The following article is a response to a post on Thom Hartmann’s Message Board. I’m using the title of the post as the title for this article.
One definition of Atheist: “Atheists tend to lean towards skepticism regarding supernatural claims, citing a lack of empirical evidence.” – Wikipedia
My response:
It seems to me Thom (Hartmann) is saying that people who define themselves as Atheists, people who only accept empirical evidence as proof of reality, are selling themselves short. We are much more than we give ourselves credit for whether we define ourselves as Atheists or Christians, whether we believe in “God” or not. Why put ourselves inside a box – for safety, for comfort?
From We Create Our Own Reality: During the course of everyday events we often forget the role of thoughts in the forging of our material reality. We get lost in the visible symbols, the material by-products of our imaginations, forgetting the invisible blueprints from which they, and we, emerge.
That’s right, “We get lost in the visible symbols, the material by-products of our imaginations, forgetting the invisible blueprints from which they, and we, emerge.” To highlight this point for me, my inner self or higher consciousness presented me (the outer ego me) with three creation dreams that I had enough sense to write down. They’re too long to reproduce here but you can read them by clicking the following link: Pete’s Creation Dreams.
Many of my most valued experiences in this lifetime are spiritual or “supernatural” in nature. Why would I want to deny these experiences or hide my abilities from myself?
Everything we do, we do for a reason, whether we’re consciously aware of it or not.
Does someone who proclaims to be an Atheist believe in atheism because they haven’t experienced the “supernatural” or, do they believe in it because they’re afraid to experience it? Have they been told one too many times to “stop daydreaming and pay attention!”, or have they been annoyed by religionists who talk about “God” but can furnish no real proof that “God” exists?
We can’t argue against someone else’s truth, every idea has its own validity, but we can observe the abilities we all have in common. For example, we all have inner senses and intuitive abilities even though we often ignore or deny we have them. We can prove this to ourselves by paying attention to our dreams as we fall asleep or meditate. When we close our eyes and tune out the physical world, we dream, even if we’ve trained ourselves not to remember. These abilities are empirically provable by anyone willing to take the time to explore the nature of their own consciousness. Instead of clinging to old ideas because they’re familiar, we need to look at life with an open heart and an open mind. We need to keep asking questions like: Who are we? What’s reality? And, what’s the purpose of life? And keep asking them long after we think we know the answers because there’s always something new to learn or understand.
You’ve heard the term: “use it or lose it.” Well, it’s true! Here’s an excerpt from The “Suckface” Incident, which describes the process of guided imagery and what resulted from it when I conducted an exercise with three “normal” (culturally conditioned) people who neglected to develop their imaginations or pay attention to their dreams:
In the late seventies I worked part time delivering desserts to hotels and restaurants from South San Francisco to San Jose for a small San Francisco bakery, Chalet 21. Since I was also editing and publishing Coordinate Point, a magazine that explored the nature of consciousness and being, I often talked about dreams and psychic phenomena with the people I met in my travels. Catherine seemed as interested as any. She was a new friend and business customer from South San Francisco. During an animated discussion about dreams and intuitive experiences late in 1979, I asked her if she had ever participated in a Guided Imagery Exercise (GIE). She didn’t know what Guided Imagery was so I described the process to her and offered to share one of my favorite experiences with her. When I finished, she asked me to conduct a Guided Imagery Exercise for her and some friends. I agreed, and we set up a time for the following week.
Here’s the guided imagery experience I shared with Catherine and her friends. I call it Healing by Fire.
In guided imagery one person acts as the storyteller or guide while the other participants lie down, relax, and close their eyes. Once the participants are fully relaxed, usually through a series of relaxation exercises, the storyteller constructs an imaginary scene and offers suggestions to focus, guide, and stimulate the participants’ creative abilities, just like thoughts and emotions stimulate our creative abilities in dreams. The results depend on each person’s ability to relax and get out of the way of his or her consciousness so it can flesh out the story line and allow the scene to take on a life of its own.
HEALING BY FIRE
The first Guided Imagery Exercises I participated in involved the spirits of Earth, Fire, Wind (air), and Water. Our group met once a week and each week, for a month, we used one of these basic elements to build a story around. My favorite was the Fire Exercise.
After conducting a relaxation exercise, the storyteller describes a scene with trees, green grass, and wild flowers. He encourages us to enter the scene. Because I’m so relaxed and these scenic elements are so pleasant and non-threatening, I find it easy to fully enter into the scene. He encourages us to explore our surroundings, to tumble in the grass, smell the flowers, or float up into the trees if we want. I follow (actualize) the suggestion to float up into the trees to smell the blossoms and after several minutes, the storyteller tells us to “see” the pathway that winds through the trees. He instructs us to follow the path. We can walk, run, float, roll, tumble, or fly, whatever suits our fancy. I choose to float, and after some initial difficulty, do so quite successfully. As we approach an open field, we’re told to see a fire burning off to one side of the path. Again, several suggestions are offered to stimulate our imagination. A roaring bonfire is one suggestion and a burning house, another. Once we see our fire of choice, we’re instructed to enter it. I choose a burning house for my experience.
The house is a short distance off the path to my left. It is nearly burned to the ground but there’s still some debris burning around the sides and in the middle of the house. Walking now, my fear of being burned grows as I approach the flames. Before actually stepping into them, I remind myself that I’m not in my physical body and that the flames can’t hurt my astral form. Without further thought, I step into the flames. They feel cool and breezy against my skin as they lap up around my legs. Delighted, I walk to the center of the house to be among the tallest flames. As I revel in these wonderful new sensations, a large column of flame rises up in front of me and huddles against my chest. As I look at it, an arm-like extension of flame reaches out from the right side of its body and penetrates my left side. Before I can react, I feel something like a hand wrap around my heart and begin to knead it gently and lovingly.
Somehow, in this alternate reality, a doorway for healing has been opened. For many years I’ve sensed a growing hardness in my heart from being so angry at myself and the world for not being perfect. As the Fire Being or Spirit continues to knead my heart, strong feelings of love and compassion are released in me. With a great sigh of relief, I completely relax into the experience.
Soon, the storyteller speaks again and gently suggests we bring our fire experience to an end. As his suggestion slowly filters through my mind, the Flame Spirit withdraws its fiery hand from inside my chest. Growing an additional appendage from the left side of its body, it reaches up over my right shoulder and around the back of my neck. Supporting itself with its left appendage, it leans back and looks up into my face. With the fiery hand it had used to massage my heart, it reaches toward me and gently brushes the left side of my face with the back side of its hand, like a mother expressing love and sadness before parting. After one final hug, it slowly lets go of me and sinks down into the flames still burning around my legs. With great sadness, I turn and walk out of the burning house and back up the pathway. As I retrace my steps to the beginning of this journey and waking reality, I mentally relive my experience with the Fire Being and marvel at the magic and wonder of it all. It was a profound, maybe even a life-saving healing experience for me!
When I arrive at Catherine’s house in South San Francisco she’s home alone but expecting two friends. When they arrive it becomes clear neither one has ever heard of Guided Imagery. They ask me if it’s hypnotism, subliminal suggestion, or something more disempowering. To remove their fears, I explain that Guided Imagery combines storytelling with imaginative role-playing, something that often happens spontaneously when someone reads us a story or tells us a joke. The only difference between old-fashioned storytelling and Guided Imagery is that the listeners are meant to actively participate in the story. It’s about them! The hope is that something important and meaningful will come about as a result of their experience, as it did in my case. Guided Imagery is essentially a waking dream, one that the “dreamer” has conscious control over. I don’t know whether it was their skepticism or a lack of experience using their imaginations, but after the exercise only Catherine said she “thought” she could see something when I suggested they picture a scene of trees, grass, and flowers in their minds. The other two participants said all they could see was the black behind their eyelids. Maybe imaginations need exercise like muscles.
Despite the poor results Catherine and her friends experienced, the longer I spent conducting the Guided Imagery Exercise with them, the more relaxed and intuitive I became, unknowingly setting the stage for what was to come next. When I left Catherine’s house for the drive north up highway 101 to my home in San Francisco, I felt very playful and alive. My body was virtually tingling with spiritual energy! This state of consciousness opened the door to The “Suckface” Incident. During The “Suckface” Incident, I switched between my inner senses and outer senses spontaneously as the situation demanded.
Many of us become ego-bound as a result of social programming and discredit the value of imagination and dreams. Instead of the outer ego (our external identity) being the eyes and ears of the soul, it becomes the center of attention, fearfully clinging to material reality as if it were a rock in the middle of a swiftly moving stream. Fearful for its safety, the ego-bound self reigns in imagination and ignores dreams. Without imagination and dreams, how do we evolve as spiritual beings?
In dreams, I can dance with my long-dead mother and talk to my deceased brothers. I can learn from entities more advanced than I. I can fly, have amazing sex and perform magic. I can see myself in different times, in different places and in different bodies on different worlds. And I can see my many selves all at once. In one dream, I was a debonair James Bond (similar to Pierce Brosnan) sitting in a rocking chair facing a tribal elder. He too, is sitting in a rocking chair. Almost side by side, we rock back and forth trading jokes and stories while laughing our heads off. Meanwhile another me, also a young male, is standing outside the door of a new apartment I just leased. It is early morning and two beautiful young women come out of their apartment next to mine. I say “Hi!” and we quickly strike up a conversation. The blond with curly hair is wearing a man’s dress shirt with tails. Bending over to pick up her newspaper, I can see she’s not wearing a bra. She seems to find me as attractive as I find her. After telling them a little bit about myself and sharing some conversation, they invite me into their apartment for breakfast.
Entering the apartment behind the two women, I see a third young woman. She is a beautiful brunette and she too is wearing a man’s dress shirt with tails. She’s in the process of setting the table for breakfast. After an awkward introduction, and without prompting or fanfare, I begin to help her set the table for breakfast, all the while engaging her in conversation in an attempt to allay her fear. For some reason, I start talking about alternate realities and alternate lives. While eating, I tell them I’m currently aware of two other lives I’m living simultaneously. Showing great interest in the subject they encourage me to continue. I begin by describing my other existence as the man in the rocking chair and finish with the details of this life, including the names of my wife and children.
Not every dream represents another reality. Like sentence fragments in writing there are “reality” fragments in terms of consciousness, enterprises we start and never finish. Many personality fragments exist in our psyches as well, giving us the potential of expressing ourselves in many ways. See: The Ball of Light. In this amazingly lucid dream, with the help of an imagined computer, I create many lives, each one exploring its own interests and values just as we do here! Since each one of us is a unique, individualized expression of All That Is, you can say that everything that appears to exist outside of us is a projection of our own consciousness. From your perspective, I’m another version of you and, from my perspective; you’re another version of me. All That Is is a by-product of consciousness and energy, awareness and action. The grand illusion of separation, the process of individualization that enables us to perceive ourselves as unique and separate individuals with separate identities, is just that, a grand illusion created by the interaction of consciousness and energy, awareness and action. It is how consciousness and energy builds on itself, creating greater and greater diversity and complexity. Welcome to the Matrix where all that can be imagined is created!
One of my dreams may explain why some of us may not want to remember our dreams. It involves my daughter, Crystal. In this dream, what some might describe as a Past Life, Crystal is my wife, Christobelle. My name in this reality is Raymondo and I am a blacksmith living in an Elizabethan style England. Christobelle, a beautiful blond like Crystal in this life, and I have thirteen children, three of which are mine. The rest of our brood has a mix of fathers. As the community blacksmith, I shoe the Kingdom’s horses, including the horses owned by the King’s Knights, that elite band of men who seem to possess a careless disregard for life along with a strong sense of entitlement.
Whenever I shoe one of their horses, they idle away their time having sex with my wife. For many years, she enjoyed the attention of these men, abusive though they were at times. One fateful day, Christobelle, in a state of heightened regret, tells me she no longer wants to be a sexual plaything for the Knights. When the next Knight arrives to have me service his horse, I tell him he can no longer service my wife. Without further ado, he unsheathes his sword and runs me through. If he can’t service my wife, I can’t service his horse!
Later, revisiting this dream reality, I watch as Christobelle grows fat, soft and toothless, eaten up with remorse at a relatively young age. Hungry, destitute and alone in the woods, almost mercifully, she is set upon by a pack of wild dogs and killed. As I thought about this alternate reality many years later, I remembered a time when Crystal was about one and a half years old. We lived in Yarmouth, Maine at the time and Sandra and I were walking down Bayview Street, pushing Crystal in a stroller. Suddenly, a German Sheppard appeared on the road several hundred yards ahead of us. It looked curious and stared at us intently. When Crystal saw it she nearly stood up in the stroller as Sandra and I watched as a visible shiver of fear go up and down her spine. Seeing that she was seriously shaken, we stopped to calm her. When the dog disappeared, we continued walking. Was there some connection between that life and this one for Crystal, some visceral memory of that alternate life? The strength of her reaction at that time made Sandra and I both take notice and it happened almost forty years ago.
How do we handle this kind of information? Who would want to know that in another lifetime their daughter in this lifetime was their wife in another lifetime, or their son in another lifetime is their husband in this lifetime? I told Crystal about this other lifetime and she’s very uncomfortable with the idea that we were once husband and wife. Even Sandra, my wife in this lifetime, is uncomfortable with the thought that Crystal was my wife in another lifetime. Seeing reality the way I do, I am not disturbed by this type of knowledge. It corroborates what I am experiencing in life. In this lifetime, Crystal is playing the role of my daughter and I love her for it. I don’t find it confusing or disturbing. As unique, individualized expressions of consciousness, we are actors playing different roles in different plays, all the while seeking to know more about ourselves, who we are and what “reality” really is.
In yet other dreams, I have come to realize that the four of us have lived many lifetimes together and that in each one, we’ve played different roles, been in different relationships to one another. And, yes, I have been female as well as male in other lifetimes. To grow, we need to face reality, not run away from it. Consciousness wants to know itself in ALL ways. For me, knowing about other lifetimes and other relationships adds richness and dimension to my life. It allows me to keep one foot in inner reality and one foot in outer reality at the same time so I can better regulate and balance the energy flowing between the two. When we can understand who we really are and what “reality” is, we’ll feel greater appreciation for ourselves and see the true magic and wonder of All That Is. What we do as men is great but what we do as souls is even greater.
(Inside Ivy). In another experience, my consciousness flowed out of my body and down into the rootlet of an ivy plant after many months of talking to it lovingly on my way to bed at night. Like Alice staring into the Looking Glass, my entry into the ivy plant, like her entry into Wonderland, was spontaneous and unexpected. In direct communication with the consciousness of the rootlet, I was made aware of the plant’s needs and value system. Primarily, its purpose is to bring beauty and grace into the world. I was completely humbled by the intelligence and wisdom of this being. It gave me new insight and appreciation for the existence of all things. Having had these and many other experiences like them, I would not want to hide or deny any aspect of my being from myself, even though it makes me aware of how illusionary the barriers are between us, being as much psychological as biological.
Should we be afraid of developing our inner senses and intuitive abilities? Based on my own experiences, I don’t think so. I’m more afraid of some guy punching me in the nose than I am of dying in a dream. When I die in my dreams, I still wake up in this reality or another dream. But, if I die in this reality, I’m gone from this reality for good. I can only visit it as a ghost and maybe learn to move a picture on the wall or materialize enough for someone to see me as a ball of light or vague human outline. The experiences I’ve had in altered states of consciousness are some of the most cherished memories I have of this reality. Besides, aren’t we meant to move forward, to evolve? I think so.
In his own way, I think Thom is telling you (Atheists in general) to keep your hearts and minds open for you are much more than you define yourselves to be. We are all much more than we think we are!
Thanks for letting me speak,
Pete, http://realtalkworld.com
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
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