Tag: spirituality

Parental Love

On By sambullington1 Comment

Today is my dad’s birthday. It is just incredible to me that this year he will have been gone for 20 YEARS (this year I am the same age he was when he collapsed in the middle of the night), yet he remains in regular contact with me! From everything I know from psychic channelers, it is unusual for a spirit to stay around even for a couple years! It’s not surprising that he would have wanted to stick around—leaving so early in life and so unexpectedly—but his devotion and loyalty, engagement, care, and continued communication touches me so deeply and I feel so incredibly grateful. Since he and my mom have joined forces on the other side, I have felt them strongly at my back, guiding me forward, and their power has been turbo boosted from their reunion. This recent cycle has brought an amazing turn of events, lots of incredible growth, and a deepening bond with my parents.

Inauguration Day

I had knee replacement surgery on Election Day in November. While I went unconscious fully expecting a Harris victory, when I learned that Trump would be the new President, my strong clear inner response was simply NO. This NO did not arise from my entire adult life being devoted to social justice. Instead, this strong NO arose in response to growing up with my mom. I spent my entire life in the shadow of someone else’s impactful mental illness. I had one precious year free of that to finally have some breathing room for my own life—and I’m not going back. Though I’m not great with boundaries, this one was loud and clear: NO, I’m done.

I’d approached January 20 with existential dread, but waking up that morning, I felt only clarity and strength. It is Inauguration Day and inauguration means the start of something new. I felt internally, and declared to myself, today is the day where the path to my future diverges from the path of my country. Here is where we part ways.

It was a big moment for me, breaking up with my country. In my interpersonal relationships, I’ve only ever been dumped—I’ve never broken up with someone before. The only break up I initiated was with the academic world—and that I had to do multiple times because, like many bad relationships, I kept going back.  

So the break up with my country was a first, but one that was long overdue. It had been a bad marriage from the start, a complete lack of alignment in our values and goals, but I had always stayed out of obligation. Since I am a healer, and this is the place most in need of healing (and the place that has the most impact on the rest of the world), I felt like I needed to be here, regardless of what it cost me personally. But my mom’s passing liberated me from so many of these self- harming obligations.

Once I was clear about my future path, things unfolded quite rapidly! Without trying to make anything happen, within a month my new course had been set! My partner Erin had been looking at properties in Canada online. When she came to the US in 2008, she’d only planned to be here for 3 years to complete her Masters and then return to British Columbia. She ended up having a baby and getting trapped in the US for over a decade because she didn’t want to take her kiddo Orrin away from his dad. She very nearly returned to Canada at the beginning of Covid, but ended up staying for all the US catastrophes of the past 5 years, and she too had had enough.  

One property in particular we’d seen online captured our imagination. It was 2 homes on 5 acres so a dream we could share with others needing to flee the US, including the eventual possibility that all the members of Erin’s kiddo’s complicated family (2 siblings with different moms) could stay together. But what really grabbed us was the gorgeous 3 story barn that would be a perfect retreat and workshop space! Individually and together, that barn started us dreaming.

Finally Erin said we needed to go look at it in person. She had a light week of work coming up at the beginning of February so she could arrange to be away. Since I’d never shopped for a home before (and had never planned to!), we set up appointments with realtors up the Sunshine Coast, en route to Powell River—the location of the property with the barn and where Erin had gone for the first time in September when she did a 2 week Enlightenment Intensive there—and then several more appointments on Vancouver Island across the water on the way back down to Seattle so we could get a sense of the range of options available.

Also, in preparation for our trip, we made arrangements to get legally married while we were in Powell River so that we could begin my immigration process.

Parental Communication: Miracles and More Miracles

My dad has 2 main ways of communicating with me: he leaves me dimes (and after 20 years I have literally thousands of dimes he’s left me in unusual places and uncanny situations!) and he DJ’s songs for me in public places (for instance, study parties with friends at Perkins in Minneapolis would just slide into a series of significant songs from my childhood). Even when my dad communicated with a psychic channeler after I went on testosterone, he gave her a song for me—“Whatta Man” by Salt-N-Pepa and En Vogue—specifying that it was not his genre, but one he thought I would like lol.

When Erin and I arrived at the Denver airport for our trip to Powell River, as she was checking our bag, I became aware of a song playing—I’d never even noticed music at the Denver airport before! As I realized what song it was, I burst into tears. “I Can See Clearly Now” was not only a significant song from my childhood, and one that has recurred throughout my adult spiritual journey, but it was a significant song in my relationship with Erin. It was a special song of her dad’s—her dad who committed suicide when she was a kid—so much so that, after our first Enlightenment Intensive in 2023, I came home and learned “I Can See Clearly Now” on my guitar so that I could play it for Erin as a surprise. It also well captures the healing journey Erin and I have been on as a couple over the past few years.  

We rented a car in Seattle and headed towards the Canadian border to make the 6 hour drive—including 2 ferries—to Powell River. About an hour into our journey, Erin was looking for something on the passenger side floor and found a dime! When we stopped for gas, there was a cash register with a change cup and in the cup was exactly 2 dimes. When we got to Powell River, I was not feeling well so we went to a pharmacy to get some cold medicine. A young woman was checking us out and got very flustered because she didn’t have the right change so she called over her supervisor. The supervisor apologized and said to Erin, “Well we could just give you your change all in dimes if you don’t mind” and proceeded to fill Erin’s hands with dimes!

We saw the property for the first time on Feb 2, the same day we got legally married, and it was even more magical in person! From the photos online, we knew almost nothing about the 5 acres—but in addition to magical forest that made it feel like we’d be living at a campground, there turned out to be 2 ponds that we didn’t even know about! We decided we wanted to focus on this property and canceled our other realtor appointments to stay in Powell River.

After seeing it a couple more times, we decided we wanted to put in an offer on the place. I consulted my parents at every turn because after all it was their resources, their legacy, their sacrifice that we would be using in order to make this dream happen! Given the state of the world, it felt like a very sound plan to turn abstract financial resources (that could disappear overnight in an economy governed by Donald Trump!) into something real—a home, a manageably-sized intentional community, land we can grow food on, a refuge and community hub that will draw people to us, especially those interested in healing and transformation. In a place that is 2 ferry rides away from the noise and chaos of the United States. That sounded to me like investing in a secure future—at least as secure of a future as current circumstances would allow.

However, once we’d decided to move forward, I went into a full blown panic. Such a big financial commitment using resources I’d planned to use towards retirement (since I don’t have any other retirement options)! Living together with Erin and Orrin for the first time and stepping into parenting for the first time—in what would be a pretty small house. Caring for 5 acres when not only am I aging fast, but I’ve spent the last 5 years largely disabled from various physical breakdowns as a result of the lack of self-care I practiced during my academic career. Home ownership, parenting, legal marriage—these were all paths that I’d carefully rejected over my entire adult life! And who would we be sharing this dream with—it was too much for the 3 of us, but the rest of Orrin’s family had said no to moving to Canada.

We decided to head home and take a breath before putting in an offer on the property. We stayed at an Airbnb in Bellingham, Washington so we’d be near the airport for our flight the next day. When we got to the Airbnb, the room we’d booked was called the Aloha Room! My mom LOVED Hawaii (she and my dad traveled there frequently together and individually for work) and her whole house was decked out in Hawaiian décor. Every surface in the Aloha Room was covered in Hawaii-themed artifacts! We had to get gas the next morning en route to the airport and across the street from the gas station was Aloha BBQ—in Bellingham, Washington lol! On the other side of the street was a giant sign that said “JOANN” (my mom’s name!) because there was a Joann’s Fabrics in the strip mall. It was hard to ignore the unmistakable signs—this time coming from my mom!

When we arrived back at the Denver airport and were waiting for our bags, Erin called me over. This time she was hearing music! When I strained to hear, I realized the song was “Our House”! The next morning I walked down to the 7-11 by my house to get some caffeine, since I’d been out of town, and the song playing there was “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.”

“Let ’em say we’re crazy, I don’t care about that
Put your hand in my hand baby, don’t ever look back
Let the world around us just fall apart
Baby, we can make it if we’re heart to heart

And we can build this thing together
Standing strong forever
Nothing’s gonna stop us now”

When we were deciding to put our offer in, I was freaking out and pacing around my studio space, up and down, up and down from the couch as I couldn’t settle. After about 30 minutes of this, I looked back to the couch where I’d been sitting and there was a shiny dime! Sitting below the pillow I’d made with my parents’ photo! I’d specifically asked them—tearfully implored actually, as I was really needing parental advice—to please give me a sign if I was on the right path and to shut doors if I was heading towards a mistake. The evening I found out our offer had been accepted, I walked into a Walgreens in search of sleep medicine for Erin and the song that was playing? “Walkin’ On Sunshine”! It felt like the heavens were celebrating with us! Truly a joint effort!

Conversation

So perhaps you are beginning to understand the ways that this parental guidance is not just abstract angel or animal signs, but is truly a conversation. I began speaking with my parents’ picture almost every night—sharing my fears and concerns, as well as my deep humility and gratitude for all of the incredible gifts they’ve shared with me. In our life together, my mom was overprotective of me. No doubt she responded this way because of her own trauma and the ways she wasn’t protected as a kid. Claudia, my mom’s caregiver and angel for her last 5 years, always tells me about how worried my mom was about me.

So it touches my heart so much to realize that my mom is still protecting me. She is giving us a path to safety from what is quickly becoming Nazi Germany. It is only because of her that any of this is possible! And I felt her happiness at getting to continue to play that role for me, the ways that creating safety for us is healing for her. And I saw that this journey to a secure future didn’t just begin in January. I remembered all the ways that my parents had orchestrated Erin and I finding our way back to one another (my dad left so many dimes for Erin, she finally had to say ok lol!), in a miraculous journey of faith that strongly paralleled the journey I was having about the house.

In my journey back to Erin, one of my main sustaining forces had been my Archangel Michael cards (which I’d gotten in Breckenridge on spring break when I still lived in Missouri and was coming out to Colorado for my mental health). So, as the journey with the property progressed (so many big scary decisions needing to be made in such a short period of time!), I found myself again turning to my Archangel Michael cards. Two things were different this time around: it felt like my parents started using my Archangel Michael cards to talk to me, and I started sharing the Divine conversation with Erin.

Erin self identifies as a skeptic lol, so she’d always found my reliance on otherworldly guidance to be a bit suspect, especially as an Earth sign (Virgo) who understands the reality of the senses and slow change. But after jaw droppingly apropos messages one after the other, she began to believe in miracles. I would never have known that I would want that, but it felt so lovely to get to share more of my inner world with her, to be seen and known. And it felt incredibly intimate for her to be seeing firsthand how I sustained myself during our 9 months broken up, when there wasn’t a lot of evidence that things would have a happy outcome.     

At every scary turn of the road, at the gate of every big decision, I would ask my parents for clear guidance and would get messages like this:

“You’ve drawn this card as validation that your thoughts and actions are in the right direction. You’ve been carefully listening to your guidance from within, and the angels applaud you for following it faithfully. Although you may not clearly see what’s up ahead, the angels want you to know that they’re guiding and protecting you every step of the way. Keep up the good work! Listen to your inner guidance, even if others don’t understand. Trust that you’ll be financially supported as you move forward with your plans.”

Two thirds of the times I sat down for counsel, I would get this card as my first card! It was extremely reassuring!!

Since there is so much UNKNOWN in our situation, I was continually reminded to step out on faith, holding fast to our destination. Before we left for Powell River, I chose out a couple angel cards and got Willingness and Adventure, so at every scary turn in this journey, when I might want to turn back, I have just asked myself: “Am I willing to have an adventure?” And every time the answer has been “Yes” and so I have chosen to proceed.

“Archangel Michael says that fear is the only thing interfering with your happiness and plans. He wants to show you how to release any worry or dread so you can feel safe and secure. This card indicates that you’re ready to let go of control issues and trust that everything ultimately works out for the best. You’re going in the right direction.”

“To resolve this situation, you must believe that everything is healed and whole right now. As your faith grows stronger, the doorway to Divine solutions will open. Your trust enables your mind and body to relax, which increases your creative energy and strength—two qualities that will prove especially helpful to you. This situation will have a happy outcome. Positive thinking will bring you your desired outcome more rapidly. Give worries to the angels.”  

There have been so many lessons in this journey for me, the culmination of so much of the healing I’ve been doing over the past decade. I began this journey afraid to want anything and unconfident about the trustworthiness of my decision making. And here I am now, being clear and decisive in naming and claiming the things I want. And the universe is responding by opening doors and organically unfolding the process. It has been like following water downhill! Though there were moments of paralysis, for the most part throughout this entire process I have bravely stayed in my adult self and matter of factly scaled mountains and slayed dragons on a daily basis.  

About halfway through the process, it felt like we were being asked to step into a new level of claiming our desired outcome. I got Keep Your Eyes on Your Targeted Intention and Make A Commitment. “This card is a signal that you’re on the right path—keep a steady eye on your goals. The path to making your intentions a reality may differ from your expectations, yet the outcome is likely to exceed your dreams. Fully commit to your desired outcome. Keep the faith… and keep going!”

It was good that we embraced our assignment because soon after we began to receive information about some potentially expensive problems with the 3 bedroom house, the one we’ll be living in. Erin and I proved to be an excellent team! When Erin gets anxious, she does research. When I get anxious, I turn to my guides. Sharing with each other the results of our inquiries was super helpful and offered great balance between material reality and spiritual reality. 

It was SO REASSURING to have continual messages that we were on the right path!!

“As one chapter of your life closes, another one is beginning to bloom. Right now you may only notice the first inklings of new growth in your life, so Archangel Michael sends this card to encourage you to keep going. There’s great goodness in store for you! Stay filled with faith and keep a positive outlook. A move to a new home may be forthcoming. Let the past go!”

“Have confidence in your plans and ideas. Tune into your intuition, as it’s right on target. Trust the person you’re inquiring about. Have faith that you’re on the right path. Know that your financial and other needs are being met now and in the future.”

Our final challenge was a big one: Erin’s brother, a real estate guy, advised us to walk away. Erin interpreted this through the lens of material reality, I interpreted this through the lens of spiritual reality. On any hero’s journey, the closer you get to the fiery portal leading to your liberation, the more challenges get thrown at you and your fears get mirrored back to you in a last-ditch effort to get you to turn back, to go back to safety and comfort and the known instead of allowing yourself to change and risking a step into the unknown. I saw it as a test: Will I listen to fear and give up or will I stay true to my commitment and step toward it, even if it isn’t perfect? In the end, both perspectives served us well. After sending out inspectors, we learned the problems in the house were not as extensive as we feared and Erin really grasped how the whole process was an aspect of the hero’s journey.

Miracles

Miraculous-feeling guidance was not the only miraculous going on. When we returned from Powell River, I was dreading seeing Orrin, unable to face his pain about having to leave his dad and siblings and his fears, especially as a neurodivergent queer-identifying kid, about having to start over in a new place. Instead—upon seeing photos of the property—he was filled with excitement, asking for chickens and to build a fort on the island of one of the ponds on our property.

He sent photos to his dad and, by the time I arrived, both his dad and his dad’s partner were suddenly texting us they were potentially in! They found the pictures stunning and wanted to get together over the weekend to talk more with us about it! WOW!! That was unexpected! All of a sudden, there was potentially a way for Orrin’s dad and siblings to join us! And we wouldn’t be parenting or stewarding the land alone! That changed everything!

Our enthusiasm was short lived, however. Orrin’s sister’s mom was still a no, and Orrin’s dad was clear that he was a no as well unless everyone agreed to go.   

The following weekend Erin and I were in Las Vegas, on a work trip of mine for GALA Choruses, having an impromptu honeymoon (or “marrymoon” as I named it, since we will have a proper wedding for friends and family at the end of summer at the barn on our new property!). We were there over Valentine’s Day no less—which also happens to be my mom’s birthday! Unable to really relax, our biggest fear/challenge around the property purchase was will the money from my mom’s estate be available in time for our mid-June closing, since most of her resources were still tied up in probate, over which we had no control.

On Valentine’s Day, my mom’s birthday, we received 2 big miracles—before lunch even! I got an email from the lawyer for my mom’s estate saying that she could arrange access to the money I needed, AND we got a text from the mom of Orrin’s sister saying that she was now in and wanting to move with us!! It was actually shocking to have our 2 biggest stresses/challenges just instantly removed at the same time! We later learned that the third thing that we needed in order for our plans to become reality was also accomplished on my mom’s birthday. When we received our marriage certificate in the mail, it was registered on Feb 14.

Going Home

The theme for this Pisces New Moon is grounding inspiration into reality. We signed the paperwork for the property on Feb 28 so it’s official! It’s apparently “a time to trust what’s unfolding, even if you can’t see the full picture yet. Endings and beginnings are woven together and you are reminded to have faith.” That has definitely been the theme of this cycle for sure!  

In addition to being a faith person, I am also a process person, so—although I am currently WITH EASE manifesting the biggest outcome I’ve ever manifested for myself—I am also noticing and appreciating the growth our situation is bringing already. That itself is worth the journey.

Erin leveled up in ways that made this situation possible—identifying and breaking old contracts with her ex husband and her child that were at her expense. And she continues to level up daily, holding so much capacity as she spends every moment between working and parenting scheduling with plumbers, electricians, building inspectors, the realtor. I am also leveling up in ways that make this situation possible—talking with financial people, being willing to make big risky decisions, stepping into parenting and cohabitation, trusting the journey even when it’s really scary. And Orrin has even spontaneously leveled up as well! He has been showing up in such buoyant and cheerful ways, full of excitement and optimism, and talking about feeling more mature. As we level up, we inspire and invite those around us to level up as well and we are starting to see that too, not only with Orrin’s extended family but in our friend circles as well.

In the big picture, there is nothing but gratitude. Erin’s Canadian citizenship offers me a path out of a dangerous situation, and I am the one to finally bring her back home. From the beyond, my parents continue to exude the generosity and care that people talked so much about at my mom’s memorial service. We are setting out on a new adventure, one that will—despite whatever challenges come our way—likely exceed our wildest dreams! At Orrin’s new school, you can hear the sea lions barking from the parking lot! At our new house, my daily walks will be to the ocean! A way of life that has been impossible to access in the US during my lifetime except for the super rich. Although I still have some fears about whether my new life will meet my needs, I trust that I will grow in important ways through this experience that will take me to my most meaningful happiness and will make the journey most worthwhile.   

“Here is that rainbow I’ve been praying for. It’s gonna be a bright, bright, bright sunshiny day!”

I Can See Clearly Now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0cAWgTPiwM

My Own Private Oracle

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My Own Private Oracle

In my spiritual community in Minneapolis in the 2000s, I learned about the joys and helpfulness of divination tools. My very favorite oracle is the online oracle created by my spiritual teacher in Minneapolis, Lynn Woodland, called The Community Oracle. (https://lynnwoodland.com/the-community-oracle/) It is comprised of 3×5 cards with intuitive messages composed during her workshops by participants, including me, so it is extra meaningful when I get one in my own handwriting!  

About 8 years ago I intuitively created my own private oracle. It is basically a Yes/No oracle, though often it manifests with little slips of paper in which I write various statements or scenarios to see whether they are true or not (depending on which side they land). This oracle of mine is something that has been a secret until this week, something that I wasn’t sure whether it was genius or psychosis lol. But last weekend I was guided to begin sharing about it.  

I do often get important and true information from my oracle, but even if it is total crap and just random chance, it takes me through a psychospiritual journey of considering various perspectives and possibilities that is really valuable. 

For instance, if there’s a scenario in my life and I feel like I have good insight into what’s going on, I will ask if I am correct. If I get a Yes, it feels reassuring that my intuition is right on track—because often my oracle will affirm for me a truth that is not apparently obvious in the situation, even one that contradicts my read of the situation from my everyday mind. If I get a No, it will stop me in my tracks and cause me to question my assumptions. “Huh, I thought I knew what was going on.”

Then another possible explanation will come to me and I’ll ask about that. If I get a Yes, I’m filled with surprise and curiosity. “Well, if that’s true, what are the implications of that?” And it changes my whole worldview in ways that open me up beyond my habitual limited perceptions.

No’s prompt me to dig deeper: if what I was assuming to be true isn’t actually true, then what else could it be? And I’ll ask about another scenario. If I get a Yes, I will feel humbled—”Oh! That’s what’s going on! Not what I thought at all!” And if I get a No, I have to go even deeper to find other possible options—”huh, if it’s not either of those explanations, what else could it be??” With each step, I’m prompted to consider perspectives I hadn’t been considering, which really opens up my thinking generally. And it reminds me not to be too overconfident in my apparent perceptions and interpretations.

Sometimes if I say “Well, it can’t possibly be this” and then I get a Yes, I will feel a charge of electricity from my paradigm totally being shattered, usually accompanied by some giddiness or elation.

My oracle helps me put puzzle pieces together: “if this is true and this is true, but this is not, what should I ask about now?” And so slowly a picture will begin to emerge, usually different from what I was expecting. The process is nourishing because it is an extended conversation with my guides, one that grows trust in their presence and their counsel. Their responses often feel comforting and reassuring, but they can just as easily feel humbling and bracing when—like any good spiritual teacher—they tell me a truth I don’t want to hear.

Seeing my emotional reactions to various scenarios and possible truths reveals to me my own often hidden preferences. And with every scenario visited, it helps me to identify and work with the various aversions and passions aroused by the situation.

And the process helps me plan for an appropriate course of action. While I know that all my information could be totally wrong, I feel grounded in the moment because I’ve already gone through so many potential possibilities that there are few I haven’t processed already. It definitely helps me have more empathy for people when I have deeply pondered what might be going on for them, so it causes me to be kinder and gentler in my approach to people.

My oracle often helps me to weather a storm, holding onto faith in something that I can’t yet see (and I’m inclined to believe that my faith has something to do with it being made manifest—though it’s obviously not a tool to try to control reality!).

Sometimes my oracle will lead me to believe something in the moment that isn’t actually true and even this is incredibly valuable. Believing it in that moment takes me through a whole healing process that usually turns out to be a crucial step in the unfolding of things. For instance, if my heart is closed to someone, my oracle may affirm statements or scenarios that demonstrate their vulnerability, causing me to soften my perspective and open my heart. In this way, my oracle can have a bit of Coyote trickster energy lol.  

I will often consult my oracle before sending communications, especially if it is something that I am worried about communicating. My oracle will give me feedback on the content, whether I have landed on what feels right to send. And it will also give me feedback on the timing of the communication. Sometimes the content can be exactly right, but it is not the right time for the other person to receive it. Sometimes the content can be just right, but it’s not the time to send it because I haven’t fully energetically aligned with the message and so there is internal work for me to do before I’m ready to send it. 

I think I will ask my oracle about whether this blog is ready to publish. 😊

Turning 18

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It was just my testosterone anniversary and I turned 18! It felt like a big milestone, so I asked a former student—one much closer to 18 than I—about the significance of turning 18. Especially since I was completely numb and dissociated during my original teenage years. 18 is of course when we are able to vote, an achievement that feels significant just before perhaps the most important election in the history of the United States. But 18 is apparently also the age at which you can legally get a piercing or tattoo. It is when you can first buy a lottery ticket. And of course it is the age at which you can be drafted into the military. And sure enough, for Halloween I was recruited into the Viking army led by my sweetie’s 13 year old. 😊

One of my big revelations at Sufi Camp, over the anniversary of my mom’s death, was realizing that my relationship with Allah contains a rupture and broken trust. One that arose during my first turn at 18. Unpacking that has been the gift of getting another chance at 18.

At this Sufi Camp, the Saturday night zikr was in silence—which was so powerful! During the zikr, I felt led to carry an intention for a closer relationship with the Divine, in particular in the realm of devotion.

About 15 minutes after setting this intention, I was invited into the circle to turn in the tradition of the whirling dervishes. I initially declined—turning practice is a serious discipline, one that I have not been trained in, and so I wanted to respect the practice. But immediately after declining, I realized that I’d just set an intention to have a closer relationship with the Divine, particularly in the realm of devotion, and at my first opportunity I had said no! So I awkwardly got the attention of the one who had invited me and asked for a redo. This time I said yes and entered the circle, awkward and unpracticed, but full of innocence and open heartedness. I spun in the way that made sense to me, and let myself enter the practice with abandon.

As I rejoined the circle, I had a flash of insight—a true aha moment! I realized that my relationship with God was one of broken trust. And that broken trust was preventing me from truly surrendering my heart. And that broken trust occurred around my first time as an 18 year old.

Though I’d found refuge in nature since I was a kid, my first real stop on my spiritual path was Christianity. It began in high school, when my grandma came to live with us, and I started going to Mass with her to get to know her better. Although I was confirmed my senior year in high school, I quickly became disillusioned with Catholicism when the most popular priest in our local parish was arrested for child molestation, including the young son of my high school English teacher, who was one of my closest friends at the time.

When I entered college, Christianity again found me. The first people I met at UC Santa Cruz belonged to Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship, a fundamentalist student group which is where I unfortunately ended up coming out. After being an outcast in high school, I was thrilled to find people who walked with me to class, invited me to social gatherings, and genuinely seemed to want to be my friend. After the dusty rituals of Catholicism, it was so exciting to find a God who was so relevant to my life as a student! I fell in love with that God. IVCF became my world, I was on fire with passionate devotion, and I set my path to become a missionary.  

Lola was my Bible study leader and through our spiritual collaboration, we fell in love and became lovers—my first time having consensual sex. Lola was wracked with guilt about what we were doing, believing she was compromising her salvation, so she begged us to talk to one of the IVCF leaders. That fateful choice dramatically changed my life.

We were required to go through a humiliating public confession of everything we’d done sexually, we were both removed from IVCF leadership, and we were told we could never speak to one another again, something Lola took quite seriously. “If your right hand causes you to sin, you must cut it off,” is what we were told. I was blamed for our transgression, as I’d had “those feelings” in high school, and was eventually driven out of the fellowship entirely, being told that I was “unteachable” and that my questions undermined the faith of the younger fellowship members. I lost God and I lost Lola at the same time, my 2 first loves.  

I was devastated and my heart was broken in numerous betrayals. The betrayal of Lola who sat there silently during our public confession and allowed me to take all the blame and who never stood up for our relationship. The betrayal of my IVCF friends who rejected me and subjected me to continual scrutiny and surveillance (for instance, telling me I wasn’t allowed to study alone at night with any of the women from the fellowship). And the betrayal of God, who had given me my first love and who had then ripped it away so harshly. The imprint was laid down: Love leads to devastating loss, God is not on my side, and God is not to be trusted. God is a God of hard things who takes away what you most love. Allowing God to know me would only encourage God to use this information to strip me of whatever I loved or wanted.

In response to all of this, I wandered campus aimlessly in a trauma fog, unable to go to class or function. Lola and I had been roommates and were no longer allowed to live together so I had been moved to the apartment of a friend, one of the worship leaders who started changing clothes in the bathroom because she newly felt threatened by me. I would walk the cliffs along the ocean late at night, pondering just stepping off into the abyss. I called my parents late from a nearby pay phone, unable to tell them what was happening when they asked me what was wrong. I began seeing a therapist for the first time, a Christian man who—when I told him I might be suicidal—asked me if I really wanted to lose my salvation over one person. I felt totally alone. 

Not unlike how I’d felt when I’d started college. The summer before college I’d worked at Yosemite National Park, a childhood dream come true until I was raped by a co-worker who’d preyed on my vulnerability being away from home for the first time. Fleeing his cabin in the early morning hours, I called the employee health clinic who—when I asked what I could do—told me that I should’ve thought of that before I went to my co-worker’s cabin. My innocence and trust doubly violated, it happened to be Sunday morning and, not knowing what else to do, I rode my bike to the little chapel on the valley floor and sobbed my way through the service. I felt totally alone.

I started college terrified that I was pregnant, having the only late period ever in my life, no doubt due to the incredible stress that I was carrying in isolation. It was in this numbness and dissociation that I found the Christian fellowship, what I imagined to be a safe and platonic home with other students who were interested in making the world a better place.

So that was 18 my first time through. Finally leaving the unsafety of growing up in my mom’s house only to have back to back to back devastating injuries to my innocence. I was earnestly trying to make God my orienting point, but learned that God was not a safe place to land either. This caused me to wander alone in the wilderness for decades, not coming into my true spiritual awakening until 2000.  

So it was sobering, but also really really helpful and illuminating, to realize that I still carry these traumas in my relationship with the Divine. My spiritual path has always been one of devotion (from Christian “praise” to Sufi zikrs to ecstatic dance to my relationship to the natural world), but I experienced something missing. I couldn’t fully let go because my heart was blocked from the pain of broken trust from long ago. Now, being aware of that, I can attend to and heal that broken trust, and my 18 year old self who has carried that pain over all these years. 

New Sam

On By sambullingtonLeave a comment

It was just the first anniversary of my mom’s death. It is amazing and beautiful to me that her presence now is a deep source of comfort and refuge and safety, of guidance and companionship, the kind of relationship I’d always longed to have with her which was impossible due to the ways her trauma made her unavailable, harsh, and unpredictable. What an incredible gift to finally feel close and safe and nurtured with my mom, truly worth waiting for.  

This entire last year has been a process of disentangling from my mom, watching dissolve the cloud of fear and self-protection and defensiveness that I’ve lived in all my life, often without realizing it. As I mentioned in my last blog, I’m only slowly noticing its existence by noticing its absence. As I also mentioned in my last blog, the most painful aspect of dealing with my mom’s death has been the way that my partner has had difficulty being able to show up for it, so while my partner was out of town for 2 weeks for a silent retreat, I took myself to Ozark Sufi Camp to grieve and honor my mom with spiritual family. It was the perfect place for me to be.

The camp theme–No Part Left Out–was incredibly resonant for me in looking at the legacy of my mom in my life, all the distortions built into my personality structure as I learned to contort myself in life to try to stay safe. And the theme was a healing framework to hold the significance and complexity of my mom’s passing in my life—the deep honoring of her, the sorrow of losing her, and the tragedy of missed opportunities, as well as the relief and liberation resulting from her absence. 

My camp experience felt like an initiation, a big leveling up resulting from the momentum of the transformative work I began soon after my partner left. I am now a person who sets boundaries! It began with saying no to a spiritual retreat leader but quickly spread to family members, friends, even total strangers. I tend to continually let people overstep—and often don’t even notice when it happens–because I could never stop my mom, but now I am someone who pushes back on that. Throughout my life I never expected people to be able to show up to do their work because my mom wasn’t able or willing to, but now I am someone who does only my 50% and expects others to do their share. I previously would work really hard internally and externally to make it all ok, but now I can see that it is not mine to make ok. And my little girl is everything to me now—my loyalty goes to her. And she is learning to trust me more not to abandon her over and over as I chase after unavailable others and squash myself to try to keep everyone happy in all the ways my mom trained me to be. It is only the beginning sprouts of these new ways of being, but they are manifesting into form rapidly. 

Interestingly, my mom has become my biggest guide and ally in this work. She came to me at Sufi Camp in the form of Armadillo, whose medicine is boundaries—offering her loving support and help with this important work I’m doing, knowing as a soul that it was her personality wounds that created my need to do this important work. While I will never know what would have been possible with my mom if I’d ever said to her that I didn’t like how she was showing up and wanted it to change, I can practice that with my partner and others and see what happens.

So this has been a time of deep and accelerated growth, insight, empowerment, and clarity, learning about my limits and withholds, freeing myself to speak, saying no more often than ok, taking truly unprecedented action in my life with courage and consistency, becoming a new person in front of my eyes (as my testosterone self turns 18!). While one friend tearfully confessed that she missed Old Sam, the placater and bridge builder, it is clear to me that there is no going back from here, even if it creates some significant disruption in my life. 

I returned home from Sufi Camp with a stomach virus that felled half the camp on the last day. Spending 2 days in bed puking my guts out was a sacred death ritual to my old self, born into my mom’s trauma and conditioned to serve her rather than my soul. It allowed me to purge that residue from my body, just as smashing the clay sculpture I did at Sufi Camp in a parts workshop helped me purge that residue from my emotions.     

On the eve of my partner’s arrival back in town, the stars really seemed to be lining up for a spectacular culminating experience: seeing the Northern Lights for the first time, something that’s long been on my list of desired experiences! It seemed like such a fitting conclusion to the 2 weeks I’d just had, of appropriate magnitude and a whisper from Spirit acknowledging the important deep inner work I’d faithfully done. Well, the Northern Lights literally came to my door, but I missed seeing them lol! Realizing this felt sad and confusing at first and made going back into the darkness (and letting go of the hope of light) feel like a defeat somehow. I felt my spirit start to sink.  

But then I remembered I like the darkness—I am a creature of the night so it is my element—and so going back to the darkness felt comforting and surprisingly like the affirmation of myself that I thought the Northern Lights would provide. And the darkness didn’t have to feel sad or scary or alone—because I think there was something about it that perhaps tapped into my fears of the void. But then I remembered that the void is the womb—the place where new beginnings are generated, the East. Which was just perfect for me because I had just completed a fierce and vigorous ritual of release to the West, the place of letting go of what no longer serves us. Which is why I had turned my back to the west when the Northern Lights came.

And just as I wouldn’t have experienced the beginnings of that comfort and refuge with my mom if my partner hadn’t broken up with me for a time last year, if my partner had been here this year, I wouldn’t have had all this accelerated growth, nor written this blog about my journey. Nor would I have been inspired tonight to write this blog if I’d seen the Northern Lights.

All the puzzle pieces that align this way and that for us to have our particular journeys of healing and awakening and emergence. The unfolding is just fascinating, and I’m learning to trust that each experience that I’m having is exactly the right one for me. The new views you can see around each new corner often makes me speechless with surprise and wonder, and often make me laugh with both hilarity and humility. All I can wonder is where will I be taken next?

The Northern Lights from my driveway (taken by my housemate)

New Beginnings

On By sambullington2 Comments

2023 was a year of extraordinary loss for me. By the end of the year, I had lost my Mom, my romantic partner, my job/academic career, and a choir community that had been home to me for 10 years. To say that 2023 was completely life altering is not an overstatement.

2023 was also a year of extraordinary liberation. I left my academic career for good. I learned to give voice to what wasn’t working for me. And I healed my relationship with my mom, something that had haunted me and had a dampening effect on my life for as long as I’ve been alive. 

In mid-January last year, my sweetheart and I were in a bad car accident en route to a show in Colorado Springs. We walked away totally unscathed, which seemed quite miraculous given the sad state of the car, so initially the accident really reaffirmed my self-confidence and my trust in the world. Look how protected we were!

However, the nature of the accident—hitting black ice and losing control of the car, getting blindsided from behind—awoke my childhood trauma from growing up with a borderline mom. Such a familiar feeling: Everything was great, but now everything feels scary. It reactivated the hypervigilance from knowing that any situation could turn dangerous at any time without warning so always needing to be on guard.  

This feeling was reinforced in me a week later when I was attending a community meeting for the program that I teach for at University of Colorado. During the meeting I learned that the program was on administrative pause for the year, as the university decided its fate. Nobody had informed me of this, so I learned during a public meeting that a major source of my livelihood, and identity, had now disappeared. Blindside.

It was as though an alarm went off inside me. Some part of me knew that this would be the year that my mom would pass away, so dealing with the impact of growing up with her rose to the top of my priority list and my entire 2023 ended up being devoted to full time trauma healing.

Growing Up with Mom

My attachment wounds from my mom are twofold: intrusion and abandonment. When my sweetheart first met my mom—early on during Covid—my mom was bedbound from Parkinson’s and my sweetie marveled at the psychic control she was able to exert over the whole house even in her weakened state (even exerting pressure in people’s psyches when they were away from the house). In thinking about the impact my mom had on me, it has been very illuminating watching my mom’s caregiver heal after my mom’s passing. Months later, Claudia still rushes while in the bathroom or out on errands, and still nervously continuously checks her phone, in anticipation of upset from my mom. And this is a grown adult who only knew my mom for 40 hours a week for 5 years so it gave me great compassion for my kid self being raised in that stressful environment.

There was no having your own experience with my mom. My grandma told me that when I was a baby, if I was on the floor playing by myself, my mom would get jealous and come interrupt me to monopolize my attention. Growing up, if I was on the phone, my mom would just come stand in front of me until I got off the phone. She would regularly stand in the kitchen and scream my name—it didn’t matter whether I was in the bathroom, asleep, or even in the house! When I would run to see what she needed, body surging with panic and adrenaline, she would quietly ask me to get her a pan from a cabinet 2 feet away from her. Loyalty tested, readiness tested.   

Once having your attention, however, proving you were on call for her, then my mom would ignore you, the abandonment side of the cycle. My mom’s inability/unwillingness to face her childhood trauma meant she wasn’t able to actually be present with someone else very often. When she was, it was so delightful, the intermittent reinforcement kept you hooked, working hard to please to try to get that mom to show up again.

Her inner pain, and trying to keep it at bay, was very preoccupying (and managing it required a lot of frantic control) so being around her often felt quite lonely, stressful, unsafe, and unpredictable. Once I bought her a get to know your Mom book for Mother’s Day and sat down to ask her the first question: Where did you grow up? Without acknowledging my question, she got up and left the room—something that happened on a regular basis—closed her bedroom door, put on the tv, and disappeared for a couple days. Connection and intimacy rejected. Message conveyed—don’t try that again. And be perfect because if you say the wrong thing, people will abandon you (a theme that has repeated painfully over my life).

When I was a kid, at the grocery store with my mom, if I got absorbed looking at something based on my own interest, she would leave not just the aisle but the entire store. My sister and I regularly had to seek out store employees to make a lost child announcement. I learned clearly that if I did not keep my full attention on my mom at all times, something bad would happen.    

The Impact of Complex PTSD

Over 2023 I began to see all the ways this trained hypervigilance impacted my life: difficulty sleeping, difficulty settling (whether putting myself to bed or landing on the right task for the day), difficulty energetically leaving the room when on a shamanic or psychedelic journey. Any small sound or disruption would immediately pop me out of my own experience, and I’d be wide awake and sober, at the ready to cope with impending disaster. I noticed the ways I neglect self-care to prioritize attending to the needs of others.

I saw the ways I could be both slow to react—needing time for my emotions and my experience to register internally—and quick to react, whenever a present moment experience overlapped with the unprocessed pain from my upbringing. I saw the ways I could lose myself in intimacy with another, and the ways I could keep others at bay in my attempts to not lose myself in connection. When my partner got an exciting new job and I feared being left behind, I saw the ongoing impact of all those times being left in the grocery store. And I saw how I’d replicated in my professional life the painful experience of not being received that I’d had with my mom, and the devastating impact of this misattunement, most acutely faced every day as a nonbinary person living in a binary world.

When my sweetheart brought me to my first Enlightenment Intensive in the spring, I was asked 40 times a day to give my full undivided attention to my own experience—something I’d never done before. What I discovered were things in my life that didn’t work for me, needs that were going unmet—things that for my entire life had been far too threatening to allow myself even to be aware of, much less to say out loud. My main coping strategy in life was simply to not have needs and wants—they could only lead to disappointment—so I engaged in a lot of spiritual bypass to override even basic needs like eating and sleeping, ignoring the underlying unconscious belief that I somehow don’t deserve to have my needs met.

So throughout 2023 I struggled to combat this internal belief and to free myself from my coping strategies by practicing with my partner, my secure attachment context where I felt safe and valued. It was hard for me to stay aware of my childhood trauma because of the ways I had buried it to have a decently functional life, but I could notice it when my partner would act in ways that overlapped with my childhood wounds. And with my partner I felt safe enough to say how it impacted me, something that could never be uttered to my mom.    

Initially this was welcomed, but as the months of tumultuousness dragged on, as my childhood trauma continued to surface and the impact of a lifetime of misattunement revealed itself more and more, I exhausted my partner. Sharing what wasn’t working for me understandably became experienced as critique. Asserting that my needs deserved to be met understandably became read as entitlement and demand. I was legitimately self-absorbed as it was hard for me to hang on to my own experience and I couldn’t really maintain that awareness while holding another’s experience at the same time. I was practicing very new awarenesses and vulnerable choices, ones that were deeply taboo in my psychology and so carried a great deal of charge, and so I was not very skillful in utilizing them.  

The Path to Healing

I spent much of the spring and summer feeling all those submerged feelings: laying awake in the middle of the night feeling the agony of my former self in her 20s, lost and alone wandering in the wilderness without community or even the language to understand herself; feeling my baby self for the first time and the utter despair of the familiar giving up place, the resignation that I won’t be met and my needs will go unattended, and the isolated self-reliance I cultivated as a result.  

I spent a lot of 2023 disentangling myself from my mom, sorting out what was simply her that I had carried for my whole life, what was the version of her that lived within me, what was the me that had been shaped and impacted by growing up with her, and what was the essential me that was whole and intact separate from my mom’s influence. My second ketamine journey helped to clarify those boundaries. The journey itself consisted of floating around in my mom’s tortured psyche, which was quite distressing, but when I was coming back to the room, my guide asked me “Who’s here?” and I said “Sam’s here and Sam is good.”

After that journey, during an online enlightenment intensive over the summer, I had a vision of dredging up an old car covered in gunk from my solar plexis which felt like my mom. Once that was removed, I could feel the energy of my solar plexis, my will center, for the first time! And the channel that had once contained the old car became a bubbling well of nourishment replenishing me. Currently I feel myself being led forward in life from my solar plexis, pulled ahead as though there were a hook in my belly button—an odd sensation when I’m so accustomed to being led by my heart.

During this same enlightenment intensive, I allowed myself to really feel and to grieve the 30 years of my life that I lost—as a transgender person—not being in my body. And it gave me a sense of conviction to take action regarding my academic career. I received my Ph.D. just days before my 40th birthday—and went on testosterone 9 months later—so I saw clearly the way that my Ph.D. was the culmination—and the reward—for living all those years disconnected from my body. And so I must now close that door for good and not reopen it (I left the academic world twice already, but always went back due to my love for teaching).

I found my boundaries and self-respect also in the fall when I was suddenly exiled from the gospel choir I’d sung with for the past 10 years. After another nonbinary singer and I had noticed misgendering and unconscious gendered language habits intruding in rehearsals, I’d offered to do a trans awareness training with them (something I do professionally with choirs all over the country through my work with GALA Choruses). While the broader community was very responsive and appreciative, the leadership became very defensive and hostile, even sending me personal attacks over text after rehearsals. I was reminded of all the experiences I’d had in groups as a trans person where I’d felt harmed and unsafe, but had to extend myself to create repair and build bridges with the very people who had harmed me (while nobody created repair with me, even accusing me of being the aggressor while I was the one being attacked). When the leadership pointedly decided to make my offering specifically a non choir sanctioned event, I decided not to go back.

All this happened over 3 short weeks, in the midst of my mom dying, so it felt very surreal. This community that had been stable home and family to me for a decade, and a big part of my joy in life, suddenly gone, swept away as I began the descent into the underworld with my mom. I was reminded again of the impermanence of everything when, a week before my mom’s memorial, my sweetheart broke up with me, my Beloved spiritual ally and spiritual playmate. I felt myself being stripped down, my life further emptied out, at the time I most needed support.  

Transformation

Immediately after my mom passed in October, I learned of a heartbreaking family secret she took to her grave. I’d always felt that the reason my mom was borderline was because she’d been molested by her father. Though it was NEVER something that could be spoken aloud, all the signs were there: childhood kidney infections, being the “special” one who escaped the emotional and physical abuse her father inflicted on her siblings, my mom’s refusal to see her father when he was dying and her absence at his funeral, my own weirdness about sex that I’d absorbed from all the unspoken undercurrents of my childhood.

After my mom’s passing I learned from her sister that my mom had gotten pregnant in high school (presumably by her father) and had been rejected by the family and sent away to a Catholic girl’s home to have the baby and give it up for adoption. This was about 2 years before I was born and so during my birth my mom would have been reliving her very worst trauma, a secret I’m certain she kept even from my dad. It explains a lot about why she had trouble attaching to me and how her psyche got shattered. I wish I could have a final conversation with her now to tell her how sorry I am that that happened to her, how it wasn’t her fault, and how much I respect and appreciate her for her ability to survive all that.  

It’s amazing how a little piece of information can change the whole entire context for your life, making you revisit and rethink even the most basic aspects of your identity (I strongly identify as a first born, for instance, but apparently I am technically a middle child). I felt so struck by the ways that my mom and I had been swimming in sexual shame our entire lives: my mom in the sexual shame common for her era and me in the sexual shame common for mine—being queer. When I came out in college—in the midst of a fundamentalist Christian fellowship—my very first lover (unfortunately my Bible study leader) and I had to go through a very humiliating confession and were told that what we’d done was so shameful we couldn’t talk to anyone about it. It made me wonder how that landed for my mom, watching me go through something that had so much resonance with her own traumatic experience.

Initially when my mom passed, I wasn’t sure if I’d want to remain connected with her. I have a very strong spiritual connection with my dad (he leaves me dimes on a regular basis), but I didn’t trust my mom and mostly I just wanted to be finally free of her disruptive influence. However, that dramatically shifted after her memorial. I’d spent the entire year deeply immersed in the trauma of my upbringing; the gathering for the memorial reminded me of the incredible beauty and goodness of my family, and all the ways the love, warmth, and generosity of my family had impacted me and others. It allowed me to really turn towards family, instead of the habitual turning away from family I’d cultivated as a defensive strategy. I saw in my parent’s delightful marriage the beautiful role modeling I’d had of the joys of long-term partnership. Feeling my parents reunited (my dad passed unexpectedly in 2005) has been immensely stabilizing for me, feeling them again as a unit fulfilling a need in me I didn’t know I had. I feel them both with me now, at my shoulder blades like wings—offering support and stability, giving me strength and lifting me up, and enfolding me in love and protection.  

As the defensiveness I’d cultivated to protect myself from my mom began to recede, I started to have greater access to the positive memories of my mom, of which there were so many. In many ways the positive memories were the most buried and deeply threatening because within them was interwoven so much longing and hopefulness that had become too painful to allow myself. Releasing this inner barrier has been so incredibly healing and I marvel at the companionship and comfort that I can now feel so easily with my mom.   

Now—as I embark on a new year and a new life—my mom feels like an amazing ally and friend and resource. I have a framed photo of her in my bedroom (welcoming her into my inner sanctuary in ways that never would have felt safe or advisable previously) that feels immensely comforting, especially as I go through this break up. As I wrap myself up in a comforter that she’d gotten me the last time she was physically able to go shopping, I can really feel what it feels like to have a mother’s support around me. Unlike with my choir, I did stay in process with my sweetheart–when she broke up with me for a second time last month, the next morning I got a text from my mom’s caregiver saying that my mom had come to her in a dream saying that I wasn’t ok and showing her my eyes. When I got that text I wept because it was concrete evidence of our new spiritual connection and I felt so incredibly cared for.

When I look into her eyes, now I just see the kindness and deep care that has always been there. I feel safe with my mom, something I never could have imagined at the opening of 2023!! I remember the painful stuff, but it is not active in my nervous system in the same way. I feel a sense of peaceful resolution and inner order, an intactness and wholeness I’ve never felt before. And she is free as well, free from the anguish and torment that haunted her personality and created so many barriers between us.

I feel anxious about publishing this, as my mom was so very protective of her secrets. I don’t want to disrespect her in any way, or break the mirage that she so carefully constructed. I feel again that familiar pull and tension: will I choose to be loyal to my mom or to myself? This year I embarked on a new path of choosing loyalty to myself, of choosing truth over and over and over again in each enlightenment intensive, knowing that this choice not only frees me but my entire family.

I’ve recently been watching the Oprah produced show Black Cake, about a brother and sister who learn of their mother’s secrets after her death. The similarities are eerie: a child conceived in sexual assault, given away for adoption in a Catholic girl’s home, a secret first sibling—and an explanation for the remoteness of the mother, unable to free herself of her grief and her secrets. The brother is even dumped by his partner just before their mom’s memorial! Like the siblings in the miniseries, my sister and I are tentatively forging new bonds of family with one another, without the dominant presence of my mom. Foundational is our agreement: no more secrets.

The path to enlightenment, to a direct experience of reality, involves clearing anything that is not truth out of the way. So I spent most of 2023 scooping the inner boulders impeding my flow. It was very exhausting at times, but at this point I’ve developed some serious spiritual muscle from again and again pulling myself out of the inner quicksand, hand over fist, powered by sheer determination and commitment. It’s been empowering to see the degree to which I have control over my own inner experience and the ways I can change my energy due to my own focus.

I’m very optimistic about where I will go next, what will unfold for me, having so many obstacles—inner and external—removed from my path. Being laid bare this year—as I entered my second Saturn return (the day before our accident last January!)—has freed me and from this place of lightness, self love, and empowerment, the possibilities do seem endless. I still have to do the actual labor of rebuilding my life, but the path is clear now so the way will be a lot easier.

*I asked my mom for her consent in publishing this and she said yes!

Enlightenment Intensives

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One of the gifts of an otherwise very challenging year was discovering enlightenment intensives. My sweetheart introduced me to the practice/community (it’s been her spiritual path for the past 20 years) and I attended my first—a 6 day in person retreat—back in April, did 2 online intensives over the summer, and then another in person gathering in October and they have been absolutely life changing.  

The methodology is quite simple—a structured dyad practice; the rest is in silence. Each dyad lasts 40 minutes, during which you are paired with a partner. Every 5 minutes the gong rings and one partner receives their instruction from the other—“tell me who you are” or “tell me what life is” or “tell me what love is.” This partner goes within to contemplate and then shares anything that arises as a result of their contemplation—it could be a bodily sensation, an emotion, a memory, an insight. Then they get across to their partner whatever has arisen for them, while their partner simply listens—without comment, without nodding, without smiling even. When the gong rings, the listening partner simply says “thank you” and then the speaking partner gives the listening partner their instruction and the roles shift as the second partner goes within to contemplate and then get across to their partner whatever has arisen as a result of their contemplation. There are 10 dyads per day—interspersed with walking contemplation, eating contemplation, sleeping contemplation where you stay with your inquiry in silence—so imagine being asked who you are 40 times a day for 6 days! For such a simple practice, the results are phenomenal.

Each round of the dyads serves to clear the mind of its clutter. Each time a communication is really received, it is then cleared so you can imagine how much unprocessed experience you can move through in 6 days! It is like doing 10 years of therapy in a weekend! Once the mind is uncluttered, one is more able to have a direct experience of the object of inquiry—the self, life, another, love. Having a direct experience is like the difference between thinking about myself, talking about myself—as though I were separate from myself—and being myself. Consider how much of our lives are experienced indirectly—mediated by the voice in our head because, as Michael Singer describes in The Untethered Soul, we are terrified of having an unbuffered experience of reality. But by steadfastly intending to have a direct experience of reality, and clearing anything that is not that, we can break through and finally see ourselves and life clearly. And this aha of awakening is completely transformative. Though the emotional state of bliss or aliveness may fade, once you’ve had a direct experience–I know who I am—that knowingness never leaves you.

For me personally, just the process is very transformational, regardless of the outcome. As someone who grew up with a borderline mom and didn’t really get to be with my own experience much, being invited to pay attention to my own experience over and over and over again is very healing. As someone who is nonbinary in a binary world and frequently seen by others as unintelligible, getting across to my partner whatever is arising in me and being received is very healing. The methodology is quite effective, I think, in working with trauma—as most of 2023 for me was full time trauma healing, perhaps my soul sensing that this would be the year that my mom would pass away. For 5 minutes you are deeply immersed in your own process—then the bell rings and whatever you were in the middle of comes to a close and you resource yourself to hold space for another. In the process of listening, your empathy is awakened and you can see your own experience with greater perspective through the sharing of another. And then you return to your own process, generally starting from a really different place—and back and forth, back and forth, raw then resourced, raw then resourced, truly witnessing how each moment is a new moment. 

It is a form of spiritual practice and spiritual community that is immensely appealing to me in part because it completely aligns with all my values. It is very accessible—you can do a weekend online intensive for a couple hundred bucks (around the cost of 2 therapy sessions!). And there are numerous weekly online dyad groups, offered free of charge, where you can continue the practice and find community after an intensive. There’s no dogma that you have to accept. The teachings consist of spiritual encouragement in the form of Rumi poems and instruction on the contemplation/dyad technique. The simplicity of the practice is beautiful, as is its depth. It is egalitarian—fellow humans holding space for one another, each doing their own work, taking responsibility for their own experience, finding their own inner wisdom. And, as a Truth and Freedom loving individual, the practice is rooted in my core values: the process is about aligning yourself with Truth and the outcome of that is Freedom!  

I’m currently in the training program for those who would like to lead such retreats and I look forward to my first opportunity to be of service hopefully sometime in 2024! 

If you’d like to learn more about Enlightenment Intensives, check out these resources:

Enlightenment Intensives – “Who am I?” “What is Life” “Self Inquiry and contemplation with Murray Kennedy (murintensive.com)

Self & Other (sandoth.com)

The Enlightenment Intensive: The Power of Dyad Communication for Self-Realization: Amazon.co.uk: Lawrence Noyes, Julian Daizan Skinner: 9780993198120: Books