A Higher Level of Choice

I don't remember my time at Naramata the summer I was 15, except for a couple of days that were memorable. I was horseback riding through the Okanagan hills when my bowels rumbled and a foul smell enveloped me. The steady rhythm of the horse didn't help. By the time I got back to the stables with the other riders, I was in trouble. The stares and muffled grins were proof that my body had given out on me publicly and I could do nothing to stop it. I quickly gave the money for the ride to a friend, slid off the horse, and bolted toward my cabin. I found out later that a certain "bug" in the Okanagan's water was well known to locals for bowel disturbances, but not by newcomers.

The other event was a talk given by an inspirational speaker. He asked us a lot of questions. I remember my mind going blank in a kind of suspended time warp followed by a profound thought. Even though I don't remember what that thought was, I remember it changed my consciousness. The event I recalled fifty-five years later was the suspended time warp that occurred before the thought.

In that space suspended between reality and a brand new thought, was a tiny seedling of possibility. I felt amazed and even elevated, though not euphoric. No, it wasn't the euphoria of the event or drugs that produced those feelings. It was the late sixties, after all. I had been given a wonderful gift.

Years later, I felt the same space and was aware of another gift. This time I was writing my memoir about mystical transformation. That ability to enter a suspended time space and receive a thought, an instruction, or a word had happened quite a few times. The first time I was a child lying in my bed wanting to go to sleep by imagining the night sky, the stars, moon and the other bright spots. I was suddenly curious to know if there was anything up there beyond the night sky. I remember pushing my mind to go up and up to the beyond, but never got there. What prompted me to think of doing that? What caused the time warp space?

As an adult, in that space, I heard the words that described my calling. Another time, I felt compassion enter every cell in my body. I then recognized the pattern that led to the suspended time warp I now called an integral pause. This no-thought state returned every time after wrestling with a question or thought I felt driven to understand. Was there another way to the open state of integral pause without the wrestling with the unknown?

This week I was listening to a Carolyn Myss video called Destiny will not serve your ego. She discussed the Five Stages of the Transformation of Consciousness and described how each stage gave rise to another. In this video, I could hear the words in my head and had to write them down immediately: "A mystical transformation is a mystical experience in which the Divine enters the walls of your soul." (35:24) In an instant, time, space, and a change followed words as I sensed the meeting of the Divine and my soul.

It changed me. Carolyn, in the same video, explained that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima ushered in a new era—the quantum age. That event was a horrific and pivotal event in our world's history. The world stopped and paused. What happened after that, though, was a new age of consciousness, characterized by the phrase, "creating our own reality". Instead, she believed the new age brought "a higher level of choice". (6:58)

A higher level of choice. Those were the words that ricocheted in my head again as I wrote them down. Questions flooded my mind. Why were these words important? How does a higher level of choice happen, and what did it mean in everyday life? I didn't have to wrangle with my mind this time because my heart had the answers in the integral pause that followed. It meant I could choose to connect with a higher authority, my soul, for answers. I found out that soul speaks in a quiet, yet powerful way, to encourage us to grow beyond ourselves and our wants as we look for opportunities to care. Is this the "higher level of choice" for humanity today, and, if so, what kind of reality could we create?

Recently, I was told my manuscript needed more work. The criticism was valid and didn't upset me, but the way it was delivered shocked me. On my walk the next day, I was attempting to calm down when I met a friend. Our conversation completely changed my pain into amazement at all the synchronicities I recognized that led up to that moment. My feelings morphed into a much broader picture of growth as a person and as a writer as my friend offered healing.

That's what I'm talking about. She could have listened or tried to change the subject, but she offered a higher level of choice. My friend's offer of healing gave me the higher-level choice of accepting or rejecting it. My angst about what happened was suddenly flipped right side up into gratitude and understanding.

Was this chance encounter with a friend an invitation to look for ways to forge a new reality of caring, a deeper way to connect with others that heals, encourages and inspires? It certainly inspired me to be more open and actively look for opportunities to act and care more deeply. Let's be clear, I'm not talking about people who claim divine guidance to push their own agendas, or those who try to fix everyone else's problems. That's creating their own reality with an enormous ego, not from the soul.

What does all this have to do with a severe case of diarrhea on a trail ride? The incident happened because I drank local water, but my embarrassment and consequent shame was one of those events I added to my growing list of victim stories. Offering wounded people a higher level of choice with compassion may allow healing to take place quickly and deeply, preventing them from adding to their collection of victim stories. We all have victim stories, but with a higher level of choice offered and accepted, they become the gifts of building blocks to transformation and our passage into a new reality.