Spicy Nina: Conversations at the Homestead

Exceptional Human Experiences

Web of Life combined with Flower of Life Sacred Geometry by Lauri Wild

During a ten-day, silent Metta (Loving Kindness) meditation retreat several years ago, I experienced a vision that broke into my consciousness in the middle of deep meditation. While fully aware, sitting up and centered, I perceived the web of life, or Indra’s Net—a Buddhist concept used to illustrate the interconnected of all things. I saw clearly with my inner eye that the people in the room meditating with me were all points of light on a grid of light beams that crisscrossed and looked to me like a structure made of light. I speak of this as a vision, but it was no fantasy. I could both see the web and feel the emotions of one individual point of light in the room on whom I focused my attention. It became clear to me as I expanded my consciousness outside of the meditation hall and into the world at large that not only were we meditators, but that all beings and everything everywhere are connected in a sacred geometrical web made of light. During our sharing on the last day of the retreat, the person I’d beamed in on expressed his overall gratitude for the retreat and talked about the sadness that brought him to the meditation center for healing in the first place. His words validated how I’d perceived his feelings during my vision.

An experience like this is an initiation—not the stopping place—into a new realm of conscious understanding or inner knowing. The place we enter to begin this new adventure of discovery is often through the portal of the subconscious. That is why dreams, meditation and contemplative prayer are so filled with what psychological researcher and author, Rhea White calls Exceptional Human Experiences (EHEs). EHEs define a human being as something more than what author and human consciousness teacher, Alan Watts calls a skin-encapsulated ego. Through such experiences we discover unique, formerly unknown ways to work with concepts such as interconnectedness, unconditional love, aging, death, precognition, telepathy, healing, relationship, and the list goes on.

I gage experiences of an exceptional nature by the power they have to promote meaningful change, ignite conscious solutions to life challenges and to bring us closer to an understanding of how spirit is working in our lives. I believe that divine guidance is everywhere and all the time present. Through grace or growth or whatever we choose to call it, we open and become acutely aware of a new way of looking at reality at pivotal intervals in our hectic lives. Through awareness of the deeper nature of reality we are transformed and experience conscious growth of an evolutionary nature.

I illustrate that thought by another experience, which had to do with a dream and an exceptional experience in the form of a synchronicity that followed the dream during a time I was struggling with bitter feelings over a relationship that was coming to an end.

In the dream…

I am a general in the front ranks of a war zone. All is dark and chaotic in the midst of the battle. Quite suddenly I decide to give up my position of leadership in the battle to a man in the dream. I continue to merely view the scene, not engaging in the fighting any longer. Later, I discover that I have dug a deep well. I find myself arranging stones around the outside of the well housing that is above ground. When I am finished, it looks like an old-fashioned well with a wooden bucket on a rope pulley dangling at the top. I am considering whether or not to lower the bucket into the cool, clear water below when I wake up. (End of Dream)

After writing it down, I summed-up the dream’s theme in a sentence: A woman gives up fighting and begins building something that holds a substance that will quench her spiritual thirst. I took this to mean that I was making a positive move—at least somewhere in my psyche—toward peace and emotional nourishment and away from the inner conquest that the ill-fated relationship had stirred in me. Later that morning, as I began again to think about the dream’s meaning, I absentmindedly walked over and picked out the book Heal Thyself, by author Saki Santorelli from my bookshelf. I had purchased the book earlier in the week, but hadn’t begun reading it. I opened it at random to these words, Right now it feels as if each of us is standing at the edge of a deep well, staring into a shimmering unknown, wrestling with the unspoken question, ‘Do I say no to this moment, remaining parched and brittle? Or do I say yes and drink from the uncertain waters, holding the possibility of life renewed’?

In that moment, I knew I had just been given a powerful gift of grace. I continue to feel much gratitude and humility in the face of it.

Transformation can also be so subtle that it takes the observation of others to help us recognize that a change has occurred at all. This concept is explained well in The Big Book: Basic Text for Alcoholics Anonymous:

Among our rapidly growing membership of thousands… such

[immediate and overwhelming] transformations, though frequent, are by no means

the rule. Most of our experiences are what the psychologist William James calls
the “educational variety” because they develop slowly over a period of time. Quite

often the friends of the newcomer are aware of the difference long before he is himself. (Appendix II, “Spiritual Experience, 569)

We in the West have the tools within us to move beyond our current paradigm of strict materiality.

Thanks in large part to the seminal work of researchers in the fields of transpersonal psychology and quantum physics during the past 75 years, the walls between science, or quantitative assessment of reality, and qualitative ways of knowing are crumbling. However, the Old Guard has had an effect on our beliefs and our openness to talk about experiences that cannot be validated empirically. Because of this many are still hesitant to share events of an exceptional nature for fear of being thought odd or, worse, crazy.

As a spiritual mentor, I believe it is my responsibility to validate the experiential nature of a person’s story by taking a stance of open objectivity while seeking to discover the meaning the experience has in an individual’s life. For, who am I to cast any experience aside as invalid until the work has been done to discern its power to transform a life? The twentieth century Indian sage Paramahansa Yogananda aptly expressed this concept in his book Autobiography of a Yogi when he wrote, Although I had read scriptural accounts of maya, they had not given me the deep insight that came with personal visions and with the accompanying words of consolation.

Since I believe that EHEs are available to us all, it would serve no purpose for me as a spiritual mentor to either downplay or exaggerate a peak experience in a mentee’s life. From my perspective, the real purpose of exploring EHEs is to understand the nature of what it means to be human in the fullest sense of the word and how these events can support us on our life journey.

Seeing into the deeper reality of things reminds us who and what we are: spiritual beings having human experiences, not the other way around. As we figure out how to work with these glimpses into the deeper nature of reality from our own unique perspective, we can creatively share our understanding with others.

I would be interested in hearing from you about your own exceptional human experiences and how they have impacted your thinking and helped to transform your life.

If you are interested in a free 30-minute dream or spiritual mentoring consult, please visit my website at www.jennafarrludwig.com . If you decide to work with me, I offer all future services on a donation basis.

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