THE SPIRITUAL PATH OF THE PSYCHIC
Seeing into darkness is clarity…
Use your own light
and return to the source of light.
—TAO TE CHING
(TRANS, BY STEPHEN MITCHELL)
The afternoon sky is a deep azure, so tranquil and pure I rise up in spirit, hovering high above the earth. Caressed by a soft summer breeze, I gaze down at a lush expanse of fertile undulating hills. Nestled there is the quaint East German village of Weimar. The scene is idyllic. Hearing my cousin Irene's voice yelling, “Judith, hurry up,” I return to earth, taking in one last look…before I meet the horror that awaits me only a few steps away.
It's the summer of 1991. I am walking down a barren concrete path, about to enter the death camp at Buchenwald. A chillingly sinister contrast to the peaceful landscape above. Staring up at the looming stone guard tower, I can make out every bare inch of its still-intact metal gun mounts. Swallowing hard, I strain to keep my composure, but the ground itself seems to be tugging at my feet like quicksand. There is no past or future, only this moment. I feel the ghosts of the dead everywhere.
I had just arrived in Germany the day before. Even at the Frankfurt airport the sound of German echoing through the loudspeakers was eerily unnerving. Rationally, I knew the Holocaust had happened over fifty years ago. But I was both a Jewish woman and a psychic; an inner instinct responded. The threat of annihilation pierced through to my core. The German men and women I talked to couldn't have been friendlier. I was well aware of that, yet still a part of me feared that if I made one wrong move I would be found out and seized. Until then, persecution of an entire people was a terror I had only vaguely identified with when my mother had expressed it while I was growing up. Now I understood her feelings better.
On a train to Bavaria to join Irene, I shared sweet rolls and coffee with a woman doctor from Nuremberg I had just met, chatting away with her as if nothing were wrong. But as I looked out the window at the fairy-tale countryside speckled with castles and meadows of wildflowers, I cringed, psychically sensing the history of this picture-perfect setting imprinted like a malignant afterimage.
Something compelled me to visit a concentration camp. I couldn't not go. I was curious—curious to see for myself what one was really like, not just to shed light on my Jewish past but to really register the malevolent extremes humans are capable of if unchecked. I wasn't sure how or why, but somehow this knowing was going to make me feel more whole.
Now here I was with Irene, an English teacher at an American military base in Germany, her new BMW parked in the visitors' lot a million miles away. And hell, bounded by a sea of barbed wire, stretching out before us. The camp has been preserved down to the smallest detail, just as it looked in the war. The point, of course, is to remember.
Shivering though the day is warm, we pass through the arch beneath the ominous tower. A stifling grayness descends. We tour the grounds, entering the crematorium, the gas chamber hideously disguised as a shower room, and the building where the “medical” experimentation took place. Climbing the winding stairway, we enter the prisoners' barracks, stark and airless. Disturbingly sparse handfuls of straw cover multileveled wooden platforms where human beings slept three to a bed, hundreds to a room.
I sense their presence. They are prowling the camp, brushing against me. I'm starting to feel vaguely nauseous, numb. My breathing turns shallow, barely perceptible. I notice myself becoming suspiciously calm, frozen inside. I get this way whenever I'm really scared. Yet the truth that is calling out to me far surpasses my fear.
Drawn to better understand the meaning of the darkness, I instinctively go off on my own—an old carryover from childhood, to retreat within whenever I feel overwhelmed. Fighting an impulse to cut off the experience, I sit on the remains of a rectangular cement foundation at the far end of the camp. It was at this spot that the public executions were carried out. Ironically, despite the eeriness of the setting, I feel safest alone. I close my eyes to meditate, not knowing where it will take me. My light cotton blouse feels as though it could be ripped off at any moment by the sheer accumulation of so much inhumane violence committed here and still present now. I cross my arms around my chest, holding it tight.
As I quiet myself in meditation, I can psychically feel the echo of the atrocities that occurred in this place, leaving my body leaden and chilled. I see every detail of the camp vibrating at tremendous speed. Transfixed, I marvel as the intensity of the motion strips away the surface of everything in sight, revealing a pervasive blanket of darkness beneath. It is a toxic, gritty film pulsating ever so slightly, infiltrating the scene, leaching every last molecule of vitality and tainting the very air I breathe. At the same time, I'm deluged by voices and images of people I believe were captive here. It's happening so fast I can't hold on to any of the words. The darkness is insinuating itself on me. I'm lost in it; nothing I've encountered previously begins to compare with this nightmare. I feel my sense of self weakening. Fortunately, I recognize in a flash of insight the stranglehold the darkness has on me: All I can think about is getting away from this place. Joked out of my meditation, I open my eyes, grasping onto the wall's cold cement blocks with both hands. I need to touch something solid and firm to reassure me that I'm okay. I stand up, my legs still unsteady beneath me. I hurry back through the archway under the guard tower and leave.
The memory of the camp haunted me the rest of my trip through Eastern Europe and for weeks following my return home. I felt lethargic and depressed, aching all over as if coming down with the flu. But I wasn't physically ill—I just felt utterly defeated by the darkness. It seemed so ferocious, so incomparable in its destructive force. Not that I hadn't been aware of this darkness before. It had been trailing me my entire life, just in lesser forms. When I was a child, it was the boogeyman, the clattering of the wooden shutters against my window on a windy night, or the spookiness of being all alone in a big, empty house. It lurked in shadowy corners, intimidating me at a distance but never fully showing its face. I'd always counted on the ultimate triumph of love over evil, but now my faith was shaken. Love didn't seem to have a fighting chance.
Soon after getting back to Los Angeles, I climbed one of the highest peaks of Malibu Creek State Park, overlooking the ocean, to get some perspective. The earth was warm from the morning sun, and I found a smooth, rounded boulder on which to meditate. This land, held sacred by the Chumash tribe, is where I feel most secure. The V-shaped canyons sheltering me in their arms like a mother, the grand old oaks venerating a silent wisdom, and the earth carpeted with golden mustard, all delighted me. There was peace here, always waiting to be found.
Sitting cross-legged, in an old pair of jeans I love so much, I breathed in deeply and began to meditate. Within minutes, however, I found myself transported back to Buchenwald. I was completely disoriented; it took every ounce of restraint I had to stay present. Not this again, I thought, sinking at the sight. Still, there it was: that terrible darkness, outstretched before me, in complete view. But this time I didn't bolt away. Comforted by the safety of the canyon, I cautiously sneaked a closer look. Here on familiar turf, courage was easier to summon. To my surprise, I recognized a dimension I'd missed while at the camp: The faintest glow of light flickered through every structure, even the ground itself, building the more I focused on it. Single-mindedly I watched, thinking of nothing else, feeling a mounting sense of love. Right before my eyes, it appeared to be birthing itself, light bearing light in a breathtaking spectacle. Pure, luminous, penetrating even the blackest crevices, it extended far beyond the electrified barbed-wire fences and into the sky.
In the face of such magnificence, my fear fell away. I drank it in, memorizing every nuance so I'd never forget or again feel so desolate. Reconnecting with this light, I felt as though I'd found once more my dearest love. I realized it had been there all the time. Consumed by feat, however, I just hadn't looked far enough to see it. Rigid before, my body softened, a flood of energy rushing through me. I breathed easily for the first time in weeks, smelled the aroma of pungent sage and rosemary growing in patches on the canyon slopes. Dwarfed by the enormity of this radiance, the darkness seemed minuscule, and yet the two were intimately linked. It looked as if the light were holding the darkness deep within its belly, sharing the same blood supply. In that moment, I began to grasp what I later better understood: that even in the worst depravity, the light can still exist. It is only our fear that blinds us to it.
I cannot, of course, claim the unspeakable experiences at Buchenwald as my own. Nor do I want in any way to diminish the misery there by making too facile a connection to my own fortunate life. Nonetheless, my visit to Buchenwald had the effect of compelling me to start exploring the meaning of darkness in the world. It was the first step of an ongoing process. Such issues are more easily stated than resolved, but I keep searching for greater clarity.
The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, one of my heroes, has guided my thinking. In Man's Search for Meaning, he courageously portrays the years he spent as a prisoner in Auschwitz:
In spite of all the enforced physical and mental primitiveness of the life in a concentration camp, it was possible for spiritual life to deepen…. Only in this way can we explain the apparent paradox that some prisoners of a less hardy makeup often seemed to survive camp life better than those of a robust nature. The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his, beloved. For the first time in my life I was able to understand the meaning of the words, “The angels are lost in the perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory.”
Though I've been spared what Frankl confronted, I've come to believe that the spiritual path of the psychic is to face both the dark and the light—not to sever a portion of life and see only what pleases us. Many people may initially recoil at the idea that we all contain a spectrum of dark and light with the potential to act both out. But we must be warriors, alert to the multiple forces in and around us. Thus we must search deep inside to identify and topple our fiercest demons. And then heal that part of ourselves. At the same time, we must tend what is most admirable within, embracing our truest strengths. All for the purpose of edging closer to the source of light from which we have come.
Our ultimate goal is to become more awake. To appreciate from all angles the stunning complexity of who we are. Consider also that even in the most dire of circumstances, there exists a possibility for magnificence and connection to spirit. As Frankl suggests, we can create a life founded on love anywhere. Spirituality means connecting with our hearts and a higher power; the psychic can help open ourselves to do this. However, it's not the only way; to borrow an expression from the writer Raymond Carver, it's just “another path to the waterfall.” But as your prescience matures, you become more of a transparent vehicle, able to experience multiple layers of reality that deepen your spiritual appreciation. A channel opens, your armor falls away, love is easier to feel and it can move you.
Spirituality is not an abstract concept from a psychic perspective. It's always right before you—manifested through dreams, visions, and intuitions—but you must make it come alive. Live it, breathe it, recognize it even in the minutiae of your life. As you do, you discover we're not just two dimensional beings bounded by our skin. Indians recognize this in the sweetness of their greeting to each other, saying, “Nameste,” “I respect the spirit within you,” instead of “Hello.” This spirit is in us all, psychically unmistakable and vast. The poet Kabir describes it so well:
There is a Secret One inside us;
the planets and all the galaxies
pass through his hands like beads.
This is a string of beads one should look at with luminous eyes.
(Trans, by Robert Bly)
Our prescience provides this. The advantage to being psychic is not simply to see more but to make sense of what we see. When everything comes together and even seemingly disconnected pieces click into place, it satisfies our most inquisitive impulses. Our ultimate reward as psychics, however, if we are also spiritually open, is to be able to glimpse the incredible light I encountered at Buchenwald—which, by the way, is everywhere. For me, feeling such love for even a few minutes a day is finding heaven on earth. Nothing is more healing.
My trip to Buchenwald and the psychic insight I gained are precious to me. With the power of love reaffirmed, I came away more able to find it in any circumstance, no matter how extreme. By viewing every experience as a gift, life has become more fulfilling and a lot less painful. On the most frozen, iciest of slopes, if you look closely enough, there will always be the tiniest of flowers. This is the great wonder. The most demanding spiritual challenge is to search for the light in any situation, even when things seem to be utterly unfair. A hard lesson, certainly. But one well learned.
Searching for the light may be difficult because we tend to be mesmerized by darkness. Our fear of it eclipses the light. Such fear is so primal and firmly embedded that it's powerfully reflected in how we react to the forces of nature. I've never seen an author capture this more masterfully than Annie Dillard in her story “Solar Eclipse”:
People on all the hillsides, including, I think, myself, screamed when the black body of the moon detached from the sky and rolled over the sun. But something else was happening at that same instant, and it was this, I believe, which made us scream: The second before the sun went out we saw a wall of dark shadow come speeding at us. We no sooner saw it than it was upon us, like thunder. It roared up the valley. It slammed our hill and knocked us out. It was the monstrous swift shadow cone of the moon…. It rolled at you across the land at 1,800 miles an hour, hauling darkness like plague behind it…. We saw the wall of shadow coming, and screamed before it hit.
Darkness comes in all forms, from without and within. Yet I believe that when we become conscious of our darker side we're less likely to be seduced by it—this awareness helps us not to get sucked in. By confronting our anger, hurt, fear, and resentments, we can refine our spirits like a finely polished diamond. As Gandhi says, “We must be the change.” Coming to terms with our own darkness can help us find peace. It's not only liberating for us, it can also profoundly affect how other people behave in our presence.
Late one summer afternoon I was driving my white VW Rabbit, heading for Chinatown to meet a friend for dinner. Even though I was passing through a seedy neighborhood, the weather was so sticky and hot that I had unwisely rolled all the windows down. When I stopped at a red light, an enormous man, large enough to play defensive tackle for the Raiders, suddenly darted from the corner bus stop and rushed toward me. I saw him leap up onto the hood of my car and felt a gigantic thud as he began to bounce up and down as if on a trampoline. It all happened so fast I didn't have time to get scared. Before I had a chance to close my window, he stuck his arm through it and grabbed for my head. I was sure he was going to strike me. Instead, his rage evaporated. He gently cupped my face in his hands. Gazing straight into my eyes, he smiled so sweetly, like a baby, that I couldn't help but smile back. Then, as abruptly as he'd appeared, he dodged through traffic mumbling to himself, returned to the crowded bus stop, and sat down. When the light turned green, I continued on, disbelieving, but grateful I was still in one piece.
That man was quite capable of hurting me, but he didn't, and I kept asking myself why. As I replayed the scene in my head over the next couple of days, I came to understand. For one thing, I couldn't look more nonthreatening; I don't go through life giving off a lot of fear or expecting at any moment to be attacked—qualities that, according to self-defense classes, count for a lot. But on an energy level, I believe the answer goes deeper. We all radiate an energy field that extends way beyond the body, an “aura,” which is partially a reflection of our emotional state. Others can often feel it, even if they don't identify it as such. Anger in particular is easy to sense. In certain situations, when people walk around dangerously close to the edge like the man I encountered, it can set them off.
This is where the work I'd done on myself really served me. Because I make a concerted effort to deal with my more difficult emotions and then let them go, there was less of a buildup for this man to zero in on psychically. Instead, at a subtle energy level, he responded to a more peaceful part of me and smiled instead of tearing my head off (though probably none of this was conscious on his part). Sometimes violence cannot be stopped no matter what we do. But the more peaceful we are, the better chance we have of bringing out the peace in those around us.
It's all too tempting to project our darker sides onto something outside ourselves. After all, the bad guys who make the eleven o'clock news are easy targets. Their actions are so glaring they're hard to identify with. But it also happens in a less obvious way. As a psychiatrist, I see people who project all the time. The qualities they most resist in themselves are the ones they project onto others. For instance, I once treated an extremely successful dentist who was a pathological liar, but he'd come to me complaining that everyone else was cheating him. His beliefs were so fixed, I barely made a dent in them. Even after being convicted of fraud, he swore he was framed and trusted no one.
Projection is a primitive, unconscious instinct learned in childhood. It takes years of effort to unlearn. Even the other day when I stubbed my toe on a doorjamb, my first inclination was to blame the door rather than admit my own clumsiness. Projection distorts our view of the world and prevents us from understanding each other and ourselves. But being psychic demands clarity, so that we can see beyond our own projections. Only then can we appreciate people and situations as they actually are, not how we imagine them. The commitment that comes with being on a spiritual path impels us to clean up our acts at every opportunity.
For two years I was a medical consultant at a residential alcohol and drug recovery program for Jewish criminal offenders. As part of our outreach services, several counselors and I visited a high-security men's prison in Chino to celebrate Passover with some of the inmates. The other women knew the ins and outs of the prison system, had come here on many occasions, but this was my first time. I was eager to experience what a prison was like from the inside—to get a better feel for the men in our program. But my interest went beyond that: I wanted to learn more about freedom, and sensed that somehow these men could teach me.
To get from the front entrance of the facility to the compound where the seder was being held, we were escorted through the enormous yard by a group of heavily armed guards who could have been clones of Arnold Schwarzenegger. Walled off on all sides were hundreds of uniformed men robotically smoking cigarettes, all jammed together in an outdoor concrete area the size of three city blocks.
As we walked by, we became the main attraction. I felt invaded by the men, their eyes devouring us like we were raw meat as they taunted us with cat calls. I had the sensation that we were passing through a sea of “hungry ghosts,” the lost souls that Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hahn talks about, those who can never be fulfilled. They were sitting ducks for everything that was terrible in the world to be projected smack onto them. I knew better, but I felt threatened, and silently judged them, too. Yet I couldn't stop staring at the swarm of anonymous faces pulling me in. My friends' voices sounded far away, muffled. For a few moments, I must have fallen into a trance, because there again I could psychically see the darkness that had infested Buchenwald, only present to a lesser degree. It was spewing out from the men's hair, their breath, their skin—slinking across ledges of buildings, creeping up closer toward me. No light in sight. Why couldn't I see it? Because of my experience at the concentration camp, I questioned myself. I knew something inside me had shut off.
What a relief it was to arrive safely inside at our destination. Thank God for the familiar. The rabbi, wrapped in a blue and white prayer shawl, his yarmulke pinned to the little hair he had left, the Torah safely nearby…the baskets piled high with matzohs and plates of gefilte fish about to be served. Now I could catch my breath. Waiting for the seder to begin, the inmate seated beside me started to strike up a conversation. A tattooed, muscle-bound man with long, curly, black hair, he immediately got mileage out of my obvious discomfort.
“Never been to a prison before, huh?”
“Nope,” I managed to get out.
“Well, I've been in the joint for over ten years.”
“What for?” I inquired politely, trying to seem like this was no big deal.
“I'm a bank robber,” he boasted. “Big time.”
“Oh really,” I cooed, wanting to appear duly impressed. He just shook his head back and forth, grinning. I felt like such a fool. Then, with a twinkle in his eyes, he said, “You see those ugly gorillas out there.” He pointed gleefully to the crowded yard. “Well, they could eat a little girl like you up in one big bite.” The whole thing seemed so absurd, both of us burst out laughing. The ice was broken.
During dinner, I found him to be an extraordinary man. “It took being in prison to get my spiritual life to open up,” he told me. A voracious reader, he deftly quoted the Buddha, Krishnamurti, Ramana Maharshi, his mentors. Their pictures were taped to the walls of his cell. He was a daily meditator, devoted to his practice—more so than many people I knew. But most impressive was his outrageous humor, the lightness with which he approached life. I never detected a hint of feeling sorry for himself. Amazingly, under dreadful conditions, he'd been able to heal.
When the seder ended, the guards safely escorted us back through the yard to the front exit. The physical scene hadn't changed—the same hordes of men, the same cigarette smoke, the same taunts—but now my take on it was different. Psychically, the darkness I saw was no longer one-dimensional. Its denseness had broken up, revealing an underlayer of phosphorescent pinpoints—each one no larger than a grain of sand—as if a pitch black night sky was now sprinkled with glittering stars. The very atoms and molecules of everyone and everything seemed to be radiating, piercing the entire environment like lasers. It was a loving light, so soothing I just wanted to bask in it. Once I had a single bare speck to hold on to, a focal point, I looked on as offshoots multiplied, growing brighter and brighter. It was a very strange sight, awesome. I was watching hardened criminals lurking around lit up like lightbulbs and they didn't even realize it.
My dinner partner unknowingly had been the key. Talking with him had deflated my fear because he so strikingly defied my projections. The light in him sparked my ability to see. True, many of the inmates were intimidating—for good reason. And on a psychic level, a visible darkness surrounded them that to me was quite real. The distortion was that it was all I saw. I'd been so afraid and angry at how invaded I felt that my projections went wild. The minute I started to withdraw them, to look beyond outward appearances at our similarities and common failings, the light that had always been present was able to shine through. My myopic vision of the prison shattered; the ball of frozen tension inside me burst along with it. I felt free. Now I grasped the larger picture, not just a fraction of it. I realized that given other circumstances I too might be propelled to commit criminal acts. I'd never held up a liquor store, joined a gang, or been busted for drugs, but could appreciate the desperation that leads to such behavior. We all feel anger, disappointment, despair. Beyond the question of how tough an environment we come from, and the real hazards of poverty, for instance, the essential difference is that some of us are better at controlling our emotions and don't act them out destructively. Once I stopped condemning the inmates and viewed them with a little more compassion, I was liberated from my projections. The darkness didn't consume me.
The spiritual path of the psychic is to acknowledge our projections so they don't get in our way. It takes mindfulness and courage for us to stop and say, “Hey, wait a minute. I must've gotten hooked by a projection. Let me take a closer look.” Believe me, this changes things a lot. Once we begin to see external reality as a potent mirror reflecting what's going on inside us, we no longer separate the inside from the outside, or “us” from “them.” This is an important lesson for anyone, but for a psychic doing a reading being projection-free is like shooting a picture with the lens wide open, light pouring in.
Spirituality is a lifelong pursuit. You don't reach a quick epiphany, get struck enlightened, and suddenly arrive. As Stephen Mitchell writes, at times spiritual transformation can be like “cleaning the heart with a piece of steel wool,” with clarity always the goal. While reading his book The Gospel According to Jesus, I was especially impressed by the story of the spiritual journey of Chao-Chou, a Zen monk from the T'ang Dynasty. Achieving enlightenment when only seventeen years old, he still chose to remain with his teacher for another forty years. He did this out of love, but also to heighten his insight further and purify his character. Other monks left to teach at a much earlier age. But Chao-Chou was matchless in his excellence and patience. Finally, at age eighty, he felt ready to teach. Chao-Chou proposed a humble philosophy: “If I meet a hundred-year-old man and I have something to teach him, I will teach; if I meet an eight-year-old boy and he has something to teach me, I will learn.” Remarkably, he taught until his death at age 120.
Chao-Chou can be a model for us all. You don't have to be shut away in a far-off monastery to live a spiritual life, even though our world has many more distractions. Like his, our task is both to solidify our connection with a higher power through techniques such as meditation or prayer, and to make love a priority in how we think and behave. When living this way, for example, it becomes a lot harder to hold a grudge when a boss treats you in a manner that seems unfair, or to announce rashly, “I'll never speak to you again,” if a friend inadvertently hurts your feelings. This doesn't mean that we're instantly transformed into saints. It's just that now, more spiritually aware, we gravitate toward loving solutions.
There's a sacredness to being human. This was brought home to me in a vivid dream I had about my mother at a time when I was intently involved with my writing—my most powerful meditation—although frustrated by how emotionally demanding it felt. My mother had been dead for about a year when she came to me and said in her adamant style: “You have no idea how lucky you are to feel so passionately. That's the great joy of being on earth. Where I am things are different. The same intensity isn't there.” I awoke saddened by her longing but also got her message loud and clear: It's a great gift to be human, to have teal passions that we can go all out for. On a deeper level the dream also reminded me that we must honor the whole experience of life as sacred, not divide ourselves into neat little categories, designating what is spiritual and what is not. Such a split is an illusion.
In the film Wings of Desire, an angel falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist. At the end, he sacrifices his wings in order to be with her. But this kind of sacrifice is not necessary for us. We can be as divine as we want, right here on earth. Nothing's stopping us. We're the template for where love begins. It's a chain reaction. The more we love and accept ourselves, the more we're able to love and accept other people. To achieve this for even a millisecond is to know the meaning of holiness.
Over a decade ago, when I returned from my first conference with Brugh Joy, love was rushing through me like a great river. I thought it would never cease. I was sure I'd found the answer. Now, at last, my life would be changed. With the best of intentions I drove straight from the seclusion of the high desert to join my parents for lunch at a ritzy country club they belonged to in Beverly Hills, a place that had previously set my hair on end because I felt so utterly out of place. With all this love in my heart that September afternoon, I assumed things had to be different. Not so. Within minutes I became just as much of a miserable outcast as I'd been before. The truth was, I didn't really feel I belonged in many places because I wasn't comfortable in my own skin. Finding this comfort was my spiritual task. The route there was through my insecurities, in search of an authentic voice. Not, I learned, by beating myself up, but by gently and patiently penetrating the fears that were stopping me.
The enormous outpouring of energy I experienced at Brugh's didn't last forever. Nor was it meant to. It was simply a taste of what was possible if I was willing to carry on that work in myself. The more we incorporate love in our lives, the closer we get to heaven. I don't view heaven as some otherworldly, unreachable realm. It is here right before us, intermingled with our humanness, waiting to be found.
Often, when you begin a spiritual path—especially when you're working with a teacher—the focused energy can be so potent it breaks down inner barriers that seemed impenetrable. You're free to feel such a heightened awareness of love that it may spark a psychic opening, a double whammy that is mind-blowing, to say the least. In this state, you may see brilliant lights around people like the halos crowning saints in Byzantine icons. Even your dog, your plants, the pots and pans in your kitchen exude it. Literally everything glows. Or you feel a oneness with the universe that can bring incredible joy. These are called peak experiences. Though dramatic and truly illuminating, they're not the be-all and end-all; rather, they are simply one marker among many on the path.
In 1986 I spent two weeks on the north shore of the island of Kauai, participating in a women's workshop on spirituality. After meditating intensely with the group before a three-day period of silence and fasting, I walked through a lush jungle down to the water's edge, to watch the sunset. The evening was warm and moist. A light wind blew through my short cotton dress as I rested my back on the trunk of a fragrant plumaria tree. I got lost in the swaying movements of its leaves and deep violet flowers. They looked like feathers and seemed to be gesturing to me. To my surprise, I began to feel sexually aroused. Waves of heat started pulsing through the bark and into my body, flowing up my spine to my scalp—then down to my genitals and feet. It was absolute bliss. I kept the slope of my back glued to” the trunk, afraid if I dared move or analyze what was happening, it would stop. For once, thank God, my mind cooperated. The sexual intensity mounted slowly and then faster until my entire body exploded into an orgasm.
When it was over, I rested on the cool ground beneath the tree, gazing at a canopy of glittering stars. Logically I knew this entire incident was outrageous. But the odd thing was how natural it all seemed. I felt soft like a baby. My harsh edges had been smoothed out, every inch of me vibrating and alive. Since becoming a doctor, I'd spent so much time thinking on my feet, making tough decisions fast, I often forgot I even had a body. I had become so civilized and proper, obsessively intent on doing “the right thing,” that I'd sacrificed my wilder spirit. But now it was back.
Previously I had always depended on a man to bring out my wildness and sexuality. In a relationship, I could be passionate and playful; when I was single, I somehow felt less feminine and lacked a certain warmth. I didn't see that I possessed my own vital sexuality, independent of anyone else. On this particular evening, however, as I witnessed every tree, every blossom, every rock, and the earth itself, radiating sensuality, I realized that it was also inside me. I felt womanly and full, in touch with that part that could run naked on the beach without shame, howl in the light of the full moon.
And yet, compelling as this moment had been, I knew from my teacher not to dwell on it. Peak psychic experiences are transitory. There are hundreds of different kinds that come and go the more deeply your practice continues. If you focus on them for too long, you can get sidetracked by their beauty and lose sight of what lies ahead. I'll never forget what took place on the beach in Kauai. Even today I can't help but look at leaves fluttering in the breeze and smile. Still, I know it's as dangerous to lose myself to the light as to the darkness. I took what I learned from that night and moved on.
Unfortunately it's quite easy to be seduced. A friend of mine had been meditating only a few months when he began having some pyrotechnic visions, each more striking than the last. He'd be gazing down at his body while floating high above it; fantastic light shows with purple strobes would burst from the center of his forehead; a band of mischievous orange-robed monks with shaved heads would be rolling in laughter as their images flew by during meditation. Off and on for days this flashy show continued; my friend was getting pretty impressed with himself. Then suddenly it all stopped. Upset that he was losing ground, he went to his spiritual teacher, believing that in some way he'd failed. His teacher listened patiently, unconcerned, and then reassured him, saying, “All experiences have value. Just keep meditating.”
By this he meant you should not to cling to any experience, no matter how dramatic, because it removes us from the present—that the secret is to endow even the simplest moments with meaning, see each one as divine. Peak experiences are merely the glitterati of the journey, not necessarily a sign of spiritual attainment. Notice them, learn what you can, but don't become too enticed. In A Gradual Awakening, Stephen Levine says, “Enlightenment is freedom, the thought of enlightenment is prison.” The instant you get enamored with how evolved you think you are, your ego gets snagged and you get thrown off course.
I once knew a workshop junkie who bounced from teacher to teacher just to get a hit of the energy. He never stuck around long enough, however, to do the real work. With his saccharine glow and perpetual glazed smile I could spot him coming from a mile away. When he sporadically dropped in on my teacher's classes, he'd make a beeline for me, giving me a big hug—which was all right because I was glad to see him—but there was always a forced quality as if he was trying too hard. He looked undeniably blissed out, too much so. Authentic spirituality embodies a range of experience, not just feeding off the high points. As author and teacher Ram Dass says, “If you get phonyholy, it will end up kicking you in the butt.” The most spiritual of acts is to be genuinely human at every moment.
We have no idea when spiritual insights will come. Our times of struggle can be just as pivotal as when we're feeling really connected. All we can do is work toward being psychically open, no matter what's happening. Life will do the rest. The point is not to sit around just waiting to become enlightened. The richness of our emotions, the very events of our lives, provide a potent springboard from which to grow. So often, at my lowest points, when I feel like I just can't go on, a psychic realization or vision restores me. The effect is instantly healing, and I come back to myself.
One night I pulled into the Saint John's Hospital garage, about to see a patient who'd just nearly overdosed on cocaine. I wound up the crowded concrete ramps until I found a parking spot; this was the last place I wanted to be. Tired and depressed (my mother had just fallen ill), I didn't have one ounce of energy left over to give to anyone. Yet there I was, in the front seat of my car, wriggling out of my jeans into a more “professional” outfit, transforming into “the doctor” once more. I couldn't have felt less spiritual. My body, a leaden weight, just sat there. For one brief moment I crossed my arms over the steering wheel, lay my head down to rest. Before I knew it I drifted into a vision.
I was standing in the midst of the clearest, never-ending sky with a being who knew me inside out and loved me completely. He wasn't human, visually no more than a stick figure you'd see in a child's drawing. Yet somehow I was certain there was no one more important to me than he. We were in a huge place, infinite in all directions, the earth a tiny speck below. In a split second he showed me a detailed replay of my life, every person, every place, every event. I saw that no matter how important any of it seemed, it was a mere blip compared to the vastness now surrounding me. Exhilarated, I felt my perspective shift. There were no beginnings, no end, just a oneness to which we are all linked. In my depression I'd lost sight of this. But with such a joyous reminder I was freed from my smaller frame of mind.
It would be wonderful if I could have kept this vision alive forever. But no matter how inspiring and true, visions by nature tend to fade. Our challenge is to recall and savor them, making them part of our life so they stick. There's no limited supply. Being psychic allows us to create room for new ones constantly. And visions build on each other. For example, the vision I had at Saint John's didn't stand by itself. Its theme of oneness had come to me many times before, underlying the basis of my own spiritual beliefs: We are all interrelated in a gigantic cosmic net. My prescience helps me to remember.
As you bring the psychic into finer focus you have the freedom to appreciate the extraordinary beauty of spirit and feel its oneness. Once you have a personal experience of this, you'll get a radically different slant on the world, sensing an organic connection to all of life—as I see it, the very reason we pursue a spiritual path in the first place. Search for this oneness in your dreams, meditations, during readings, or while simply walking by the ocean or hiking in the woods. No reminder is too small.
Our connection to each other and to the entire universe exists everywhere. But certain locations in the world are magical; they're psychic treasure troves that evoke even more of a connection. These places seem to buzz with energy and activate us, sacred sites such as Machu Picchu, Stonehenge, the Great Pyramids in Egypt, or the colossal stone monoliths on Easter Island. The history of the land seems to be embedded in the soil, the landscape, and the architecture, preserving the memory of what happened there as concisely as if it had been stored on microchips. When you're psychically open you can join with the ancient quality of the land, hear its voice, sense the enormity of its spirit.
A few years ago I visited the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, a place so holy that people of many religions make pilgrimages there from all over the world. For the Jewish people, this wall is especially sacred. It's all that remains of the ancestral temple that was destroyed in A.D. 70, when the Jews were forced into exile. Traditionally, Jews have journeyed there to shed tears and mourn the original loss of their homeland. The wall is not merely a historical marker, however; many Jews regard it as a physical touchstone to a greater sanctity.
As I slowly approached the women's side of the wall, I felt I was being drawn into the vortex of a tornado. At least a hundred women, heads covered with shawls in muted colors, were wailing at the top of their lungs. I felt besieged by their outpouring of grief. I wanted to run from it, yet I just stood there. As usual when overloaded, my first response was to go numb. Mechanically, I lifted my arm and placed my neatly folded prayer into a crack between two mammoth golden-brown stones, as was the custom. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, my feelings returned, but magnified, larger than life. Like a hypnotic incantation, the moaning and wailing of the other women lured me in. I hadn't intended to cry, but soon tears filled my eyes. I was startled; I'd been feeling fine. I was sure I had nothing to cry about.
Uncontrollably, my body began to tremble as a wave of sadness hit me. So many personal losses came back at once: memories of smaller disappointments, my grandfather's death, relationships I'd worked so hard on that failed. And my weeping didn't stop there. Gathering momentum, I cried not only for myself but for my family and friends, for all the troubles and injustices in the world that came to mind. Finally, I cried just to cry. In a tremendous release, I completely let loose. It was a cleansing, purifying catharsis, as the despair washed through me and became something more. My cries and the wailing of every woman at the wall blended together with all that had come before us, merging into a single sound. I was immersed in a whirlpool of grief, not just my own, but a larger grief that seemed to be arising from the heart of the collective.
As if coming out of a trance, I noticed the sky growing dark. I could hear the evening prayers of the Muslims echoing mournfully throughout the city from a central mosque nearby. I looked up at a clock tower, stunned to see that two hours had passed when I'd only planned to stay a few minutes. The old city of Jerusalem glistened, the last rays of sunlight reflecting off the winding cobblestone streets. I walked briskly back to my hotel. Exhausted, I couldn't wait to jump into a steaming hot bath. But I was also exuberant: Beneath all that grief at the wall, I'd felt a collective oneness, an ecstatic and merciful unifying force. At that point, I'd only been meditating a year and had gotten just glimpses of it. But now there it was—right before me, glorious as could be.
It took many months for what happened to sink in fully. Yes, I was somehow catapulted into a profound feeling of connection. But how did I get there? I needed to know. Slowing everything down, examining it in stages, I came to appreciate more than ever that the Wailing Wall itself was sitting on a powder keg of energy—amplified over the centuries by every person who'd ever come to grieve. Even those who don't think of themselves as psychic can't help but feel its pull. I'd no idea how tremendous it would be and within minutes had been launched into a hyper-alert psychic state. First, without intending to, I began to cry. But that was just the starting point, one layer that soon melded into another. Surrendering to my sadness, I let it carry me as it grew in intensity, until its very force lifted me from my own emotions to an experience of collective grief. I could never in a million years have willed this to happen. And then, not resisting the frenzy of this collective grief, I felt it evolve into a sublime oneness. I knew we all were of a single heart, the ancient memory of love binding us through time.
Love has a way of moving us beyond the artificial boundaries we've created. It's the uniting ingredient, no matter what path we choose, transcending religious differences. Just because we adhere to a particular faith doesn't have to limit us from appreciating the good in them all. Without love, we are spiritually adrift. The world can appear impoverished, fraught with an endless series of insoluble problems. Separation from love is the primary cause of our pain. With love, we have the courage to take our difficulties in stride and turn them into demonstrations of faith.
As the psychic ripens, we become better equipped to perceive love, not only in ourselves but in our family, friends, and even in the darkest places on earth. Whether we've just won the lottery or lost our job, we're ultimately being challenged to become more compassionate, large-hearted people. Then we can live as fully as we were meant to, not being so hard on ourselves or feeling victimized by every bump in the road. When seen through loving eyes, our lives begin to take on a different cast, to exude a new vitality and meaning. The aim becomes, as Raymond Carver suggests in the poem “Late Fragment,” “To call myself beloved and feel myself beloved on the earth.”
To be psychic means so much more than being able to see into the future. It can be our entry into a full-bodied spiritual life, where love abides and everything has a purpose. From the very start we may sense this, but with refined prescience it's like standing in a moonlit room as vague shapes and shadows gradually materialize into recognizable forms. Every step of the spiritual journey, no matter how small or when we begin, leads us closer to the intuitive wisdom of our hearts and to love. We can't help but grow stronger. Love gives us the power to transform any seeming calamity into an asset and source of comfort. It's a magical tincture that enables us to spin straw into gold, to become alchemists for a more bountiful and enlightened future.