Let it Flow

Let it Flow

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
—Carl Jung

Let it Flow

My initial fungal-induced teachings of mood and emotion led me down a path of investigating what emotion and belief do to our existence. Having written extensively already regarding the original teachings of Jesus, I had an immediate spiritual comparison with the scientific discoveries I also found. The correlations, evidence, and teachings from both were quite shockingly similar as I have already shared. Whatever the reasons and wherever my special insight came from, I was ready to conclude then—and still now—that emotion has the single most profound impact upon our existence in how it shapes our reality. And this emotion is deeply tied to the voices or stories that we tell ourselves in our minds.

Despite concluding this, I continued only with head-knowledge for a while. Practice is much harder. I understood how it all worked in principle, but I continued to struggle with how to use the knowledge. I partook of my travels to learn all the more, but my lessons dwindled as I tried to write from this head-space. The voices said I had enough understanding for now and that I simply needed to do the work. My lessons became rather direct every time: do the work. Do the work. That’s all I would get. Despite having so much head knowledge, I still hadn’t a great clue on how to do it. I knew that we ought to cater our moods, I knew music could play a big part, and I knew I was hearing something that I was not sure went beyond my own imagining. I wanted more to prove the voices true or false rather than doing any actual perceived work. What work was even real?

I considered giving it all up. What did I know? This was nonsense. I didn’t believe any of this stuff anymore. I spent 9 years devoted to science and disowning all things spiritual. But the positive voices continued to coerce me: You don’t have to believe to try. Consider it like an interest of yours. You are indeed interested and you have every right to investigate the things that interest you without believing them or being ashamed.

This made sense to me. Sure, why not? I’ve always loved investigating various beliefs and worldviews. And why not also experience them with an open mind—especially since something was definitely happening here? Even if it was my own internal voice and nothing magical outside me, it was still a deeply personal and useful introspection which was guiding me toward healing. It was worth something even if it was just me.

I set out to begin the work. I did so clumsily without a clue on how to cultivate my own moods. I began listening to Enya non-stop as my only known source of feeling love. I joined spiritual groups on Facebook but tried to keep anonymous because I still wasn’t sold on anything and I didn’t want to betray my analytical mind just yet. What would my friends think? What would I think? Engaging in such groups proved far less useful than one might hope. Sure, there were good people, but like any other group, people were egotistical, vain, and caught up in their own superiority. Being anonymous and asking questions also invited spite.

I decided to watch instead of participate. I gleaned what I could and ignored the rest. They spoke of many things like chakras, Reiki energy healing, drug-induced ceremonies like Ayahuasca, God and the entire universe as a consciousness, channeling, and even aliens. Many things resonated strongly with what I had learned from my own personal “ceremonies” and all I had known from the Bible, but many things seemed too far out there or even contradictory. How is one to parse truth from fiction in all of that?

I went to a psychic just to give that experience a fair trial. I paid significantly for a highly rated psychic to give the attempt the best chance of success. I figured if voices do indeed speak to people, psychics could certainly be real. And if I had some special mission, she should certainly be able to let me know. I made sure to have a secret code word that she could reveal. I asked for nothing specific initially, and I avoided any form of leading her while remaining entirely open. I simply received whatever came to her.

She opened quickly by calling me a writer. I confirmed this saying only that I do write all the time. Not a bad start. This hit the nail on the head for what I perceived as my next step and it matched my past. She could have looked up my previous book ahead of time, but I didn’t have evidence of that so I chose to suspend doubt and continue.

She said I should keep writing, not to force it, and to let it teach me. She saw my writing as being tied to purpose, and that my next book would be more spiritual and metaphysical in nature. I had not yet informed her that I was working on exactly that nor did I tell her that I wrote non-fiction specifically. I questioned what my previous book was, but she essentially dodged the question and asked me to reveal it. At the time, this bothered me a little that a psychic wouldn’t know, but quite honestly, I’ve since learned how misunderstood that expectation is.

She told me how my life would be transforming between the ages of 42 and 44 and then asked my age: 42. She said the first two years will be building, growing, and understanding, and that what I am building will become clearer around the age of 44. She repeatedly called me a teacher and an educator, one who likes to share knowledge, but that my biggest critic is myself. Too much self-criticism. She said I focus on what is wrong and I too readily take personal responsibility for all that happens. I need to have compassion on myself.

Now, I recognize some of these things as “Barnum Statements” where they would possibly apply to many people. How many people don’t struggle with self-criticism or focusing on negativity? Still, it was on brand for me and not many people take on the mantle of educating and writing non-fiction books.

She could have looked up that I was a writer, she could have guessed that I had a second book in the works (though it was 9 years ago since the first), and given that I was talking to a psychic, she could have guessed it would be metaphysical in nature. She could have looked up my age and used that ahead of time as well. But I must note that to assume all this would be to accuse her of being a fraud without any evidence. Further, guessing can only get one so far before they make blunders. She did not really make any at all.

I was disappointed that she didn’t state my secret code, but I never did ask and she doesn’t get to choose what information comes through. I was also saddened that she claimed my writing was already doing my mission instead of proclaiming I had something more profound to accomplish. It was hard to reconcile. If these voices were external, why would I hear something profound and she would act like my writing was enough.

As an open skeptic, I took the information as potential but with nothing solidly proven. She mentioned a struggle with my boss which seemed a bit of a stretch at the present moment and which was certainly a Barnum Statement. Oddly, that did unexpectedly become a thing months later. She mentioned that my relationship with my wife was strong and solid which is perhaps not a Barnum Statement as most people struggle and I was not even wearing a ring. I would think that to be a terrible guess, but it was entirely accurate. She mentioned that we might have a struggle coming which seemed like nonsense to me given that we had multiple times concluded we had truly made it. Oddly, that did come about as well.

While it often sounds shady to a skeptic to make things fit when not stated with explicit dates and facts, the means by which information is received is not as clean and obvious as we’d like—as my own voices expressed. Sure, that sounds like a copout, but that doesn’t mean it is. At the same time, this is exactly a trap that many people fall into with more discount-psychics if they’re ready to fit everything they hear.

It takes a lot more introspection, experience, and study to comprehend why it is this way and that is perhaps by design. A skeptic should reserve judgement, not default to it. Even now I can’t say for certain that my voices are anything beyond my own internal musings or that the psychic did more than amazing guesswork, but it honestly doesn’t matter. When it’s all filtered through love and hope rather than dogma and authority, it leads to the best scientifically-proven outcomes.

I continued on with my exploratory journey. Things like Chakras and energy healing still sounded like pure snake oil to me even though I was hoping it might all culminate with powerful healing like Jesus performed. I simply figured if people could heal, it would be the most profound discovery ever made and people would not be hiding on street corners selling it for profit. But channeling seemed interesting: the idea of beings speaking through another person. It’s like a psychic experience, but a little more direct. It seemed similar to what I thought I may be experiencing but perhaps with a cleaner channel of information.

Mayim Bialik, with a PhD in neuroscience and much acclaim as Amy Farrah Fowler from the hit comedy series The Big Bang Theory, has a podcast called Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown. In it, she interviews many people in regard to metaphysical claims. Through her, I found many interesting people to follow and read up on such as Thomas Campbell with his Big TOE, Bashar as channeled by Darryl Anka, and the Zs by Lee Harris. Some ideas seemed interesting and resonated greatly while others seemed perhaps shady.

While I refuse to take any one person as an authority, investigating the channelers proved quite interesting. They were presumably channeling spirits or even proclaimed aliens which not only merged my interests, but they were saying many of the same things I had concluded about Jesus’ teachings and more. I tried reaching out to them before I realized just how big and popular they were. I had no idea they had large followings and entirely booked schedules. How had I never heard of them before? This caused my faith in writing this book to waver quite a bit.

Channelers already exist, they hear far more clearly than me, they have significant followings, say all that I am saying myself, and then there is me. My grandiose belief that I’d be changing the world was clearly off target. If that was off target, then what else was off target? Not only would it not be me to change the world, but clearly my ideas weren’t even working. They had huge masses of followers and we still have no kingdom? And why is it so expensive? They teach all the right things yet charge extreme prices for the privilege. Why, why, and also why?

So many questions left me frustrated. It all had to be fake, I concluded. What alternative was there? I turned to my internal voices for guidance. This is not a one-man show. Even with the charge you were given, it was not intended as some singular source of God’s second coming nor does it rely on you. You can indeed play a part in this if you so choose and it will be far more fulfilling and rewarding than anything you have done before. Not rewarding in physical terms, but emotional terms—the most important kind of reward.

As you know, all these things were occurring outside your awareness. We need more people stepping up and sharing. Even if other people are doing it already, that does not mean they should do it all. There is plenty of work to be done in this field. As for the cost, what makes more sense: having a regular job to make money while supporting people on the side after being drained and depleted, or simply making the work the actual job? Sure, ideally it would not cost a thing, but we do not yet live in the ideal world. That has yet to come. And this enables all the more people to be served.

This all made sense and I agreed somewhat reluctantly. But why isn’t it the ideal world yet? Where is the power? All I received was a promise that it will come when it is time. I would have asked about why the different channelers sometimes have discrepancies, but I already knew why: the messages filter through humans and come from multiple sources. Much like humans, not everyone agrees about every little thing in the spirit world. It is as ridiculous to expect them to be cohesive as it would be to expect every human to answer questions the same way on Earth. Our personal experience and discernment is required to be our guide rather than any other human—just like when reading human works.

The answers satisfied me to some extent, but it left me humbled. I was hoping for more significant fanfare and an exponential ushering in of power. Instead, I have to sit with this for how long and simply hope? You can always go back to what you were doing if that’s what you prefer. I considered for a millisecond what that would mean. No thanks. I love the idea of growing and feeling yet again. And I love the idea of helping others to do the same. This isn’t some ego-driven desire, this is simply who I am. I want to help. But I must first claw out of my own physical world of nonsense and emotionally heal myself.

As I continued to do the work of listening and abiding, I began to feel energy within my body much like a vibration. This persisted regularly throughout my day and it was strongest in the morning. I eventually tried to find any diseases matching my symptoms but did not find any. The closest non-spiritual assumption I could find was that maybe I was now getting so relaxed that I could feel my blood flow, but even this is pure speculation.

Throughout these vibratory days, I found my eyes pulled to the clock at the exact same time nearly every day for a week. The time correlated with my birthday. When I saw it, it resonated with what the psychic had told me. These were my years of transformation. It banged in my head that this birthday would be different. I would rarely even remember my birthday in the past let alone hope something grand for it, so this was interesting.

I decided to take the week of my birthday off just in case something great would happen. As soon as I had requested the time off, I received an impression that I should go on a retreat which spanned the week. I looked some stuff up but only found weekend retreats or things I was not particularly interested in. I began realizing that I needed to get more in connection with my body so maybe I should do something that mixed yoga with spiritual practices over a week. I searched and searched but found nothing. I decided it would have to come to me rather than me to it and I just waited.

A couple days before my vacation started, I was beginning to feel like I hyped myself up for nothing. No retreats made themselves known and I guessed I’d spend the time working around the house. But that’s when something popped up on my feed: someone I had never heard of before with a week-long retreat right over my week. It was quite late on the announcement, but I took a look at what it was.

Paul Selig, a channeler of “The Guides” offered a mixed Yoga and channeling retreat. In Hawaii. My brain lit up: this is the one you’ve been waiting for. I told my brain to calm down and at least let me investigate this guy a bit first. His message, the channeling aspect, the Yoga, and my desire to reconnect all seemed to fit wonderfully. And so, I informed my family I would be leaving for a week in a couple days to go to Hawaii. Alone.

My wife was a bit unenthused and a tad jealous, but she was supportive and wished me well. I bought my tickets and began watching more videos of Paul Selig’s work. I realize now, it was a good thing that I saw and bought immediately. After a few more videos, I wasn’t quite so sure I wanted to do this anymore. Voices began to dissuade me. It’s nothing new. You already know all this. Look at all these strange people. Look at how he channels. You’ll be bored to tears. It’s a waste of money. Nonetheless, I had already purchased my tickets so I went.

I packed up and headed out a couple days later. My first night there, I woke up with such a strong energy vibration that I had never before experienced. It startled me and by reflex alone I sort of snapped myself out of it. I continued to feel the vibration but the intensity diminished as I continued through the day and even the whole week.

That week was indeed profound. I went in quite skeptical still and perhaps left with more questions than answers, but I got to experience community for the first time in forever. I got to share my ideas, concerns, fears, and all my crazy ideas and philosophies and the people there didn’t hate me for it in the slightest. I was with people who cared and listened. This was such a strong shock and difference from my experience so many years ago with Christianity.

Paul’s Guides spoke of all the ways things were changing in our world. They spoke with the language of Christianity that I was familiar with which was both a turn-off and an encouragement. I wasn’t crazy after all. Or, if I was, at least this time I wasn’t alone.

During question-and-answer times, the guides would speak to us in the audience. I struggled for a while to figure out what question I would want to ask. Both fortunately and unfortunately, any question that I wanted to ask, I felt I knew the answer to ahead of time through my own internal voice. Why ask a question that I already had a feasible answer to? But I couldn’t let the opportunity pass—this was expensive and I probably wouldn’t do it again.

I really wanted to ask if they could simply tell me my passphrase but I did not want to come off as a closed-off skeptic. I was an open skeptic. I wanted to qualify why I needed to hear them say my passphrase—to explain myself. But my explanations were never very good. Why did I need the assurance? What’s the overall outcome? If they can’t tell me, I’m going to assume it’s all fake and stop… what? Stop pursuing love? Stop pursuing my own edification? What did it really matter? If they could tell me then I’d take them authoritatively? They wouldn’t want me taking them authoritatively. They are confident in their truth, but they are also very direct that we are not supposed to simply sit at their feet and consume the words that come from Paul. There is no reason to provide my answer and prove anything. It’s a bad question.

Back to the drawing board. What did I want to ask? I decided on a variation of “what is wrong with me that I don’t get to see the magic that others claim?” but as I asked the question, I got my answers personally. It came out as statements disguised as questions.

I said, “I've been trying to figure out how to ask this question and I honestly don't know the right way to ask it. I think, I don't trust myself, maybe? I think I have abilities but I think I keep blocking myself? I think I've been hurt in the past and I can't get over it and I don't know why.”

Paul asked for clarification, “Abilities like psychically speaking, or…?”

“Yeah, I heard voices, I still hear voices, but I block them and I hear very negative voices as well,” I sputtered out before emotional energy overwhelmed me. I laughed in confusion at my lack of composure.

Paul provided some back story regarding his own experience with voices. He called them his committee of voices and many were just as negative for him. He assured me that as dark as it seems to have gotten, that’s how much light we can hold.

He then tuned in to my higher self, “You do say, ‘am I allowed, is it safe?’ It’s a bit of a fear of being taken over. I don’t get that is going to happen. You do need to learn discernment—not every voice is supposed to be listened to.”

Paul then asked either my higher self or the guides, for what I needed and continued, “He needs to learn to trust himself first and foremost. That would actually be pivotal in learning to trust the other. To be developed in a group would be useful so you’re not operating independently as if on an island which means you have support.

“I hear you do have abilities and you don’t know what to do with them. I’m also hearing that your shielding yourself was necessary for a while.” He continued with personal anecdotes to explain how common this is for psychics.

“The guides are saying the young man doesn’t need to be so frightened of himself and that he’s already loved. He doesn’t need to earn it. He’s already being mentored, he just has to begin to take notes. Do not seek to be psychic, just allow your innate abilities to be expressed. When voices are speaking through you, ask if they’re from the light. It’s a simple question. And you can move into discernment through that.

“And they’re circling the word ‘heard’ as it’s not really heard—it’s energy. I hear the young man is safer than he knows. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be.” Paul began explaining more regarding his start as a psychic and how some of his abilities didn’t come until later. He only began to see visual things when he was 48.

He goes back to speaking with my higher self, “You are saying ‘I need to understand this is all part of the process. It is not a pass/fail life. You tend to think of life as if it’s something you pass or fail at.’ It doesn’t work like that. It’s all opportunity. This is all part of it. You’re not supposed to get it right. You’re saying, ‘it can happen, but are you allowed?’ Everyone tell this guy he’s allowed.” The whole room shouted, “You are allowed!”

While some of this is certainly repeating back what I had told him, a few gems of note are embedded within. Fear of being taken over was actually quite significant for me. I had a couple bad experiences with my explorations and they continued to haunt me as I tried to seek deeper. Secondly, he knew I was operating on an island without any community. Third, he knew that my style of hearing voices was different than his own—that I was receiving energy input rather than words. And fourth, he picked up on my very engineering-oriented and past-Christian-life perspective of pass/fail. I didn’t want to do the “wrong” thing. I didn’t want to join a cult or else reject the truth. I wanted certainty and didn’t want to fail by picking the wrong direction.

Before I could truly digest all this, I was only slightly impressed. I didn’t feel like I got my real question answered, but I still couldn’t even articulate it. I wanted to know if I was somehow special—not out of ego, but out of confirmation that I’m hearing things correctly. Was I really led to jump on a plane last minute and be here? Do I really have a significant adventure ahead of me? Sure, he told me I had abilities, but what if he was just a crank himself? While everyone around me seemed to nearly worship the guy, I was still unsure if I even believed any of it. I still wanted something more profound.

I spent far too much of that week debating validity and trying to guess how it was going to change my life while looking for a sign. That was exactly my recurring problem. I wanted assurance but assurance is never provided. We have to go with the flow and never know much beyond our next step. Faith, as it seems, is always so damn important for some reason. But why? Over the course of listening to Paul’s channeled texts from The Guides among many other inputs and introspections, I may have a theory about that.