"There is always light. If only we're brave enough to see it. If only we're brave enough to be it."
Amanda GormanIt has taken me ten years to figure out how to follow the last chapter. The last line implies that I should get right into the teachings and let you know what I learned from the Abyss, so you can share the wealth of knowledge or judge the worth of this book. The fact is, however, that the answers really are unimportant. You could probably find the same answers in a cracker jack box or a Chinese cookie or a sci-fi novel. In fact, the answers I got were WAY better explained 20 years later in books like “Conversations with God” and “A Course in Miracles”.
What really matters is that every day for two and a half years I witnessed miracles - unusual physical phenomena - as if they were no big deal at all. The miracles were like eating cornflakes for breakfast - something unremarkable, perfectly natural and not worth thinking about too much. I lived in a world where anything was possible, and the miraculous a common event - the opposite of Cancer Man’s world. Yet the miracles themselves paled in comparison to their implication: that there is something out there and it is possible to communicate with it. The miracles were physical evidence of the existence of God or Spirit or whatever you want to call it, and I received whatever evidence I asked for.
For example: I once asked God to put everything She was telling me in writing so I could study it a bit more. I asked that as a joke, not thinking it possible. Yet I came across a Paul Twitchell book on Ekancar the next day which described the phenomena I was experiencing in detail. They had actual words for things I thought nobody else knew about. For example: there is this process of communication whereby if I catch the Freudian slips that people make in a crowded room, the words link up to form a sentence that answers a question I just asked in my head. This is a recognized phenomenon in Ekancar's world view.
Another phenomenon is natural events occurring at phenomenally coincidental moments - things like lightning striking, or the wind suddenly gusting up and breaking a window, or the lights going out or the aurora borealis shaping itself into an eagle. This was a lot like the communications channel I had “discovered”.
As another example: one day I asked God how I could control someone else’s body - you know, like a marionette or a Svengali (I know - strange question but I was curious and not just a little bit immature).
The answer that evolved was, “It’s impossible to control someone else’s body. That would be a kind of violation. Only you can control your body. What to do instead is get someone to WANT to do what you want him to do - aim for their motivational center “.
“How do I do that? “, I asked.
“By sending a blast of completely joyous love and humor into them psychically and then just asking them to do what you want them to do - in your mind. If people love you, they are more willing to go along with what you want.”
A few days after that “conversation” (for lack of a better metaphor) I was in my apartment reaching across my bed for a book. A friend was sitting in the living room behind me. Half way to the book I heard a voice say “Now!” and in that moment I realised not only that such a thing was possible but that this was the moment I could actually DO it. So, I froze in place with my hand outstretched for the book, sent my friend a blast of humorous joy and asked him (in my head) to “Come Here”. He got up and walked into the bedroom.
As you will recall, I had set an arbitrary number of 5 for an answer to be verified so it wasn’t enough of a coincidence that he rose and came into the bedroom.
Before he opened his mouth I said (in my mind) “Go away.” He immediately turned around, walked out and sat back in the chair. I then said “Come here.” He got up and come into the bedroom again. Before he could talk I said “Go away”. He left and walked down the hall and mulled about the kitchen as if he didn’t know what to do with himself. I then called him back. When he came into the room, I burst out laughing at the joy of all this.
I spoke to my friend about this many months later and told him what happened. He remembered the day very well. He said he felt a desire to get up and talk to me. When he entered the room, the desire left and he wandered out not knowing what to say. The desire came back, he entered, the desire left, he left, etc. He noticed it was a bit peculiar but didn’t mention it at the time.
I never used that talent again, by the way. It was enough for me to know it was possible and I had no real desire to manipulate people. A more accurate statement is to say I let the knowledge of this settle down into my subconscious and never became AWARE of the fact I was doing it ever again.
Awareness was an interesting subject for us to get into at this point. Many of the unusual phenomena I ran across had been happening since the beginning of time. What had changed was my awareness of them. For example: I think we all communicate telepathically all the time. We’re just not aware of it. We block our awareness because we cannot handle knowing. Let’s face it, do you want EVERYONE to know exactly what you are thinking? Are you comfortable with all your little secrets leaking out into the open? Can you handle being utterly naked and without defenses to the truth?
You see, the thing about telepathy is that you can only travel into someone else as deeply as you are willing to let them come into you. Telepathy isn’t reading someone else like a book. It is becoming one with them. Telepathy is a natural corollary of believing in God. If both you and I are part of God, then through Him we have a direct connection. If I look deeply enough into myself, I will find you there. The connection is mutual - if I am experiencing you, then you are experiencing me to the same degree. You get to see all my secrets also.
These realizations all came about while exploring the question “How do I become one with the universe?”. The answer turned out to be “By realizing that you are already one with the universe.” Being one with the universe is also a natural corollary of believing in God. If God is everything and then some and you are one with God, then you are one with the universe. You don’t even have to give up your criminal, drug addled ways to become one with the universe/God. It is your natural birthright. All a messed-up life may do is muck up your awareness of the fact that God is your best buddy, and reality can be anything you make it out to be.
Most people just cannot bring themselves to the realization that they are one with the universe. They can think of the idea in their heads, but most don’t believe it. Most think they must do something to deserve it … say “Ommmmm” for a few years or give up everything and meditate on a mountaintop. They think there is work involved. Very few believe that there is nothing to it … that “poof, you’re one with the universe” is something that can happen effortlessly. You already deserve it and don’t have to do a thing other than know it to be a fact. All the work does is give you the discipline and skills to maintain belief. Most people cannot bring themselves to a state of solid belief. Doubts fester. The disciplines and practices are very good at dealing with that.
Having the advantage of being monumentally stupid and mind-bogglingly arrogant, I simply went ahead and assumed I was one with the universe and began playing with the idea. Telepathy was one implication of being one with the universe.
Another implication was so profound that things really became fun. I realised right away, that if I was one with the universe, then that opened the possibility I could manipulate … maybe even control the universe in some way (Ah … there’s a little Hitler in all of us, I guess). I could do it not by controlling anything outside but by controlling myself - controlling what I thought, felt and believed. Logically, if I and the universe were one, then what I changed in myself would change the universe.
The first thing I began to manipulate were cards in a deck. I remember thinking specifically about the fact that I didn’t know what the next card would be. Nobody knew. Because of that I began thinking the reality of that card didn’t exist. Its reality was established only after it was flipped and I saw what card it was. There was no way to disprove this hypothesis, and it begged the question, “Does what I think at the moment a card is flipped over have any effect on what card comes up?”. When I began to experiment with this idea, I noticed that what I believed influenced what happened.
Manipulating what you believe is WAY harder than it sounds. Try it. Try to shift a belief you have. It’s almost impossible without extensive brainwashing or without the occurrence of some great liberating realization – or a boatload of spiritual discipline. There is no way I’m jumping off a building in this lifetime because there is no way I can bring myself to believe that I will fly. Flipping a card, on the other hand, wasn’t life threatening. There was also a way I could change what I believed about the card anytime I wanted to - the communication medium I had discovered. I honestly believed that if I asked the right question and if it was important enough, I could affect what card flipped by asking for a specific card as a sign of my answer’s verity. The results matched my expectations.
I never even thought of taking this process to Las Vegas. Honestly, I was more interested in the information I was getting. I also didn’t use it much in my daily life as gambling had no real appeal other than as occasional recreation among male friends and it was too easy to run out of important questions to ask. Knowing this, I treated the experience as sacred and seldom thought to misuse it.
I don’t remember if I had these experiences before I ran across quantum theory. It was still the late seventies, so quantum theory wasn’t that well known to us common folk.
The big stew about Quantum Physics is that at a sub-atomic level, science has encountered a fundamental limit in its ability to define an objective reality. The fact of observation appears to affect the reality we observe. An element of uncertainty has been introduced into the observation process as complimentary characteristics such as the speed and position of a particle cannot both be discovered at the same time.
Part of the reason is that you have to bounce a high energy photon off a particle in order for it to bounce back onto whatever receptor you are using to perceive it. The act of bouncing the photon off the particle, of course, knocks the particle way off its original trajectory and you have no way of knowing where it will be so no measurement of its speed can be taken. Similarly you can determine its speed mathematically but not have a clue as to its exact position. What you can do, however, is mathematically determine where it is most likely to be.
There's a lot more to it than this, of course. It has been discovered that when particles are not directly observed, they act like waves of probability, but when they are observed, they act like particles should act. The act of observance seems to collapse the probability wave into an actual fact
This phenomenon can be observed and reproduced at any time in what is known as the "double slit" experiment. Simply take what is essentially an electron gun, fire it at a background capable of registering the impact of an electron and place a barrier between the gun and the background with two very small slits that can be opened and closed.
If only one slit is open, then the pattern of impacts on the receptor is similar to that of a rifle firing bullets. If both slits are open, then one doesn't know which slit the particles go through unless they are directly observed as they pass. When they are observed so that you know which slit they went through, the pattern of impacts is again like that of a rifle firing bullets, but if they are not observed as they pass through the slits, the pattern of impacts is like a wave. There is an interference pattern similar to that of a wave of water going through two very small openings in a sea wall.
The implication of this is that if the electron is not observed, it appears to go through both slits at the same time. That's what's causing the interference. Both possibilities exist as an overlapping pattern until the particle is actually observed, in which case only one possibility is observed.
It's not that sub-atomic particles are unreal when in a wave state but their reality is not determined until the moment they are observed. They have no definite state. On the contrary, they seem to exist as an overlapping series of possibilities that interfere with and affect each other. The act of observance causes all these other possibilities to drop away and cease affecting the one particle that is observed. Even stranger, once one stops directly observing a particle, the wave quality of interfering possibilities returns.
Similarly, the reason the future is not predetermined is that it comes at us as a probability wave of overlapping possibilities which doesn't crystallize until it is observed.
I believe this is the same principle that allowed me to manipulate the final state of cards I flipped (or was dealt) from a deck. Their state was not determined until the moment I observed them and what I believed had some effect on what that card turned out to be.
The first thing I began to manipulate on a grander scale was the wind and weather. I specifically asked my god, “Could I become Vice-Lord of the Wind and Weather - you know, when the real Lord was on vacation?”. I asked in that humorous way I had - full of mischief and joy. Over the next few months, I began to notice that it stormed every time I got angry and that the sun came out when I was happy. I suppose there might have been a “chicken or the egg” thing happening - as in I became very sensitive to the weather and got mad when it stormed and happy when the sun came out but there was more to it. I also started to notice the wind itself was matching my moods. Powerful emotions brought out some powerful winds.
One time, when Lia had committed one of her many “indiscretions”, I was attempting to enter a hot little bar I knew she was in with her latest lover. I couldn’t get in the front because it felt as if she had thrown a force field around it. Every time I tried to get close to the door, I’d feel a massive pressure wave of wind pushing me away. Lethbridge has powerful winds - strong enough to knock you over. So, I went around to the back. The back door was one of those all-steel doors with no handles - the kind that makes you give up all hope of getting in or breaking through - so I turned in dejection and began walking away. Suddenly, a surge of energy flowed through me, and I realized I could do anything. The wind, which had been wild most of the night rose to a howl and as I turned back, it shattered the back window. When I got to the door, I touched it with my fingertips as if invoking it to open and suddenly noticed it was already open an eighth of an inch, so the latch wasn’t caught. I pried it open with my fingernails and went in - to what turned out to be a very interesting evening.
The notion of manipulating the world around me is a tricky one … in that there were side effects that happened to my communication medium. As I flowed through my life I began to ask questions not for the information I got but for the power it gave me to manipulate the world. I was seduced by that power. Despite being specifically warned that I would lose this communication medium if I abused it or became addicted to it, I could not resist the temptation. I had fallen in love with someone who had no morals, and I became desperate for the power to keep her with me. A little bit of mucking about with this power doesn’t really matter but when you do that as a habit, it slowly disappears.
Towards the end of my experiences, I began making war on other men with all this spiritual knowledge I had. It was a war designed to seduce Lia and make her stay with me. My addiction to her had become too powerful and precipitated a long slow downfall. It was easy for me to make other men look clumsy or classless - make them drop their drinks or stumble at a critical moment or trip over their tongue. Inevitably, it turned violent. At one point, I even sucker-punched a guy and ended up in an outright brawl over her.
With that statement, I suppose it’s time to point out something which may disappoint some. Knowing what the point of life is, witnessing miracles, knowing that there is a God and that I have infinite amounts of help on my journey does not stop life from being hard sometimes and it does not stop me from being foolish. I must still do the work. I must still deal with myself, my humanity, the frail things which get in the way of me believing in myself, the brainwashing my culture has given me, the childhood hurts and misconceptions, the wounds I think I suffered. No matter what I saw, no matter what physical evidence I was given, I could not hold onto the vision I had of what was real. I could not hold on to my relationship with God. It was too powerful for me and eventually I ran away from it. I misused my “powers”, got addicted to having them and stopped walking in the naked majesty of my own being. I broke my pacts, I let desperation - even economics - determine my morality.
I'm not going to go into the particulars of my downfall other than to say one must never be controlled by anything outside of oneself. To do so is to lose one's soul. My so-called love for Lia ended up being no different from anyone who ever loved in a way that turned into addiction, and it began to warp me. Some men turn to murder when this happens. We've all seen the stories in the news - ex-husband/boyfriend kills in fit of rage. I feel so sorry for such men for not realizing the fundamental principle of love.
Love has nothing to do with you.
It's all about the other person. If I truly love someone, I want what is good for them, not necessarily what is good for me. It takes a lot to love that way. You must have your act together - which is why you must take care of your own stuff before you are even capable of truly loving someone else.
Even self-love is like that. I love myself the way I would a lover - giving myself the things I need - reassurance, commitment, communication - telling yourself, “I love you. I support who you are. I give all I am to you.” I’m on my side.
Fortunately, I hung on to a shred of belief that love was all about freedom and was eventually able to let go and escape my addiction.
Now is a good time to explore the notion of love I had about that time. My whole idea about love centered around freedom. It was a massive implementation of the truism “If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it’s yours. If it doesn’t, it never was.” I loved the way I believe God loves us. We get to do whatever we want, and God never turns His back on us. I gave that to whomever I loved. I never fought over a woman until that one time. The only thing I could do was outclass other men and conquer by charisma - make her want to stay with me. If a woman didn’t want to be with me, I let them leave. I also didn’t turn my back on them. Despite the fact I was hurt many times by Lia, I always took her back. I suppose some might think me weak and easily taken advantage of and perhaps I was. Others might think me strong to be able to love so generously and perhaps I was.
I don’t love people in a way that is addictive anymore and yet am vastly more generous in the way I love than I was as a young man. I also love in a more human way as I have accepted the fact that I am a man and not a god as I once thought.
I should explore the “... and not a god as I once thought” thing. It’s a bit of a bold statement. The fact is, I once thought I was the second coming of Jesus Christ. There was some justification for me thinking this. I matched the profile:
I learned much later, however, that I was just another guy. The real second coming of Christ is the phenomenon that is occurring now in the world - the coming of what the Christians call Christ consciousness - the fulfilling of Christ’s comment, “This and more you too will do”. We are all becoming Christs - capable of performing miracles, capable of reaching into the deepest parts of ourselves and each other. We are becoming aware of our true nature. If ever any of you get to the point where you finally know who you are - what your true nature is - hold onto it with every fiber of your being. It’s almost all that really matters in life, and it is possible to lose this realization after discovering it.
I know this because it happened to me.
I lost who I was partly because I could not speak to anyone about what I was experiencing and partly because I ran away from it. The power, intimacy and responsibility of my relationship to God scared the crap out of me. I was frightened I would do something terrible and the self-centered actions I committed as a result of being addicted to Lia and no longer being my own center seemed to demonstrate that I was not only capable of using this god-like power to make war but that I was in fact using it for that purpose.
Curiously enough, this didn't just happen to me. I began to notice that everyone of the people I knew in Lethbridge was beginning to separate into “tribes" that began to make a strange kind of psychic war on each other. Rather than simply enjoy the limitless nature of the world and of all our newfound freedoms and powers, we began to separate into warring factions. We got competitive about it. It started as petty things but escalated - even to the point of violence.
Chapter 5 - The Sleep Talker