It was in a week-long healing workshop that I experienced my first profound mystical experience.  The Cape Cod beach house had a large room with massive picture windows, facing the ocean.  The year was 1986.   The healing workshop made use of Applied Kinesiology (AK or muscle testing).  In this style of work, you walk through dozens of AK balances, which you recheck now and then to see if each balance is still holding.  Think of each balance as a circuit breaker in a house.  Occasionally correcting one thing will throw out something you had corrected earlier.  No problem.  You just go back and correct that one too.  Retest and move on. 

Things got interesting when someone's balances all started "popping".  Popping was the term we used to describe when all of a persons circuits started to go out, randomly and rapidly.  You could not correct them fast enough to retain system integrity.  It was as if all the circuit breakers in a house started to suddenly start to flip on and off, on their own.  Strange as it looked, it was a very good healing indicator.  It meant that a huge core issue was activated for the person.  If corrected it would mean profound healing. 

I had witnessed popping enough times in others to know how to recognize it in myself.  A student we'll call Jon was working on me.  Unlike the other students, Jon looked like your garden variety guru, long beard, flowing robes, peaceful face and living off a trust fund.  I was already a little jealous of his life.  After a few corrections, I started popping.  The teacher came over and tried to recover.  No luck.  He then asked what was going on for me inside. 
I said, "It looks as if Jon here is about ready to complete his lifetimes on earth and is about to ascend.  And not only am I jealous, but I am angry.  I'm angry because that's what I want so desperately."  The teacher brought me deeper into that trauma (tied to inter-lifetime events of abandonment).  I began to scream, "Don't you leave me down here!  Don't you do it!" 

I gladly allowed the crying, knowing that deep healing was happening.  About ten minutes into it something strange happened.  As I screamed my anger toward Jon, his eyes started to change.  They were no longer his eyes.  I suppose that would have been okay.  The problem was, they were my eyes.  He was wearing my eyes!  In his head!  That was just too weird.  I freaked, drawing out even more tears, which I again freely welcomed.  I looked to one of the other students for some emotion support in my terror.  And dang it, they had my eyes too!  In their head!  What was going on?  I looked to another and she did too.  In fact, everyone in the room had my eyes.  Not angry eyes, just eyes looking back at me.  I had to close my own eyes because I could not stand it anymore.  With great discipline, I looked back up into each of their faces, forcing myself to work through the terror of seeing my eyes all over the place.  I alternated between hiding and looking up at them for some time.  Eventually, the tears, the pain and the terror all started to subside and eventually stopped. 

The process had lasted over 45 minutes, during which time, they had broken for lunch, which was set out on a table across the large room.  They checked in on me occasionally.  I looked content enough, so they let me be.  A peace began to wash over me, a satisfaction of having done some profound healing.  I understood that Jon had just been a trigger for me, and that he was not likely to ascend in the next few days.  I understood my healing was larger than just this lifetime.  I understood that seeing my eyes in others heads was just a variation on the idea that we are all one.  That was the mystical part of it.

Yes, things were pretty good, except that I was exhausted and hungry.  I wanted some food.  But I really didn't have the energy to move, much less get up and feed myself.  Then a wild thought occurred to me.  Wouldn't it be neat if I could just go right over to the food table with no effort at all, and just leave my body behind.  Yes, that would be ...  Hey, what's this?  I'm at the food table.  I looked back at my body in the chair.  Cool!  An out-of-body experience.  Problem was I couldn't grab any food in this condition.  Fortunately, I was no longer hungry.  But hey, while I'm wandering, wouldn't it be neat to be out there on the ocean, walking on the water.  In an instant, I was there walking on water.  Fun, but no big deal.  Yep, I'm walking on ....  What?  I'm where?  Hey, this is so amaz....  Suddenly, I was sucked back into my body.  Even the disappointment I felt for blowing it at the end could not wipe out the great sense of peaceful coolness that rested over me now.  I had just walked on water.  About four steps, as I recall.

Back in my body, I once again felt the exhaustion and hunger.  I had to get something to eat.  I dragged myself out of my chair and wobbled over to the food table.  This time I could actually grab some food, which I put on a plate and I ate.  Normally, I'd want to tell someone, but this time it didn't seem to matter.  Jon came over and asked gently, "So, how you doing?"

"I'm okay," I said.  "This was good work.  Thanks for your help."  I smiled for some time, that easy, peaceful smile that just rests on one's face.  It was years before I told anyone else what had happened.  It was not so much I was afraid to tell people.  It just didn't seem important to discuss.  It was certainly nothing to brag about.  It just was.

As I understand it today, a mystical experience is simply a glimpse of a truth that goes beyond this reality, a reminder of sorts.  It is an answer to a very personal, perhaps unspoken, question.  In that sense it is a revelation, one primarily intended for the person alone.  That is not to say it must not be shared.  It can be fun to hear of another's experience, particularly if it resonates with your own experience and sense of truth.  But sharing is not the point.  There is nothing special about those who have mystical experiences.  They just asked a question long enough to get a technicolor answer.  Healing is but one way to clear away the barriers to such clear communications from Spirit.

Confession is liberating.  So I confess, I have been more jealous in recent years than at any point in my life.  I used to look at wealth and figure that people either deserved it having worked for it or were just lucky.  Either way, good for them.  But as I have become more deeply entrenched in my depression and financial challenges, I experience far more scarcity, more lack, more having to do without.  While I had believed that my depression was getting better, this increase in jealousy does not bode well.  I look at retired friends with nice houses and I get scared.  I am reminded how precarious my future looks from here.  Not that things are that bad for me, mind you.  In fact, my health and wealth are better than they have been in seven years.  I am simply more scared lately.

I see people who get to hang out with great teachers, who are surrounded by people committed to transformation, and I get jealous.  Why can't I hang out with that quality of teachers and friends?  Admittedly, I am in a peaceful stage of life, in a quiet little southern town, where such teachers don't often find themselves.  And it's not that I've never had that.  I just forget that I got to study with some of the best people in my field.  I forget that I got to teach the work that Spirit brought forth through me in five different states.  I forget that others have looked at me and felt the same jealousies I am feeling now.  I forget.  I get jealous.  Then I feel guilty, ashamed, ungrateful, unworthy, thus complicating the whole thing. 

I hear stories of mystical experiences and I whine, "Hey, why can't I have those kinds of experiences?"  Then I remember, "Oh yeah, sorry, I have."  Some mystical experiences were terrifying at the time, and yet way cool to recall.  (Read more about my Mystical Experiences.)  I can see how a loving Spirit might want to spare me from more of such terrors before I'm better prepared.  I sometimes receive guidance so clearly that I take it for granted.  And when I act on it, I get marvelous confirmation.  Sometimes people ask how I knew to ask a particular question, wishing they had such a connection to their guidance.  But so many of my own questions remain unanswered, that it sometimes feels like I don't have Divine guidance, that I don't have mystical experiences, that I don't have a place of peace to go to.  I do have these things.  I just forget.

I hear people talk of how rewarding their meditation is and I get angry, a variation on my jealousy.  Meditation, like reading, is hard for me.  I can do it and I do.  But the most rewarding times seem random, based more on body chemistry it seems than on focus.  I have to forgive myself for not meditating as much as I think I should.  Why does it seem to be so easy for them?  I forget how much time they have devoted to it.  I forget that I have a quick meditation technique that is remarkably effective most of the time.  I forget that I can even use gratitude as a form of meditation.  I forget that I am unique in many ways, and my path need not follow theirs.

Which takes me back to the need for these confessions.  One of my discoveries in learning to do rapid emotional healing work was that you cannot learn in the presence of guilt and embarrassment.  In the language of a rule: "If you can't say it, you must say it.  That which wants to be hidden must be brought forth."  Those core feelings of unworthiness are never true, but they gain power in their hidden state.  As we expose them, we get to see how the unforgivable sins we lament are indeed very much forgivable, even endearing, particularly in the presence of loving friends.  We get to be accepted in our worst moments of embarrassment.  But only if we have the courage to expose them.

So as I have offered my confessions to you, I pray and imagine that you are accepting them fully and you are forgiving my pettiness.  I hope it serves to increase your compassion for both yourself and others.  In that way, my pain will have been of service to the greater good. 

I have also received insight in writing these confessions (with the intent to publish and be exposed).  This increase in pettiness I see may not be such a bad thing after all.  In fact, it might be a very good thing.  It is possible I am not becoming more petty and jealous with age, but rather that I am simply becoming more aware of that which already exists in me.  If that be the case, then this increase in pettiness is a sign of great and rapid growth.  The very presence of such petty thoughts suggest that I am up to the challenge of transforming them all.  Given the alternative of either seeing myself as more petty or believing I'm becoming more aware, I choose the latter.  So celebrate with me.  Hey, I've just allowed more of my pettiness to come forth and manifest!  May you also be so blessed.

"I hate this," I said to the woman seated next to me.  Tears came to my eyes, as I looked down at the floor of the small church.

She was the guest speaker at our service that day.  Her sermon was on the idea of getting out of God's way.  Let go to God.  Seemed fitting enough to the moment.  She had been making the rounds after the service when I told her I wanted to talk to her last, when she was done with her goodbyes.  She had nodded a yes to me.  "Hate what?" she asked gently.

"I hate having to offer healings, even in this church where we take such things for granted.  I do healing work.  While you were talking, I heard a deep, tearful sadness in your voice, both current and ancient.  Does that make sense?"  I did not think others had noticed this sadness.

She smiled knowingly.  Then nodded.

"I was inspired to ask you about it.  Would you like to heal a portion of that today, in the next ten minutes?" 
She smiled broadly.  "How could I say no to such an offer?"

"I'll take that as a no," I said, dashing her enthusiasm.  "You see, on questions of real import, I have learned to listen for only two answers:  yes and everything else.  Do you really want me to be thinking about all the reasons and ways you might find to say no to such a question?  I am pretty good at answering such things."  I rarely explain this to people, but she seemed sincere.

She shook her head sadly, "No."

"Do you want to receive healing on this sadness today?" I asked again.

Her face softened with renewed confidence "Yes," she said quietly.

"Great.  Do know what the sadness is about?"

"No," she said, furling her brow.  "I've been aware of it for a year or two.  And you're right.  It is ancient.  But I can't quite get an image of it.

"It's okay.  We don't need content for this style of work.  I once developed a technique to help people break out of a stuck storyline.  But I rarely need to use it."  I reached for her hand.  She began to lift it from her lap to give it to me.  "No.  Let your hand just rest there.  In fact, let it rest on the hymnal."

She placed her hand on the book sitting on the empty chair between us.

"Good."  I looked at her fingers closely, as I reached out and gently touched each one.  I was testing mudra connections energetically.  Mudra is a Sanskrit word for a hand position used during meditation.  Should I explain this process?  Spirit shook her head, no need.  "I often explain as I go, but in the name of time, I will skip all that if it's okay with you.  I know you have people waiting for you to go to lunch."

She nodded confidently, with a gentle smile.

I examined each finger again.  Her pinky was fine, suggesting no problem with her "electricals" (learning disabilities).  Her emotional structure was solid, in spite of this current sadness.  That suggested she had done a lot of emotional healing work already.  Middle finger was "out," suggesting a nutritional imbalance.  Index was a little out, suggesting mild structural problems.  "Your minerals are a bit low.  And you could use a visit to the chiropractor."

She nodded with a knowing smile.  "Yes, I could."

I then projected my awareness to the test points on her head that I would normally touch before testing.  I sometimes find it easier, faster and safer to project than touch.  My raised right hand fluttered, jumping in a sort of gentle waving.  This was how I did surrogate muscle testing.  Grounded?  check.  Spirit connection?  check.  One by one I quickly tested each of 14 points of alignment, looking for imbalance.  Finding none by point ten, I paused, recalibrated, checked my own balance and asked Spirit if I was reading accurately.  (She nodded.)  I quickly retested the ten points.  All strong. 

It was rare to find anyone so well balanced when doing a first session of my work.  I look for and usually find subtle imbalances.  It can take over an hour with some clients to work through the corrections of those imbalances.  It is what I call the "pre work" or the setup for the "real work", their conscious issue that day.  This is admittedly an artificial distinction.  I am always surprised and tickled when someone comes to me so "clean".  I found only three points mildly out.  "Please rub your upper and lower lips with the tips of two fingers, like this."  I demonstrated.

She did.

"Now gently rub your third eye and say, "Blessed, Holy, Good and True."

"Good," I said when she finished.  Now tap here very lightly as you say, "I deeply accept myself, even though I have this sadness."  We repeated it on the other hand, with a slight variation.  Specific reversal, as this imbalance is called, can block healing work even if all the others are fully balanced.  She physically relaxed as she spoke the words.

As she did this, I looked to Spirit for the significance of her already clean system.  There were so few imbalances I figured I had missed something.  Even her excess weight had not even registered as an issue, as it so often does.  Spirit just pointed to an area in front of us, where I saw the woman's guides desperately trying to get through to me.  I often get my intuitive information visually, so I sometimes miss the yells of other's guides.  Her collection of guides and fans (maybe 7 of them) split their presence into two separate screens for me to see.  Then I explained.  "Your guides need you to know they are extremely proud of you for all your hard work in your healing process.  But for some reason they split it into two scenes, with the same characters.  In one they are bowing to you with great reverence and formality.  In the other the are partying, jumping up and down in celebration.  I'm not sure why they split it like that."

"I am," she said.  "It's because I have both the formal and the party girl inside of me.  And they needed to address both of those."  Tears came to her eyes.  "You have no idea how badly I needed to hear that level of recognition from them.  I often wonder if I have worked hard enough on this."

I nodded and smiled.  "Oh.  Now they are telling me they could not be more proud of you for your accomplishments.  Good job.  Good job.  They keep saying that and applauding."  I let that sink in before continuing.  "Now we can work on the sadness.  This work will not necessarily correct it all, but it should remove the barrier that is preventing it from self correcting.  Can you feel the sadness?"

She nodded.

"Great!  See if you can intensify it, make it worse.  Now on a scale of 1-10, where 10 is the greatest, how intense is that sadness?"

"Eight," she said.

"Great!"  I was pleased she could access it so fully, especially while being so fully present to the work.  I tested her fingers again, this time looking for meridians that might be blocked.  My right hand fluttered gently.  Hmm.  That was strange.  It was on the opposite side of the lung meridian.  I could not recall if there was even a meridian located there.  I checked again, and then checked with Spirit.  Yep, that was it.  I tapped it firmly about four times, checking her full body response to the work.  I was about to tap again, when I got a no from Spirit.  In my Zen like approach to healing, you never use more force than is necessary to make the correction.  To do so would be unecological to the system, causing other problems later on.  "How's that?" I asked.  "Check to see how much of the sadness is left."

"About a four," she said.

"Good!  Breath into that and allow it to keep moving.  Is it still moving?"

She nodded.

"Tell me what that's like."

"Well, it's like there is a big hole in there, and a thick plate about 2 inches thick, pressing up against my heart.  I feel the compression.  But the side is shrinking."  A few minutes later she said, "Yes that is now fully compressed.  But there is still a small paper size barrier in there, but no more compression."

"Great.  Allow that to continue to move during the day.  Over the next day or two, you are likely to have some big spouts of grief pop up, probably without any content.  Just allow them and it should go to completion in a few days."

"I understand."  Her face was calm and peaceful.  Unlike some clients, she found this information comforting.

"Okay.  Now thank Spirit for its participation in this healing."  As she did that, I blessed and cleansed the room, always a necessity after doing any form of energy or healing work.  We were standing now.  As her lunch mate came our way, I said, "I have not done this work in years, until recently.  In fact I did my first formal session in seven years on her."  I pointed to the woman who just walked over. 

She looked at me with deep eyes.  "You have a real gift.  Everything you said was dead on.  And you did exactly what you said you were going to do.  And I do feel better.  Why is it that you are not doing this work?" 

"That's a hard question," I said.  "And I would be happy to tell you more about it later.  But you have people waiting for you.  The short answer is that I was sick for a lot of years, the classic wounded healer.  And I have found very few people around here who warranted the kind of work I do.  You were clearly ready for this work.  And I was moved by Spirit to offer it to you.  Give me your card and we will connect by email and phone."

She handed me her card and offered me a hug.

"I'm sorry.  I don't usually hug after a session.  I need to rebalance my energies."  In fact, I don't hug many people at all these days.

"I understand completely.  I often refrain from hugging after I do healing on someone.  But I never knew why.  It makes sense."

"We will talk more.  Have a great lunch."  I headed into the bathroom to rinse my hands as a ritual of completion and cleansing.  It had turned out beautifully, as it usually does when I am so powerfully moved by Spirit.  And I felt delighted at getting to step into "my perfect swing", as Bagger Vance called it. 

Still there were those nagging fears.  Yes, it was right to do.  This time.

I was 13 when I got my first gun, a Crossman combination pellet gun and BB gun, pump action, air compression rifle.  I had never bought anything like that before, if you don't count the switchblade I owned for a few weeks in grade school.  That is until the kid's mom made him get it back from me.  Took a few more weeks to get my eight dollars back.

The rifle was a beauty, make with real wood stock and perfectly functional.  It was by all adolescence standards a cool thing to own.  Not that I knew any hunters or for that matter, any proud gun owners.  My dad never spoke of guns.  He kept his old hunting rifle hidden away in a closet.  I never saw him use it.  I was just tickled to own a gun.

I had no grand plans to go hunting with it, no aspirations of showing it off to the few friends I had made in this small Connecticut town to which I'd recently moved.  No.  I just liked having it.  I even made a gun rack for it in wood shop.  I wasn't very good in shop, and this was the most utilitarian thing I ever made.

My older brother was a fur trapper for a brief time in high school.  Sometimes I'd watch him skin muskrats.  At least I think they were muskrats.  All I remember is the size and color.  I never knew where he sold those pelts, since he rarely included me in any part of his life.  But I did admire his entrepreneurial spirit and his sense of adventure.  Many years later I learned that the peculiar joy he took in tying firecrackers to cats and electrocuting his pet mice were the sort of masochistic tendencies that sometimes produces serial killers.  Add to that the regular beatings he took in school for being a wise ass and it's a miracle that he turned out fairly normal.  Maybe it was not such a bad thing that he wanted little to do with me.  Yes, now that I think of it, it was indeed a good thing.  A very good thing.

After a few weeks of target practice, I found myself in the back yard "woods," a 100-foot strip of wild brush and trees that separated our lawn from the one behind us.  I was on the prowl, looking for something to shoot.  I sort of thought of it as a male rite of passage, something to be proud of in my otherwise undistinguished and timid existence.

Not seven feet away from me, a small bird perched on a branch.  The air was still.  Beams of sunlight cut through the lush Connecticut greenery.  It was a clear shot.  I froze, then slowly raised my rifle into position.  I took a long time getting the bird perfectly in my sights.  The creature just looked at me, chirping, as if to say, "Hey!  What's that you're holding?  Looks like fun."

I took a slow, deep breath ... and fired.  Much to my surprise, I had missed.  At seven feet!  The BB whizzed by the bird, causing a momentary flutter of its right wing.  And yet, there he stood, perched on the same branch, with that same silly look on his face, this time saying, "Hey, what was that?"

I don't know if it was his clueless innocence or his wise courage that lead me to question what had just transpired.  Should I take another shot?  After all, he was still there.  Hmm.  I think not.  Here's how the revelation unfolded in my head that day.

Steve.  If you can't hit a bird perched at eye level, just seven feet away, then maybe, just maybe, this is a sign from God.  (Yes, I can hear all you hunters are out there saying God gave me a second chance, so don't blow it.  Shoot!)  Maybe this is God's way of telling you that killing is not to be a part of your path.  Okay, in all fairness, maybe I didn't use the word path at 13, but still.  Don't kill stuff, at least not stuff big enough to look back at you and ask you questions like, "What are you doing?"  I sort of knew that this rule need not apply to ants and spiders.  And yet years later, I became pretty respectful of all life, including bugs as long as they didn't infest my house.

At 17, as the Vietnam draft loomed over me, I agonized over whether to dodge the draft and move to Canada, or to register as a conscientious objector.  Fortunately, just months before it was my time to go, the draft came to an end.  I had been spared that awful decision.  I will be forever grateful that I didn't have to choose.  I was not afraid of dying.  I was simply unwilling to kill. 

So there it is.  That is why I don't kill.  It wasn't a moralistic posture.  I didn't learn it from a holy book or even from my parents.  I just got that it wasn't on my path this lifetime.  Or whatever the 13-year-old equivalent of that might be.