The Skeptical Mystic

        I kept standing at the Hub, trying to will myself forward (or perhaps I should say backward) for yet another week. Was it stubbornness or perseverance? Eventually I had to admit I was not making progress. If I was too afraid, perhaps of another episode with the High Priest, then I needed a back door, an approach that would avoid or lessen the effect of direct confrontation.

          It occurred to me that I could split my awareness. Sometimes I could continue physical activities while viewing the action from outside my body. Of course I couldn’t use the technique with detail work, but it had its advantages. It significantly altered the emotional involvement. You are aware of yourself walking or crying or stomping around angry, while also watching yourself engaged in the activity. Part of one’s emotional awareness of the everyday world becomes diverted into the observation.

         Often the technique allowed an accurate assessment of a relationship or situation, since it would be seen from the perspective of a third person.  My problem---this was another one of these abilities I hadn’t used for some time.  I had recently tried short episodes of split-attention. I questioned whether I could maintain a split-awareness for long enough to cover an entire episode, and whether it was possible to split today’s awareness with that of Seeka, a high priestess who lived three thousand years ago.

         It turned out that the split-awareness allowed an incomplete recollection. I hit a stopping point where today’s logic prevented me from seeing yesterday’s reality. Fortunately (or unfortunately), the next day I was hit with an intuitive understanding of a minor detail. It so delighted me that I enthusiastically leapt back into the lifetime the following night, ignoring my previous concerns about general safety issues. This time there was no split-awareness, a very unwise decision.

        Long before Seeka discovered a secret room, my awareness blended that of the high priestess-elect and became inseparable. I became powerless to stop the episode from carrying through to its completion. Caught up in the beauty of a large crystalline head of the goddess, I found my third eye opening, found myself standing face to face with Sekhmet, Herself. My heart melted before such splendor, and I eventually passed out, overwhelmed by the bliss.

         The High Priest (upon discovering me in a swoon) had revived me, dragged out the details, then beaten me to a pulp for not following his rules and regulations. I could not understand the intensity of his anger or why I was once again being punished, only that this was more brutal than any previous beating.

          It is hard to explain how intensely real pain can feel when one is reliving a past life. I’d never been through anything remotely similar to this pain or the beating, not in this lifetime nor in the most intense nightmare. The worst part---this time, the ‘me’ that existed in today’s world was unable to break free of the experience, unable to force myself back to an awakened state. I fought to stay above the pain, then finally began a more desperate fight---to sever my connections with the body altogether. Death seemed far more desirable that a life so saturated with pain and misery.

          Realizing he’d gone too far in venting his anger, the High Priest quickly called in the other priestcraft for laying-on of hands. The first part of their energy work reached out to my higher body (which was desperately seeking to separate forever) and dragged me back, reconnecting me to a battered and bleeding body.

          I lay there with all my pain, listening to the High Priest convincing the other priestcraft (who still had hands upon me, pushing energy into my weakened body) that Sekhmet was responsible for beating her own high priestess-elect; it was the penalty for anyone who dared to look upon the goddess’s face. Through a mashed and bloody mouth, I attempted to deny this, but the High Priest was instantly down by my ear, whispering so others could not hear him, laying the mother of all guilt trips upon me. My heart ended up more broken in spirit, more pained than any physical beating he’d ever inflicted upon me.

          I struggled with tears and painful shame for some time before realizing I had pushed myself out of meditation. The awareness I was in my own room did not stop the tears. Anger rose up within me. The tears that streamed down my face were no longer tears of pain or shame but of anger.

          “Why,” I yelled into the night. “Why does every memory of this lifetime have to end like this?” The anger was not directed at the High Priest. I was only mildly surprised at that. I was angry at the memories themselves. I was tired of dealing with a lifetime so lacking in joy. Why was it so important for me to keep going back into these memories? What purpose was there, to keep pushing me through this again and again?

         I could feel the presence of spiritual guides around me. If they did not speak it was because I could find the answers myself. I resented their silence. Now I grew angry at my guides, my teachers.

         “Why do I have to go through this? What is it I am supposed to learn?”

         No answer. That meant I could find it easy enough on my own. Like it or not, they expected me to find the answer myself. All right then. What was the answer? Every experience in our lives could be used as a lesson, teaching us about ourselves and the way we saw or related to the world. Sometimes we saw the lesson clearly. Sometimes we drew our own conclusions, made our own rules to protect us in the future. There we were, thinking our rules would keep us from getting hurt again. Instead they ended up limiting and restricting our potential. In the long run they always outlived their need to protect us. They became guards instead of guardians.

          I knew all this but it didn’t make me feel better. The anger had turned cold and bitter inside me. “So what are the conclusions I’ve carried with me? What are my restrictions?”

          I snapped out examples, my voice harsh and sarcastic. “Reach for your potential, Seeka, but don't reach too far or you’ll get hurt? Use your talents, Seeka, but don’t venture in different directions or you will end up being punished?”

         Like a bubble, the anger burst. My God, that was the answer. That was the conclusion that had always kept me reaching and stopping, afraid of my own success.

          There occurred strange situations in my everyday life, twists and turns in psychic dimensions that made no sense in terms of my current life. These pointed to ancient Egypt , though not directly to the life I’d led there. Were memories of the High Priestess’s life once again bleeding into this lifetime? That would be a bummer, since it would mean I’d still left behind some ancient emotional scar.

         How weary I became, just thinking of the need to revisit that particular lifetime. Most lifetimes have a single event which (once understood and resolved) free one from a significant series of emotional blocks in this lifetime. How many times lately had I ended up back in Egypt ? I’d learned more than I wanted to know of Seeka’s life---the young priestess had been brutalized by the High Priest through much of her childhood, all in an effort to keep her psychic powers under his control. Surely, I’d seen and experienced enough to understand her plight, enough to let go of that life and get on with the business of living this life.

           Yet, I did seem to be stuck. I’d never had trouble before opening the third eye. If I was reading the signs correctly, my best and perhaps only hope of solving the third eye problem was to go back to Seeka’s life. Please, I whispered, let this one final regression put Seeka’s life to rest.

           I feel strongly that you should not go back into past lives if your intent is to search for a colorful or famous life. Your identity in a past lifetime is not going to pay today’s bills; nor will it impress your boss when you miss a dead-line.  If boredom, curiosity or a desire to improve your self-esteem is tempting you to try regression, do yourself a favor and forget the past. Think about the life you would like to lead, the person you would like to be, and then focus on how to change the things inside (or outside) yourself that keep you from living a better life.

          On the other hand, going back to distant lifetimes to uncover, to understand and to resolve emotional issues serves a definite purpose. It can provide help when you are unable to make headway solving problems, especially if---after a search of both current and past situations/events in this lifetime---you come up with no rational explanation for your reaction to current situations.

           I finally sat down to meditate, focusing on the High Priestess and the third eye. What memory stood out? How could I pull this memory into my awareness? Getting into past lifetimes is not a matter of projecting oneself back, further and further in time. The consciousness shifts and one stands at a hub with the past lifetimes spreading out like the spokes of a wheel. Once centered this way, one must focus on the emotions under examination; it is sensitivity to the fine details of overlaying emotional patterns that pulls one into the corresponding lifetime.

           So there I was, standing at the Hub. The next step would carry me...would carry me...nowhere. I couldn't take that next step. Fear gripped me and kept me from making that move. I tried to booster my confidence and force a bold leap forward. I couldn't move.

          I sat for a long time, breathing hard, trying to understand. The fear experience brought up memories of climbing the ladder to the high dive when I was a child. I am afraid of heights. I remember standing in line, and then climbing up the ladder until fear would grip me. I would stand on the ladder, knowing the only way down was to continue up and out onto the board, knowing that other kids did so with no ill effects, knowing that I had jumped before and survived. It wasn't the jump itself that was painful. It was conquer­ing my fear. There was that moment of wanting so badly to back out and knowing you couldn't climb back down. It was the moment of pushing yourself past the fear.

          This was my moment. I stood on the board, willing myself to take that first step, that one that would carry me past my fear. My will remained frozen. My body could not respond. I continued to stand, immobilized. When I could stand the tension no more, I backed out of meditation.

         The next week was spent building my resolve during the day, standing immobilized on 'the board' each night. There was a frustra­tion with myself that I couldn't get past the fear. There was a nagging concern about whether I really wanted to come face to face with something capable of stopping me so com­pletely.

          I posted a quotation by Anais Nin up on my mirror..." And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." That was where I was -- not even a turning point. I could not turn around anymore. I couldn’t run.

          I’ve evolved into a person who has little patience with anyone who turns to a spiritual life as an escape from life’s problems. To reach the deeper truths takes more faith, courage and persistence than whatever would be required to face the everyday world. If the mind itself creates barriers when it feels threatened by what is unacceptable, have you the courage to uncover whatever is necessary to make memories acceptable and accessible?

          I paused, wondering if I should be careful exploring a past that seemed blocked so completely. This Egyptian lifetime had waited three thousand years before it began surfacing, and I truly believe the timing was due to this lifetime’s emotional stability, to years spent learning a wide range of techniques for facing issues.

         If I was being guided in this procedure by spiritual teachers, then surely they knew how much I could safely handle. My own small voice whispered, “Ah, yes, and what about the times you behaved as a stubborn, bull-headed student, one who stumbled ahead blindly in her own determination, rather than following prudent advice from her elders?”

         I’d forced things to surface once before by undergoing hypnosis, and then found myself unable to understand or deal with the memory. There breifly arose the fear that I might be facing another such circumstance. More prayer. More searching for some edge or corner of the problem where I might nibble away at smaller, less threatening issues.

          TIme to get back to exposing my private journey.  I'd made the decision to see the Face of God, but had no idea where to start.  For all of one summer, I delighted in Buddhist meditations.  Each meditation seemed special and unique, with its own lesson or discipline. Not all of them involved Tara , but my favorite ones were with her.  Tara was different from Kali and Sekhmet.

         The warrior goddesses each had a softness that covered steel-hard layers beneath. There was always the feeling that -- should I be foolish enough to lash out at Kali or Sekhmet -- I would be the one injured while they sympathetically shook their heads at my painful lesson.

          Tara , in contrast, was immensely powerful but with endless compas­sion.  Were I to lash out at Tara, there was a feeling that she would absorb it all, emptying the negativity from me.  I would never be hurt, even by my own stupidity or imbalance, for Tara 's compassion ex­tended without limits.  This was the other side of feminine strength, the compassion and endurance that survived all trials and still gave self­lessly.

          For the most part, as with Kali and Sekhmet, I chose not to study books about Tara too closely.  I didn't want to be influenced by other people's expectations.  Instead I chose to wait until something oc­curred and then seek out explanations.

         I did know that Tara was represented in many forms.  Western religions may have a problem with different forms. To be truthful, the pantheism of the Hindu’s had confused me at first.  Not the idea that the Divine was without limits and all encompassing. That was acceptable to my past understanding.  But it took a while to understand the rest.

        Pantheism acknowledged man's inability to perceive the Divine in Its totality.  In the human state of consciousness it was easier to worship some aspect of the Divine, such as love and compassion, represented in a particular form.  This allowed the seeker to focus his/her love and devotion.  That was true even of Christianity.  Pantheism just extended the number of forms, each with specific qualities.

          Tara in her multiple forms provided seekers with a focal point for specific needs.  People went to Tara in her white form for longevity and health, to Tara in her green form to remove obstacles.  Tara in her red form represented spiritual liberation and purity of speech.  Black Tara represented emptiness, the removal of ignorance and illusion, and the pre-dawn of enlightenment.

         I assumed these colors helped alter the seeker's awareness in subtle ways that fine-tuned their connection to an inner aspect. I was surprised to find Tara herself changed colors in the middle of some meditations. In retrospect, the lessons changed as her color changed, but it would still surprise me.

         One night of meditation the teacher told us to meditate on the form of the Buddha.  We needed to become like this form, to feel ourselves in the pose of the Buddha, to feel the peace and harmony of the Buddha.  Does that identification seem egotistical?  I wondered if it was meant to help us identify with that part of us made in the image of God.

         I enter deep into meditation:  I visualize the way White Tara sits in the poster.  I place that image before me so I can imitate her pose. I try to imitate the look and feel of serene contentment and peace and unity.  She floats, still in the same pose, to a spot behind me. Then I feel her form slide forward until the awareness of her body overlaps my own body.  How different it feels.  There is a textural difference beyond what I can analyze and describe.  Peace and joy fill a cellular area, far more complex than what I had felt in my own meditations.  I feel her smile within me.  It is a total body consciousness of her smile.

         The poster image shows Tara with her physical eyes resting closed.  She has five additional eyes, two on the soles of her feet, two on the palms of her hands, and one in the middle of her forehead.  These spiritual eyes are open.

         I try now to understand and feel the eyes on the soles of my feet.  I have never thought of feet and hands as having eyes before.  I focus for some time, until I can feel them open.  It is a strange sensation.  A channel is opening up through the inside length of each leg.  Something pours through this channel -- a subtle form of percep­tion too foreign to identify.  I am just aware that it is happen­ing.

          I focus on the eyes in the palms of my hands.  They open slowly.  Again I feel a channel, a hollow tunnel running now from each eye up the arms.  Combining this awareness with my 'foot-eyes' is a struggle. It is a splitting of awareness and an expansion of body awareness that pushes my capacity to comprehend both together.  I am marginally successful.

          I relax this awareness to focus on opening the third eye. This part should be easy.  As much as I have not attempted this exercise for several years, it has always been relatively easy.  Gently, I open the eyelid. Well, I try.  It doesn't open.  I strain to force it open.  It might as well be glued shut.  I try again.  And again. It stays glued shut.  I pause, confused, then make one huge effort to open the eyelid.  Is the effort visible on my face?  Do others see my nose wrinkled, my forehead furrowed, and my teeth clenched?  No luck.  Back up, I tell myself.  Relax.  Let love and peace flow through the forehead chakra.  Relax and let the eyelid float upward on its own.  Nothing happens.

         Visualize a heavy stage curtain in front of the third eye, I tell myself.  Activity is taking place on the other side, hidden only by the heavy dark curtain.  Visualize the curtain being raised upward.  Nothing happens.

         Visualize multiple sheer curtains.  One by one raise the curtains so that as each one rises the barrier between my awareness and the activity beyond grows thinner and more transparent.  Nothing happens.

         I am ready to inwardly scream my frustration.  I force myself to back off.  I can not understand this blockage.  How could I lose what once came so easily?  Back away from the frustration, I decide. Think. Something new is creating this blockage. It's just a matter of finding the cause and confronting the conflict. In time I can undo the blockage. In time...

         Each night for over a week I programmed my dreams to find the answer.  I chanted, directing the energy to the third eye. At the end of two weeks I'd made no progress. Perhaps I just needed to give myself time. Maybe the next step required another experience before I could uncover the answer. I waited for some sign or lesson...

         I’ve been traveling a lot, which means a chance to get caught up on reading while on airlines or boats. David Berreby’s recent book, Us and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind, had some brilliant lines.

        "Doing science means accepting that truths are temporary—the best we can do for now, until more is learned. So when creationists say that evolution is just a theory, they’re missing the point. All scientific knowledge is "just theory," destined to be replaced. Creation myths don’t belong in science class precisely because they’re supposed to be the final, unchanging truth about the universe, and science doesn’t deal in that sort of knowledge...

         "...It’s part of the job of science to explain why you can’t trust what you are sure you know, and then to give you today’s best picture of what’s really happening. That picture is sure to change, but today’s version is useful right now. Truth and certainty and fact are not matters that endure forever. For knowledge to increase, they must be subject to the useful discipline of doubt."

        This is exactly the stance I would take on traveling the spiritual path. Our understanding of higher realities will always be limited by our current awareness level. The way we conceive our world, the very way we think, is different from the mindset of hundreds or thousands of years ago.

        A mystic reaches out for a higher level of understanding, knowing that time and effort is required before the level can be integrated into everyday life.  Having finally established a level of higher understanding, a mystic should be reaching again, willing to throw out old assumptions if they prove inadequate to advance his or her search for a yet higher and more encompassing truth.

        As a mystic, I resist the tendency to focus on one interpretation of holy texts, which themselves were considered interpreted wisdom (from divine sources) centuries before.  I do not deny that some truths are eternal, but our ability to understand those truths can and does change, as personal and world history advances.

        Why should one fear scientific discovery if one truly believes that beneath all things is an all-encompassing divine? If God is in everything, then we should be willing to re-examine any and all concepts which appear to be in conflict. Physical facts are what they are; it is our interpretation of them which must advance if we are to grow in awareness, comprehension and wisdom.

        I see clinging to religious dogma in the face of scientific discoveries as a lazy approach. Where is the faith that would keep one looking deeper, confident reality itself is not in conflict? Scientific discovers should be accepted and we should be searching deep within those truths to uncover spiritual reality.

        My husband, Randy (a diehard materialist), and I have long discussions on this. That science can explain the workings of the universe does not lessen my faith. Science is great for looking at small slices of reality. The human mind does not lend itself to describing or holding in a state of comprehension what I would call the highest realities. That I cannot easily describe the whole is a limitation of the linear method our brain uses to define or explain small fragments.

         Acutely aware of how difficult it would be to describe higher states of consciousness, I am nevertheless confident they are real and I have experienced them. After much self examination, I believe they cannot be explained by co-incidence or hallucination, residing outside the ability of the brain to manufacture a similar experience on its own. Can I prove this to someone else? No. (Neither can I prove the exact way I feel sadness at a particular event, though other people may be able to empathize somewhat, based on similar experience.)

         I think materialists, who work on probabilities, can ignore the anomalies that lay at the borders of everyday experience. That someone in a laboratory cannot reproduce the same experience does not invalidate what has happened in my life. (Consider that statement a thumbing of my nose at materialists.) That some religious authority back in history has defined how to live a spiritual life should not hinder my personal quest to create a spiritual life. (Consider that a thumbing of my nose at fundamentalists.)

         Oh, I do try to be a good mystic. I try to be tolerant and open to the choices other people make. I have no problem using spiritual writings to guide my search. But, the minute I believe I cannot stray off a path set down by previous generations, I lose the chance to discover new frontiers and to move human understanding forward.

          I don’t want to knock a belief in scripture or religious tradition. I know this type of belief provides meaning in a restless and confusing world, ritual and communal gatherings provide structure and stability to the lives of millions (probably billions) of individuals. However, curiosity seems to be so basic a human quality, that if I believe in the divine, then this must also be part of the ‘plan,’ that human nature would continually seek to understand the world and one’s place in the world.

          Come on, people. We are living in the twenty-first century. Scientific discoveries won’t go away no matter how much you point to ancient scripture, because scientific discoveries are explaining physical realities about the world around us. If you believe God created the world, why wouldn’t you marvel as we untangle the beauty and order (sometimes the seeming randomness) of creation? If that does not match the divinely inspired writings of other centuries, perhaps you need to search these writings at a deeper level, to see if---at today’s higher level of awareness---we might find new interpretations or understandings of ancient explanations.

         As David Berreby states, "For knowledge to increase, they [truth and certainty and fact] must be subject to the useful discipline of doubt." This should be the path for a dedicated mystic.

        To see the face of godforms was only one type of experience; it did not count in my mission to ‘see the Face of God’.  I could remember moments of feeling one with the universe, being one with God, touching the Divine, etc. (I’ve spoken of some of these before).  Any of these experiences should have made me a content little mystic, willing to settle down into the harmony and comfort of my inner knowledge.

        Yet I was not content. Some inner urging kept pushing me forward, demanding some level of awareness not yet experienced. ‘Seeing the Face of God’ would not mean involvement with Christ or Buddha or Krishna.  It would not be any godform that would signal the end of my search; I wanted to see the Form of the Formless.  Only that experience would satisfy my spiritual craving.

        Gads, what hubris.  Any sane person would be content to have had a single experience and here I was casting aside handfuls of intense spiritual encounters.  Could I be so ungrateful?  In truth, I wasn’t really that insensitive.  Each experience had been precious and wondrous; I cherished the memory of each and every encounter.  Were it possible to exchange all traces of just one of these previous encounters to obtain a single new experience, I would have agonized, unwilling to mark any as unworthy of holding in my heart.  Yet, there remained an unquenchable thirst to know more of the Divine, the Absolute.

         To see the Form of the Formless is often defined by religions as being an impossibility; Humans cannot grasp the totality of the divine.  Some myths tell of humans being burned to cinders by the sight of the divine in its true form.  I was already aware of the Jewish story of rabbis who died or were driven insane when finally allowed to see the true form of the divine.

         Intellectually, I wondered how one would see something without form? If you could perceive something before you, beyond your awareness, even in some invisible form, would that not remove it from the category of formlessness? How would you know you had perceived something if the human mind contained no images or references with which to record the experience? There would be no ‘inside versus outside’, no ‘this versus that’, there could be no division between ‘the form and the formless’.

        I had no idea how I would find the path to this goal, nor how I would know if or when I succeeded. There may be warnings about attempting this spiritual journey, but there were no guidelines.  What a strange goal—to throw away the contentment of all my past encounters, to throw away the traditional life of a mystic, just to seek an unknown, one that most likely would never be discovered.

        I think this may be one of the hardest parts of a spiritual journey.  There is a tendency to stop and rest once you’ve reached a milestone.  To continue moving forward in higher realms means throwing away many of the techniques and theories you relied on to reach earlier insights. It means going back to the mind-set that you don’t know anything. You move forward in darkness, resorting again to blind faith to uncover something beyond your comprehension.  When I hit those pivotal points in my life, I can never decide if it is arrogance on my part that cannot accept the blessings already given, or courage to turn and step once again into the unknown.