Thoughts are like water flowing going mostly down the drain unless something of substance can catch and percolate into the deeper substrate and coalesce into more meaningful content. Everyday discourse is digested later to cull and save the nuggets. We sift and filter and search for the gems which can light our way. We are filter feeders and scavengers for any morsel for subsistence at a deeper level. Humans are always searching for the novel and an out of this world experience which can light our way. It is in our nature and evolutionary inheritance because having come from the treetops and having to discern between changing patterns alerting us for danger or pleasure. The moving mosaic of leaves and branches shaped our minds by having to look for patterns and creating and thereby effecting an endless craving for novelty. Give me a spiritual experience so that I can transcend the usual, the mundane, and reach beyond myself and be more, feel more. This craving for novelty can drive behaviors which can lead to addiction. So many times, escaping boredom is an excuse I have heard about the reason for substance abuse and use and can be an underlying precursor to addiction. But boredom is a state of mind which overlays like a miasma blinding us because we are endlessly interesting, if we can see deeply into our complicated nature.

It was a close call about our survival as a species evolutionarily speaking. Look at us now – we are without compunction about scaring the planet with our slash and burn mentality. We close our eyes to what our eyes are seeing point blank. We mesmerize ourselves by self-delusion and an adherence to lies and liars. The truth burns so cleanly, and this is what I burn at my altar. Deceivers and charlatans will be disrobed and then where will they be – out in the cold! Stripping away the layers which attenuate and dishevel to get to the core of the matter because we are human beings and spiritual beings because we can have spiritual experiences. The question becomes a recipe on how to generate spiritual experience. This is the platform for healing modalities such as Alcoholics Anonymous. Carl Jung advised and befriended Bill Wilson through letters and a go between confident. He maintained that without a spiritual experience the alcoholic was “hopeless.” The A.A. program is designed to effectuate that potential by clearing the blockages which stand in the way of a break-through spiritual experience is my best guess. Clearing out old business by making amends and opening ourselves up through forgiveness of ourselves prepares us for some intermediation of spiritual experience. I do not believe that Carl Jung provided a roadmap for the prescribed “spiritual experience,” he prophesized. He spoke in generalities about it calling it “active imagination” —- which has always been a nebulous concept to me because it was confusing and frustrating to me. We need something we can grab a hold of and sink our teeth into – something moving and movable. It turns out it is within our grasp because it is our own body. We hold the answers to our own conundrums and confabulations – because the answers are within our mind and our body. The trick is to monkey with the apparatus in such a way that an answer can “pop” which fits in the category of “spiritual experience.” I would like to order one right now if you don’t mind but they do not come off the shelf prefabricated. There is the prep work which is necessary as I alluded to earlier and then there is the basic grunt work and getting your hands dirty. Process, process, process!

Let’s take the prescription a step further and add other comorbidities into the mix – like say we add trauma and its ensuing personality disfunction. Can trauma respond to our trickery? Can we go through the back door and catch trauma unawares that we are coming for it before it can turn tail and hide again? Can we uncover it in its hiding spot? I say yes and particularly so because I am a prime example and I attest to the fact that I have cured myself of a boatload of trauma. The slate was not cleaned without remnants left because like a chalk board’s first cleaning leaves a residue behind. I am still finding traces of unfinished business which need curating and processing, but the bulk of the pain was wiped clean in one fell swoop. I came to my senses and my sense of self came along at long last. The reunion was glorious and relatively pain free because of the blessing of a spiritual experience.