How Can You Measure Progress?
It’s The Bumps in The Road
A long time ago, I pursued an interest in the paranormal. As a child, I had an experience at a slumber party where all the little girls pushed around the planchette on a Ouija board. Somehow, even though I never pushed to the front of any line, I got scrunched in with a few others around the board.
The planchette moved. Everybody immediately began accusing each other of having pushed the planchette. I had not. I don’t know about the others, but I had not moved it. We had been trying to connect with Jayne Mansfield, a beautiful actress who had been killed most gruesomely in a car accident. We thought she had been decapitated.
That’s when all the little boys rushed the basement windows and scared the bejesus out of us. That was the only slumber party I ever went to.
Somehow, this and that happened over the years until I turned 30. That was when I turned my fascination with the paranormal and spirituality into a more focused inquiry. I wanted to learn how to channel.
I figured that was all that was going to happen. I would be me, and I would be channeling. I’d been to a number of psychics to see what getting readings was like. Some of them involved hearing people channeling to know it was something I wanted in my own life. It also got expensive, and I wondered if I couldn’t save money and learn to do it myself.
Here’s where it got interesting.
Before this experience, whenever I was interested, I’d generally learn about whatever it was and tended to drop the new hobby immediately if I wasn’t successful. I would sometimes revisit the activity until finally, after a long time, I became proficient at it.
One of those things was crochet. I learned from a book. That began when I was in grade school. I remember examining the hairy rope-like pictures in the book I used, trying to understand which piece of yarn was where, and translating that into a piece of crocheted material. Of course, there was more to it than that, and it took me years before the light bulb went on and I could actually do something with yarn. I still love a good YouTube tutorial. Last week, I learned how to keep my edges smooth and straight. I suppose you could say I’m into stitch porn. That’s what they call it on Reddit.
But somehow, learning about my spirituality, especially channeling, kept coming back to me. I was like a bulldog with a bone. I just couldn’t tear myself away from it, no matter how many setbacks I encountered. The same thing happened with writing. I just couldn’t say no.
Anyway, back to the learning lessons. During my lifetime, I’d been like pretty much everybody else and learned as I did. I’d have good experiences and learn good lessons. I’d had good experiences that resulted in bad outcomes. Much of my life was spent blaming others for my bad luck. It was always somebody else’s fault. That’s how I was raised. At least, that was my take on it.
Little did I realize that my interest in the paranormal and metaphysical, along with my desire to become a generally better human being, would involve changing some basic things.
I learned patience: Before the turn, I would fret about outcomes. I would become anxious at the drop of a hat. I don’t know why I was that way. All I knew was I did it. It wasn’t until many years into my channeling experience that I realized I didn’t mind standing in line at a crowded grocery store, and the new me actually had patience. I could sense the anxiousness of everybody all around me. I could hear people asking what the problem was with the holdup. I remember my mother sending all of us kids out to stand in different lines at the grocery store. There were five of us, so she could pretty much cover all the cashiers in the store. Then, whoever got to the cashier first would call for her, and she’d come trundling up with a shopping basket loaded with food. It was actually a good system for her, but I remember being embarrassed.
The next thing I learned was how to cope with disaster and disappointment. Before the new me, I would have been disappointed with whatever happened. It would take me a long time to roll over, sit up, and get back on my feet for many things. In those days, I called it bad luck. Again, placing the blame somewhere else than on my own shoulders. After my change, I began to think, “Well, that happened,” and consider it the universe’s way of testing me. It felt like a more grown-up way of approaching life. It was when I began to consider that life lessons were plentiful. If you didn’t get it, the same sort of situation would come up and bite you in the behind again.
Another thing that happened was that I found a book called A Course in Miracles. I’ve put a link to it at the end of the article. Life-changing is what it was for me. Perhaps it might do something similar for you. The first of the 365 lessons is to look around you and say, “This is not real.”
I understand disappointment the same way anybody else does, but I also began to understand that life lessons are like going to a therapist. It all happens in stages. You have a problem. You go to a therapist for help. They address the most glaring symptoms you’ve got. Eventually, you feel good enough to get on with your life and part ways. Three years later, you begin to feel hemmed in again and wonder, “Shoot. I thought the therapist would cure me. Maybe I got a bad therapist.” And you either blast all forms of therapy or you try again.
It’s like having an old car. Something happens to the car, and you take it to a mechanic. They have to remove 12 different things to get to the problem to fix it. Each of those 12 different sprockets, screws, and bolts have rusted comfortably into place in the old car. Now, they’ve been torqued, wrenched, and moved. The car doesn’t like it. Three other things are wrong with the car because they’d been holding the car together and now have been moved slightly. It happens when you work on an old car.
A psychotherapist helps you to cope, heal, or whatever you need to do with whatever psychological issue is bothering you. Time moves forward, and your inner self says, “Ah, strong enough, are you? Let’s test it out and see if you’ve learned enough.” Then, the shit hits the fan, and you have a recurrence of your agoraphobia or whatever it was that moved you to visit a psychotherapist in the first place. You have to go back. Are you disappointed? No, it’s an opportunity to learn something new about yourself. Now, you are ready to tackle some more hard stuff that you could never in a million years get to when you originally went to seek help. The therapist gives you tools you can learn to get through problems yourself. Tools like journaling, meditating, or pushing yourself in new directions.
At this point, my guide began to say, “Oh, happy accident!” to me, like when I dropped a half gallon of milk on the floor, and it exploded. On the bright side, I had an opportunity to clean the kitchen, which I tend to ignore in favor of more interesting pursuits.
Another hard lesson I learned was to realize I was not a victim. I’ll write about it more someday, but it was a really tough one to swallow. The last significant lesson I learned was that only you can make yourself happy. It is no one else’s responsibility to do that. The same goes for love. Love will come if you love yourself first.
So, the lessons were small, yet at the same time, they were huge. I’m glad to have learned them. I’m not here to convert anybody who reads this piece into becoming a psychic; I just want to nudge you into a headspace where you are more comfortable with the world.
By the way, everybody is psychic to one degree or another. With that? Happy dreams.
Thanks for reading.
The Links
Tension Porn at Reddit. Beautiful examples of neatly formed crochet stitches. YouTube video for keeping crocheted edges straight. A Course in Miracles. This channeled work was instrumental in helping me along. I still go back to it now and again. It’s a free read on the Internet.
