Remembering a sacrament

Friday, May 27, 2022

5:35 a.m. Let’s play around a little with the four kinds of memory we discussed yesterday. Lying in bed, I could see that they could be divided for the purposes f analysis – quite validly – but in practice were likely to phase in and out, in the same way other aspects of our consciousness do. I thought, let’s see if together we can express what I cannot express alone.

Not quite what you were thinking. Set your switches and, sure, let’s play.

“Fellow, Royal College of Physicians.”

You were thinking, more, that you – and we, but you, driving – could consciously use any of these states of memory (call them) to recapture specific lines of continuity in your life. You didn’t phrase it that way, but that’s what it amounted to.

Yes, that’s right. Rather than having to sort through all those journals, I could set out to remember, trusting that the logic of the thing would lead from memory to memory, – and, then, come to think of it, I realized that maybe I’d start with one Specific, and it would start a chain of Associations, and move into Reverie, occasionally jump-started if need be by a specific Matching, comparing one to another. I saw that we don’t use just one form even in any single exploration, probably, because they are complementary.

Well, don’t over-think this. Holding in mind that there are four kinds of thinking may be helpful, but there is really only consciousness, manifesting in different ways, as water twists and eddies as it runs downstream. Use the categories, but don’t think they are more than abstractions.

Yes, I see that. So, let’s begin. I got – from where? From whom? – that I could maybe start with that sacrament. I almost forgot, in getting up, and feeding the cat, and sitting down to talk.

It was in the Spring of 1998, I think. Might even have been Easter weekend, or thereabouts. I was not yet living on the New Land. Where was I? I had to have been living in Keswick, having left my wife and children’s house but nothing having been made definite yet. That is, I didn’t know what was going to happen. Without going back to look through my journal of the time, I can’t remember when –

No, follow the thread of your interest, not concerning yourself about the details that don’t come on their own, and the story will emerge, because it will be you following a thread, rather than you trying to bull your way through obstacles. What seem like irrelevancies will sort themselves out. You might look at it this way: Your unconscious processes – that is, processes of which you are not aware and which you do not (and need not) control – are well used to telling stories. Just provide focus by your intent, as you do in speaking to us. That’s why the process often seems like you’re “making things up.” Memory, dreams, communication with non-3D – it is all much the same. You might say, it all has much the same flavor.

All right, then I’ll begin in media res.

Your whole life – everybody’s whole life – is always in media res. How else could it be? Like Dante in the forest, you wake up and find that you are already in the middle of something, always.

The first time I ever experienced a sacrament was in the Spring of 1998, when I received the final attunement in a Reiki II weekend course.

There you go. There’s your theme, now let it tell you how to tell the story, you following intelligently but not directively. In a sense, you are holding the space for your inner story-teller.

When I received First Communion at the age of seven, I expected there would be a  transcendent feeling, an emotional experience. But that didn’t happen. Things were ordinary. It was something of a disappointment and  a slight mystery, as if I had somehow missed the boat. Later experiences, like Confirmation, didn’t come with the same disappointment, because I no longer expected as much. Hemingway experienced the same thing, I noticed in a passing comment in one of his novels or stories.

Fast-forward 45 years to 1998. I had met Nancy Dorman and she had invited me to do a Reiki I weekend at her house, which I did. January, maybe? Then she hosted a Reiki II weekend and I did that one too. And now I’m realizing that I don’t remember which weekend gave me the experience. I’ll have to look it up. In any case, the weekend consists of learning various things and practicing them. It culminates in the participants sitting in a circle, while an initiate gives them an attunement.

Now slow way down. Let the associations surface. Remember.

Nancy’s friend Trish came up behind me (that is, she was going around the outside of the circle) and put her hands gently on my head, I sitting with eyes closed. The idea was to convey the energy directly, and I imagine this is what the church used to be able to do. (Maybe still does, for all I know, only I never experienced it there.) I felt something, as I never had in church. It was peace, and voltage, so to speak. Whatever passed from her to me, something passed. It was not emotionalism, though there was emotion in it, and it wasn’t intellectual content. It was, I suppose, a healing – a making whole – of something unspoken and perhaps never known to me.

That attunement changed my life. But I see now that change doesn’t come in the way we sometimes think. It was nascent in that moment, but the actual living-out of the change was up to me.

Now let “irrelevant” associations surface and express them, if only in passing.

Well, that Spring the Society for Scientific Exploration met in Charlottesville, and John Nelson called my attention to it, and I attended. So did Nancy Dorman. I don’t remember if the SSE meetings were prior to or after the attunement – after, I think – but the shared experience of that conference helped create a bond between us, and by July I was living with her in the house she was renting on the New Land, and my life had moved firmly into a new channel, and my old life was over. Not immediately, not smoothly, not without continuities, but still, my life had turned and I began moving into what I would become.

I don’t know if the attunement could be said to have led to my going to the SSE meetings, and falling in love with Nancy, and uprooting my old life, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

A word on process. You see, the things you don’t remember – pretty major details, some of them – don’t matter in terms of your telling the story for the sake of seeing hidden threads in your life. You can always fill in the blanks if it becomes important to you, or if you wish to produce a more finished product, but your own memory can be relied on to tell you the story as it holds it. That is, what’s important to you will emerge that way, unchoked by facts or details. Even things you remember inaccurately will show you the story.

Well, an encouraging start. Let’s do it again.

Any time, and we don’t need to be explicitly involved. It’s up to you.

Thanks for your part in it. Tell next time.