American Mystic - Movie Review

When you self-identify in greater society as a mystic, as I do, you get 1) a lot of weird looks and 2) a few great perks. Recently, the perks have been outpacing the looks. I have guest lectured on mysticism at several local distinguished universities (and they didn’t throw me out!) and a request to do a review on my blog for the indie documentary, American Mystic. Being an amateur movie buff, I jumped at the chance for a free home screening of a film subject near and dear to my own contemplative heart.

            Alex Mar, in this fascinating close-up, follows three young adult Americans who traverse their own unique paths as mystics-in-the-making. All have to learn to cope with, among other things, a society that largely marginalizes the spiritualities of non-traditional religions. You learn this goes far beyond getting weird looks by others, however, as the three narrate the personal meaning and struggles their counter-culture journeys bring to their daily lives.

            Kubali, an African American young man from Rochester, NY, is the first we meet. He is studying to be a medium and a healer within the spiritualist church of his upbringing. Ever since he was a child he could hear, through his gift of clairaudience, his name being called by spirits. Chuck is the second to whom we are introduced. A Lakota Sioux, raised as a Christian on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, his plans in his teens to be a priest are interrupted when he is introduced to native spirituality. After a drunken crisis, he decides to change his ways and pursue his heritage under the guidance of the local medicine man. The third and final person we learn about is Morpheus, a self-identified witch from California. Growing up she spent much time in the woods, and after the Santa Cruz earthquake found herself spontaneously going into trances and chanting. Just as with the first two, she underwent training—Morpheus with a local witch in the faerie tradition while she worked at a pagan shop.

Trees, nature’s mystical beings, provide a unifying visual theme for the film as they center in ceremonies for all three narratives. We see Kubali and the spiritualists at a gathering place in their retreat center in the woods, called “inspiration stump” where mediumship is practiced and honed. The piercings Chuck undergoes during Sundances allow him to hang suspended from a tree by his own skin, allowing his spirit to fly free from his body. For Morpheus, her rituals take place under trees and in forest glades, surrounded by them. Throughout the interweaving of the stories, each self-narrated, we learn how the need to make ends meet keeps the three functioning as a part of society even while their main life’s purpose is oriented away from the hustle and bustle and toward the spirit-world.

            American Mystic is a hauntingly courageous look at those who live close to “the other side,” trying to integrate that awareness in the midst of an increasingly materialistic and technological society.

Occupy Your Heart: On being a catalyst for systemic transformation

The Occupy movement continues to highlight the grave inequities and injustices in our economic system. There appears to be enough energy in the United States and even around the world to keep the ground swell going for awhile. Good. It will need a lot of sustained energy to make a difference over time. It will also require a societal heart transplant.

Systemic counseling for group transformation defines two kinds of change: surface change and second-order change. With surface change the motto really is “the more things change the more things stay the same.” Surface change does nothing to fundamentally alter the system, the underlying order of a group, large or small. It’s like putting on new clothes over a still unwashed body. The stink will eventually become all too apparent in time.

Second-order change brings systemic change—a real, fundamental re-ordering of the structures that sustain groups, be they mental, relational, financial or other forms of power infrastructures in societies. Giving women the right to vote was a second-order change. So were civil rights laws. Whenever there is a redistribution of power, there is second-order change.

In order to effect a second-order change that is sustainable, not only is a lot of collective energy required, a heart change is also required. Having been a catalyst for systemic transformation on a national level, let me explain a bit of my story and what I mean.

At a church I was an associate pastor of many years ago, I experienced sexual harassment and when I reported it along with some other things, I was retaliated against. I eventually ended up filing civil rights discrimination lawsuits to hold the larger church body accountable for its many inequities and injustices against me and many others as well. It was a long drawn out case that dealt with constitutional law, church-state issues, and clergy sexual misconduct. It required me to take an activist stand, just as the Occupy movement is doing.

But for true transformation to happen, it required more than just taking a stand, important as that is. It also required that I find all the places I criticized about the system in my own heart. If I criticized the aggressive tactics of the larger church body against me, I looked for aggression within myself. If I was furious with their lies against me, I looked for the lies I told myself and others, no matter how small. I would then look for the core of good within the bad. I would find the light in the darkness. I would see that aggression and lying were tactics I used to protect myself when I didn’t feel safe. Then I would understand that the impulse to protect was good, even if I or they had twisted it into aggression or lying, and I would have my compassion for myself and them and then I could forgive myself and them.

When I would heal my own heart and soul by doing these steps above, the system would shift—often immediately. Right after I would heal within, I would get a phone call, email, or other notification that the courts had suddenly had a “change of heart” and rule in my favor. Or the larger church system would suddenly relent and choose to negotiate when previously they refused. This happened repeatedly over several years until finally the story played itself out. In the end, I became the first ordained minister in the country ever to be granted civil rights by a federal ruling—a second-order shift establishing new rights for clergywomen.

So, in shifting our unjust economic system, the Occupy movement is taking a crucial first step. The next step for all of us who wish to shift the economic inequities is to look at our own hearts with regard to how we use money. Upset about corporate greed? I hear you. But let us look within. How much of your income do you donate to charity? Even, or especially, on a good year? How many things do you buy that you don’t really need? The latest flat screen tv, the latest iPhone, the latest ____? Where are you wasteful and unaware with where your own money goes? Do you balance your checkbook, keep a budget, and balance necessities with play that help and do not hurt the environment (extra car trips to do errands, or plane rides to vacation spots around the globe)? Where are you not honest with your accounting? How much debt do you have on credit cards? Any criticism you have of the system, turn it around and ask yourself where it is in you.

I have seen some of these things in myself and in many people who are protesting the inequities in our larger system. These questions of mine, uncomfortable as they may be, are what is required to bring about lasting, heart-full change on a systemic level. There is no judgment in these questions. It is honest self-inquiry only. But after taking a stand, until we heal within with all the love, compassion, and forgiveness we can give ourselves and others along with any corresponding corrective action we can take in our own lives, any change we are able to generate will either be surface change or short-lived at best.

Use the Occupy movement’s energy to motivate you to look within and heal. Occupying our hearts is a stimulus plan that will really bring true second-order change!

You are Safe (No, really, you are.)

The question of security comes up a lot in healing work. It is a fundamental issue that needs to be addressed because it is difficult to heal if you think you are in danger on any level. Mentally, emotionally and physically, your energy is drained when consciously and unconsciously you are trying to make sure you (and your loved ones) are safe and not destroyed. This is instinctual in so far as our bodies are wired for survival and our DNA has generations of coding in it to pay attention to signs of danger. We evolved this way in order to ensure our species would survive in hostile environments with predators around threatening to attack.

Most of us no longer live in an environment where a lion could be poised to pounce on us at any time. However, many of us still live with this constant sense of needing to be on the alert or an underlying dread or foreboding. This is especially the case when some kind of trauma has happened to us, destroying any sense of security that we may have managed to have prior to the trauma, despite our predisposed genetic hardwiring telling us to always be ready to fight or run for our lives.

As is well known, after big trauma people will often respond by curling up into the fetal position. This is also what can happen energetically when you go through any kind of trauma—big or small. Your energy draws up from the ground and curls up tighter around you to try to protect you. This is all fine and good. It is the animal instinctual part of you trying to reconnect with the feeling of total security in the womb. The difficulty is that once the trauma is over, your energy may not relax and re-extend itself, thus keeping itself cut of from the earth’s energy and from the grounding needed to heal. This can result in getting into a constant feedback loop of fear and anxiety which can also get hardwired into our brain’s patterning. The ability to move and release these anxious energies out of the body and into the ground can remain unavailable because you have unknowingly blocked your root chakra (energy center) from reconnecting with the earth.

Thus solution #1 is to reground yourself. We are electromagnetic beings. We need grounding just like electricity does to work properly. People in many developed countries, especially urban and suburban environments, don’t get enough direct contact with the earth. For one, your shoes’ soles are mostly made of synthetic elements that disrupt the back and forth flow between the earth and our bodies. For two, we sit on chairs, sleep on beds, ride in cars—all keeping us up off the ground. For three, if you live above the ground floor in a condo or apartment building, there is even more distance between your natural connection to the earth. For four, much of non-rural life is connected to machines and technology more than nature.

The more we disconnect from the earth the harder it is to stay healthy and to heal when that is needed. The extra energy we carry in our bodies from stress is unable to leave effectively and it becomes stagnant and stuck causing inflammation and heat in our physical body, anxiety in our emotional body and compulsive thoughts in our mental body. This is one of the main reasons I think it can be difficult to heal thoroughly in a hospital. Some of them are skyscrapers! How can someone in a room fourteen floors up reground their energy after a trauma or surgery if they are so far away from direct contact with the earth on a 24/7 basis? (I think some research should be done to see if ICU psychosis could be reduced or eliminated by situating ICU’s on the ground floor and if possible, letting patients walk outside in their stocking feet.)

So, too, for you, walking outside on the ground or grass without shoes (leather moccasins are one exception) is a good way to help reground your energy. Sitting or lying on the ground or grass or beach is another good grounding exercise. Kneeling and putting your hands in dirt (gardening) can help too. I noticed that almost all of my clients who suffered from situational depression had blocked root chakras, so I encouraged them to spend time in direct contact with dirt!

Solution #2 to help yourself reground is to visualize that you have roots growing out of the bottom of your feet and tail bone (the root chakra) and into the earth. Send them all the way into the earth and see them spread out throughout the earth, then come back up into your feet and tail bone with your awareness. Feel or imagine the connection and flow between the earth and you. Say the affirmation, “I am safe.” Then feel safe. Imagine this if you have to. Imagine that nothing can harm you ever. Imagine what that would feel like. And let your body feel that feeling from the top of your head to the bottom of your feet. Tell your body, too, “You are safe.” If you’ve been through trauma talk to your body compassionately and gently like you would a frightened child.

“You are so grounded.”

I get this statement a lot from intuitives who read my energy. I believe it is because of the mystical awakening I had several years ago. I learned I was safe when I woke up and knew that my truest self was God—that my core was divine essence, (and so was everyone else’s.) After the shock of that startling insight wore off, I realized the direct implication of this was that I was safe no matter what. No matter what! No one could really do me harm in any way, even if they killed me. I was who I was and nothing for all eternity could change that.

So solution #3 to ground yourself is using this bit of mystical mojo. That fetal position our bodies like to curl into to feel safe? The understanding that each and every one of us has God within is also true in reverse. Each and everyone on of us is also always in God, in the womb of God. Imagine yourself all curled up inside God, totally safe (and all your loved ones, too). Affirming this spiritually can ease the need to physically curl up into an actual fetal position after trauma and keep the fight-flight-or-freeze triggers at bay even after trauma. When you know you are safe, even disease that comes up is not an occasion for worry, because it is just a teacher to help you learn and integrate more. But it can never in no way destroy the real you or your loved ones. EVERYONE IS SAFE! This is a truth that can heal the world. No more grasping. No more hoarding. No more striving. No more greed. No more attacking. No more fear.

To be sure, this is a knowing that comes through direct experience with this truth and cannot be manufactured through gimmicks, and being human, we will still have fears, griefs, and other emotions that arise in our being to work through and process. In the meantime before this truth becomes your own internal knowing, spending time in nature, connecting directly with mother earth, and visualizing and affirming that you are always safe can help your body relax again, stretch out, and begin to feel the security that is always true: You are safe!

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The idea that you are safe is one of the key chapters in my book, You are Light. For more writing about this truth and meditations and exercises to help you read You are Light. Energy healing sessions that unblock your root chakra can also help as can EFT-Free for Life—a tapping technique considered “acupressure for the emotions” that neutralizes the hardwiring for anxiety, stress and PTSD triggers. I offer both of these in my healing practice. For more information visit my healing webpages or email me at monica@monicamcdowell.com.

My 9/11 Premonition Story

Excerpt from My Karma Ran Over My Dogma
Chapter "Reality is a Unity"

My unusual experiences went beyond asking and getting immediate, specific answers.  I began noticing a unity with events and my surroundings that went way beyond any previous experiences in my life.  Once more, the first episode I had was when I was still working at the church. It was Ash Wednesday morning, February 28th, 2001.  I was to preach that night for the church’s Ash Wednesday service.  I had prepared a sermon based on a scripture passage about how catastrophes have within them the potential to help us open up all of our hearts to God and to one another.  Just as I was about to email my finished sermon to the office administrator who was in an office down the hall from me, I was silently lamenting to God:  No one is going to connect with my sermon.  We don’t suffer social catastrophes of any kind in the Northwest, let alone one on the order that could open up any hearts.  Why did I feel so strongly compelled to preach on this topic?  This is completely irrelevant.

As the saying goes:  be careful what you pray for…

For at the exact moment when I hit “send” to forward my email to the office administrator with sermon attached, the earth started to move.  It moved and it moved some more and I looked out the window and saw the normally straight, statuesque evergreens dancing as though they were made out of rubber and the earth rolling in fluid waves like the sea.  As I dove under my desk to wait out the earthquake, my first thought was, NEVER MIND, GOD!  Forget my complaint!  I decided an irrelevant sermon on catastrophe was much more desirable than a relevant one after all. 

As I looked out from under the desk watching the trees continue their dance and the earth its rolling, I pleaded out loud with God over and over, “Save my children, oh God, please keep my children safe.”  Then, in a matter of seconds it just stopped.  The rolling, the shaking, the rumbling, it was all over.  I ran out of my office and the church staff and I gathered for a quick prayer.  I then sprinted outside, jumped in my green Volkswagen Beetle (license plate:  HUMBUG), and drove the all of two blocks to the school and then pre-school to check on my kids.  There was terror in my son’s eyes, but everyone, everything was fine.

Back at the ranch, I surveyed my office.  Only one thing had fallen over—a picture that had been sitting on a picture stand.  The picture was a calligraphied scripture verse, “Be Still and Know That I Am God.”  Wow!  Then it hit me.  This verse comes from Psalm 46 that begins, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear though the earth should quake, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea.”  It would be a good story for my sermon that night, Ash Wednesday, when we remember our physical mortality. 

Church was full that night.  The Nisqually Earthquake, as it was to be named, had shaken everyone on a lot of levels and spiritually they wanted reassurances.  Preaching my already finished sermon on how “catastrophe can open our hearts to God and to one another,” and “God is the one we can rely on during a total crisis” was surreal.  Twilight zone chills kept running up my spine.  How could I have prepared a sermon so relevant to the day’s events without any conscious knowledge of what was going to happen?

Later that year, after everything had blown up when I’d filed complaints of sexual misconduct and was retaliated against by the senior minister for doing so, catastrophe hit again.  Extraordinarily, for the second time in a few short months, I experienced a knowing that came from a profound interconnectedness.

By Labor Day of 2001, we moved into a house in Lake Forest Park, a suburb of Seattle, and settled our kids in their new elementary school situated just behind our house.  I loved being able to walk them to school, past all the towering, stately Douglas Firs lined up like sentries along our street.  After walking them to school every morning, I would then take my whistleblower survivor routine and walk to Starbucks and then on to Third Place Books.  Many days I would meander through the bookstore to find a good read and spend the better part of the morning in an oversized leather armchair, sipping my chai latte, contemplating all the while.  Nothing like good old-fashioned escapism when your life is falling apart.

The next Sunday, September 9th, early in the afternoon, I was sitting in our sunroom praying and reflecting on my ongoing travails, when suddenly I was overcome by “something.”  An impression?  A premonition?  All I know is that I gasped and said out loud, “Oh no!  There’s not just doom for the church, there’s doom for our country!”  I immediately started praying, “Lord, have mercy on our country.  Lord, have mercy on our country.  Lord, have mercy on our country.”  In fact, that is about all that came out of my mouth for the next hour as I went about household chores.  But it gradually faded away and I totally forgot about it. 

Later in the afternoon, my husband walked up to me rather jerkily and mechanically, like a robot, and declared in monotone, “I need to go to New Jersey.  I need to fly out tomorrow.” 

“Okay.”  I replied casually, “If you must, you must.” 

So, he went back to his office, booked a ticket online (a very expensive ticket), and started packing. 

This did not strike me as unusual at all.  Looking back I really don’t know why I didn’t question my husband’s strange behavior.  Usually he planned his business trips well in advance in order to get good prices on tickets, and so I could pre-plan the kids’ and my schedules while he would be away.  I guess it was because he sounded so certain that he had to fly, that I just shrugged my shoulders and went along with it.

I took him to the airport the next day, Monday, while the kids were in school and he called later that night to say he’d arrived safely. 

The next morning I woke up hearing the phone ringing—early.  Way too early for me.  I slowly got out of bed, brushed my teeth, and went downstairs to find out who had called.  I figured it was someone from the East Coast—probably one of my husband’s business associates who didn’t yet know that my husband was actually on the East Coast, and who had forgotten that we on the Pacific Coast are three hours earlier than our Atlantic cousins.  I was fuming at whoever it was who had forgotten to check the time and their brain before trying to reach us at such an ungodly hour.

Just as I got downstairs the phone rang again.  I picked up the remote phone and said mildly, “Hello?”  successfully withholding my early morning, pre-chai grumps.

“Monica!  I’ve been trying to reach you.  Have you seen the news?  Oh my God, there’s another one!  I’m watching TV right now.  Go downstairs and turn on the TV!  Oh my God!  A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center and now another one.  Oh my God!  Hurry!  They think it’s a terrorist attack.  I’m watching this live on TV!”

It was my husband.  I ran down to the basement with the phone and turned on the TV.  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  Airplanes crashing into skyscrapers?  It looked like a scene from a movie.  Maybe a bad joke.  Maybe a “War of the Worlds” error, but no, it was on all the channels we got with our antenna (about 5) and it was the top news agencies reporting.  This was no joke.  This was no movie.  I immediately flashbacked to Sunday afternoon:  “There’s not just doom for the church, there’s doom for our country.  Lord, have mercy on our country.” 

“Oh my God, I had a premonition on Sunday that there was doom for our country, but I completely forgot about it.  Oh my God.  I can’t believe it.”

“I’ve gotta go, Monica.  I’ve got to make some more phone calls to reach some people here about meetings in light of this.  I can’t believe this.  I’ll call you later.  I love you.”

“Love you, too.  Bye.”

I sat shell-shocked for a minute or two, and then I checked the messages.  My husband had left several, as had my mom.  I called my mom and recounted my premonition.  I also recalled while talking with my mom that my daughter had night terrors during the night after she had gone to bed.  I finally let her crawl into bed with me, because she just wouldn’t settle down.  She kept stirring, moaning, muttering, and waking up.  I had never known her to do this before.  Perhaps she was on some level having a sleeping premonition as well.

As you know, the rest of the week was a bit hellish.  Airports were shut down; the stock markets plummeted.  In fact, this is why I believe my husband had automatedly declared on Sunday afternoon that he was flying to New Jersey the next day.  On some level he too had known.  With the stock markets’ nose-dive, the family business went upside down, and the banks it had loans from were all in New Jersey.  If my husband had been in Seattle when the World Trade Centers were attacked, he never would have made it to New Jersey with all the airports closed, and we would have lost everything. 

But because he was already in New Jersey the very evening before the morning of 9/11, he could arrange face-to-face meetings with business partners and bank personnel to salvage what he could.  It was a divinely appointed flight he took on 9/10.  He was able to salvage enough to keep us afloat for quite a while.  It was a miracle of protection.  Even so, things would still be crashing down around us for a long time to come...

Why You Want to Make a WIG

A WIG is the brainchild of life coach and best-selling author, Martha Beck. In her book, Finding Your Own North Star, she suggests a WIG for helping you leap ahead on your true path in life. What is a WIG, you say? WIG stands for Wildly Improbable Goals. It recently occurred to me that I hadn’t set my own WIG in awhile and so I took a little time, went through the process of setting my own Wildly Improbable Goal and (gosh darn golly!) it worked yet again. If you’d like to know how to set your own WIG, read on, my friend!

The first step is to think of five things that would make your soul blissfully happy. These are things beyond your ego needs. They are deep down soul desires. In fact, they may be very small things. That’s okay—we’ll use them later. But try to write down some biggies as well. For example, when I started to daydream about my own WIG, an idea sprang forth for an inter-spirituality meditation summit in Seattle. As my soul started to hum and purr I continued to write down all sorts of ideas around this central idea. By the end of my creative process, my sentiment was generally: This would be ABSOLUTELY AWESOME, but I do not have the slightest idea how I would even begin to get started with this, let alone get this done! Not. A. Clue! This is the perfect sentiment a WIG should instill in you. So once you’ve thought up some big WIG’s then choose the one that feels the best right now to you.

The second step is then to let go of it. “What?” you stammer. “Aren’t I supposed to DO something?”

“Why yes,” I would reply, “You do something by letting go.” Say outloud to the universe: Universe, this WIG would be something I would totally LOVE to do. But I don’t have the slightest idea how to accomplish it. So right now, I’m giving the whole idea over to All That Is. I surrender.”

The third step is to wait. See if the universe responds in some way over the next few days. When I set my latest inter-spirituality meditation summit WIG it was a Monday evening and I had said almost the exact same words above to the universe. The very next morning, I opened up my facebook and lo and behold a local business associate, someone I’ve only exchanged emails with and never actually met, had posted, “Does someone want to help me organize a meditation flash mob in Seattle like the one in this video from London?”

Shock is not too much of an exaggeration of the feeling I had as I stared at her post. Since I was pretty sure her post was my cue from the universe, I replied, “Yes, I would.” From there with a few interesting turns, including getting in touch with the main organizer of the worldwide (94 cities, to date) “medmobs” I am now the official Seattle organizer! (Let me know if you want to attend…Here’s the facebook page to stay up-to-date!)

So fourth, after waiting to see if and how the universe responds to your WIG, then take a tiny step that’s very simple. My first step was simply to type “Yes, I would” on the business person’s facebook post. Now note, a flash mediation mob was not exactly what I had envisioned by a meditation summit. What I was thinking about was far more complicated and probably a lot less fun to put together and participate in than a flash medmob. This is why the total surrender and letting go of the WIG is so important. By doing so, you allow the universe to take care of the details and to show you how what you thought was the ultimate idea could be even better!

Even if you wait and the universe doesn’t seem to respond to your initial WIG setting and subsequent letting go, take a tiny small first step towards the WIG anyway and again wait and see what happens. This is the way to accomplish your WIG. Take a step, wait. Take another small step, wait. Over and over. If over time the universe isn’t responding at all, take that as a clue that either it’s not the right time or you need to choose another of your WIG’s or dig a little deeper into your soul to find the sweet spot that will yield an even better WIG. This step, wait, step, wait is a much less stressful and much more exciting way to find and accomplish your true path.

You will encounter fear along the way, even in taking those tiny little steps because you are stretching yourself beyond your self-limitations into the unknown. I had to breath deep several times before I typed in “Yes, I would.” But any fear you feel should be good fear not bad fear, though—the kind of exciting fear you feel on the top of the roller coaster right before it reaches the top of the track and plunges down. If it helps, promise yourself that after taking a small step you will reward yourself with one of the small soul pleasures that came to mind when you were brainstorming back in #1. For me, a small soul pleasure is a fuzzy velour coated pencil. I LOVE those. If even a small step along this medmob path seems a bit too much I might promise to go and buy a velour pencil for myself after I risk and take that small but soul-stretching step. That way I satisfy my soul with little rewards along its true path until it can accomplish fully the WIG that was beyond all that I could even imagine. And that accomplishment will be reward all in itself.

Good luck with your WIG! Let me know how it goes!

6 Tips to Increase Your Intuition

This is probably the question I am asked more than any other: How do I increase my intuitive skills? So, to help you in that regard, assuming you, too, want to be more intuitive (I mean, who doesn’t??), here are my top six tips.

But first, a disclaimer. It is my belief that everyone and everything is an interconnected part of All That Is. It follows then, that at our core level of Oneness, we all have access to all the information in the universe(s). We can access this information through empirical study and research (via the left brain, aka, the slow way) or through intuition (via the right brain, aka, the fast way). If you do not share my belief, that’s okay, but try these tips out anyway, as an experiment and see if any of these work for you. Even Einstein said, “Logic will get you from A to B, imagination will take you everywhere.”  And this takes you right to my first tip…

1) Spend more time in your right brain. 

This means enjoy daydreaming, visualizing, making music, art, dance, stories, or anything else creative. Why? Both intuition and imagination are processed through the right brain. By getting to know your right brain a little better through your imagination, even if it’s all pretend, you keep the portal open to intuition as well. At first, it may be difficult to distinguish between what you’re “making up” and a direct intuitive hit. That’s okay, too. With practice you learn the differences. The important thing is to visit the right brain and value it by keeping it stimulated through imaginative play. 

2) Act on the intuitive hits you get. 

Many of us are getting a lot of intuitive hits throughout our day, but since we live in a culture that devalues intuition as medievalism, mental illness, or even of the devil, we are very good at dismissing, rationalizing away, or simply ignoring the glaringly obvious intuitive guidance that is staring us in the face. 

For example, a few months ago, my husband had the impulse to buy a lottery ticket at the grocery store. This isn’t common for him at all so it was probably already his intuition guiding him. He then had the sudden thought to play the famed numbers that the character Hurley used in the TV show Lost. Later that day, when the lotto numbers were revealed, indeed four of the winning numbers were the Lost numbers which meant a $150 prize! However, my husband didn’t get the prize because he didn’t actually play the Lost numbers. Why? After he had thought to play those numbers he reasoned that if we were fated to win, it wouldn’t matter what numbers he played; he’d win no matter what. So he played different numbers and didn’t win anything. This is exactly how the left brain tries to trump the right brain. So the next time you get an intuitive hit, try it out and see what happens! It may be all that happens is you save yourself an hour in traffic by listening to your  intuition and taking an arterial instead of the interstate you later find out was completely blocked due to a protest march. (Yes, this happened to me!) By acting on your intuition no matter how small it is or seemingly insignificant, you build your trust in your abilities. Intuition is just like a muscle: the more you exercise it the stronger it gets. 

Again with Einstein: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.  We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” 

3) Meditate and contemplate.

It doesn’t matter too much what practice you follow. Just do what appeals to you and therefore, is easiest for you to keep at on a regular basis. Most meditative and contemplative practices increase mental strength through focus which enables you to train your brain. You are then able to quiet down the left brain that is usually streaming a steady flow of commentary about everything and free up the right brain to be in the ever-present now, watching, aware, awake and open to the flow of intuition.

4) Pay attention to your body (and nature in general).

You body is more connected to intuition than your rational mind. Ironically, in our materialistic society, many people are disconnected from their body’s awareness, so it may take some time to get back in touch with your body’s wisdom and learn to trust its intuition. A general rule of thumb is that if you are going away from your intuition, your body will constrict in some fashion: your gut clenches, your throat constricts, your breathing gets shallow. When you are going towards your intuition, your body relaxes, opens up, and feels better. Nature responds similarly. When I am “in the flow,” I notice eagles overhead or some other “sign” that confirms my intuition.

5) Do your inner work.

It’s not sexy, but it is imperative. Some of the main blocks to getting clear intuitive hits are heavy emotions, limited thinking, and unseen shadow. Some people give up on their intuition because when they have followed it, it hasn’t been accurate. The issue isn’t with the intuition itself, but how it’s being received and process by you. Like a radio, if you’re not tuned in exactly to the right station you’re going to get static or pick up multiple stations at the same time. Fear, anger, sadness, and pessimism can all be like static and shadow can twist or add to the pure intuitive message trying to come through. If you have no idea how to do inner work, find a reputable therapist, spiritual director, healer, or wise religious leader to help you discover your inner world and integrate it. 

I once received intuitive guidance not to attend a class I was interested in. The instructor, also an intuitive, told me I was wrong not to attend, and that by not coming to class, I was dooming myself to being in a car accident. I trusted my own intuition over hers because 1) she was financially and emotionally invested in the outcome of my decision - she would make more money and have more attendees – both ego concerns that might twist or warp her intuition; and 2) her message of doom was a fear-based threat. Pure, intuitive messages are emotionally clear. Even if they are warning messages to keep you safe, they do not carry fear, or threats, but are simply matter-of-fact. 

6) Learn the language of your dreams.

One of the first things I did to begin to become more aware of intuition through dreams was to keep a dream journal. Not only would I write down the interesting dreams I could remember in the morning, I also wrote open-ended questions down in the journal right before I went to bed at night to see how my dreams might answer them. For example, I’d write “I need guidance about which job to take” or “I am asking for guidance about this relationship.” It’s amazing how many intuitive hits would come in the dreams, or even the next day as I went about regular chores. The subconscious is very connected to your intuition, and even though its language is often cryptic, symbolic and archetypal, by connecting with your subconscious intentionally, you open another door to your intuition. 

Good luck! Let me know how your experimenting and playing goes…

The Sound of Angels Singing Over Me

In My Karma Ran Over My Dogma, I wrote about an event when a choir of angels sang to me. I didn’t know if I would ever hear that glorious sound again, this side of heaven. Now I do know, which I will write about at the end of this post, but first, rather than rewrite about the original event, here’s the excerpt from My Karma:

“Around the time I started to see energy, I was filing lawsuits in federal and state courts for civil rights violations. Reluctantly. 

Some time later, after a long day of bemoaning my litigious fate to God, I happened upon a little book about Rosa Parks. As you probably know Rosa Parks is considered “The Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.” She is well known for standing up for herself and others by insisting on sitting down. In 1955, she refused to move from her seat for white men who had entered the bus and she was subsequently arrested. 

What I learned from this book, however, was that this was not unique to civil rights activists of the day. Many refused to move from their seats to protest segregation on public transportation. What is less well known and what made Rosa Parks stand out from the crowd was that she sued, albeit reluctantly, for her arrest. This lawsuit with the support of the NAACP, went to the US Supreme Court and in a landmark decision, the highest court in our country declared bus segregation illegal. This ruling was then the precursor to the Civil Rights Act of 1964—under which my own discrimination lawsuits were filed.

Knowing it was a lawsuit that had made a difference in the African American struggle for equality made me feel a little better that I too had sued for civil rights violations. Even though I knew the church needed accountability, I truly had not wanted to sue. It’s costly, it’s time consuming, not to mention a drain on one’s mental energy, and in general a real hassle. Plus, I had loved the people in the church. I had loved being their pastor. It grieved me to be in litigation with them. I would have walked away several hundred times over throughout the whole ordeal if I hadn’t been completely convinced that God wanted me to stay in the thing.

Needless to say, God made sure I knew I was supposed to stay in the thing. 

One day I was questioning God as to why I had to sue. I mean really…why? Why was the legal part of it so necessary from God’s perspective? What was it going to gain? It seemed rather severe from my own perspective. The next morning I received a devotional scripture through a daily email subscription of mine that said in summary:  “The farmer knows each grain she plants. She knows how much threshing each type of grain needs to be harvested. Some types of grains need very little threshing, but some need a lot, like wheat, but the farmer knows.” (The sex change for the farmer—my idea.)

In other words, some situations need more intense treatment than others in order for something productive to come out of them and God knows which ones do. My task then was just to trust and follow the continued leading of God to the best of my ability.

Still, not one to just trust, (although “I just must trust” did become a necessary mantra to help me cope over the years), I would repeatedly find myself struggling to come to grips with the litigation. One evening in particular I was wrestling with God about why the lawsuit had to be. The next morning I awoke to music as if my alarm clock had been set to a radio station. One problem, though. I didn’t have an alarm clock that played music. Moreover, it sounded like a choir was singing in my head…or maybe in my bedroom…or both? I couldn’t tell. It was glorious angelic singing or I presumed it was angels anyway. The words? “That all may be free. That all may be free. That all may be free.” This phrase was sung several times in hauntingly beautiful melodies and harmonies and then it gradually faded away. 

I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and looked around—seeing nothing. Yet another bizarre event to wonder about, but whatever the source, the message was clear. Without civil rights (even for ministers), no one is free. Thank God for Rosa Parks. Without her, I wouldn’t have been able to file my civil rights litigation in the first place, let alone win a civil rights victory for clergywomen.

But contemplating the angelic choir in my bedroom, made me more suspicious than ever about other strange events that seemed to confirm the existence of disembodied spiritual beings around me. I kept running into them, or they into me. Why me? I mean it wasn’t just a few angels singing that morning…oh no, no, no, no, it sounded like I got an entire tabernacle choir of them. 

Maybe because I was still uncertain as to what to do with the few experiences I’d had up to this point that I metaphorically needed to be hit over the head with a two by four of a whole legion of angels singing to get that this is real. It’s not that I didn’t believe in angels. I was, in fact, raised in a church that did believe in them. It’s just that somewhere down the line, attending an intelligent academic-oriented Christian university and then Princeton Seminary, that I (along with many other like-minded ministers) relegated talk about angels to Sunday School theology and ancient scriptural stories. I don’t recall any Presbyterian ever talking to me about their encounter with angels. It went right along with seeing auras…

So while in essence I believed in angels, I didn’t really figure them into everyday modern life. The mystical was not in my worldview. I had a strong faith and a close relationship with God, but really on the whole my spirituality had been normal, for lack of a better word. I would later learn that more than 78% of Americans believe in angels, according to a Gallup Poll, and the percentage keeps going up. But for some reason, even though the vast majority of people in our country believe in angels, the acceptability of talking about such things is low. I have had many friends, clients, and strangers in the years since tell me about their encounters with spiritual beings. Alas, they usually begin their story with, “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but...”

I could relate to that worry. I was so afraid someone was going to think I was nuts, especially since I knew there was a senior minister running around out there declaring exactly that sentiment about me. So to whom could I talk about these strange events? No one, I thought, so I kept it all under wraps. I hid the fact that I had not only heard angels, but I was starting to see them…” (pp. 45-48 )

So, here’s where the story, almost nine years later, picks up. A couple of weeks ago, I clicked on a link for a TED talk on facebook. As soon as the speaker, Eric Whitacre, started to play a clip of his virtual choir singing Lux Aurumque (Light and Gold), my eyes filled with tears. Here was the angelic sound I had heard in my bedroom almost nine years ago—the same haunting melodies and gorgeously dissonant harmonies! I was moved and quietly wept as I watched and listened to the whole video later on YouTube. Of course, the legion of angels singing to me were vocalizing the words, “That all may be free. That all may be free. That all may be free.” Over and over they repeated these words but with an amazingly similar sound to Eric Whitacre’s virtual choir. And interestingly, Lux Aurumque is a Latin translation of a poem written about angels singing to Jesus: 

Light, 

warm and heavy 

as pure gold,

and the angels sing softly 


to the newborn babe. 

~ Edward Esch

Here’s the video of Eric’s virtual choir of people from twelve countries singing Lux Aurumque:

Thank you, Eric Whitacre! If you’d like to hear his fantastic TED talk about how his virtual choirs came to be, here’s the link for that. May you be blessed with knowing your angels are watching and  singing over you today!

Be the Peace You Want to See or "How to Detach from your Emotions in Three Steps" (Without Denying Them!)

Emotions can be very powerful fuel for actions that benefit or for actions that harm. In general it is better to be in touch with your emotions than not. But, once you can express your emotions, learning to detach is an excellent skill. Why? Well, for one reason, as I just stated, emotions you are not in control of can cause you to say or do something harmful you greatly regret afterward. A lot of people in prison could tell you that is exactly how they got there; their emotions got the better of them in the heat of the moment.

Even if your emotions don’t lead you to criminal behavior, out-of-control and reactive emotions can still create a lot of havoc in your relationships and career. Learning to detach from your emotions is a way to create an empowering awareness that allows you to choose your emotions and therefore your actions. The challenge is that when emotions strike, it can be difficult to choose what actions are thus forthcoming. The emotion rules rather than your intention! To create more balance and less reaction in your emotional life, learning the art of detachment is necessary.

First, in order to detach, you have to get in touch with your emotions. Only when you are accepting of your emotions’ full import and at home with the gamut of them, does the ability to detach from them become possible. However, sometimes getting in touch with long denied emotions is a little (or a lot) like opening Pandora’s box. If you find yourself getting overwhelmed by your emotions, use the services of a reputable counselor, therapist, spiritual director, or healer who can help you. Once you can name your emotions and accept them, without them overwhelming you, then you are able to move on through the process of detachment.

Second, notice your language. Most often, once someone is in touch with their current emotion, they will say something that clearly identifies themself with the emotion. For example, “I am sad” or “I am angry.” Whenever we fill in “I am _____” we are essentially saying, “I = ______.” So, rather than fully identifying with the emotion, change your language. Say something different, such as, “I am noticing sad/angry feelings arising.” This makes you the observer of the emotion without identifying with it. This in and of itself creates distance from the emotion yet without denying that it has come into your awareness either. By creating some space between you and the emotion, there is far less chance that the emotion will overwhelm you. Then you can process it without being reactive or destructive.

Third, once you have named it, and disidentified with it, then you can dialogue with it. Talk to the emotion as if it’s a guest who is passing through with a gift for you. “I see you anger/sadness. I am glad you have arisen so you can teach me something. What are you here to teach me?” Allow the emotion its own voice to speak to you. Once you have heard the lesson, then you can thank your emotion for being such an excellent teacher, and send it away or release it. Add visualizations if this helps you.

I learned this skill by myself out of necessity. It was a time of great grief and stress (see my book, My Karma Ran Over My Dogma, for the details!) and expressing all of my emotions was literally killing me. Thus, I had to find another way to process the emotions without emoting them and stressing out my body more, and yet without denying them either. I found that I could visually process my emotions by looking at them in my mind’s eye, having a dialogue with them and then releasing them up and out my spine or by pulling the energy out of my body. I did not have to emote or express them in order to release them. I only had to acknowledge, honor, dialogue and learn from them. Today, I do the same process with clients who come to me for energy healing.

The bottom line is—You are not your emotions. You can observe your emotions. So who is the You who is observing? You are not even your thoughts. You can observe your thoughts so who is the You who is observing? This is the trillion dollar question. When you know the answer to this, the resulting emotional equilibrium is a calm, deep sea that brings peace to your life as well as to all around you. Be the peace!