Image versus reality

It's all in our heads

This ’stack is a continuation of last week’s Down to the nitty gritty of our multidimensional nature … adding yet one more log to the fire regarding Who/What We Really Are!

It all started long ago in a land far far away called WAGA-TV where I was introduced to “spirituality” by the station’s daytime on-air meteorologist, Art Bradley.

I’d barely met the man during the six months I’d worked at the Atlanta CBS affiliate as a videotape operator. Engineering (my department) and “talent” (his department) were light years apart geographically and philosophically. Plus, I usually worked the evening sign-off shift, not days. Little did I know as we greeted each other in passing in the middle of the news van parking lot one day, that he was about to lure me from my recently-divorced haze of "normal existence" into an entirely new reality.

“Your aura is looking particularly bright today,” he said, smiling at me.

The comment stopped me cold. “You see auras?” I gasped, impressed and wary.

“Oh, yes,” he replied. “Yours is very bright yellow today with a lot of …” he waved his hand in a swishing pattern towards the direction of my heart … “blues and oranges around your heart chakra.”

“Seriously?”

“Oh, yes. Your guides have been talking to me for some time about you, saying it’s time you woke up. No wonder we’re bumping into each other today.”

Huh? “My guides?”

“Everybody has guides—angel guides who look out for souls on Earth. And yours are looking for an introduction. Which …” he laid a hand over his heart … “I’d be happy to help with. It’s one of the spiritual services I provide seekers.”

Spiritual services … seekers … what the …?

“We could schedule something for the conference room on your lunch break sometime.” He straightened his spine. “Let me know if you’re interested.”

And with that, he walked away.

Introduction

I was interested and we did schedule the conference room and he did introduce me to my guides. I vaguely recall there were ten or so. I also recall I was concerned there were so many.

Was I a slow learner or what?

Art hastened to reassure me that the size of one’s “gang” was determined solely by the size of a seeker’s spiritual job assignment on this planet, and apparently I had a sizable one. Which was surely news to me.

Television production was a brutally competitive, male-dominated profession. I was about as material as a material girl could get in the 1980s. And my early Episcopal upbringing and Catholic convent school years were far behind me.

But Art—who was as psychic as it’s possible to be—was surely right about one thing: I was indeed a seeker. And an avid one.

At age thirty, nothing the world had presented to me so far—money, career success, sex, rock n’ roll, drugs, marriage, mortgages—seemed even slightly related to personal fulfillment. And “truth” about the nature of existence, God, the universe and everything—in other words all the things that actually seemed important to know about—was even more elusive.

Although I rather quickly tired of trying to communicate with my guides (why a bunch of angels would be interested in hanging around waiting for an Earth girl to get her act together was beyond me), I did not tire of the rest of the information I was guided towards.

I devoured books like Autobiography of a Yogi, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, and The Road Less Traveled. Art introduced me to my first “guru”—a female ascetic Christian mystic. And on the rare occasions I was assigned to work the sign-on shift at the station, Art and I would go to lunch at a nearby New Age book store that sported a small vegetarian café.

It was on one of those lunchtime sorties that I made my first acquaintance with “the image.”

Oh—and speaking of images—here’s a picture of Art and the rest of the weekend news team at WAGA some ten years before we met. (Art is on the left.)

Destruction

It was summer in Atlanta. Sun-shiney and hot. Art was driving, and we stopped at his bank on the way to lunch. While he was inside, I leaned my head on my arm resting in the open window, staring dreamily at my image in the sideview mirror.

Art’s and my relationship was strictly mentor/mentee. But that didn’t stop me from engaging in vanity—in this case spiritual vanity. Wanting to look “contemplative” when he came out of the bank, I tried on several poses in the mirror.

Hmmmm.

Eyes closed? Nah. He’ll just think I’m asleep. I opened my eyes and shifted to resting my chin in my right hand and stared off into the distance, presenting a studied profile.

Yes! That’s it!

The back door opened and Art walked into the sunlight. I adjusted my “look.” And just as I started to shift into my “distant wise gaze” pose, I saw him straighten his back, one hand going to support what I knew was a painful lumbar issue.

And in that moment I saw what I was doing.

While Art was busy BEING spiritual—serving the world as best he knew how, even though he was often in physical pain—I was interested in looking spiritual.

In the space of time it took Art to walk from the bank to the car, the whole house of cards crashed around and within me.

If I didn’t have the substance to BE spiritual, that was alright as long as I looked the part? Was I that shallow? That superficial? That false?

Seemingly, the answer was “Yes.”

I have no memory of that lunch. I have no memory of getting through the rest of my shift at work. I don’t remember getting home. But I do remember that night and the next two days.

That night found me sitting in the middle of my kitchen floor, sobbing my heart out, mentally rehashing every false moment of my life … the moment when I was twelve and pretended not to know my best friend because I was trying to impress another girl who was socially more prominent. The moment I bowed my head piously in chapel to impress Sister Mary Donald Anne while I was actually seething with hatred towards her about a low grade.

The time I carelessly seduced a married man just because it made me feel powerful.

The movie in my head rolled on and on. I thought I was wise? Kind? Caring? Spiritual? God’s gift to humanity? It was all pretense and pretend. Moments of trying to look good, appear kind, and seem thoughtful while simultaneously being none of those things.

My life was a lie. I was an actor on a stage and nothing more.

(Okay! Okay! I’m a Leo! I admit I do go for the dramatic extremes!)

Anyway—I spent the weekend shredding my carefully-constructed persona. And when Monday noon arrived and my ex-husband came to my front door to pick me up to go to lunch as we’d planned, I was sure he’d take one look at me and go shrieking off towards the horizon.

I was terrified he’d see the real me!

But he didn’t. He smiled and we went to lunch and things seemed normal. And after that trembling re-entry into the world, over the course of the next few days I stabilized.

I went to work. I self-monitored, guarding against moments of falsity and image projection around others. And slowly I gained perspective and came to grips with what had happened to me:

I’d had a spiritual breakthrough.

I’d met the story of myself I’d created in my own head—what spiritual teachers often call the image or the false persona—and seen the distance between the image and how I actually was in the world.

And it had been a much-needed revelation.

Another hurdle

In last week’s ’stack I talked about our multidimensional nature. I talked about how there are an almost infinite number of internal “voices”—aspects of self created not only from childhood experiences growing up, but also from past lives (many not even human)—and how those voices/influences can unknowingly hijack us into acting in ways that are not in our best interests.

Or anybody else’s.

I referred to humans as:

Massive pulsing prismatic disco balls glittering with the accumulated weight of thousands of lifetimes of experiences, good, bad, sublime, and ridiculous in multiple forms, species, and levels of consciousness across the entire space/time continuum of the multiverse ... all come together at a conference table or a dinner table or a town hall meeting, trying to get something definitive accomplished.

Sometimes succeeding. Oftentimes failing. With those at the table rarely understanding what made things go one way or the other—let alone what to do about it.

Now here comes the image … aka the ego … another layer added onto this massively complex creation called a human being.

And the global picture finally comes clear.

On top of interdimensional interference, mind control, and elite satanic agendas, now we know what else is running the show at those NATO conferences and WEF summits at Davos, the UN, the WHO, at White House press conferences, Congressional hearings, and “peace” talks.

The inner abused child part refuses to listen to reason while the arrogant Nephelim soul part indifferently seeks global control of the sheeple while the starving former peasant inside drives us to perform acts of rapacious self-interest and corporate greed.

And smeared on top of all of it, the oblivious self-created image of all these actors on the world stage struggles mightily to maintain its story of superiority and control by threatening to push the nuclear Red Reset Button.

Oy vey.

No wonder humanity runs in circles, screaming incoherently while shooting at itself in rage and terror. No wonder young people are turning to AI for companionship, sanity and respite.

As a kid I turned for relief to the hyper-rational Spock delivered in weekly episodic doses of Star Trek.

I used to lie in bed at night and fantasize he would land a shuttle back behind the barns down by the farm pond and we would sit and talk. And eventually, impressed by my fervor to leave insanity behind, he would offer me asylum on the Enterprise. And while I knew I would miss the countryside and my horses and all the dogs and cats terribly (in other words, all the sane “people” in my life), I always left with Spock.

The desperate inner cry for peace and order and reliable logic was that great.

It took many decades for me to finally understand that it’s not human emotions that are the problem. And that emotional cauterization and rigid self-control are not the answers to anything.

But rather that self-understanding is the key.

Know thyself …

For with self-understanding comes compassion. And with compassion comes kindness.

When we know what we’re dealing with, we can turn within and be gently firm with ourselves and others as we learn about all the “voices” and multidimensional influences that make us tick. As we learn to contain, organize, and guide ourselves, instead of brutalizing, blaming, and hating ourselves, we can move into an appreciation for our astounding versatility and knowledge.

As the confusion and inner conflicts die away, as the need to impress fades, we start to draw on the vast resource of inner wisdom garnered over countless lifetimes of experiences. And we start to grow—wisely, confidently, excitedly—into expressing Who/What We Really Are at last.

Vastly complex, multidimensional spirit beings on a journey together into forever, boldly going where no one has gone before …

Much love and aloha ~