My nearly ongoing state of bliss all began with a blinking light bulb.
It was in 1998 that I was feeling a case of the blahs. Not outright depression, not even feeling unhappy. But more of questioning "Why am I here?" And "Is this all there is?"
Those types of things. One of the factors that likely prompted such was that I was living the ultimate dream of my life, owning a stable of racehorses via a large partnership. I was only 37yo. Now what? I had no larger dream to look forward to, but for things to merely continue as they were.
I was also writing Starsky/Hutch then and publishing my own fanzines, while continually frustrated with the hypo-thyroid nature of the fandom, as far as readers having much interest in interacting with authors. Plus, the internet was taking all fandoms by storm, and suddenly all the emphasis was on super-short stories, and there was a whole different mindset than what I was accustomed to.
Is this all there is?
I had grown up with the idea that religious people were stupid and backwards. I would say we were raised atheist, but my father took offense to that word the one time I mentioned it, and had me look up "agnostic" in the dictionary. Still, I couldn't equate that new word with the rancor that filled his tone whenever religion was brought up. (My father was studying to be a Methodist minister in young adulthood, but he had problems with his voice and was told not to talk for two years. Then he met my mother, and she took credit for "straightening him out" as far as belief in anything other than hard science. Oh, wait, she very much believed in aliens and UFOs -- she's always been an ongoing mass of contradictions.)
Though I did not believe in God, I was fascinated by the supernatural, and always believed in ESP, life after death, and all that. I read lots of books on those subjects as a pre-teen. If one wants to declare that I therefore couldn't be considered an atheist, I'm not going to argue.
One day in 1998, when I was questioning my existence and "what's it all about", I was watching Larry King Live, and his guest was psychic James Van Praagh. I felt a renewed since of wonder as Van Praagh took calls from viewers and connected with dead relatives. Oh, how I wished I could do that. My father had been dead some 15 years, and I had no interest in connecting with him. But I very much wished I could connect with my older brother, Brad. He had committed suicide when he was 18 and I was 17. While we weren't close by that time, we had very much been so in our younger years. His suicide wasn't devastating to me or anything like that (that's a whole 'nother story), but I wished I could communicate with someone like him, whom I was certain could see all of existence from a broader perspective. Perhaps he could answer my question, "Why am I here?"
The next night or two, I was doing bookkeeping work, or perhaps some writing, and I was once again overwhelmed with questioning the point of it all. So much so, that I was sniveling back tears, even as I acknowledged it was rather overblown to be crying when I wasn't unhappy about anything. Thinking back to the Larry King episode with Van Praagh, I wished so, so, so, so much that I could somehow get in touch with my brother.
The light in the hall blinked off and on.
I watched in astonishment. Was the light bulb loose? If so, why did it blink at that particular moment?
I'm not sure how long it lasted, or what I did after that. I don't recall asking questions out loud. But I did feel better at the thought that perhaps my brother was letting me know that he was around.
A day or two later, I got a step ladder and checked the light bulb in the hall. I could turn it in order to tighten it, so it had definitely been loose. Was it sheer coincidence it had started blinking at the particular time when I felt such an overwhelming desire to communicate with my brother? And if had been blinking because of being loose, why hadn't it ever blinked before?
I had lived enough of life to know that sitting around pondering something didn't do anything. Could I maybe see a local psychic who could communicate with my brother?
Looking under the phonebook under "psychic" or "metaphysical" didn't bring any results. But somehow -- perhaps through the young world wide web -- I got in touch with someone in Denver who did psychic readings and held classes, though the former wasn't a "talks to the dead" type of thing.
Anyway, long story short, I had a psychic reading that was intriguing, and I was on board to take meditation classes. I ended up doing that for the next few years. They started out being a fun "anything goes" type of thing, but gradually insisted on a more specific way of viewing the world, so I eventually was satisfied to let that go and do my own seeking.
In the midst of taking classes, I realized that I believed in God, which I found very difficult to get used to, lol. Of course, not the "bearded man in the sky" God, but the existence of some universal consciousness we're all connected to.
I was also exploring a lot of spiritual books, and the one that resonated most was the Conversations with God series. Their outlook made sense to me. That we're all "making it up", in terms of what we experience, and that, yes, even Hitler went to heaven. So do all the child molesters. Nothing is disconnected from All That Is. If I had to sum up the point of the original three books in one sentence, it would be that we're all here, on planet Earth, thinking we're not-God, to give definition to God. Because one can't know what it is to be tall, unless they know what it is to be short. One can't know exhilaration, unless they've known despair. So, one can't know what God is, unless they have a concept of not-God.
That all made sense to me. CWG also presented the idea that a thought can never be destroyed, but it will join others like it, gaining more momentum. And that we all are in control of our own point of view. We can't change what has already happened, but we can decide how we view what has happened.
Most importantly, perhaps, that God is incapable of judgment. God only responds to thought because thoughts create. In fact, that's all God wants from us, according to CWG, is to create. A mere thought creates. Via creation, God knows itself, and we are all part of that knowing.
That was something I could wrap my head around. I was here to create? Cool! Yes, I could do that. What a lovely assignment for one's existence, especially when there is no judgment about the "goodness" or "badness" of the creation itself. The "Why am I here?" question went away.
In 2008, I was as intrigued as many when the documentary "The Secret" was released. A year or two later, after discovering Abraham-Hicks, I felt "The Secret" hadn't done enough to emphasize the importance of emotion in How It All Works.
How ironic this all was. I'd grown up with all sorts of messages that emotion was something to scoff at, the idea that head was "supposed" to rule over heart and similar "wisdom". Turns out, emotion is the single most important thing of all. It shows how near or far we are to whatever it is we want to create.
This road to having all my questions answered began with a blinking light bulb.
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