Hallelujah, Client’s Religious Views Improve!

I teach a couple of classes a week at an inpatient rehab near Pensacola called Gulf Breeze Recovery. I’ve written a little bit about it before. The paperwork wore me down, so I’m not seeing clients there anymore. It’s heavily regulated by the state, so it’s not their fault… I’d say a bit too regulated, though. All that paperwork sure makes it hard to help people. I doubt it’s been changed much since the 80’s, either. But I digress… I guess I should breathe instead of go into a rant. That was fun, though. (Breathing now…)

My classes there are generally pretty fun and interesting. I talk about some of the cases at my coaching/counseling practice, and that’s very educational for them. And we cover just about everything else that’s pertinent to the human experience and our innate wisdom and peace. I also like to bring in some things that are meant to expand their minds. Like some of the findings of frontier science described in the amazing book The Field by Lynne McTaggart. We’ve covered meditation, quantum physics, Fibonacci numbers, and near death experiences that have the out of body experience. I’ve promised to write about all of that here, and I admit that I have not yet. It’ll come, though, in due time.

All of what I mentioned is presented as what seem to be facts, not opinions. If a woman who was blind from birth dies in a hospital and is brought back to life, and she’s still blind, but she can describe the hospital room in detail, then that means we are not a body and death is literally not real. Done. I don’t need any more evidence. That just has to have happened once (and it has). And if you think it was a hallucination of the brain due to lack of oxygen, I think that’s a pretty lame explanation with a very low probability. She saw what was in the room, including her own body for the first time! And if you still have doubts, read Proof of Heaven by Dr. Eben Alexander (it’s not religious, by the way). He debunks the brain hallucination thing.

Now, I present all of this stuff with a big disclaimer since we’re in the Deep South. I tell them that they are perfectly free to hear or watch anything they want. They decide what they believe. They don’t have to protect or defend any beliefs, especially religious beliefs. And I’m not trying to push anything on them, either. I’m very clear about that. I’m simply sharing some very cool stuff that I’ve learned about and that has helped me.

One of the guests was about to graduate and go home after 6-8 weeks there, and she told me that she really got a lot from my classes. That always warms the heart to hear. Then she said that one of the biggest changes was that she had eased up on her religious views. She was still Christian, but she was a deeper Christian, if that makes sense. She was more Christ-like. She no longer felt the need to defend the status quo. She could even see more deeply to the deeper meanings. She was able to feel the meaning more and get below the surface. And she could see the tremendous amount of man made stuff that clearly did not come from the Divine. That’s the case with every religion and spiritual tradition, by the way. Somebody “gets it” and their followers do not. They do their best, but they’re not the awakened or enlightened one. It’s just not the same. They do all of this writing and teaching and rule-making, but it didn’t come from the Source. This is why it’s best to go to the mystics of any tradition and check out what they have to say. They’re closer to the Source. Experience beats theology any day.

Anyway, I was very pleased that she shared this with me. She’ll get so much more out of her religion now. And she’s tapping into the truth that what she’s been looking for has been inside of her the whole time. That’s why she can discern the Divine from the man-made junk. She has an inner GPS that she’s learning how to use. And we all have that same GPS (there’s only one of them). Her GPS was always working, but she wasn’t paying attention to it because the man-made noise was too loud. She even told me this. She said she knew that there was a bunch of junk in her religion, but she couldn’t admit it at the time. Her identity was too tied up in it. Now she was beginning to know that her identity was far beyond any religion. It was already set in stone, and it was good. And it was not a frail body that’s only temporary. We’ll go into more detail about all of that, but for now I just wanted to share her experience of loosening her grip on her religious views and opening. Now she can see truth anywhere. And that’s a way cooler way to roll. I love my job…