This will be an interesting post because I am going to take you out across an invisible bridge to a different way of looking at what is possible. What we think of reality may need to be more expansive. Reality is so much more than we can yet perceive. Over the years I have had the good fortune to have a number of experiences, which expanded what I think of as possible. If my reality can be stretched then so can yours.
My practice of exploring out-of-body experiences (OBE’s) has started to really shift my sense of self and the world. I feel more confidence, more awake and in an uneasy way more stirred up from the demolition of the barriers of my comfort zone. I now sense there are much greater possibilities and that is exciting. The familiar is being overrun by the unfamiliar and I find myself more often crossing into new forms of what is possible.
Recently I traveled to Italy out-of-body and had this most amazing experience. I found myself in a village up on a hill, which I recognized as Assisi. Assisi is pilgrimage site for many because Saint Francis once walked these hills. He is buried in the Cathedral there and his energy still fills the town.
In my OBE’s up to now there has been little in the way of interaction with people from the past. However in this journey I met St Francis and we walked together through his village and he filled me with insights and awareness. It wasn’t like a conversation but more of a transmission in which he shared his wisdom just by being with me as if in a joint consciousness. I know they may sound different then most experiences of life but this was my experience.
This is the wisdom he shared with me:
He told me the most powerful of his teachers was nature. He learned from his interactions with the land and the creatures around him. He said his capacity to interact with animals came from his joining with them in a nature consciousness. This expanded consciousness happened by tuning into all the aliveness that existed in nature. Higher consciousness is about flow, about life force and about a deep feeling of the interconnection of all things. St Francis said that when we take the time to tune inward we can find this place of interconnectedness. He says this tuning inward always takes us to higher level of consciousness.
He said beyond nature there was deeper level of knowing, which he called Divine Consciousness. This higher consciousness is unlimited in is power. He said all beings are connected to this greater wisdom and have access to it by inner practices and prayer.
He had a fresh perspective about the importance of patience in what we do. Impatience is the ego trying to push us out of the now, he explained. His work with his monks and his community always involved a great need for patience and acceptance, which he says comes naturally when we are in harmony with self.
Stayed tuned for the next OBE adventure in which Michelangelo shares about his sources of inspiration.