In May 2019 I visited Chicago IANDS again and became aware that there was a video of my presentation there. Although it is 14 years old, it stands the test of time.
……(but not sure so much about the dress)
Category: Being
Illumined Human (Part 2)
Becoming: Feet of Clay
Genesis 2 says that God created Adam out of the dust of the earth. World myths (Greek, Sumerian, Egyptian, Chinese, Babylonian, Hindu, Maori, Inca, etc.) depict people, male and/or female made from clay. Even Wonder Woman was sculpted out of clay by her mother Hyppolita! A Jewish Talmudic legend portrays Adam as a golem (clay figure–a body without a soul) for the first 12 hours of his existence.
It is safe to say that we all have proverbial “feet of clay” even before we left the Garden of Eden. If we were already clay or dust were we of heaven or of earth?
A long time ago I surmised that the reason we Earth beings left the Garden of Eden was because the divine actually wanted us to go—a reason and a purpose. Perhaps we had developed enough that it was time; or perhaps we hadn’t developed enough and needed a challenge course for growth.
So, as the Genesis 2& 3 goes, an apple tree was planted in the midst of other fruit trees in Eden and the young’uns were told you can eat the fruit of any tree except the fruit of the tree of knowledge. As any parent knows, if you put something where the child will regularly encounter it and then say, “don’t touch”, the temptation is irresistible. But even then Adam and Eve didn’t eat the fruit, so a serpent had to be devised to seduce them. And, voila! Success! Humans who lived in an eternal state of BEING fell into BECOMING. Birth, biography, death.
“What could you not accept, if you but knew that everything that happens, all events, past, present and to come, are gently planned by One Whose only purpose is your good?”
A Course in Miracles
Not knowing its source, I kept that quote on my refrigerator for years so that I would see it often. And, because I am aware that BEING is “One”, I concluded that I was an integral part of the planning.
“Is willing to accept that she creates her own reality except for some of the parts where she can’t help but wonder what the hell she was thinking.”
Story People, Almost New Age
Is our world is a virtual reality of our own design? This idea is closely aligned with the ancient spiritual tradition of India that we are living in “maya” (roughly translated as “illusion”). There is the beautiful maya of the natural world that is there to appreciate it and to meditate on its many mysteries, to teach us and help us grow spiritually. But it is the human maya that becomes our role play—our charade–and leads us into believing that this Earth life is our only true identity. However, it is not. It is a merely temporary reality.
: “Reality is an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
Albert Einstein
Any cursory exploration of quantum mechanics reveals that modern Western science has met ancient Eastern tradition.
Wordsworth captured this knowledge and the inevitable destiny of ego development in Ode on Intimations of Immortality. An excerpt:
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting
And cometh from afar;
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!
Shades of the prison-house begin to close
Upon the growing Boy,
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows,
He sees it in his joy;
The Youth, who daily farther from the east
Must travel, still is Nature’s priest,
And by the vision splendid
Is on his way attended;
At length the Man perceives it die away,
And fade into the light of common day.
The Illumined Human (Part 1)
From Being to Becoming: Time & Space
“Being is always there; it is what we are in the most fundamental way”. –
A. H. Almaas,
The Pearl Beyond Price
I see no reason why spiritual awareness or self-realization must be incompatible with a personal human life or that being an ordinary human, flaws and all, must be a hindrance to self-realization as an illumined human. Embracing humanness may very well be essential to spiritual awakening.
There was three year old child who kept insisting that she had to be alone with her newborn sibling. The parents, concerned that the older child through sibling rivalry or just lacking awareness might harm the infant, refused the request. But the child kept asking, insisting over and over again on time alone with the infant. Finally, relenting, the parents stationed themselves outside the closed door, having set up video and sound monitors in the room. Not being a religious family, imagine their surprise when they saw their daughter lean over the crib, put her head close to the infant’s head, and say:
“Please tell me about God. I’m starting to forget.”
Most people cannot remember anything prior to age three. Sense of self, or self-concept, is something that develops with time and experience. Children become self-conscious (showing signs of embarrassment or shyness) around age two to three. Also until around the age of three the child often doesn’t understand the concept of “I” and speaks in the third person (e.g. “Sharon want toy”).
The splendid innocence of the infant is that physical birth marks only its bodily separateness but not its differentiated psychological self. Over time the personality evolves through enculturation, experience and increasing levels of choice into a separate sense of itself—a self-concept. Self is constructed. As that self continues to grow and become stronger, it creates a kind of amnesia of the Essential Being, its spiritual home. Veils descend that allow the ego to assert and sustain itself.
Time & Space: Relative Existence
Many who have experienced a near-death experience report that time does not seem to apply to reality. As one experiencer, Jeanie Dicus, put it, “Before we’re born, we have to take an oath that we will pretend time and space are real so we can come here and advance our spirit. If you don’t promise, you can’t be born.”
greekmytholog.wikia.com/wiki/Lethe
The tale of Er in Plato’s Republic gives us the image of souls returning to Earth drinking from the River Lethe (Lee-thee), the “River of Forgetfulness” that ran through the caves of Hypnos, so that they would forget from whence they came. The implication of the Greek myth is that we are hypnotized out of remembering our true nature so that we can adopt a new human identity. This would suggest that developing that identity is actually important.
Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity explains that time is subjective. An amusing anecdote, wrongly attributed to him, is supposed to explain this theory:
“When you sit with a nice girl for two hours you think it’s only a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute you think it’s two hours. That’s relativity.”
While this is relatable and generally subjectively true, in this case time has not changed at all, only the perception of it is different, as can be measured by a clock.
The actual theory is that in the space-time continuum time does not move or flow. All of time is now. Time just IS; and passage of time is a result of limited human awareness.
“People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion”.
Albert Einstein, 1955
If the spiritual world is timeless, the physical world is not. Not only is time called into question but so is space or locality. We have an awareness of solidity, and yet we are both wave and particle. We occupy a location, but exist in a quantum state of non-local entanglement. Another way to say this is that we merely appear to be here. There are fundamental contradictions between what are scientifically understood as proven realities. The cognitive dissonance that this creates—that existence itself is a paradox—can only be resolved by accepting that two (or more) contradictory realities can and do exist simultaneously.
- The material/spatial/temporal world is real. Deal with it. Study it. Understand its laws. Be in it, grow and learn with it. Embrace the experience of being fully human. Later, you will be mature enough to learn that it does not define you.
- The spiritual/non-local/timeless world is real. Deal with it. Be with it. Understand that this is a larger, truer you. Your earthly biography, like a story, has a beginning and an end. Don’t believe that the story of you is you. But don’t allow that awareness to prevent you from having a human life.
- Be at peace with both realities.
Coddiwomple
It’s something you might expect to happen in a favorite children’s story or perhaps a cartoon. I can imagine Winnie the Pooh doing it, wandering the 100 acre wood, or maybe Calvin with Hobbs.
“Because Poetry and Hums aren’t things which you get, they’re things which get you. And all you can do is to go where they can find you.” –The House at Pooh Corner
One can do it on foot, in a car, or any other form of transportation. I imagine one could even do it in a dream or a daydream—to coddiwomple that is.
Coddiewomple is reportedly an old English slang verb meaning to wander purposely but with no clear destination.
Often I used to get in my car (each car had a name, sometimes male or sometimes female); and I might say it even out loud, “Roger, take me somewhere.” And then I would let the car choose directions and turns. Of course, this was just a ruse to use my intuition. Though one time it brought me to the house of a colleague and when I started the drive I did not know where she lived. From that visit, we became friends (now 30 some years) and I am her daughter’s godmother.
So, because I’ve been coddiwompling for so long, forgive me that I convert the verb to a noun, and say that I love “to take a coddiwomple” much in the same way as someone might “take a cup of tea”. To take a coddiwomple is to allow the possibility of discovery, to explore the unknown. I do this very purposefully, especially when I have no idea of what I want to discover. Rather I want something (much like Pooh’s poetry and hum) to find me, so I must go somewhere.
Meditation is like this, too. I sit down and purposely get as quiet as I can and then some surprise usually shows up in this journey of silent attention.
As a frequent world traveler, I usually set out on foot and wander. My purpose is to explore the place and allow the surprise of what I find and the people and situations I meet. My first time is Paris, staying the Marais (near the 5th arrondisement), I set out on foot with a friend along the right bank of the Seine.
We had no special destination in mind, just to walk this so very walkable city with its amazing light, sights, sounds and food. At one point I needed to find a restroom and walked for quite a while in search of one and had begun to feel urgency about it. Finally, I saw what looked to be a large administrative building and I said, “Let’s go in there. Surely they will have a bathroom.” That building was the Louvre, and it was a Tuesday and it was closed.
Fortunately, there are free and pay public restrooms sprinkled (pardon the pun) around Paris. So after a brief pit stop and resting on the steps of the Louvre gift shop to take in the scene, we turned left and continued walking. We found ourselves in the Tuileries Gardens. There we enjoyed the statues (and the birds sitting on them), the flowers that were in bloom at that season, and the people enjoying the park.
We continued walking in the same direction and found ourselves on the famed Champs-Elysées. I remembered thinking of this as such a romantic place when I was an elementary school student doing a report on it, and was disappointed to find that it was basically a very wide street with a lot of upscale shopping, including a Disney store.
At the end of the Champs-Elysées was an underground passageway to the base of the Arc de Triomphe which stands at the center of the Étoile (Star) roundabout. Circling around the Arc, we took a left and continued walking for quite a while, eventually and surprisingly finding ourselves viewing the Eiffel Tower. To get to it we crossed one of the many bridges over the Seine.
There was no pre-determined destination to this journey. We simply coddiwompled—purposefully moving with only a vague destination. Unintentionally, we saw so many of the main tourist attractions and so much more that we might never have seen if we predetermined our journey.
Over the years I have coddiwompled in much of the U.S. (especially the mountains of Colorado), Madrid, Hanoi, Danang, Singapore, England and the Netherlands.
I highly recommend a good coddiwomple.
Resilience
Have you ever wondered something your whole life only to discover there’s a word that answers the question?
For me, that word is resilience and it answers the lifelong question, “Why do some people overcome all obstacles while others fall apart at the smallest stressor?
Are some people naturally resilient? My best guess is, yes.
Is there a resiliency gene? My best guess is, no.
Even raised in the same family with the same life lessons, some siblings are more resilient than others. Some see failures and challenges as opportunities for growth. Others see failures and challenges as a threat to their identity.
Can resiliency be learned? Probably.
Knowing a resilient person and watching her model resiliency does not guarantee that another will adopt resiliency as a lifestyle. However, knowing such a person who teaches a program that fosters resiliency increases the likelihood.
I have been blessed to know such a person, who has made it her life’s mission to “Choose Love” and to teach others how to do that through a proven step by step program of Social Emotional Learning.
Scarlett Lewis is the mother of Jesse Lewis who was one of 20 children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary on December 14, 2012. I met her in February of 2013 when the trauma was freshly palpable. Over the years although her loss and pain will likely never pass, her resilience has increased manifold.
So, I present to you, Scarlett, the world servant.
I am
I am empty, so You fill me, but I am never full;
For I am a fountain pouring forth your love, emptying.
Beneath this craggy mountain shell is cavernous magic.
I am countenance, only an image, as the leaf is of the tree.
I am empty, so You fill me, but I am never full:
For I am a singing, starlit river carrying ecstatic rainbow fish.
Spilling into your vast, eternal ocean.
I am but an iridescent bubble, delicate and hollow,
Floating, shimmering, pretending to be knowable until I burst,
I dance in the breeze while I can, flit and spin myself
Into and out of being.
I am nothing. Empty. Without form.
I glisten and shimmer with dragonfly wings.
I hover and land then flit away on a moment’s inspiration.
Exhaling.
You breathe You into me, and I breathe You out.
I am empty, so You fill me, but I am never full:
I am a hollow shell holding the roll of the ocean.
I am a cupped hand holding light.
I am nothing. I am.
©Sharon Heller, (Yom Kippur) September 18, 2018
Ego Development and Loss of Ego
Self-awareness, ego and the persona
Let us think of the newborn for a moment. In healthy environments this precious being is welcomed with such love and joy. The aroma of the newborn is like a perfume of heaven. It seems to be alight with joy for no apparent reason or distressed by hunger or physical discomfort. Does the newborn know a religion? …a nationality? … its age? And, although it is no doubt affected somewhat by gender, does it know it has one? Does it know it has a name or even an identity? I would say, no, it does not. It is a Self. In it is the seed of its becoming. It has gifts, challenges and expressions inherent to itself and its genetics. Given a nurturing environment these indwelling characteristics will emerge in proper sequence as determined by a majestic natural process.
The infant is exposed to a human environment that is both a non-material energetic field (already experienced in utero) and a material world of atmosphere, language, gestures, beliefs, rituals, customs, diet, objects, etc. These outer influences act upon the innate Self. Along with learning the essentials of life, the child also learns that it is different from others. It is not only the inherent abilities and preferences that form but also the habits, attitudes and beliefs of the people in its environment give the child an identity that is external to the –the beginning of that conglomeration of external influences and memories with which the growing child identifies is what we often call “ego”.
The “ego” (Latin for “I”) a term beginning in antiquity, then as part of the Freudian psychoanalytical model to the modern day usage for which there are at least six definitions (dictionary.com), it is still commonly used to mean sense of self or identity.
Identity is a necessary function of human existence. There are historical cases of children raised by animals, lacking human interaction for an extended period. These children do not develop certain recognizable human traits. The so-called feral children are not enculturated, do not learn human language, may not walk upright, and are often emotionally, socially and cognitively impaired. In some cases even sensory awareness (heat/cold) remains animal-like.
Identity can be lost, confused or poorly expressed because of neurological disease and disorders (Alzheimer’s, autism) or psychopathology (dissociative identity disorder, schizophrenia, narcissistic personality disorder, borderline personality disorder).
We want our children to develop a healthy identity and self-concept. Any parent of an infant knows that the world revolves around the child’s needs and desires and that the child’s awareness of the needs of others comes later. A healthy sense of self leads to a healthy sense of and respect for others.
A question arises then when in so many spiritual teachings there is talk of “ego death”. What does this mean? And why is it important?
“The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.”
― Joseph Campbell, quoted in Psychology of the Future: Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research by Stanislav Grof
During one of our group mentoring sessions, the leader, a mystic (former priest and a PhD psychologist) stated that I (Sharon) do not have an ego. The uproar of all the egos in the room arguing that of course I also had an ego was pretty funny. It was probably just a question of semantics because words like ego, identity, self, persona, and awareness are so poorly defined.
Thanks to a near-death experience when I was 27, I left my body behind and experienced my SELF as an individual Being merged in the ONE. In that experience the identifiers of age, nationality, religion, and race were not just unimportant, they were non-existent. Upon return to earthly awareness, I found that I had insufficient buffers (separateness) to function well. I needed to re-create/re-learn my personae (multiple persona) for interacting in different social and cultural settings. But these were no more “me” than an avatar for my online presence is me. I understand that persona is a construct that is necessary for function. My persona expresses in various ways (gentleness, forcefulness, graciousness, self-interest) according to the situation and I do my best to fit the responses appropriately to the circumstances.
Obviously I have a sense of identity or I would be unable to use the word “I”. Fortunately I had a well-established sense of self when I “died” so that I was able to find my way back into everyday life. Otherwise, as Joseph Chilton Pearce so aptly quipped, I would have drowned in the waters in which I now swim. I do know that I am the proverbial drop in the spiritual ocean. I understand that I am One with the “is-ness of everything”.
Paradoxically, the spirit that I am has taken up a soul with its inherent qualities that express through a body that is influenced by genetic and epigenetic expressions and by memories and patterns retained within this adult body. I do my best to let the story of who I am “die” so that the reality of my larger, truer Self can have full expression in this life. It isn’t that I don’t have personal identity, it’s that I am defined by the larger rather than the smaller. Just as the body is needed for life on earth, so too are the soul-identity and the personae necessary and all deserve to have boundaries, self-protection and self-care. The “death of the ego” means only the birth of the awareness that I am so much more than it.
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The Youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day. Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her own; Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, And, even with something of a Mother's mind, And no unworthy aim, The homely Nurse doth all she can To make her Foster-child, her Inmate Man, Forget the glories he hath known, And that imperial palace whence he came.
Excerpt-Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood by William Wordsworth
Courage, Trust and Integrity
“Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
In friendship, as in all interrelationships, trust is a foundational building block. Trust is established through dependability, responsibility, integrity, honesty, and commitment in word and action. In a true friendship one is able to speak openly, freely, from the heart, to confide, to share things that are meaningful, and when needed to bridge the inevitable differences and misunderstanding that arise between and among people, to speak openly even if it might be hurtful or uncomfortable. Friendship is trusting that everything is said and done in an atmosphere of safety and a commitment to deepen and extend communication and understanding, to building upon commonalities and accepting and appreciating differences. No progress can be made and ground can be lost when a foundation of trust is poorly developed or crumbles. Lack of trust underlies so many of the seemingly unending, unresolvable controversies and wars because one or more of the parties will not give it the opportunity to be resolved.
Without trust, there is fear and fear destroys relationships.
We need trust to deepen our relationships, to feel safe to make plans and safe to share ourselves and our lives. Trust requires that we keep our promises and demonstrate respect and honor for the other.
The betrayal of trust can be devastating. Betrayal can take many forms such as promises not kept, unreliability, untrue or failed communication, taking the other for granted, playing one friend against the other, playing favorites, switching allegiance, mixed signals, manipulation; and, perhaps worst of all, the inability or unwillingness to be real, to unveil oneself, to be vulnerable. When one is afraid to be vulnerable, there really is no basis for trust; and relationships, even longstanding ones, can be crushed.
To develop, continue and deepen a trust relationship:
- Be dependable: return calls and messages, be there, show up (more or less on time).
- Be kind: when plans change, be respectful and notify the other as quickly as possible; treat the other as you would wish to be treated
- Be fully present: really show up with your whole self, listen with full attention; create an environment for communicating respectfully
- Reciprocate: give and take, mutually and with reciprocity. (for example: invite your friend to do things and trust that your friend will invite you too)
- Demonstrate integrity: be impeccable; don’t gossip; keep your secrets if you must and respect your friends’ secrets; don’t minimize the other, especially to someone else
- Have clear boundaries: discuss and be clear about boundaries; respect differences; respond honestly; working through conflict serves to make the connection stronger
- Demonstrate commitment: reach out and stay connected with each other
- Ask for help when it is needed: be willing to communicate when scared or confused; demonstrate trust through vulnerability
“If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you. … 
Walking away may hurt for a while, but your heart will eventually heal. Then you can choose what you really want. You will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
Consensus Reality
Kurt Vonnegut in Welcome to the Monkey House wrote,
“A sane person to an insane society must appear insane.”
In 1971 Joseph Chilton Pearce, in The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, wrote of consensus reality as conditioned, uncritically examined group beliefs. I remember my first encounter with it. It was 1962 and I was in 6th grade. Some man dressed in the typical suit, white shirt and tie of that period entered our gifted program classroom. He informed us that because the Russians had just launched the Soyuz rocket that there would be jobs for us in mathematics and engineering; and “not to worry” because we were being prepared and trained for those jobs.
He was p
robably mainly talking to the boys, but that didn’t occur to me while in my head I heard my own voice screaming, “But what about what I want!?” The image that spontaneously arose was that of a giant machine that ground us up and fed us into a tumbler where we were encased like sausages and expelled in perfect uniformity. (I’m fairly certain that I had never been exposed to a similar depiction in Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times).
For the masses insane behavior can pass for normalcy; and the truth is that insanity is and has been alive and well, is well-funded, advertised, promoted, and socially approved. If you can’t see the insanity, I suggest you ask yourself …..
“What sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?”
Ursula K. LeGuin
Consensus reality can be developed consciously or unconsciously and at a very early age. Many who inculcate it in others do not realize that they have been subject to an insidious form of brainwashing (not unlike an hypnotic trance) passed from one generation to the next. It is not unlike an epidemic virus spread by people who do not know they are infected. It is a way to indoctrinate and control behavior, whether for good or ill, in which adherents not only refuse to consider any evidence that might cause them to question or alter their behavior, but may even have learned to block it from their perceptions.
As Hans Christian Anderson showed in the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes when no one dares to say the Emperor is naked, all will make themselves believe that they don’t see what they see or see what isn’t there. Regrettably, in real life, even when someone says, “No! The Emperor is naked,” masses will hold on to their pretense. The drive to be right, the need and pressure to be part of the collective power of the group defines the perception of reality even in the face of proof and all evidence to the contrary. The individual’s innermost truths are squelched.
Salmon Rushdie said,
“…. surrealism it seems is the new realism..”
Consensus reality can lead to totalitarianism and a conformity that controls the minds, hearts and actions of those subjected to it (think Nazi Germany). Its influence, like a pandemic, is deeply disturbing. Is it curable?
The concept of the “contrary” exists in both Taoist and Native American cultures. Legend has it that in the first millennium a Taoist, Zhang Guo Lao, considered the popular notion that we would today call “getting ahead”–becoming wealthy, powerful, gaining prestige, satisfying every desire–was not forward progress but, in spiritual terms, backward movement. He demonstrated by riding backward upon his donkey that people were moving away from their own humanity .
In the North American indigenous Lakota tradition the same kind of sacred satire was performed by the heyoka. This spiritually-appointed court jester or “fool” of the Plains made an important point by doing everything backwards—wearing clothes inside out, walking or riding his horse backwards. The role included asking the difficult questions and saying the things others were too afraid to say; and to serve as a mirror so that people in his tribe would examine their behavior and perhaps think differently.
This is a call to all people who are reading this to become contrary, to wake up from whatever hypnotic spell has you in its grasp. Stop shouting at each other. Stop listening to the constant drumbeat of same-thought, stop dulling your senses with distractions, practice opening your perceptions the new, stop the patterns that have been planted in your minds and hearts, that are not your own.
The only basis of freedom is to be free—free to think, feel, and to act for yourself out of your own deepest sense of knowing.
PLEASE. FREE YOUSELF NOW. Embrace sanity.
NDE presentation IANDS International San Antonio 2016
First 9 minutes and 10 seconds are the brief introduction and my presentation.