INTO THE LIGHT

Intuitive Mind.

“There is no siren whose call is quite so exquisite

as the music of the future.

For as long as writing has existed there are records showing

we have sought to know its form.

Last year alone, literally billions were spent by widows, lovers, spies and presidents—

all seeking, like an arrow through time,

some way to answer: “In the future, what will . . .?”

~Stephan A. Schwartz

  

I knew I had hit rock bottom when I found myself on the phone with a pet psychic and I didn’t even have a pet.  Allow me to explain.

Having felt the first seismic tremors shaking the foundations of my life, I wanted someone to tell me what it all meant.  Why was it happening? Where was I going? Would it all be okay? Everything was upside down.  My relationship no longer worked.  Professionally, I felt the need for big change but what?  I knew that any change would create a domino effect in my life geographically, financially, and emotionally.  I was hearing the call but I was afraid to listen. What if I got it wrong?

I was scheduled to go to Hawaii the next month for a much-needed vacation, so I decided to turn my trip into a soul-searching retreat.  Maybe I can find a spiritual healer, I thought; some wise old sage to sit with me by a volcano and tell me what to do.  I began with an Internet search for “spiritual healers in Hawaii,” and within moments a page full of psychics and self-proclaimed spiritual advisors appeared on my screen. They promised “spookily accurate predictions” and direct lines with God.  Before that day I had never called a psychic in my life, but I was a woman on the edge, desperate for answers, and I was curious to know what they could see...if they could see.  I had been praying for guidance with no real-time answers and I needed to make some decisions soon, and so I started calling people on that list, growing more agitated and despondent with each call.

I was wasting my time.  None of their “predictions” were the same; none even came close to identifying my concerns.  They couldn’t “see” my life.  Then I got mad.  I was mad at how vulnerable I felt.  I was mad at the inconvenience of change.  I was mad because no one could see my truth.  I was mad because these people claimed to have the answers, preying on the likes of desperate people like me, and I fell for it!

Then something took over.  One-by-one I called them, all of these self-proclaimed seers.  I didn’t engage them in any real discussion; I just rang them up and gave them a piece of my mind, calling bullshit on their craft.  “What makes you think that your ‘line with God’ is any stronger than mine?”  I challenged, denying their exclusive link to the spirit world.  I unleashed my anger on all of them until I found myself on the phone with a pet psychic, crying, exhausted and ashamed of my temporary insanity.   

It was crazy, the way I behaved; so sad and hilariously pathetic that I had to share it with you now.  Thing is, I know what it feels like to be out there on a limb, equally scared and enticed by change, wanting a guarantee or confirmation of my next best step.  Sadly, not one thing in my years of formal education, study, practice or religious upbringing prepared me for this moment. 

In law school we’re trained to be aggressive in finding answers to our clients’ most pressing dilemmas; to solve problems and sort through the rubbish until we get to the truth; to counsel our clients on their next best step.  It’s professional malpractice if we don’t.  Whole industries are born and thrive around the practice of law and our need for information, supplying never-ending volumes of legal statutes, treaties, case law and continuing education seminars where lawyers network with each other.  We form special interest groups to deal with very specific legal issues and solve those pesky, recurring problems that demand solutions.  Even with the most difficult issues you can bet that someone, somewhere out there, has dealt with your problem and it’s just a matter of how resourceful and diligent you are in finding that information. 

But how do we find answers to the questions in our personal lives?  There is no book or standard that we can call upon to find the answer to the questions:  Should I take this job?  Should I marry…? Is … the way forward in my life?  Sure, we can seek comfort and perhaps some proverbial guidance by reading the Bible, Qur’an, Bhagavad Gita, Torah or other religious text.  We just have to go online to find a world full of life coaches and career counselors, Ask.com and Google searches, and self-help books with formulas and ideas for finding your life purpose or dealing with a wayward relationship.  Some are quite good.  Still, I challenge anyone to show me in any of these books or resources a direct answer to the pressing and super dynamic question:  Where do I go from here?      

Come to know what you know . . .

Not what you know in your head, 

what you know in your heart . . .

Everything you need is right there waiting for you,

To own . . . and to give away . . . in love.

~Gail Harris, Your Heart Knows the Answer

For the record, I do believe there are people in this world who have strong connections to the Spirit realm.  I am not here to discredit those who do, as many have helped to heal the sick, solve crimes and locate missing children; some are also mediums that provide an open line of communication between the living and the dead.  However, I have learned that when it comes to discerning the direction of my life someone else’s vision is no substitute for my own.

For light I go directly to the Source of light, 

not to any of the reflections.

~Peace Pilgrim

In Latin terms, the word intuition comes from the root “intueri”, which can be translated as “to look inside” or “to contemplate.”[1]  We come into this world with all that we need to survive and thrive in the outside world, including the ability to know our personal truth—a sixth-sense that is available to us all. 

Psychologist Carl Jung called it “perception by the unconscious,” where answers come less by thinking and feeling and more from sensory connection. There is that instinctive, intuitive process that brings things sharply into focus, alerting us to danger so that we can get out of harm’s way.  But there’s also the more deliberate intuitive connection that will guide us if we let it. Not a quick fix but a process that takes time and patience to discern.  Some people never connect, for reasons that I believe have more to do with the noise and chatter of our lives than lack of access to internal wisdom, but if we are committed to the process we can learn how to root down and quiet the logical mind, not empty the mind but still its processes, which allows us to connect our base of experience with our lifeline to the Divine.  There, in that space, solutions arise. 

It’s there for the taking.  We need only tune in, and trust ourselves to go into the light.

[1]  Carlin Flora. "Gut Almighty". Psychology Today. Vol 40. Issue 3:68-75,2007.

Sweet Surrender

Faith consists in believing

when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.

~Voltaire

Sweet Surrender © 2010 by Melissa Johnson.
________________

My friend Jimmy got into a bidding war on eBay for the purchase of a human soul.  He didn't go there looking for a soul, but he was charmed by the illusion of buying one when he found it was for sale. “Well, I thought it might be nice to have an extra one in my pocket just in case…” he joked when I teased him about his near purchase.  Ultimately, he missed the cut-off time for entering his final bid and the random soul was sold to the highest bidder for $50.

And to think … the Devil went down to Georgia looking for a soul to steal.  Now you can buy one on eBay from the comfort of your living room--and relatively cheap!  The world is flat, indeed.

All joking aside, Jimmy’s eBay auction really got me thinking: What is the value of a human life and the soul that dwells within?

I contemplated the extraordinary capacity of survivors to rebound from tragedy and loss—like those who lived to tell of the atrocities of Hitler’s Germany; children rescued from brothels after being sold into slavery by their families; ordinary people beating the odds of cancer or other life-threatening illnesses; rising from the ashes of violent crimes, disfiguring accidents or financial disaster—and I wondered, what allows these people to surrender with grace to their crushing circumstances?

Sure there are stories of human survival aided not so much by a spiritual belief system but by a strong will to live, rising up from somewhere deep within their DNA—fight or flight. But more often than not, the common thread running through these stories of survival can be traced to a fundamental faith in something far greater than the individual even when the events of their lives made no sense; even when it seemed that they had been forgotten.

When things run amuck in our lives,
without a spiritual root,
what do we hold on to?

What do we surrender to?

How do we hope for something better?

Where do we put our faith?

Consider these equally tragic examples with very different outcomes.

Rwanda in the 90s was a dark place. Tensions ran high as the two main political groups—the Tutsis and the Hutus—were pitted against each other in much the same way that Hitler seized political control of Germany, turning Nazis against Jews. As it was in the 90s, if you had the great misfortune of being born into a family of Tutsis, regardless of your independent beliefs, you were a target for political genocide.

Imaculee Illibigiza was one of the few Tutsi women who survived. On the run, she was taken in by a Hutu minister and hidden from her would-be killers, while her parents and brothers were slaughtered along with a million others.

Her refuge was a tiny bathroom measuring 3 x 4 feet, hidden behind an armoire in the minister’s bedroom; she shared this space with six other women for more than 90 days as they waited and prayed for their rescue. They couldn’t speak out loud or make any noise for fear of being heard. They were instructed to flush the toilet only when someone was using the adjoining bathroom. Believing that the minister was hiding the enemy, Hutu soldiers repeatedly raided his home in search of more Tutsis to kill. Yet they never found the tiny bathroom concealing these women.

While in hiding, Imaculee prayed and meditated for hours each day. In her state of exhaustion and hunger, she saw a vision of herself working for the U.N.; she believed it was a vision from God. And she knew that she would have to learn to speak English so that she could communicate with the other U.N. workers. Trusting her vision in spite of the circumstances surrounding her, she convinced the Hutu minister to bring her a French-English dictionary and some other English-language books. French was her second language; but there, in that tiny bathroom, while hiding from vicious killers, she taught herself to read and speak English without ever saying a word out loud and with no guarantee that she would even make it out alive.

In her memoir, Left to Tell, Imaculee recounts her long and painful ordeal. What strikes me most about her story was her path of sweet surrender. She didn’t panic or freak out. She accepted the circumstances of that tiny little bathroom as being temporary, while never losing faith in God and what she knew to be true despite outward appearances. She believed with all of her heart that there had to be a reason for her survival--why she was the one left to tell this horrific story--and she was right.

Not long after her release from the refugee camps where she stayed after her confinement in the minister’s bathroom, she was offered work with the U.N., helping to rebuild Rwanda and using her English-language skills in the process. And while grieving the loss of her family, she met the man who later became her husband and loved her through her pain.

But what makes one person surrender to life
and another surrender to death?

In September of 2008, in the throes of financial disaster, Kirk Stephensen, a 47 year-old husband and father of one, and the chief operating officer of a private equity house, stepped onto the tracks at a rail station west of London. He was struck by a train and killed instantly. His death was ruled suicide.

Later that same year, in New York City, just two days before Christmas, Frenchman Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet slashed both of his wrists—found dead at his desk next to a bottle of pills—after losing $1.4 billion of his own money (and money belonging to his family and clients) that he had invested with Bernie Madoff, making him one of the biggest losers in Madoff’s fraud. Having tried unsuccessfully to recover the money, his brother described him as “totally ruined.”

Then at the beginning of 2009, German billionaire Adolf Merckle threw himself in front of a moving train, taking his own life and leaving behind his wife and four children. His spirit broken by helplessness and fears of financial loss and devastation, Merckle’s suicide is yet another casualty of our global economic crisis.

As I watched these events unfold in the news, I felt sick. What is wrong with a society that supports a mindset where an individual’s worth is measured by their bank balance rather than their acts of kindness, or the kind of parent, friend, spouse, lover, boss, or brother they are?  Where financial loss leaves people not just devoid of cash, but bankrupt of all faith in the ability to recover and create something better for their lives?

In his compelling book, Creating a World that Works for All, Sharif Abdullah suggests spiritual starvation as the root issue. He writes:

“Lest you believe that spiritual starvation is the by-product of race and poverty, let me present a nightmare about the children of affluence. From 1992 to 1994, I was on the core faculty of the Oregon Governor’s School for Citizen Leadership (OGS)...The students were predominately white and middle-class.

"One of the exercises we would conduct with them was 'Stand Up If . . .' On a purely voluntary basis, participants were asked to stand up if certain statements were true of them. Among the items was 'Stand up if you have either attempted or seriously contemplated suicide.'

"Consistently, 60 percent of the students would stand up. They wanted to kill themselves. Why would these mostly middle-class kids attempt or consider suicide? As children of material affluence, they are told they have everything this society can provide. But they are still hungry. So they incorrectly surmise that something must be terribly wrong with them. Or they choose to leave a society that seems to have nothing else to offer... They want connection and instead get materiality. They want meaning and instead get a life devoid of cultural and spiritual richness, a life ripped free of context—historical, social, spiritual, communal… America’s middle-class children face spiritual starvation on a mass scale.”

It's not just our children who are starving.

So maybe we're not ready to sell our souls on eBay or throw ourselves in front of a fast moving train, but at some point in our lives—probably more than once—we will face some form of hardship and intense life challenge. And while I am not suggesting a course of pounding people over the head with our religion, I do believe there is a quiet, gentle way of influencing others by looking first within and shoring-up our own faith.  After all, believing in a higher power and actually surrendering to it are entirely different things.

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

~Gandhi

Opportunities surround us everyday to practice faith and surrender in our lives, especially with the small stuff, which prepares us for the greater challenges.  And perhaps in so doing, we will send a calming, healing energy into the world, like ripples in a pond.

Here are some ideas to start:

1. When faced with a challenge, set-back or great difficulty, STOP SPINNING. Take a few deep breaths and remind yourself of at least one time in your life where you have overcome a seemingly insurmountable obstacle or survived a tragedy. Consider the source of your strength and how you made it through your ordeal. Follow that thought with a memory of a good time that came later. Look for the lesson.  Remember, you are strong; you've already worked through many challenges in your life. In every instance you have a choice in how you react to the problem.

2. Stay calm when possible and ground yourself. Seek sound, practical advice before making any hasty decisions. Get clear about what you need to do; stay alert and aware of all that is happening around you. Remember that love engages; fear reacts.

3. Connect with the comforting rhythm of a routine; yes, even in the midst of difficulty. Think about Imaculee in that tiny little bathroom with 6 other Tutsi women for more than 90 days. Even though she was hiding for her life, she still devoted herself to prayer, meditation and studying her French-English translations rather than surrendering to the fearful mind. Especially in difficult times, routine can bring peace and help us feel as if we have some command of our life. Eat nutritious meals whenever possible, take care of your hair and skin, exercise, sleep, pray, meditate, read books that inspire, and believe in good times to come.

4. Meditate on the image of a lion; contemplate his strength as you connect with your own spiritual strength—life-giving and eternal—radiating out from your heart like the energy of the sun itself.

5.  Be gentle with yourself.  As the saying goes, Everything will be okay in the end.  If it's not okay, it's not the end. (Unknown)

And as you move through the world, be ever mindful of the true value of Life and the precious liquid of your soul:  PRICELESS. . .

BE THE BEAR . . .

Animals are great teachers, it is true; especially for those willing to open their hearts and minds to the greater lessons on how to live and thrive in our two-legged world.

Look deeper than an animal’s biology and connect with its essence—those very qualities, habits and patterns from which we may draw strength and wisdom. The Native American people call this “animal medicine,” as they have long understood the healing power of the animal kingdom.

Photo: Summer Bear by Melissa Johnson; © 2008.

Take the bear, for instance. Consider its most well known habit—going deep within the cave to hibernate for the winter until it emerges anew come spring. True, each animal has many lessons to share, but it’s easy to see how our Native Ancestors view the power of introspection to be the bear’s great metaphorical teaching. By introspection they mean one’s willingness and ability to go within and engage the process of self-examination and reflection.

Call me crazy, but I’m driven to explore and understand the deeper, often unconscious, motivations behind my own actions; a real nightmare for those who would rather not deal with the messiness of why they do what they do. But try as I might to shut it all out, part of me naturally connects with the energy of the bear as I ponder: What’s triggering this emotional response? Why did I behave that way when . . .? Is there a connection between the thoughts I entertain and the day-to-day experience of my life? What am I holding on to that’s blocking my ability to move forward?

For me, the power of introspection has brought about healing on many levels—mind, body and spirit—so much so, in fact, that being a “bear in the cave” has become my personal metaphor for solitary reflection . . . when I have an important decision to make, when I need to work through a troubling issue or want solitude from the stressed-out world around me. “In the cave” I am free to connect with my creative side and establish clear boundaries when I feel pressured by the expectations and demands of others. Sometimes this involves focused meditation; other times, it is my way of spending time alone, which allows me to turn down the volume and connect with my intuitive self—that still, small voice within that knows what’s best for my life.

Experience has taught me well: When we don’t acknowledge our “stuff” it will always find a way to express itself, like water escaping through the cracks in a wall intended to hold it back; it could get ugly. And somehow, by ignoring what needs attention, eventually we find ourselves living out the same situations and dramas, over and over again—with a different cast of characters and slightly different story lines, perhaps—which aggravate our feelings of separateness rather than help us connect to the whole.

It’s sad but true—until we become aware of our patterns and learn what’s motivating our choices, we don’t stand a chance of understanding our Self or others and this can bring about great suffering. Sometimes we can’t do this on our own and we need the help of licensed professionals to work through traumas and issues of the past. But for others, going within to access our highest wisdom is a great place to start, and a wonderful habit to adopt from our bear friends.

So maybe we go in the cave once a week, or six times a year, rather than spending the entire winter in solitude; whatever works. But there, in the light of understanding, we can release the energy of hurt feelings, resentments, anger or whatever may be holding us back, and clear the space for new life to enter.

To be like the bear requires patience and trust. We must feel safe to enter the cave and know that we will emerge in the proverbial spring. And while there, we must learn to connect with our intuitive mind and the energy of our Creator, for this is where answers live and the solutions to our most pressing dilemmas can be found.

Bear medicine, indeed. . .

Legal Disclaimer: Remember, true intuitive messages are loving directives that offer insight and guidance for our highest good. Terrifying, debilitating thoughts or those that encourage you to do things that you know are inappropriate either come from manufactured fear or psychosis. If the latter please run, not walk, to your nearest psychotherapist’s office and do not enter the cave alone again.

By Melissa Johnson

This article first appeared in Colorado's Highlander Magazine (May 2009). Reprinted with full author copyrights and editorial permission.

How Does Your Garden Grow? A Guided Meditation for Creativity

Since posting my last article (Distilling Your Essence: A 7-Step Program), I have received a number of e-mails from readers asking for help with meditation. So I share with you this meditation technique that I developed for working with my creativity.

MED-I-TA-TION [med-i-tey-shuh n]. Webster's Unabridged Dictionary defines it as "Close or continued thought; the turning or revolving of a subject in the mind; serious contemplation; reflection; musing."

When it comes to meditation, a lot of emphasis is placed on emptying the mind and finding that place of absolute stillness within. But my experience has been that a mind devoid of thought is daunting and mostly impossible.

Think about it: Even the thought of not having a thought is a thought.

Some people find it easy to connect with silence or to completely empty the mind. Ultimately, I believe it’s more important to allow yourself the time and space to connect consciously with your thoughts rather than avoid the process altogether.

In this approach, I have experienced great success.

THE EXERCISE: HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW? This meditation is a combination of contemplation and creative visualization. Here, you are asked to focus your thoughts for a specific purpose but hold them loosely enough to allow for the spontaneous expression of the subconscious mind, where your seeds of truth are often buried.

Our objectives are these: (1) contemplate a specific dream, desire or goal that you would like to achieve, (2) connect with your intuitive or subconscious self to understand what may be blocking the fulfillment of your desire, and (3) creatively transmute the poisons of negative thoughts into healthy growth.

I encourage you to read through all of the steps below before moving into the meditation. Just get a general idea for where this is going and then make it your own.

STEP 1: GET COMFORTABLE. Find a comfortable place to sit or recline. So much of the meditation instruction encourages practitioners to sit a certain way, hold our hands a certain way, touch our fingers together in a certain way, while doing a host of other things. My early days of meditation were frustrating and anything but enlightening. While for some, rules and a defined structure may be comforting, for me, I find that too many rules turn me off and take away from my experience.

So my only “rule” of meditation is this: Find what works for you and never give up.

As for me, I go into meditation almost always lying down, with my head on a pillow, arms and legs uncrossed, and covered with a warm, snuggly blanket. Gentle meditation while lying in bed just before going to sleep often will spark creative dreams that bring solutions to my most pressing dilemmas.

STEP 2: B-R-E-A-T-H-E. Now that you’re comfortable, focus on your breath. Most people find it challenging to focus on two things at once, but connecting with the breath is a great way to slow the mind chatter. Like Rain Man, I find it comforting to count, so mentally I count on the inhale and the exhale, which keeps me focused and grounded in my breath.

Spend a few minutes breathing.

STEP 3: FIND YOUR HAPPY PLACE. Imagine that you are sitting under your favorite tree. (I envision myself sitting under an ancient Blue Spruce tree in my backyard.) While comfortably seated on the ground, imagine that you grab a couple of the tree’s above-ground roots lying on either side of your hips and fasten them around you like a seat belt. The roots are important because they represent the core—or root—of your experience, and they serve as a conduit for removing the obstacles to your creativity.

Spend a few minutes breathing under your tree.

STEP 4: AWARENESS IS KEY. In this step, we move into contemplation mode. Consider questions such as:

• What is my dream, goal or objective? What is my creative purpose?
• What skills or qualities do I bring to my endeavor?
• What am I lacking? What do I need to do, be or overcome to fulfill my desire?

You can focus on any question for which you want clarification but, again, don’t over “think” it. Try to let your subconscious mind reveal the subtleties of your situation.

Sit with these thoughts for a while. Grab the kernels of truth in a, “Hmmm, this is interesting” sort of way. Don’t judge what comes up. And don’t forget to breathe!

STEP 5: DISTILL YOUR CREATIVE ESSENCE. Now it’s time to turn your lemons into lemonade. To “distill” something means that you are purifying it, taking the negative or contaminated parts and running them through a cleansing process. That’s essentially what we’re doing here in Step 5 as we move into creative visualization.

As you sit under your tree, grab those thoughts of lack or negativity that block your creative path and imagine that you are sending them, one by one, to the root that is fastened around your lap. Visualize the fears or blocks going through the root and into the ground, where they are planted as seeds that then sprout all around you as flowers—the flowers of your dreams. Don’t over think it. The goal is to relax your mind enough to allow for new and helpful information to present itself.

Look around at your new growth and see what’s there. Do you see a solution to your problem? Can you extract even one idea that will help you move forward? Are some of your dreams ready to harvest?

Spend some time in your new garden and make a mental note of anything that may help you move in the direction of your creative dreams. And b-r-e-a-t-h-e.

STEP 6: WINDING DOWN. Now we work in reverse. Start by giving thanks for your fully-functioning intuitive self and your creative nature. When you’re ready, unfasten your root-belt and disengage from your position of contemplation. Spend a few minutes counting your breath before slowly bringing yourself back to the present moment. Wiggle your fingers and toes. Stretch your arms and legs. Slowly move your head around and, when you’re ready, open your eyes . . . relaxed, present and ready to make your action plan.

STEP 7: DREAM CATCHER. Immediately following your meditation, before you get busy or distracted with the details of life (or before falling asleep), take 10 minutes to write down your impressions from your session. Like recording your nighttime dreams, the information you receive in meditation is most clear immediately upon waking.

Disclaimer: Remember, if you hear “voices” telling you to do things that you know are inappropriate, run, not walk, to your nearest psychotherapist’s office and do not attempt meditation again.