Читать книгу The Quickening - Gregg Unterberger - Страница 12

“Tones and sounds will be the channel through which the coordinating of forces for the body may make for the first of the perfect reactions . . .”

Edgar Cayce reading 758-38

One way in which the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines the word “quickening” is as an entering “into a phase of active growth and development.” It is a fourteenth-century word that shows up in the King James Version of the Bible in Psalms as a prayer in a moment of desperation: “quicken thou me according to thy word.” (Psalms 119:25) Basically, “Hey God, hellooo! I’m dying here. Throw me a bone. I need some help, and it better be soon: I’m talking pedal to the metal.” Curiously, I was doing some research into the readings of the American psychic Edgar Cayce who also talked about a quickening of the spirit, a sudden acceleration or growth spurt.

You may have heard of what is referred to by psychotherapists as a “breakthrough session.” A quickening may be but another name for this term, which is used by therapists to describe when their clients suddenly take a giant step forward on their healing journey. The inference being that after a certain amount of volition is built up, unconscious resistance to an uncomfortable truth or clarity is “broken through.” A little “death” takes place of an old subjective reality that makes room for a new way of thinking or being.

After the dream of my Prius plunging over the edge, I was propelled into another stage of my spiritual growth. My relationship was at an end; I was powerless to stop it. I had to die a little . . . no, I had to die a lot that day. I died to the idea of becoming that woman’s husband. I died to the idea of a future with her. I died to the idea that since I was a therapist or spiritually awake that I could save the relationship. Not that I wanted it, or welcomed it at the time; to the contrary, initially I fought it. Eventually, the dream led to a return to therapy, a willingness to reach out to others for help in a way heretofore unknown to me and a re-thinking of what I wanted in a partner at this stage in my life. In the therapy business, there’s an old saying that, yes, the truth will set you free, but not before it sends you to hell first.

It was a pretty toasty time for me for a number of months.

Sadly, most of us go along the spiritual path slowly, if with any speed at all. More often, we stay largely asleep until the next catastrophe slaps the hell out of us and—if we are lucky—we awaken to the next level. No doubt you could point toward moments of your own where life dealt you a violent change in circumstances that knocked you off your feet, only to find yourself suddenly propelled forward (a life-threatening illness, the sudden loss of a loved one, a crisis of faith in your belief system). This is Saint John of the Cross’ “dark night of the soul.” Neurosurgeon and mystic, author of the best-selling Proof of Heaven, Dr. Eben Alexander, has called these moments, “the gift of desperation.” These catastrophic awakenings might be called spontaneous quickenings. We didn’t choose them, at least not at a conscious level. They happened to us.

Happily, some quickenings may be ultimately exceedingly positive, while at the same time, life-changing. The American psychologist Dr. Abraham Maslow wrote at length about peak experiences, which he defined as euphoric, ecstatic experiences filled with a deep sense of unity and interconnectedness. Maslow believed that, if integrated, these experiences have life-changing, long-term effects. However, it seems to me that these transformative experiences are seen largely as either a result of painful life circumstances or the grace of God—either of which is seemingly beyond the control of the individual.

Now, you may be saying, not so, there are spiritual disciplines that with practice can lead to these quickenings. To be sure, yoga, meditation, tai chi, among many other forms, may gradually lead to these kinds of awakenings.

But when I was fourteen years old, I studied transcendental meditation. I was the youngest in my class, surrounded by hippies and intellectuals in a college classroom. I think everyone was touched by my dedication. The dudes with the long hair and the love beads told me that if I learned to meditate I would see heavenly lights and hear the angels sing. Frankly, that is why I took the class. I wanted to hear God speak. I wanted colors and lights and spiritual revelation. But here was a typical meditation session from inside of fourteen-year-old Gregg’s head:

“(Repeating the mantra himself) Om, Om, Om, Om, Om, Om, Home, Home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play . . . Range . . . a range is an oven . . . I wonder what Mom is going to cook for dinner?”

I kept going to my TM® class anyway and dutifully received my sacred word, my mantra. But the angels weren’t singing and the lights weren’t lighting and apparently God was taking a meeting with the Holy Ghost or something, because I sure didn’t see Him.

Now, I know that meditation is a spiritual discipline and that it takes time and effort to catalyze those peaceful moments, the “gap between the thoughts” as Deepak Chopra likes to call them. I also know that learning to watch thoughts is essential to developing mindfulness—being fully present in the moment—which I value very highly. I also know that for me, breakthrough experiences came only after years of meditative practice, and even then only sporadically. I can hardly endorse these more typical approaches if you want to move forward rapidly.

Now, before you send me hate mail, I am not suggesting that you give up meditation or yoga or tree hugging or whatever spiritual discipline you ascribe to. I won’t give them up either; if you must know, I am especially fond of Sequoias. And by the way, Ponderosas, though scratchy, are quite nice, and you needn’t worry, their bark is worse than their bite.

But I am inviting you to consider that in this day and age, technological advances and psychological research are leading us to more than just a better Xbox, brain scan, smartphone, or anti-depressant.

What if there were new approaches that could greatly enhance your spiritual awareness? What if there were breakthrough techniques that could save you years of meditative practice? What if I suggested that the traumas of your childhood that block you from your full potential might be resolved in months, not years of therapy? What if I told you that you could consciously recognize your karmic issues from other lifetimes? What if you could resolve issues directly with loved ones that have passed on, without the aid of a medium? What if you could meet Jesus or the Buddha directly? What if you could experience the oneness of the Universe? What if I told you that you could touch the Face of God? What if I told you that the kinds of experiences that saints, poets, and geniuses have had are yours for the asking? What if I told you that you could leap ahead on your spiritual journey into an entirely new way of being in the world?

It boggles the mind.

But I have seen it. I have lived it, and I have watched countless clients and workshop participants have these kinds of experiences. They are the result of specific techniques, deliberately applied in specific settings resulting in real, demonstrable life changes. These quickenings are not wishful thinking. They are reality.

By far, the three biggest impediments to utilizing these techniques are as follows:

1.People are ignorant of these techniques.

2.People believe they are too good to be true.

3.People believe that profound spiritual experiences can only be catalyzed through years of hard work.

Let’s address these one at a time. First, the answer to ignorance is education. The book you hold in your hands can be the doorway to opening your mind to these accelerated techniques. And, I urge you to go beyond the cursory explanations I will offer and go directly to the source materials, which I list in the back of this book, to get a deeper understanding of these breakthrough modalities. Or get on Google (or get your grandkids to get you on Google), and let your cursor go wild. You will be amazed at what you find.

Second, these techniques offer such radically profound results in relatively short periods of time that they certainly appear, at first glance . . . okay, even at second glance, to be “too good to be true.” I understand. Can you imagine what a breakthrough the typewriter was after pen and ink? Are you old enough to remember your first word processor? Maybe you recall the first time you heard about a voice-recognition system that could convert speech into words on a page.

I remember being a very young boy and sitting in a restaurant with my mother and one of her friends and hearing about a microwave oven for the first time. My eyes went wide! Hamburgers cooked in three minutes? Plates don’t get hot in them, but the food inside does? Impossible. It sounded like a magic trick; too good to be true! But, of course, it wasn’t. It was simply new technology. These modalities are, too.

Arguably, Edgar Cayce offered in one reading, “there are no shortcuts, [spiritual progress is made] line upon line, precept upon precept.” But surely, we can agree that some paths are faster than others. You can get to Los Angeles from New York faster if you don’t go by way of Tampa, Fla. One way to account for how a quickening can be accomplished is to look toward a concept called gauge symmetry.

Imagine for a moment, that you are at the foot of a very steep incline. There are two paths before you: one is a very steep ladder that goes straight up the side of the mountain; the other is a series of gently sloping switchbacks that zig-zag back and forth, first left and then right, with mild inclines, all the way to the top of the mountain. Which path should you take?

You say to yourself, on the one hand, the switchbacks look a little easier; they won’t take as much energy and effort. On the other hand, don’t they say that a straight line is the closest connection between two points? Doesn’t that mean that the ladder is the faster path?

It is, but there is more to the story than that. As any physicist will tell you, setting aside minor calculations like extraneous friction, either path takes the same amount of energy. Fill in the variables in the equation, and you will see that you can exert yourself more on the ladder for a shorter period of time or take the switchbacks and exert yourself less . . . but over a longer period of time! So, it may be that engaging in a conscious quickening takes every bit as much energy—expressed as faith, commitment, and emotional vulnerability—as more traditional approaches, but like the ladder, it gets you there faster!

So, for those of you who are looking for a “magic bullet,” a pill you can take to make you a Tibetan monk overnight, may I remind you that these are accelerated techniques, not presto-chango David Copperfield tricks. But they can save you time. A lot of time.

Finally, people believe that hard work is required to “earn” revelatory experiences. This is very much a Western mindset—the Puritan work ethic applied to spiritual growth. As children, our good behavior got us rewards from our parents and teachers. Our dedication and loyalty at work (theoretically, at least) earn us a raise. At first blush, it doesn’t seem fair that God, Our Father, would grant us a free pass to the front of the line, since Dad, Our Parent, told us if we didn’t behave he would yell at us or ground us until we reached adulthood.

There is no free vegan lunch and the like.

I understand. Let me be clear, without question, spiritual discipline has its rewards. But millions of people have had spontaneous spiritual experiences that have changed their lives apropos of nothing. How do we account for these breakthroughs? Most of us have had the bootstrap ideology hammered into us, even when it comes to revelation. But one doesn’t have to look any farther than the New Testament and the story of Saul “seeing the light” and becoming Paul on the road to Damascus to discover that transformative experiences can happen unbidden to the so-called “undeserving.”

I think some people associate this with God’s grace—a special gift. Who is to say? Once I saw a painting of a beautiful woman, gazing toward heaven, flanked by angels—cherubs, actually, floating by each of her ears. They seemed to me to be ready to whisper the secrets of the Universe, to sing the song of all of heaven. There was only one problem.

This chick had her fingers in her ears.

Perhaps we are no different. Perhaps angels are whispering to us constantly, but we are too distracted by the temporal world and our noisy egos. I want to believe that if we go seeking God that She will only be too happy to respond! A Course in Miracles, a powerful spiritual pathway lauded by teachers such as Eckhart Tolle, Marianne Williamson, and Dr. Wayne Dyer, reminds us that “there are many answers you have already received but have not yet heard.”¹ “Knock and the door shall be opened,” Jesus tells us. Maybe we just have to take our fingers out of our ears and find the right way to knock.

This book is a result of researching, training in, and practicing these new breakthrough methods—what might be called spiritual technologies—all over the country for the last fifteen years. I have seen them work for thousands of people both in individual sessions and in workshops. While some techniques have been around for decades and are rooted in years of research, others are relatively new. Many are well established and have extensive track records. All have been developed by leaders in the fields of psychology and spirituality. Each has tens of thousands of hours of clinical observations by trained professionals who would testify to their potential. And, yes, some of these modalities have their share of critics. In my estimation, many of these criticisms are simply uninformed naysayers, a bit quick to dismiss something out of hand. And yes, some critics have valid points. But all of the modalities in this book have been demonstrated to be effective—over and over and to my satisfaction—as having the potential to help you leap ahead on your spiritual journey. For my clients and workshop participants, the proof is in the pudding. They would tell you, almost to the number, that they are very different, happier, more spiritually awakened people for having tried these approaches. More than a few would tell you their very lives have been saved.

So obviously, spiritual sweat and tears are not, part and parcel, a prerequisite for spiritual awakenings. According to a 1997 poll commissioned by U.S. News and World Report, an estimated fifteen million people have had near death experiences.² (We have no figures for how many did downward dog daily as a way to “earn” these experiences.) An estimated forty percent of Americans³ believe they have had direct contact with loved ones who have passed. But even these transformative moments can be seen simply as “the grace of God,” a gift. Perhaps they are. But the danger in this thinking is that we simply have to wait around, a-hopin’ and a-wishin’ that the Divine will make a little time for us. It seems to resign us to a God who is somewhat fickle and who sometimes bestows grace and sometimes doesn’t.

Could it be that the convergence of these techniques are, in fact, a reflection of God’s grace? Dr. Helen Shucman, the “scribe” of A Course in Miracles, was given information by her own Inner Teacher, a voice that she described as Jesus. The Voice suggested that the world situation was devolving at a dizzying pace (imagine that!) and that a kind of “celestial speed-up,” an acceleration in global consciousness, was called for. In fact, according to the Course, “the miracle is a learning device that lessens the need for time. It establishes an out-of-pattern time interval not under the usual laws of time.” These same miracles, sudden shifts of personal clarity from fearful thoughts and bodily identification to loving ones, filled with the recognition of our Unity with the Divine, had the ability to abolish the need for certain intervals of time “within the larger temporal sequence.” In other words, one way to think about these miraculous quickenings is that we can literally leap ahead in time, thanks to an intense, but relatively brief instant in which we download an entire piece of cosmic jigsaw puzzle and understand the bigger spiritual picture. Interestingly, the work of Edgar Cayce and the Course, among other “special agents” were seen as a part of this speed-up.

“Though the way may seem long,” Cayce observed, “a moment in the presence of thine Savior is worth years in the tents of the wicked,” (Edgar Cayce reading 705-1) (an important concept to remember, not only as you engage your spiritual journey, but also the next time you go camping.

I am asking you to consider with an open mind that there might be specific pathways, modalities, and technologies that allow us to move toward these quickenings more directly, without years of spiritual practice. And yes, maybe a sincere willingness to engage in these new approaches is the faith as big as a mustard seed, that yields these beatific, life-changing experiences. I have seen countless clients and workshop participants without backgrounds in metaphysics or spiritual practice have transformative spiritual experiences using these modalities. These gifts from God are yours for the opening. We might call them intentional quickenings.

And for Christ’s sake, keep doing your yoga or Om Sweet Om, if that works for you. Let’s get beyond an “either/or” dichotomy and embrace an “also/and” approach.

Imagine for a moment, that the next step on your spiritual journey is an old dead tree you have to cut down. If you want to take on the task with a nail file, you can do that. It will take a lot of time, perspiration and, if you are like me, maybe a bit of profanity. When you are done with all the angst, you can be very proud of yourself—your sweaty shirt, bloody knuckles, and all the effort you put into it. But, if that’s not fast enough for you, get an ax and a good pair of leather gloves, and you can fell that sucker in a matter of minutes and save money on Band-Aids. Or, if you like, get a crosscut saw and a friend, and you can take it down even faster.

But I’m from Texas, y’all.

I’m gonna give you a chainsaw.