What might it mean to live an "EHEerly life"?
Living
a life more and more consciously open to, listening into, living from one's
identity as eternal spirit temporarily embodied, rather than
assuming to be a physical person trying to be more spiritual, is one way
to express this. Every
corner you
turn, every hill you crest, sometimes in the moment of a single breath
is a new and unexpected gift of meaning to be discovered that
continually reconnects us to the Good, the True, and the
Beautiful. The more profoundly we are changed by our EHEs, the
more accessible is this way of seeing and being in the
world.
I
don't mean to imply EHEers simply lived on the far end of the kite
string of their lives, floating
in the ethers. This glimpse or greater awareness of the
Eternalness of our nature is accompanied by compelling irrepressible
bristling buzzing relentless unremitting sense of connectedness
within the Whole [Oneness] and of purpose. Living out of that
awareness is very grounding and makes life so much more meaningful and
alive and present to and within us and all that we do and sense and be.
Also associated with this EHE consciousness shift, comes an
apparently natural, "spontaneous
development of moral consciousness and reverence for all
life," in Rhea White’s terms.
We
have generally taken it for granted that morality is learned from others
and may vary considerably. But
in these experiences, we discover, as one, a fundamental sense of
principled knowing and integrity that EHEers as a whole seem to
recognize, as natural and orienting as the mystery of how homing pigeons
find their way back to their place of origin. I
am not aware of any studies that have looked into just how universal the
expression or specific values associated with this EHE-based moral
sense, except for its being recognized as “a given” associated with
this transformational process. Also,
how can one
not feel increased reverence for all life when, in whatever way, heshe
is blessed with an expanded awareness of the “Larger Life Reality”
and one’s true being and/or the Divine?
These characteristics do not
appear to require 'effort' as one
might expect, to learn or to rehabituate to; they come out of one's
experience of this nature. They
are irrepressible, as
natural as breathing. An
EHEer may be aware when occasions arise that pit an old behavior against
the new, but if the EHEerly outcome is genuine, this is pretty much a
non-choice, even of one stops to reflect on this in the moment.
I think of it as, you can’t not make the better choice, the
choice that ‘beckons’. And
by the way, this does not imply someone is pedestal material now –
mistakes still get made, growth and learning are an endless adventure.
But it does seem to result in the slightest shift from the
perceived struggle to ‘be perfect’ to the celebration of the
perfection in all things, regardless of appearance.
The EHE
aftereffects
demonstrate well how one’s reality filters under these
conditions are going to catch so much more spiritual sustenance,
insight, clarity of direction and meaning, intuitive knowing and
connectivity within the all-dimensional relational web of life, and
including more synchronous events and flow.
This is all the more so as you allow and invite this shift, this
growth spurt in consciousness, and is less so or will become less so if
you ignore it or cut it off in some way.
Assuming you consciously support this development, whatever your
focus of consciousness may be builds and grows as a way of one’s being
aware and engaged in life, and it builds and grows you!
Exceptional or exceptional human experiences may come and go, but
the richness of meaning and how these reflect in your life build on each
other and are yours forever in the sense of what you allow to live
within you as a result.
The
Significance of the EHE
One lingering concern with this web project has been, on the one hand,
to convey the world-sized importance of exceptional human experiences
– of the need to make a conscious effort to be open to Spirit and to
let It in. Elaine Pagels,
says this so beautifully:
[W]e
have a latent capacity within our hearts and minds that links us
to the divine -- not in our ordinary state of mind but when this
hidden capacity awakens [us to] . . . modes
of consciousness susceptible to revelation.
And for the
sake of our Earth and our Humanity, of similar import is the need for us
to seek out safe, appropriate ways to share our EEs
and EHEs and the effervescing insights and redirections that
spill into our lives as a result, so we all can recognize ourselves on
the same page, we could say, in this growing new
consensus reality. As we learn to appreciate more fully
this natural human capacity to be touched and even transformed by the
Ineffable, along with our creative and individual ability to discover
greater meaning and purpose in our lives as a result, intolerance of
others' differences will no longer be an issue. We thus are able
to appreciate the extraordinary giftedness of this aspect of our human
condition, the uniqueness of each person. That natural
reverence for all life that results increases our protective and
pro-active concerns to care for and safeguard all living creatures, and
the creation as a whole, and so EHEers frequently become passionate and
committed care-takers within ecological and / or sociological fields of
interest. Many times, people
speak of “a calling” along these lines, which they feel was presaged
by their EHE/s.
In Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future, by
Peter Senge and his
collaborators, these opening lines
conceptualize our Human potential for transformation and growth to
become all that we can be, both singly and as a species.
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It's common to say that trees come from seeds. But how could a
tiny seed create a huge tree? Seeds do not contain the resources
needed to grow a tree. These must come from the medium or
environment within which the tree grows. but the seed does provide
something that is crucial: A place where the whole of the tree
starts to form. As resources such as water and nutrients are drawn
in, the seed organizes the process that generates growth. In a
sense, the seed is a gateway through which the future possibility of the
living tree emerges.
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The seed in this case can also be said to be a perfect metaphor for the
Exceptional Human[izing] Experience toward the same purpose and outcome.
In essence, the EHE " is a gateway through which the future
possibility" -- the
MORE -- of the living essence of our eternal Self can
flourish. With the essential nutrients, such as our choosing and
committing or surrendering to the continual unfolding of this internal
Shift, as we love it into fruition, the seed Experience naturally
"organizes the process that generates growth" on the basis of
the meaning and purpose we receive from the original moment of epiphany
with and within what Senge, et al. call Presence.
Here is part of their description, which feels more like a verb
than a noun:
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…
deep listening, of being open beyond one's preconceptions and
historical ways of making sense. We came to see the importance of
letting go of old identities and the need to control and, as Salk said,
making choices to serve the evolution of life. Ultimately, we came
to see all these aspects of presence as leading to a state of
"letting come," of consciously participating in a larger field
for change.
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And
Beyond the EHE
On the other hand, we must
move beyond any fixation on the experience itself, the heart-skipping
electric glimmer-glow of the gift wrapping used to get our undivided
attention, in order that we may open ourselves to receive the benefits
of that gifting experience. In
essence, it’s not the experiences per se, but the meaning and purpose
we derive from them [see aftereffects],
the depth from which they / their meaning and purpose come to live
within us and through us that is
the ‘HUMAN’-izing Transformation.
But the original FELT Experience, the blueprint can and will
continue to orchestrate the remainder of our lives in the natural
direction of that MORE, if and as we allow this.
It was the precedent that set the stage for . . .
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All that growing and connecting in new ways. For example, going back to the metaphor of the seed: imagine an acorn eventually being separated from its parent tree, only to take root in quite a different way in its relational existence from what it knew before.
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Drivenness, purposefulness, the stretch to bring ever more fully into being the MORE -- such as the seed becoming a young tree, limbs and leaves of the reaching out in all directions, the green, growing edge of growth spurts.
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As the tree continues to mature, it begins to produce its own nurturing fruits / seeds to ensure a sustainable future not only for itself, but through is natural participation in the give and take of life as a whole.
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One last comparison to the new stage of development, post-Shift: The very breath that breathes the whole of nature as one, in which the growing tree participates -- giving out oxygen crucial to other life forms, some of which in turn give out carbon dioxide, crucial to the tree. We discover our natural place in the large scheme of things in a whole new way. |
What an astonishing difference to realize metaphorically:
The barely relational Acorn -- the self
-- intensely packed with the blueprint, the DNA, the potential of
becoming MORE, and its next stage of development as The deeply,
integrally relational Great Oak Tree -- the self/Self [the acorn grown
into the tree is not lost] -- the fully realized living embodiment and
expression of the blueprint, the MORE.
And here’s a thought:
imagine being an acorn, coming into being and developing over a
couple of comfy seasons, being nurtured with plenty of sunshine and
moisture, being a part of this great tree.
Then one day the wind severs you from the tree and blammm!! you
are now cut off from all the glory of life in the way it was so familiar
to you day and night. Now
you are this little thing on a hard ground that threatens to decompose
your sturdy, glossy shell. You
appear to be rotting in the shift of season to cool and colder, and
leaves and snow and whatnot begin to cover you.
No more swaying in the pleasant breeze above.
And your innards begin to change altogether,
some going one way, some pulling in another, and your cap is long
gone. .. In this moment as a distinctly anthropomorphic species of
acorn, can you possibly imagine that you could become another Great Oak,
that that is your destiny?
In Saved by the Light, Dannion Brinkley
gives
us a glimpse of our hardly imagined great- treeness:
Once we begin to really understand that we are not from Here, we are from There, that we all chose to come Here and were chosen to come Here, that we were somebody and something long before we came Here, only then do we comprehend that we are not poor, pitiful, stupid human beings. We are all great, awesome, powerful and mighty spiritual beings! What then really becomes important is realizing the true purpose of our lives.
Beyond the
Experience – Two:
I have long suspected that
if you got born in a physical body, even if you may not remember such
things, you have had experiences of this nature.
So whenever people say they have never had an exceptional
experience, I have this gut feeling they just do not remember they
really have had probably a number of Experiences!
I used to be a biofeedback therapist.
For those who may not know, biofeedback is the use of technical
instruments to provide a kind of mirror or amplifier for activity going
on in the body. It’s a
powerful learning modality, because as you train yourself to recognize
finer and finer nuances of change, such as in muscle tension, you can
learn to control what you are monitoring with the skill of an athlete. A
blood pressure cuff, thermometer and bathroom scale are examples of “biofeedback
machines,” which you can observe on a regular basis and make choices
to modify your behavior.
With the blood pressure cuff, for instance, you might check your
blood pressure hourly and notice it goes up and down.
Using some tried-and-true techniques, or through simple
observation, you can learn to control blood pressure, either to raise or
lower it.
In actual biofeedback
therapy, more commonly monitored modalities are things like muscle
tension, heart rate, and skin temperature.
Attunement to body activities like these is for most of us very
poor, unless we work with a bodymind discipline like hatha yoga or
meditation, relaxation training – or biofeedback.
I might work with someone initially to assess tension in their
shoulders, where it’s already evident they have a lot going on
reactively in this area to various types of stress.
Heshe may be telling me about what is stressful in hir life
lately, and sure enough, the tension would be substantial while they are
talking or thinking about it. I
can’t tell you how many times I’ve encouraged people to “relax,”
to which heshe replies sincerely, “I am relaxed.”
Yet, one or both of hir shoulders would feel like rocks and be
half way up to hir ears. If
‘normal relaxed’ registers 2 on the machine, what heshe feels as “relaxed”
might be something like 10 or even 20 or more.
But after a few biofeedback sessions, heshe begins to make some
progress, all of which is contingent on one thing:
heshe learns to feelingly recognize hir body’s tension, and
before long, even telling the difference between a 2 or 4 reading is
easy, and moving the shoulders back to a 10 or 20 will feel like
obviously enormous tension. It’s
all a matter of consciousness and intention.
The same can be said for
potential exceptional experiences. It
just takes cultivating greater awareness about what you are looking to
experience. For instance, a
prime time to bring yourself into that “mode of consciousness
susceptible to revelation,” is at that small juncture drifting between
the states of sleep and full alertness.
The more regular and prolonged your attention, the more you begin
to notice things suggestive of a shift in consciousness that takes you
to altered states. This is
where you can appreciate that every day we all move in and out of
remarkably different states of being and awareness.
So it’s not like we don’t have the opportunities.
And some people are so mis-oriented,
they just do not recognize one, even if it hits them over the head.
An example of this is highlighted on this page, a man who was
totally unfazed by a full-blown near-death experience.
But as Elisabeth Kubler-Ross says, sooner or later we all “get
it” once we pass over into the other world, if not before.
And by the way, some consciousness researchers who study our
sleep patterns say we routinely, as a stage of our sleep cycle, go
out-of-body, even though most of us by far do not remember it.
Other Ways of Shifting Without Having an
EHE
Whether you have or have not
memory of such experiences personally, you can be just as affected by
others' EHEs or even [what may be to the experiencer merely] anomalous
events as if they had been yours! That certainly was the case with my
mother's disclosure to me of an experience she had soon after the
passing of her youngest son. I
have sometimes wondered if that experience influenced me even more than
it did my mother!
One other avenue of such transformative shifts that is quite
common, short of an actual EHE, is reading of others’ Experiences.
Actually, this may be through any media for which you are a
bystander, a reader, the audience ..
The point is, it’s another’s story, not yours.
Yet you may so profoundly identify with the other person or even
imaginary being [it doesn’t have to be non-fiction -- e.g., the
Transcendental Poets, Hermann Hesse, Rabindranath Tagore, The Celestine Prophesy,
Jalal Al-Dinn Rumi, Zenna Henderson, Kahlil Gibran, Issa [haiku!],
Novalis, Ranier Maria Rilke, Zen koans] that
this in itself Shifts you!
Certainly first and last, your own spiritual disciplines and
practices and support community in which you can give and receive mutual
encouragement toward this kind of internal transformation. Gopi
Krishna was a very ordinary person of the Hindu faith who did meditation
routinely, much as Westerners might say daily prayers.
He says he was not a particularly religious man at all.
This started when he was 17 years old.
Seventeen years later, one day he had an utterly other
experience, that of Cosmic Consciousness, brought on by the raising of
the formidable Kundalini. He
says he was not looking for this in any passionate way, although the
daily prayer that accompanied his meditation said something about
leading to this type of experience.
This has its mirror reflection through Experiencers in every
religious and spiritual tradition. And
of course, reading, studying whatever of these great literatures and
sacred texts that most attract you.
But also, seek out the contemporary EHE stories of others.
Immerse yourself in many and varieties.
Remember what Abraham Maslow
and his students discovered?
Over time they realized the more they studied peak experiences,
talked about them, listened to others’ stories, the more they
themselves began to have such experiences.
Go read the quote about the originally highly skeptical Colin
Wilson and how his research into such things totally changed him [see
Quotes – search for Colin Wilson.]
I can't recommend enough that you immerse yourself in Rhea White's
work,
an invaluable resource, because it is a brilliant, inspired, mature
lifework of passionately engaged study of the significance of these
incidents, not only as personal historic events, but more to the point
as processes to nurture, cultivate, meditate on, etc.,
throughout one's lifetime in order to benefit from them ever more fully.
Openness, the held intent of being more awake as a spirit being, and
processing for the treasures of meaningfulness and purposefulness are
the essence of an EHEerly lifestyle. Incorporating an active
engagement with these experiences, such as using White's suggestion of writing
an EHE Autobiography, can help to expand your sense of what
it can mean to be more Human in the way White and William James infer.
She certainly practiced what she preached. Over a period of 2-3
years she concentrated on writing her EHE autobiography and, by the time
she slipped across the Bridge to Forever the last time in February 2007,
she had accumulated well over 2000 pages of experiences that deepened
her sense of meaning and purpose!! And
by the way, many or maybe most of these were what you might call
'ordinary, everyday experiences', but seen through the lens of her
seasoned EHEer consciousness, they began to fit together in patterns and
stand out individually with meaning in relation to the wholeness of her
life in ways she had not even anticipated, fully reflective of what David
Spangler refers to as the sacralizing of the seeming
ordinariness of one's life.
Like turning on a faucet that hasn’t been used in a while, when
she first tried to remember anomalous or exceptional experiences in her
life, not much came to mind. But
the more she worked with this, the more started flowing out of the
spigot, and the more experiences that she remembered ‘out of the blue’,
the more she began to see how all these experiences fitted together
synergistically, adding even more depths upon depths of meaning to her
life! To hear her talk about
this, you couldn’t help but be swept up in the wonder and blatant glee
of discovery with each recovered experience, which also fed the process
of new experiences finding their way into her daily
existence.
Here are a few more nudges toward the realization of a more
holistic 'EHEerly lifestyle' regarding spiritually transformative
experiences as integral to your personal and communal life:
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1.
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Be open to and welcome such Experiences – anomalies/EHEs;
but go beyond merely having them as an objective [beyond shallow
‘wowie-events’ thinking].
They are gorgeous gifts, kind of like exotic wrapping
paper with frills. You could say, all fun intended, any
such event that takes your breath away gets your total
attention! But
the REAL Gift is inside. You
have to get past the wrappings to find it.
Live with the event/s, dwell on it, listen into it with
your whole being, meditate on it, savor the meaning it has for
you. It is like a
seed planted; the more you dwell on, water and nurture it, it
will grow in you into whole new depths of meaning and
purposefulness throughout the remainder of your life if you
allow or encourage that to happen.
As more such experiences come to light from past or
present, just as you might work with dreams, dig for how they
all relate together and within your life as a whole; utilize the
EHE
autobiography process, journalize, act them out;
where appropriate, share them.
Always the fullness of the Gift is derived from their
being enabled to live and express in and through
you.
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2.
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Cultivate a continual, attentive acknowledgement, recognition of and
receptivity to the spirit world
[kingdom/quingdom]
which is, as the Gospel of Thomas' Jesus insists, in
two ways always present to us:
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It
is within us, within the heart [what Andrew Harvey calls
"kingdom consciousness" or divine love
consciousness; see Stevan
Davies' Gospel of Thomas Annotated &
Explained; Harvey wrote the foreward.].
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We
are always in its very midst all around us .
Both
of these are reiterated through the work of many, many
pathfinders who are EHEers, e.g., Rhea
White, David
Spangler, Rudolf
Steiner; also distinctively emphasized throughout the
Gospel
of Thomas from the Nag Hammadi find].
But there are many such resources.
Delight in that which most connects for you!
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Another way to say same thing [see
article comparing the two]:
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Each
fosters and reinforces the other.
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3.
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Commit to character building as a regular practice or personal
challenge
and so sharpen your focus to be more of who/what we are as a
spirit being temporarily living in an earth body suit.
Create or utilize various disciplines or rituals, initiations
with the objective to embody ever more fully this great Self,
always with an aim toward an increased sense of meaning
and passionate purpose, personal development, and soul
deepening. Make this
positive, creative, engaging, rewarding for you; if you are
using this to beat up on yourself – that is a sign you need
another avenue with which to explore this.
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4.
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Take your inner development / giftedness out into the world, into
community
in two ways:
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As
appropriate, find ways to share this inner wealth with
others, such as sharing your spiritually transformative
stories among others to reinforce and find common ground and
languaging to bring it more fully to life together. [EHE
study groups – see www.ehe.org;
at some point in the not-too-distant future, I will add this
activity in a much bigger way to this web project. But you
don’t need me or Rhea White to do something with this.
Form study groups with your friends, etc. Share with
us how that goes, what you learn.]
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Find
more ways to bring it into your habit of thinking / feeling,
behavior, values-in-action in your relationships and daily
encounters with others.
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5.
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Find ways to make this ever more immediately alive for you within
and without
and for IT to live through you throughout the ordinary unfolding
of your days and nights. Form
habits of thought / feeling more conducive to receptivity to
Spirit, being actively engaged with it throughout your daily
life; keep an ear to the ground for ever-more meaning derived
from all your life experiences.
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6.
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Find
at least one other or a group of others to practice and work toward
this together with you. This
way, you can give each other encouragement
and strengthen each other's commitment. John
Heron wrote a fantastic book for this very purpose
-- Sacred Science. He calls this
collaborative work "co-operative
inquiry." [Also see "lived
inquiry."]
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If and as we cultivate our living out of our true nature as
spirits temporarily embodied, including inviting Spirit into our
moment-to-moment, year-in-year-out lives, indeed, Spirit becomes more
fully and brilliantly present in our lives, both within and without.
Sometimes this is further seeded, you could say, by the EEs /
EHEs that occur. But as we
live more consciously, intentionally, habitually into this
being-present-to and –within the reality of spirit and as spirit, it
could be that all life becomes [for the experiencer] a singular
unfolding EHE, constantly and exquisitely full of new insights and
bringing us more into living out of the infinitely creative and
empowered Self that is eternal, which Rhea White calls the All Self that
includes one’s “little I” and the “Ultimate I.”
This also seems to smooth the way in terms of outer events;
things flow, we seem to move and dance as one with eyes wide open, with
less stumbling and less dropping out into spells and pits of our own
darkness where we forget and shut out the light, simply by forgetting
ourSelves! What an
interesting thought that life itself, as a person experiences it, could
be or become a fully, ongoingly potentiated EHE, with less interruptions
from the dark pit experiences, until eventually, we no longer take dips
into the pool of despond, except to help someone else step out more
fully into their own Light!
Living
consciously in this way is my sense of what David Spangler means by
"incarnational
spirituality." In one
article by this name, Spangler says,
[I]ncarnational spirituality is concerned with both our unique
particularity--it is person-centered--and the universal
beingness we share with everything else in creation. It fosters
both personal identity and an ecological awareness of our
interconnectedness and co-incarnational relationship with the
rest of the world. It calls us to honor our own individuality
and the individuality inherent in others and stresses the twin
conditions of freedom and compassionate accountability.
Incarnational Spirituality acknowledges and engages with
transpersonal and transcendent levels of being, but it puts its
primary emphasis on the spiritual resources emerging from our
incarnate lives. It sees our embodied, unique, personal self as
a source of spiritual energy and presence, manifestation and
blessing. It seeks to draw out that spirituality within our
everyday lives in a way that honors our personhood, our
individual sovereignty, and the sacredness of physical
existence. It explores in practical ways how our personalities
can be the focus of emergence for our spiritual and co-creative
power.
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Whether you label it an 'EHEerly life' or "incarnational
spirituality," or something else, it all comes down to a sustained
and sustaining awareness of the relational ecology of being within
oneself and with all life. One is like the particle, the
other like the wave, the qualities that can characterize light.
Each so constantly transforms into the other that it is impossible to
separate them realistically. The EHEerly life and incarnational
spirituality both come from and lead to the ultimate Humanizing
awareness of the sacredness and Oneness of all that is -- and that
Oneness is us appearing to be momentarily encapsulated in these bodies.
What can possibly be more healing, wholeness-making, connecting and
exhilarating than a life consciously intent on this magnitude of purpose
and meaning and being?
