Spirituality is a lifelong pursuit. You don't reach a quick epiphany, get struck enlightened, and suddenly arrive. As Stephen Mitchell writes, at times spiritual transformation can be like “cleaning the heart with a piece of steel wool,” with clarity always the goal. While reading his book
The Gospel According to Jesus,
I was especially impressed by the story of the spiritual journey of Chao-Chou, a Zen monk from the T'ang Dynasty. Achieving enlightenment when only seventeen years old, he still chose to remain with his teacher for another forty years. He did this out of love, but also to heighten his insight further and purify his character. Other monks left to teach at a much earlier age. But Chao-Chou was matchless in his excellence and patience. Finally, at age eighty, he felt ready to teach. Chao-Chou proposed a humble philosophy: “If I meet a hundred-year-old man and I have something to teach him, I will teach; if I meet an eight-year-old boy and he has something to teach me, I will learn.” Remarkably, he taught until his death at age 120.
Chao-Chou can be a model for us all. You don't have to be shut away in a far-off monastery to live a spiritual life, even though our world has many more distractions. Like his, our task is both to solidify our connection with a higher power through techniques such as meditation or prayer, and to make love a priority in how we think and behave. When living this way, for example, it becomes a lot harder to hold a grudge when a boss treats you in a manner that seems unfair, or to announce rashly, “I'll never speak to you again,” if a friend inadvertently hurts your feelings. This doesn't mean that we're instantly transformed into saints. It's just that now, more spiritually aware, we gravitate toward loving solutions.
There's a sacredness to being human. This was brought home to me in a vivid dream I had about my mother at a time when I was intently involved with my writing—my most powerful meditation—although frustrated by how emotionally demanding it felt. My mother had been dead for about a year when she came to me and said in her adamant style: “You have no idea how lucky you are to feel so passionately. That's the great joy of being on earth. Where I am things are different. The same intensity isn't there.” I awoke saddened by her longing but also got her message loud and clear: It's a great gift to be human, to have teal passions that we can go all out for. On a deeper level the dream also reminded me that we must honor the whole experience of life as sacred, not divide ourselves into neat little categories, designating what is spiritual and what is not. Such a split is an illusion.
In the film
Wings of Desire,
an angel falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist. At the end, he sacrifices his wings in order to be with her. But this kind of sacrifice is not necessary for us. We can be as divine as we want, right here on earth. Nothing's stopping us. We're the template for where love begins. It's a chain reaction. The more we love and accept ourselves, the more we're able to love and accept other people. To achieve this for even a millisecond is to know the meaning of holiness.
Over a decade ago, when I returned from my first conference with Brugh Joy, love was rushing through me like a great river. I thought it would never cease. I was sure I'd found the answer. Now, at last, my life would be changed. With the best of intentions I drove straight from the seclusion of the high desert to join my parents for lunch at a ritzy country club they belonged to in Beverly Hills, a place that had previously set my hair on end because I felt so utterly out of place. With all this love in my heart that September afternoon, I assumed things had to be different. Not so. Within minutes I became just as much of a miserable outcast as I'd been before. The truth was, I didn't really feel I belonged in many places because I wasn't comfortable in my own skin. Finding this comfort was my spiritual task. The route there was through my insecurities, in search of an authentic voice. Not, I learned, by beating myself up, but by gently and patiently penetrating the fears that were stopping me.
The enormous outpouring of energy I experienced at Brugh's didn't last forever. Nor was it meant to. It was simply a taste of what was possible if I was willing to carry on that work in myself. The more we incorporate love in our lives, the closer we get to heaven. I don't view heaven as some otherworldly, unreachable realm. It is here right before us, intermingled with our humanness, waiting to be found.
Often, when you begin a spiritual path—especially when you're working with a teacher—the focused energy can be so potent it breaks down inner barriers that seemed impenetrable. You're free to feel such a heightened awareness of love that it may spark a psychic opening, a double whammy that is mind-blowing, to say the least. In this state, you may see brilliant lights around people like the halos crowning saints in Byzantine icons. Even your dog, your plants, the pots and pans in your kitchen exude it. Literally everything glows. Or you feel a oneness with the universe that can bring incredible joy. These are called peak experiences. Though dramatic and truly illuminating, they're not the be-all and end-all; rather, they are simply one marker among many on the path.
In 1986 I spent two weeks on the north shore of the island of Kauai, participating in a women's workshop on spirituality. After meditating intensely with the group before a three-day period of silence and fasting, I walked through a lush jungle down to the water's edge, to watch the sunset. The evening was warm and moist. A light wind blew through my short cotton dress as I rested my back on the trunk of a fragrant plumaria tree. I got lost in the swaying movements of its leaves and deep violet flowers. They looked like feathers and seemed to be gesturing to me. To my surprise, I began to feel sexually aroused. Waves of heat started pulsing through the bark and into my body, flowing up my spine to my scalp—then down to my genitals and feet. It was absolute bliss. I kept the slope of my back glued to” the trunk, afraid if I dared move or analyze what was happening, it would stop. For once, thank God, my mind cooperated. The sexual intensity mounted slowly and then faster until my entire body exploded into an orgasm.
When it was over, I rested on the cool ground beneath the tree, gazing at a canopy of glittering stars. Logically I knew this entire incident was outrageous. But the odd thing was how natural it all seemed. I felt soft like a baby. My harsh edges had been smoothed out, every inch of me vibrating and alive. Since becoming a doctor, I'd spent so much time thinking on my feet, making tough decisions fast, I often forgot I even had a body. I had become so civilized and proper, obsessively intent on doing “the right thing,” that I'd sacrificed my wilder spirit. But now it was back.
Previously I had always depended on a man to bring out my wildness and sexuality. In a relationship, I could be passionate and playful; when I was single, I somehow felt less feminine and lacked a certain warmth. I didn't see that I possessed my own vital sexuality, independent of anyone else. On this particular evening, however, as I witnessed every tree, every blossom, every rock, and the earth itself, radiating sensuality, I realized that it was also inside me. I felt womanly and full, in touch with that part that could run naked on the beach without shame, howl in the light of the full moon.
And yet, compelling as this moment had been, I knew from my teacher not to dwell on it. Peak psychic experiences are transitory. There are hundreds of different kinds that come and go the more deeply your practice continues. If you focus on them for too long, you can get sidetracked by their beauty and lose sight of what lies ahead. I'll never forget what took place on the beach in Kauai. Even today I can't help but look at leaves fluttering in the breeze and smile. Still, I know it's as dangerous to lose myself to the light as to the darkness. I took what I learned from that night and moved on.
Unfortunately it's quite easy to be seduced. A friend of mine had been meditating only a few months when he began having some pyrotechnic visions, each more striking than the last. He'd be gazing down at his body while floating high above it; fantastic light shows with purple strobes would burst from the center of his forehead; a band of mischievous orange-robed monks with shaved heads would be rolling in laughter as their images flew by during meditation. Off and on for days this flashy show continued; my friend was getting pretty impressed with himself. Then suddenly it all stopped. Upset that he was losing ground, he went to his spiritual teacher, believing that in some way he'd failed. His teacher listened patiently, unconcerned, and then reassured him, saying, “All experiences have value. Just keep meditating.”
By this he meant you should not to cling to any experience, no matter how dramatic, because it removes us from the present—that the secret is to endow even the simplest moments with meaning, see each one as divine. Peak experiences are merely the glitterati of the journey, not necessarily a sign of spiritual attainment. Notice them, learn what you can, but don't become too enticed. In
A Gradual Awakening,
Stephen Levine says, “Enlightenment is freedom, the thought of enlightenment is prison.” The instant you get enamored with how evolved you think you are, your ego gets snagged and you get thrown off course.
I once knew a workshop junkie who bounced from teacher to teacher just to get a hit of the energy. He never stuck around long enough, however, to do the real work. With his saccharine glow and perpetual glazed smile I could spot him coming from a mile away. When he sporadically dropped in on my teacher's classes, he'd make a beeline for me, giving me a big hug—which was all right because I was glad to see him—but there was always a forced quality as if he was trying too hard. He looked undeniably blissed out, too much so. Authentic spirituality embodies a range of experience, not just feeding off the high points. As author and teacher Ram Dass says, “If you get phonyholy, it will end up kicking you in the butt.” The most spiritual of acts is to be genuinely human at every moment.
We have no idea when spiritual insights will come. Our times of struggle can be just as pivotal as when we're feeling really connected. All we can do is work toward being psychically open, no matter what's happening. Life will do the rest. The point is not to sit around just waiting to become enlightened. The richness of our emotions, the very events of our lives, provide a potent springboard from which to grow. So often, at my lowest points, when I feel like I just can't go on, a psychic realization or vision restores me. The effect is instantly healing, and I come back to myself.
One night I pulled into the Saint John's Hospital garage, about to see a patient who'd just nearly overdosed on cocaine. I wound up the crowded concrete ramps until I found a parking spot; this was the last place I wanted to be. Tired and depressed (my mother had just fallen ill), I didn't have one ounce of energy left over to give to anyone. Yet there I was, in the front seat of my car, wriggling out of my jeans into a more “professional” outfit, transforming into “the doctor” once more. I couldn't have felt less spiritual. My body, a leaden weight, just sat there. For one brief moment I crossed my arms over the steering wheel, lay my head down to rest. Before I knew it I drifted into a vision.
I was standing in the midst of the clearest, never-ending sky with a being who knew me inside out and loved me completely. He wasn't human, visually no more than a stick figure you'd see in a child's drawing. Yet somehow I was certain there was no one more important to me than he. We were in a huge place, infinite in all directions, the earth a tiny speck below. In a split second he showed me a detailed replay of my life, every person, every place, every event. I saw that no matter how important any of it seemed, it was a mere blip compared to the vastness now surrounding me. Exhilarated, I felt my perspective shift. There were no beginnings, no end, just a oneness to which we are all linked. In my depression I'd lost sight of this. But with such a joyous reminder I was freed from my smaller frame of mind.
It would be wonderful if I could have kept this vision alive forever. But no matter how inspiring and true, visions by nature tend to fade. Our challenge is to recall and savor them, making them part of our life so they stick. There's no limited supply. Being psychic allows us to create room for new ones constantly. And visions build on each other. For example, the vision I had at Saint John's didn't stand by itself. Its theme of oneness had come to me many times before, underlying the basis of my own spiritual beliefs: We are all interrelated in a gigantic cosmic net. My prescience helps me to remember.
As you bring the psychic into finer focus you have the freedom to appreciate the extraordinary beauty of spirit and feel its oneness. Once you have a personal experience of this, you'll get a radically different slant on the world, sensing an organic connection to all of life—as I see it, the very reason we pursue a spiritual path in the first place. Search for this oneness in your dreams, meditations, during readings, or while simply walking by the ocean or hiking in the woods. No reminder is too small.
Our connection to each other and to the entire universe exists everywhere. But certain locations in the world are magical; they're psychic treasure troves that evoke even more of a connection. These places seem to buzz with energy and activate us, sacred sites such as Machu Picchu, Stonehenge, the Great Pyramids in Egypt, or the colossal stone monoliths on Easter Island. The history of the land seems to be embedded in the soil, the landscape, and the architecture, preserving the memory of what happened there as concisely as if it had been stored on microchips. When you're psychically open you can join with the ancient quality of the land, hear its voice, sense the enormity of its spirit.
A few years ago I visited the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, a place so holy that people of many religions make pilgrimages there from all over the world. For the Jewish people, this wall is especially sacred. It's all that remains of the ancestral temple that was destroyed in
A.D.
70, when the Jews were forced into exile. Traditionally, Jews have journeyed there to shed tears and mourn the original loss of their homeland. The wall is not merely a historical marker, however; many Jews regard it as a physical touchstone to a greater sanctity.