to have converged on answers similar to those of Buddhist monks and eastern traditions. I keep being amazed at how much that is now considered really out-there, arcane thinking, was written about by the likes of Carl Jung, and many probably pre-date him. Not to take away from any of his accomplishments. He built on the work of those who came before, like all great people.
Smoley is not a wholehearted new-age type, though I suspect he leans that way. He has no problem poking holes in many of our cultural myths, like Atlantis, the ideas behind The Da Vinci Code, and the Masons, but he has no problem saying “I don’t know” when he reaches the end of what can be truly proved. He is a skeptic in the true sense of the word: “One who questions,” rather then the current view of the term that appears to imply that you must “debunk” and deny all evidence that doesn’t fit your pre-conceived ideas. It’s refreshing to have someone refuse to say that all prophecy must be wrong, fully acknowledging that that would be making their own prophecy about whether or not the predicted event will occur.
I find that studying books like this helps me to understand and interpret the events and ideas that I encounter. People ask me questions and I have to struggle to come up with words to express what I intuitively know. That often means revising and re-revising conceptions that I have already created when new data doesn’t fit. In doing so, I find, in the old masters, that there is truly nothing new under the sun.
Take the story of the warrior Er, related by Socrates and Plato, who dies and battle and then awakens at his own funeral, and recounts tails of the afterlife. Long regarded as a myth, some now say that his tail contains all the signs of a classic Near Death Experience. How much of what we now call metaphysics or paranormal, was well known to the ancients, and now we must turn to them for insights into these human conditions that we have ignored for so long.
Someone asked the question “What would you do if you realized that the end was near and you had not accomplished anything?” There were lots of answers to this, but most of them assumed that, somehow, “accomplishing something” would have value to you after you were dead. That made me notice that our culture spends a lot of time and energy on “planning for the future,” and no time considering how to know when “the future” has arrived, and what you do when it does, other than vague ideas about having fun. My first thought was “Yay! I no longer have to worry about the future! I can do whatever I want with no consequences!”
This has special meaning for me because I have recently transitioned out of the 8-5 career lifestyle. All my “obligations” are now gone, and I only have responsibility for myself. What do I do? Do I still plan for another 30 years, or just do what I want and let the chips fall where them may? The stone cold reality is that I could die at any time, so is it time to stop planning and time to start living? I put no stock in “leaving a legacy:” Your name may live on, but people will quickly forget who you were and what you really stood for, using your memory as a pawn in their own games.
As for accomplishing something, I feel that I should live my life satisfied with every day. Goals are fine, as long as I am not putting off living until I get there. I no longer have time for that. When the time comes, I am more than ready to walk through that door with no regrets. I want to help people, as much as I can, while I am here, but when the time comes, I’m outta here. The biggest problem now is getting past of the groundless fear that something really bad is going to happen. I can see the antidote to that, but it’s taking me time to get there. Meanwhile, I’m comfortable with the thought that once I’m gone, all that happened here will have no more significance than a Monopoly game: Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, then you roll the dice and start over.
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
WWI Past Life
Tonight I went to a past life regression MeetUp. I went as a participant, because I really felt the need to find out a few things.
Lately I have been realizing that I had no direction. At least I didn't *feel like I had a direction. For quite some time now, I have doing simply what had to be done, or running entirely on instinct. I had no real feeling about what I should be doing or where I was headed, I just knew what needed to get done and did it, without really caring, one way or the other. But in the past week I have reached the end of that road and was staring into the face of…nothing. Make no mistake, I have a path forward and, objectively, everything looks on track. But I just didn't see any particular reason to keep going, all the passion and drive and any reason to get up in the morning, were gone. So I got that it was time to reach out to others for help.
As an aside that show how completely I am not the person I was a few years ago, hear this: A few days ago I was having a really bad morning. I was having problems that I just couldn't make any headway with, problems with my phone and dentist and health care, all at once. I went into work feeling really, you know, ARRG! But, the real funny thing is, that by the time I finished lunch, I was feeling much better. Talking to customers actually got me out of my funk and lighted my day considerably. This was so not me a few years ago, when hiding in a book, by myself, was the only cure for a funk.
I went to something last night, that I thought was a psychic class, but turned out to be readings from a psychic. Surprise! My reading turned out to be helpful, because she told me to let go of the idea that the decisions I make now have to be my best and final ones, for good. I hadn't realized that I was putting so much weight on my choice of where to live and what I do next, that is was just overwhelming me. I got that I can just put my money into a house for investment purposes, and sell it in a few years, if I want, and move somewhere else. There's really no "long run" to worry about. The decision just needs to be "good enough" for now.
In that frame of mind, I went to the past life regression with the intension of getting an answer to the question of "What do I do now, what is my goal?" I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that I didn't an answer to that question.
The leader started us with a few warm-up exercises, and I couldn't get my head out of my daily concerns and I was worried that the whole session would be a bust. No worries. It turned out to be the best session I've had so far.
My past life opened with me flying a WWI airplane. I don't know which kind, but I noticed that there was one machine gun in front of me. It was dark, which is odd since they generally didn't fly at night in those days. There were clouds below, and flashes in the clouds that I first took to be lightning, but then supposed to be artillery fire. I was old, for a pilot, maybe 23-24, and tall enough to be awkward in the tiny plane. I think I had just finished some kind of action, because I seemed wounded and the plane had bits of lose canvas flapping in the wind. I was numb, and tired, and I think I had been in the war too long and just didn't care anymore. The next thing I remember was nosing over into a dive. Perhaps I passed out.
The next thing I saw was of two shinny boots, and then green uniform pants. It took me a bit to figure out that I was lying on the ground, on my left side, in the mud staring at a pair of boots of someone standing next to me. I raised my head slightly and then dropped it back as I passed out again. The next thing I was was a young girl looking at me sideways. She was wearing a dress and had long, light brown hair that hung down as she turned her head sideways to look into my face.
In the next scene, I was lying in a bed in, what I took to be, a farmhouse with white plaster walls. There was an older man there and the girl, and they were taking care of me. This part was blurry and indistinct, and seemed to go on for a while. Skipping ahead, the death scene of that life started with a picture of a single candle. I was still in the same room, I don't know how much time had passed. It seemed like a long time but the girl looked unchanged. I found out why later. As I was lying in bed, the girl seemed to move in a blur from one place to another, or just, magically, pop from one place to another. At times she seemed transparent.
The girl seemed to know when it was time for me to die, for she held my face in her hands as I left my body. I looked down at her holding my face for a short while, then she rose up with me and we both ascended into the light. On the way, she transformed from a girl to a being of light, and then left me, for parts unknown, as soon as we reached our destination. I got that she was a helper and a guide, but her job was now done and she was off to a new assignment.
Next, I met with a fellow that was a counselor, of some sort. I couldn't hear what I was trying to tell me, and then got that I didn't want to hear what anyone told me. That was what I took away from that life: Don't listen to anyone! They will convince you to commit yourself to some stupid cause and throw away your reason and your life in a war on the other side of the world. When I realized that, the fellow smiled and nodded vigorously. That was the answer I wasn't looking for. I have been going through my life, not committing to anything, not joining anything, ever, because I was afraid of what that commitment might "trick" me into. Now, if I want a future, I have to "join" and commit to the community I want to be a part of. You can't commit to being a "sort-of" healer. Either you are or are not. I need to make a decision and then, once I've decided, go for it and stop hedging my bets and being halfhearted about it. Ouch! I get that, but it still scares me. But, it's time to take some concrete steps. We'll see how that goes.
During the part with the counselor, I noticed that the left side of my face seemed "heavy." I'm thinking that had something to do with the plane crash. interestingly, for the past year or so, I have noticed issues with the left side of my body, especially my left leg, but my left shoulder and arm as well. Most of the issues seem to be "spiritual" since, physically, there's nothing wrong. My own investigations pointed to something from an earlier life, especially something mangling my left leg, but I was never able to pin it down, perhaps, this was it.
Opps, I almost forgot, but there's one more thing: Tonight I got that the reason I've had so much trouble getting results for myself in sessions is because I don't trust other healers. It's like, if they help me, they'er better than me and that makes me look bad. I don't trust them with my information, so I keep it hidden, even from myself. Time to do some healing around that.
These two sessions have lightened my mood considerably. For that I'm thankful. I seem to have been avoiding meditating for the past weeks, with all the moving and all. The new place and circumstances just seem to make it difficult. I am now committing to getting myself back on a regular schedule, or at least making time for it when I'm not otherwise busy. Things are looking up, so getting out of myself and seeking help and input from others was definitely the right thing to do. There is also something about picking the right people to go to, but that, I think, will be the subject of another post.
Lately I have been realizing that I had no direction. At least I didn't *feel like I had a direction. For quite some time now, I have doing simply what had to be done, or running entirely on instinct. I had no real feeling about what I should be doing or where I was headed, I just knew what needed to get done and did it, without really caring, one way or the other. But in the past week I have reached the end of that road and was staring into the face of…nothing. Make no mistake, I have a path forward and, objectively, everything looks on track. But I just didn't see any particular reason to keep going, all the passion and drive and any reason to get up in the morning, were gone. So I got that it was time to reach out to others for help.
As an aside that show how completely I am not the person I was a few years ago, hear this: A few days ago I was having a really bad morning. I was having problems that I just couldn't make any headway with, problems with my phone and dentist and health care, all at once. I went into work feeling really, you know, ARRG! But, the real funny thing is, that by the time I finished lunch, I was feeling much better. Talking to customers actually got me out of my funk and lighted my day considerably. This was so not me a few years ago, when hiding in a book, by myself, was the only cure for a funk.
I went to something last night, that I thought was a psychic class, but turned out to be readings from a psychic. Surprise! My reading turned out to be helpful, because she told me to let go of the idea that the decisions I make now have to be my best and final ones, for good. I hadn't realized that I was putting so much weight on my choice of where to live and what I do next, that is was just overwhelming me. I got that I can just put my money into a house for investment purposes, and sell it in a few years, if I want, and move somewhere else. There's really no "long run" to worry about. The decision just needs to be "good enough" for now.
In that frame of mind, I went to the past life regression with the intension of getting an answer to the question of "What do I do now, what is my goal?" I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that I didn't an answer to that question.
The leader started us with a few warm-up exercises, and I couldn't get my head out of my daily concerns and I was worried that the whole session would be a bust. No worries. It turned out to be the best session I've had so far.
My past life opened with me flying a WWI airplane. I don't know which kind, but I noticed that there was one machine gun in front of me. It was dark, which is odd since they generally didn't fly at night in those days. There were clouds below, and flashes in the clouds that I first took to be lightning, but then supposed to be artillery fire. I was old, for a pilot, maybe 23-24, and tall enough to be awkward in the tiny plane. I think I had just finished some kind of action, because I seemed wounded and the plane had bits of lose canvas flapping in the wind. I was numb, and tired, and I think I had been in the war too long and just didn't care anymore. The next thing I remember was nosing over into a dive. Perhaps I passed out.
The next thing I saw was of two shinny boots, and then green uniform pants. It took me a bit to figure out that I was lying on the ground, on my left side, in the mud staring at a pair of boots of someone standing next to me. I raised my head slightly and then dropped it back as I passed out again. The next thing I was was a young girl looking at me sideways. She was wearing a dress and had long, light brown hair that hung down as she turned her head sideways to look into my face.
In the next scene, I was lying in a bed in, what I took to be, a farmhouse with white plaster walls. There was an older man there and the girl, and they were taking care of me. This part was blurry and indistinct, and seemed to go on for a while. Skipping ahead, the death scene of that life started with a picture of a single candle. I was still in the same room, I don't know how much time had passed. It seemed like a long time but the girl looked unchanged. I found out why later. As I was lying in bed, the girl seemed to move in a blur from one place to another, or just, magically, pop from one place to another. At times she seemed transparent.
The girl seemed to know when it was time for me to die, for she held my face in her hands as I left my body. I looked down at her holding my face for a short while, then she rose up with me and we both ascended into the light. On the way, she transformed from a girl to a being of light, and then left me, for parts unknown, as soon as we reached our destination. I got that she was a helper and a guide, but her job was now done and she was off to a new assignment.
Next, I met with a fellow that was a counselor, of some sort. I couldn't hear what I was trying to tell me, and then got that I didn't want to hear what anyone told me. That was what I took away from that life: Don't listen to anyone! They will convince you to commit yourself to some stupid cause and throw away your reason and your life in a war on the other side of the world. When I realized that, the fellow smiled and nodded vigorously. That was the answer I wasn't looking for. I have been going through my life, not committing to anything, not joining anything, ever, because I was afraid of what that commitment might "trick" me into. Now, if I want a future, I have to "join" and commit to the community I want to be a part of. You can't commit to being a "sort-of" healer. Either you are or are not. I need to make a decision and then, once I've decided, go for it and stop hedging my bets and being halfhearted about it. Ouch! I get that, but it still scares me. But, it's time to take some concrete steps. We'll see how that goes.
During the part with the counselor, I noticed that the left side of my face seemed "heavy." I'm thinking that had something to do with the plane crash. interestingly, for the past year or so, I have noticed issues with the left side of my body, especially my left leg, but my left shoulder and arm as well. Most of the issues seem to be "spiritual" since, physically, there's nothing wrong. My own investigations pointed to something from an earlier life, especially something mangling my left leg, but I was never able to pin it down, perhaps, this was it.
Opps, I almost forgot, but there's one more thing: Tonight I got that the reason I've had so much trouble getting results for myself in sessions is because I don't trust other healers. It's like, if they help me, they'er better than me and that makes me look bad. I don't trust them with my information, so I keep it hidden, even from myself. Time to do some healing around that.
These two sessions have lightened my mood considerably. For that I'm thankful. I seem to have been avoiding meditating for the past weeks, with all the moving and all. The new place and circumstances just seem to make it difficult. I am now committing to getting myself back on a regular schedule, or at least making time for it when I'm not otherwise busy. Things are looking up, so getting out of myself and seeking help and input from others was definitely the right thing to do. There is also something about picking the right people to go to, but that, I think, will be the subject of another post.
Saturday, January 2, 2016
Fingernails Break
Today I find myself desperately trying to hold on. Hold on to what, I’m not sure. I just have this feeling of holding tightly to something in my core habits or ways of being. It’s like I’ll lose myself if I let something out. I feel like a balloon, and if I let out even a little of what’s inside, I will lose everything.
I’m not sure what it is I’m afraid of, though I think I’m trying to keep from changing. So much of my life has changed that, perhaps, I’m seriously trying to keep something of my old life intact. I can almost see my hands clenched and tired, but still grasping tightly to this, something. I don’t want to let it out. It feels like, if I’m not careful, what little there is left of me will escape and there will be nothing left. An empty shell. Everything that I value will be gone and I will be just some kind of ghost, without substance, meaning or purpose.
Up until recently, I had structure and rhythm to my life. Things I had to do, was expected to do. Duties and obligations that filled the time and used up my days. They left me empty and frustrated, but I had a niche and my life had rhythm. Now that is all gone. No one depends on me. No one requires me. I seem to have ultimate freedom, but I am still trapped within my expectations and self-imposed requirements, all still based on what was. My work schedule changes every week, and there is no one around be that keeps a regular, daily or weekly schedule. I never realized how much of my life was structured around that weekly rhythm. I feel totally lost without it. I am having a really hard time keeping track of the days. It is so disorienting to not have a rhythm to life. It never really come home to be before how the internet and digital recording has done away with TV schedules. So that rhythm is gone as well. There was a certain amount of comfort in knowing that certain things would be happening on certain days and times.
I expect that this is a period of transition. At some point I will let go of what I was, as frighting and difficult as that will be, and become something else. I know, I know that most of what I miss really didn’t exist, it’s made valuable only by it’s loss. I didn’t like it when I had it, but now that it’s gone it seem infinitely more appealing than the unknown staring me in the face. On the other hand, I now find myself going back to my roots, writing and reading again, but not as I had done before. I find that I want to out in the world much more than I ever did before. I want to be with people, being alone is just plain lonely. In that sense, my current job is a godsend. I get to spend my time interacting with people all day long, and there are no important decisions to be made, everything is straight forward, right now, and I can completely forget about it when I go home. Nice.
Everybody knows that change is stressful. But it’s one of those things that is hard to grasp until it happens to you. I think this is probably the most drastic period of change I have ever gone through. This time, there is truly no one in it with me. Or, perhaps, there are, I just need to recognize them.
This change didn’t happen all at once, of course, things have been shifting for years. This was like the earthquake that happens after years of two forces moving in different directions. They finally reach the breaking point when something’s got to give. Then, when it does, the disruption’s considerable, as it shatters the pretense of sameness and normalcy. The break scattered my life into pieces and now I am trying to reassemble them, but I don’t know which pieces to keep and what the picture is supposed to look like.
I have be re-architecting myself for a while now, a process that had been hung up on the immovable forces in my life. Things I thought couldn’t be changed, or that I didn’t have the strength to change, or survive it I did. Yet change they did, and now, like pulling a thread from a scarf, I really don’t know when to stop. Everything is intertwined, and the fear, deep down, is that I will completely lose something vitally important, if I’m not careful. So I’ve dug my emotional fingernails onto some intangible core that I want to preserve. Ironically, I also have the fear that I’ll, by being afraid of change, I’ll make some commitment that locks me back into those old patterns that I’m trying to be rid of. Maybe my fingernails will hold, maybe they won’t and maybe they shouldn’t. My path forward is as clear a mud at night. I just hope that, in my stumbling and bumbling, I don’t make any mistakes that can’t be corrected.
I’m not sure what it is I’m afraid of, though I think I’m trying to keep from changing. So much of my life has changed that, perhaps, I’m seriously trying to keep something of my old life intact. I can almost see my hands clenched and tired, but still grasping tightly to this, something. I don’t want to let it out. It feels like, if I’m not careful, what little there is left of me will escape and there will be nothing left. An empty shell. Everything that I value will be gone and I will be just some kind of ghost, without substance, meaning or purpose.
Up until recently, I had structure and rhythm to my life. Things I had to do, was expected to do. Duties and obligations that filled the time and used up my days. They left me empty and frustrated, but I had a niche and my life had rhythm. Now that is all gone. No one depends on me. No one requires me. I seem to have ultimate freedom, but I am still trapped within my expectations and self-imposed requirements, all still based on what was. My work schedule changes every week, and there is no one around be that keeps a regular, daily or weekly schedule. I never realized how much of my life was structured around that weekly rhythm. I feel totally lost without it. I am having a really hard time keeping track of the days. It is so disorienting to not have a rhythm to life. It never really come home to be before how the internet and digital recording has done away with TV schedules. So that rhythm is gone as well. There was a certain amount of comfort in knowing that certain things would be happening on certain days and times.
I expect that this is a period of transition. At some point I will let go of what I was, as frighting and difficult as that will be, and become something else. I know, I know that most of what I miss really didn’t exist, it’s made valuable only by it’s loss. I didn’t like it when I had it, but now that it’s gone it seem infinitely more appealing than the unknown staring me in the face. On the other hand, I now find myself going back to my roots, writing and reading again, but not as I had done before. I find that I want to out in the world much more than I ever did before. I want to be with people, being alone is just plain lonely. In that sense, my current job is a godsend. I get to spend my time interacting with people all day long, and there are no important decisions to be made, everything is straight forward, right now, and I can completely forget about it when I go home. Nice.
Everybody knows that change is stressful. But it’s one of those things that is hard to grasp until it happens to you. I think this is probably the most drastic period of change I have ever gone through. This time, there is truly no one in it with me. Or, perhaps, there are, I just need to recognize them.
This change didn’t happen all at once, of course, things have been shifting for years. This was like the earthquake that happens after years of two forces moving in different directions. They finally reach the breaking point when something’s got to give. Then, when it does, the disruption’s considerable, as it shatters the pretense of sameness and normalcy. The break scattered my life into pieces and now I am trying to reassemble them, but I don’t know which pieces to keep and what the picture is supposed to look like.
I have be re-architecting myself for a while now, a process that had been hung up on the immovable forces in my life. Things I thought couldn’t be changed, or that I didn’t have the strength to change, or survive it I did. Yet change they did, and now, like pulling a thread from a scarf, I really don’t know when to stop. Everything is intertwined, and the fear, deep down, is that I will completely lose something vitally important, if I’m not careful. So I’ve dug my emotional fingernails onto some intangible core that I want to preserve. Ironically, I also have the fear that I’ll, by being afraid of change, I’ll make some commitment that locks me back into those old patterns that I’m trying to be rid of. Maybe my fingernails will hold, maybe they won’t and maybe they shouldn’t. My path forward is as clear a mud at night. I just hope that, in my stumbling and bumbling, I don’t make any mistakes that can’t be corrected.
Friday, January 1, 2016
A Question of Time?
I was talking to a potential client last night and she asked me how many sessions it would take to solve her problem. The stopped me. I ended up saying “just one,” but now, I’m not so sure. I hear other practitioners talking about clients that they see, regularly, for months or years. Most of my clients seem to get finished up in one session, and then I never hear from them again, and I always took that as a good sign. But I'm thinking now that different people, with different challenges, will probably need more time.
It’s dawned on me that many people need both education and treatment. Hypnosis sessions are good for uncovering what's behind the issues they face, but then what to do about it is up to the client. They will often get instructions about what they need to do to resolve the issue, but that still can leave them facing the same reluctance to act that created the issue in the first place. Knowledge is helpful, but the necessary next step is to understand what to do with that knowledge. In a couple of cases, I've had clients that discovered that the habits they wanted to get rid of, like smoking, or over eating, were a direct consequence of seemingly unrelated choices and their core values. In one case, an inflexible core of self-sacrifice forced an "somethings got to give" response from the subconscious, resulting in the habit, as compensation. These clients choose not to re-examine their beliefs, so they left with nothing changed. I hope you now have an understanding why simply laying on "good" suggestions and positive affirmations often don't work all that well.
Hypnosis is a powerful tool that allows us to uncover the source of challenges, and to release emotional charge around them. This often causes a shift in the client without them being consciously aware if it. They know something's up, but don't know what it is, and that can be confusing and frighting. The intensity of these feelings are directly related to the size of the shift. When I went through my shifts, it felt like the world had rewritten itself around me. Everyone was acting so differently towards me! Slowly I realized that what I was experiencing was due to both changes in how I acted, and how I interpreted other people's reactions. It would have been nice to have someone me navigate these strange waters, and guide me through the rough patches. I strive to offer my clients both relief and guidance.
So, what do I say when someone asks me “How long is this going to take?” It’s a valid question. If it was me, I sure would like to know what I’m signing up for, too. But I'm just not sure what to say, other than “It depends.” For people with just a "single issue," like to do one long session, which includes some counseling at the end, followed by a couple of short, followup sessions, as needed. For people who are on a path, or have a number of issues, we can work as long as they feel the need. I encourage clients to work as the feel the need and to quit when they're ready. When I was in therapy, and when I was working with any teacher or program, I knew when I was "done." I knew when I had reached the point where I got all I was going to get and it was time to move on. I want my clients to feel the same.
I don't think that any professional in this area really knows how long something is going to take. Every client is different, they work differently and have their own path. There really are two distinct types of clients, the ones that just want something "fixed," and those that recognize that life's a journey and that hypnosis is one effective tool to remove blocks and help clarify their path. In the best case, the "fixers" will evolve into "seekers," as they use the tools that I teach them, as they begin uncover and fulfill their life's purpose.
It’s dawned on me that many people need both education and treatment. Hypnosis sessions are good for uncovering what's behind the issues they face, but then what to do about it is up to the client. They will often get instructions about what they need to do to resolve the issue, but that still can leave them facing the same reluctance to act that created the issue in the first place. Knowledge is helpful, but the necessary next step is to understand what to do with that knowledge. In a couple of cases, I've had clients that discovered that the habits they wanted to get rid of, like smoking, or over eating, were a direct consequence of seemingly unrelated choices and their core values. In one case, an inflexible core of self-sacrifice forced an "somethings got to give" response from the subconscious, resulting in the habit, as compensation. These clients choose not to re-examine their beliefs, so they left with nothing changed. I hope you now have an understanding why simply laying on "good" suggestions and positive affirmations often don't work all that well.
Hypnosis is a powerful tool that allows us to uncover the source of challenges, and to release emotional charge around them. This often causes a shift in the client without them being consciously aware if it. They know something's up, but don't know what it is, and that can be confusing and frighting. The intensity of these feelings are directly related to the size of the shift. When I went through my shifts, it felt like the world had rewritten itself around me. Everyone was acting so differently towards me! Slowly I realized that what I was experiencing was due to both changes in how I acted, and how I interpreted other people's reactions. It would have been nice to have someone me navigate these strange waters, and guide me through the rough patches. I strive to offer my clients both relief and guidance.
So, what do I say when someone asks me “How long is this going to take?” It’s a valid question. If it was me, I sure would like to know what I’m signing up for, too. But I'm just not sure what to say, other than “It depends.” For people with just a "single issue," like to do one long session, which includes some counseling at the end, followed by a couple of short, followup sessions, as needed. For people who are on a path, or have a number of issues, we can work as long as they feel the need. I encourage clients to work as the feel the need and to quit when they're ready. When I was in therapy, and when I was working with any teacher or program, I knew when I was "done." I knew when I had reached the point where I got all I was going to get and it was time to move on. I want my clients to feel the same.
I don't think that any professional in this area really knows how long something is going to take. Every client is different, they work differently and have their own path. There really are two distinct types of clients, the ones that just want something "fixed," and those that recognize that life's a journey and that hypnosis is one effective tool to remove blocks and help clarify their path. In the best case, the "fixers" will evolve into "seekers," as they use the tools that I teach them, as they begin uncover and fulfill their life's purpose.
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