My Awakening Story

This is a story not easy to write nearly 10 years ago when it happened. There are certain things expected of me as a responsible mother, wife and upstanding member of the community... express sober truth! Isn't that expected of us all? I'm known to be dependable, honest and smart. I obeyed the law and conformed. But the more I see how logic, reason and compassion do not prevail in our society to the extent it should, the less I care about conforming or what other people think. I look for encouragement in the story of Jesus and how he wouldn't bend or conform to say what the Jewish priests and leadership wanted him to say in order to spare his life. To speak your truth in spite of the risk to your own safety and demise - what an extraordinary thing. I'm not even facing such a threat - so why not tell my truth?

There was a time when I thought spiritual awakenings and mystical miracles were for isolated yogis and holy people. I was raised Catholic and I didn't think about mysticism too much outside the context of religion. I certainly avoided psychics and card readers... ironic now that I am both. I've had to come to terms with a disappointing but enlightening reality: that religion is a tool for covering up truth and controlling people. My love for the faith in which I was raised endures. I love the Catholic Church despite its flaws. I love the prayers, the rituals, the catechism and when I left it behind, I mourned. I taught my kids about faith and God without the framework of religion and I can see them thrive in it, the same ways I did but without undertaking the damaging, controlling aspects.

The experience that I'm about to share was a great high point in my awakening journey and one of undeniable magnificence. This happened to me in 2017. I was an active student of the teachings of Paramahansa Yogananda and his teachings of self-realization, a process of understanding the power that exists inside. Right away there was the contrast between his teachings and the teachings of the church. The idea that I held a great power within was celebrated and even defined. The church focused on the things outside of yourself that inevitably had power over you. The church taught that your fear of and obedience to God would lead to your salvation. Through Yogananda's teachings I learned the science and art of meditation. Over the course of weeks and months I had the time to maintain a routine and disciplined meditation practice. One morning I took a blasé approach to my meditation. My husband made the out-of-routine decision to work from home that day. We were living in a fairly small apartment in Frederick, Maryland. We had just moved to the area from Minnesota and were still house hunting. The dining area was a busy space used for my husband's work office, family meals and also served as my meditation room after the husband and kids were gone for the day. So on that day I had to use our bedroom to meditate, admittedly, with a little bit of annoyance for my husbands impromptu decision that took over my usual spot. I took the attitude that this obviously wasn't going to be a very good meditation session due to this interruption and in that spirit I didn't even bother to pull the door closed to the bedroom. At that point my goal was simply to sit for a bit just to maintain the routine and didn't expect the meditation to go deep. I sat down with my back straight, on the side end of the bed with my feet flat on the floor, closed my eyes and found the breath work style I was taught to use, sometimes called "the little death". It seemed like it had only been a few minutes when suddenly my eyes opened and I found myself in the middle of a large body of water. I could see no land. While I was almost fully submerged I didn't even feel wet. During this vision I felt absolutely serene and was totally and utterly an observer mode. I didn't have any physical sensation nor a sense of smell. Perception-wise I had sight and that's it. I was in a vast body of water, no land or shore in sight. All of this should have been a bit terrifying or at the very least concerning since I was obviously not in my bedroom anymore. On the contrary, I was at a peace that I had never experienced before. I didn't just have not a care in the world but what I find so intriguing is that I didn't have a single thought; I was only aware of what I was seeing with an absolute stillness, peace and acceptance. As I think about it now it still overwhelms me with wonder and awe. I'm a very brainy person, like most of you I'm full of thoughts, questions, and concerns all the time. This was an experience that I had never had before, I felt truly free. Free from concern, worry, even danger ... I was free from the ego entirely. I was free from the faucet of thoughts. When I was in the water I was at eye-level looking out on the surface of the water. There was a gentle current in the water, the sky was full of thin clouds that were painted a soft, muted yellow. There were moments when I felt a gentle wave of water come up over my face and head but again I didn't feel wet at all. After what seemed like a minute or so the environment changed and I was somewhere else. I was in a blue sky floating slowly and gently past snow-capped mountains. As I floated I did not feel any air resistance nor a sense of smell in the air.

Suddenly I flicked my eyes open. I was still sitting upright on the end of the bed with my feet on the floor. I looked out past the half opened door to my bedroom at the back of the chair where my husband was sitting. What had just happened?! Where did I go?! I wasn't sure that day of what happened. The only thing I was sure of was that I didn't fall asleep and I hadn't been dreaming.

That day was the beginning for me becoming fully aware of the transformation of my consciousness. I had experienced an extraordinary even mystical clairvoyant vision. Up to that point, through all that I had read and learned from teachers and healers, I still maintained a healthy skepticism. I still held a limiting belief that there was a reasonable, logical explanation other than the mystical or paranormal. But now I couldn't deny it. I crossed a sort of threshold officially into the world of woo.

For many months afterwards I thought about the experience. I didn't tell anyone about it for a long time not even my husband. But the experience then and now functions as an anchor, a point of reference at times where whenever I reach a place of reconsidering my sanity that experience grounds me like an affirmation that the seemingly impossible is possible. That the unseen does exist out there in ways that you can feel, maybe know but out of sight. It was permission to believe what you can't always see.

You can do amazing things, have incredible experiences but you are still human navigating this world, managing emotions, managing day-to-day life with the same ups and downs. And if I feel low, if I feel down then all I need to do is take myself back to that experience. That experience is proof of light, it's a reminder that things are not what they seem, its evidence that there is something more to the problem or challenge right in front of you. I'm not special. These experiences await us all but we need to put ourselves in the position to be able to receive them. Today I stand in a different space or mindset I did back then in 2017. Since that time I've had many amazing experiences in meditation and with clients. That experience was an initiation into a different reality and a different consciousness. It set me up to do the work that is my passion. Now I'll take what I've built and learned and help as many people as I can discover their own self-realization and expansion of consciousness.