Psychospiritual growth: Into the stream of consciousness to plant a seed

Earlier in the year, I was pulled by a then unnamable sensation to anchor in the Deep South versus return to the northeastern corner of the United States. My psychospiritual growth was piqued. But I had to fill in the blanks about what it was/is in Alabama that makes me feel called here. Why here and why now?

I spent a few months in the actual spiritual emergence, bowled over by the entirety of circumstances that led me to land in Alabama. 

I’m still sifting through the experience and the accompanying stream of consciousness thoughts and sensations. They are my compass through inner space. Ultimately, I believe I’m moving toward integration of these pieces, but I am still looking at the granular level of the process.

When we are functioning like “normal” (or whatever normal means for someone), we rely predominantly on our logical mind, our left brain. We make connections between events and personal beliefs in a way that involves thinking and language. When changing into a different state of consciousness, or bearing witness to experiences when we are “losing our mind” or “going crazy” or forced to navigate a situation without logic as the main compass, we function in the intuitive mind or the right brain. This is when a lack of conscious reasoning takes over, “gut feelings” come to the fore, and language eludes us–we may do better to “think” in archetypes and symbols. 

In altering states of consciousness, changing mindsets and being open to the receipt and processing of information in ways that are “not normal” for us, the way we make meaning of experiences starts to change. Time perception changes. The way the moment is perceived might have sensory qualities to it that differ from a person’s day to day experience of time. And, when we are in a state of Witness consciousness, separate from thoughts, unattached to the mind and able to observe all around us in a neutral, not engaged manner, energy shifts. There was a need to take care of myself medically and physically. And there was equally a need to take care of myself mentally, as the stress of living in the city had taken its toll after two years. Leaving New Orleans happened in the three-dimensional world. I could call that outer space. That tripped some strings in inner space. I’m not sure the distinction of inner space matters, save for the perceptions that we have of these intuitions from the third eye that come through the invisible layers of the world as if they arrive from different dimensions. They are all experiences of psychic phenomena that can happen during emergence.

Synchronicities emerge from the lower unconscious and higher unconscious in the presence of awareness. Jung refers to a famous story of synchronicity as a beetle tapping on a window precisely at the moment a patient of his brought one into conversation. In his writings about the event, he noted that there was “something down there” in the subconscious that was emerging; an account of a train ride he embarked on recounts his experience of hearing an inner voice that said “what the fantasy depicted would become completely real.” In other words, when plunging the depths of psyche, when the hard shape of a personality or a mindset that had previously given structure is ruptured, it is difficult to determine what is reality or not. Consciousness alters.

There was a synchronicity of the deepest level on a day I was towing north toward New York. I was in Alabama, a state north of Louisiana and generally somewhere I would not choose to be. It is notoriously conservative and boasts aspects of Southern culture that do not match with my lifestyle. I was lost in my thoughts, about four hours in and suddenly an alarm went off, indicating my trailer was disconnected. I looked out my passenger-side window and saw smoke. I pulled off the highway and before I could even pull up the app to call for roadside help, a white truck pulled up in front of me on the shoulder. None of the series of events seemed real. In other words, I slid into altered consciousness.

So, why here? Why now?

I am not exploring this experience (or inner space) through a human-only (psychological perspective); I’m also not about taking a spirit-only perspective (spiritual perspective) where this was a purely fated event as the universe willed it. I believe the here and now is about embodying both perspectives and moving toward empowerment, which looks like my ability to choose what is needed in a moment so I could make a conscious choice around making meaning of what happened. 

Why here, why now is not answered logically but in stream of consciousness. It goes something like this: I live in the country, which is rural and not as diverse as other locales I have lived, where gentrification is a whisper no one fears to hear, where most people who haven’t lived here have preconceived notions about what it’s like to live here. Those preconceived notions are gleaned from mainstream history books and mass-media-broadcast narratives. They fear the substance use and religious overtones and trade labor because it seems so last century, as in, problems that come from a lack of change. In other words, time has stopped here. The future isn’t falling over its own to feet in the name of progress. The present is all that matters here. There are layers to the present. I splice them into time-space as Saturn time and Moon time, my term for time beyond time. Saturn time that governs in a linear, material here and now point of view. Moon time is spiritual essence and cycles, repeats across an ethereal here and now in which multiple timelines are present.

I free-associate astrological archetypes. They become characters that appear in my day to day life. Walking, talk synchronicities.

Another flow of thoughts: The country has lived up to its stereotype of being full of characters. The diversity here is not so much in the literal sense as it is in the metaphorical one and found in the characters I encounter. I think about my guardian angel who helped me with my tire incident earlier this year (the incident that was the turning point that led to my move). During one particularly challenging post-tire incident week for me, he had, unbeknownst to him, painted this out my struggle. I was drowning in the heat of the summer and drowning in the overwhelm that accompanies a complete plot twist and unexpected move. I was struggling to make meaning. I felt a deep something for the land that was the most illogical choice. I wanted to understand why I felt myself choosing Alabama over New York.

The archetype of the artist reveals the beauty to be had in the process of transformation.

The artist revealed his new painting, a calm, cool under the sea landscape. The painting represented a secret place to which I might recede in the darkness of the chaos that is inner transformation. He had painted my bubble. Here, I harvest seeds, the things I am learning.

A few weeks later, I was having dinner with another friend from the Deep South–a native Alabamian with military service, manual dexterity, a suave gentleman nature and a soft accent. This is typical of the men here.

This friend is a gentle-natured man, an archeologist. He is not one to be worked up, save for one trigger, which I learned came from his signature way of speaking: “When I travel and people hear my accent, they think I’m an idiot. For them the Deep South means losers who don’t know shit. But we have here what you want there. We have community. We are spiritual. We believe in family and we care for one another.”

And in his soft roar, I heard the other piece I was looking for: now is never how it used to be.

We incarnate over and over trying to be how it used to be. If I resist the rupture, the opportunity to go out of my mind and into the space and characters around me, I lose out on the ability to grow.

I think we chase that all the time–the idea of how things used to be–and we forgo the present. The present is ultimately the ripest seed, the seed ready to grow.

This blog was written during a sun–Saturn opposition. That means, there’s a tension inside that is reflected outside. The urge to live and let live, the stream of consciousness, isn’t finding satisfaction by the confines of the material world. It is too much for the form. The boundaries between the world and I feel too tight. Saturn wants to binds to life in a finite time and space, but I can see beyond it when I relax into the stream of consciousness, the impulse to life across all times (something I call Moon time). Perhaps the value in the rupture this summer is the reminder that asking Why here, why now?  is an invitation to perceive outside of boundaries of Saturn time because ultimately, our impulse to live and our spirit is boundless.

                                                                                       
The land here is pregnant with memory. It stays while I, my spirit, comes and goes through it, the memory. I want to honor that continuity of life through times of shift and transformation. I’ll drop a seed here: these experiences shape the course of lifetimes. I will be learning from this summer for lifetimes to come. It is I who am in charge of fate. I’ll let that idea grow in me for a while.

The rupture of structures (including ego structures) and alteration of consciousness (immersion into the sea of streams of consciousness) lets me play with associations as if I am spinning the wheel of fate. My conscious choice will dictate where my energy will go. Here again the energy of the sun–Saturn opposition strongly emerges. The ability to discern one’s own boundaries, to create strong ego (a good use of ego) that supports psychological growth, is one thing we incarnate to learn. And then, those boundaries become our compass.

This blog is just a smattering of dots, really. Stream of consciousness ideas. The why here, why now is really a lesson in presence during spiritual emergence and consciousness expansion. The lesson alludes to the importance of letting the intuition take over, to be flooded with sensations of memories, and to acknowledge time beyond the present moment–and in the present moment. The ever present opportunity is to witness the present as pure consciousness and find a place to plant a seed. There you will grow.

 

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