Blog #129--When the Spirit Moves Us

As I described in my book “It’s a Secret, So Pass It On: a Toolbox For Life,” I experienced an explosion of awareness on January 8, 1978, that continued off and on for nearly a year. It felt like I was in a classroom, and I wrote down copious notes as lights flashed in my head. The experience transformed my life and helped me become far more spiritual than I ever thought possible.

Although the length and intensity will vary considerably, this type of experience is available for all of us. But it does not happen on demand. We can ask for, pray for, beg for enlightenment, but it comes on its own sweet time. I wasn’t expecting any kind of explosion when it happened; it was a complete surprise. And subsequent peak experiences didn’t always arrive at times I could benefit from them.

For instance, I remember driving 50 miles to get home after visiting family. I had no writing materials, and this was long before phones with built-in recording devices. But suddenly I was bombarded with exciting information on a wide variety of subjects. I kept saying, “Please wait until I get home. That way, I can write this down so I won’t forget it.” But whomever or whatever I was tapping into wasn’t synchronized with my personal schedule. It came when it came, and I had to somehow remember things I was learning and write them down an hour later. Needless to say, I lost the gist of several topics by that time. “My cup runneth over,” and I couldn’t control the spillage.

I had a similar experience in college. I had participated in a 10-minute song-and-dance skit as a sophomore, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I was taking a heavy class load and was involved with three major extracurricular activities, so I was usually extremely tired and slept soundly when I got the chance. But one night I woke up at 2:30 am excited about an idea for a skit I was certain would win the next contest. I got up and wrote out the entire skit, complete with music and lyrics. I couldn’t put it down until I was finished.

When I took my idea to the person in charge of the next skit, he declined to give it fair consideration because he wanted to write the skit himself. I was terribly disappointed, but as it turned out, the contest was discontinued before another competition could be held. I still occasionally wonder why I was driven to get up and write the skit when it would never be of value to anyone.

Perhaps the answer lies in the fact our egos are not in charge of these phenomena. We can’t get inspiration just because we want or need it. And sometimes the reason we get inspiration is to learn that we can’t always benefit from some of our most memorable experiences. We can’t always get answers to our prayers either. We may eventually get an answer, and that answer may be even more appropriate than when we first thought we needed it. But we usually don’t know ahead of time what we need and when we need it.

So asking for it or expecting it to happen on our whim doesn’t usually work. We often take credit for times when we get timely information secondary to a prayer or other outward request. But the times we don’t get what we want may be even more frequent. Percentages suggest we cannot force things whenever we want them. We may pray for our basement not to flood during a heavy rain, but we can’t credit the prayer for having no flooding. After all, there will come a time when we get flooding despite devout, repeated prayers.

Our egos love to think they’re in charge of our lives, but what they really do is set limits on what we think is possible. For instance, we are told to eat three meals a day, and foods like cereals and eggs should be eaten for breakfast. But there is nothing wrong with eating those foods for lunch or dinner either. For that matter, there is nothing wrong with eating a full meal for breakfast, the kind we normally restrict to the evening hours. Eating what the spirit moves us to eat and when it motivates us to do so is far better for our physical and emotional health than arbitrarily setting limits on what we can and can’t do.

If we are honest with ourselves, we can conclude that our most exciting experiences in life come to us without us forcing them to happen. We must still take all the steps that lead to exceptional results, but the original inspiration for making the effort comes to us from a source beyond our egos. After all, we can’t think up something special to do without a thought entering our minds encouraging us to do so. We don’t create the energy and ideas that motivate us.

The more we trust our inner guidance, the more we benefit. We don’t always have the results we hope to have, but we can still learn valuable lessons from them. The spirit knows where we are going, how to get there and what we need to learn. Our egos have a distorted view of this phenomena and need the spirit’s help to stay in balance and benefit from the experiences we have.

It took 36 years before I was finally inspired to write a book I knew was meant to happen eventually. When the spirit moves, much can be accomplished.

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