A1

I don’t know where to begin…I am overwhelmed in a way, because I feel like, if I start writing, I won’t stop….a part of me wants to tell you every detail about the last two and a half years of my life and another part knows it doesn’t matter…still, like Julie, I think this short email will be the start of writing to a real someone who gets this-a part of me laughs to see the person on the other side of this email going, “we found another one”…yes, I am laughing again these days…other than the “witness mode” laughs I had when I was locked up in the mental ward (not once but twice) over this, if someone had told me early on that I would laugh again some day, I would have never believed them.

Also, I don’t want to get on yet another bandwagon (I’ve done that often enough, that’s for sure), but-having read two and a half of your books within the last week (I’m half-way through “Spiritual Warfare”), I know this is different…

It is refreshing to hear someone tell the truth about this process.

I TRIED AND TRUE KNOW IT…I AM IN IT, HAVE HAD GLIMPSES OF THE “OTHER SIDE” OF IT, AND ABSOLUTELY KNOW THERE IS NO TURNING BACK NO MATTER HOW MUCH I STALL IT (I even cashed in on my retirement and am going to India on a “Spiritual Pilgrimage” for 19 days…spending my last penny to do it, speaking of stalling it)…I know, I know-you’re thinking-what a waste…truthfully, I am not sure, but I hate that I am doubting the trip seeing as how I just spent $6000 plus to do it…could get into more of that and maybe I will, but I’ll sum it up by saying-even before I found your books (crazy-ass synchronicities there and since then)-I knew I was going without expectations-but I’d be lying if I said I am still not capable of fooling myself….still, have always wanted to go to India and the trip sounds amazing…whatever…

Okay, may I say, I have either experienced and/or said (to a dwindling select few) what you have written in your books…even my quote unquote more spiritually evolved friends (ha,ha) did not understand what I was experiencing….

Also, I could have been Julie and especially Lisa (I think I’d really like to talk to her)-I’m a mother, too, and that has been the hardest part about dying for me…

And, yes, I have written poems about it (65 to be close to exact)-even as I have sort of half-assed done this thing.

Early on, I used to say many things, one of them being, “I don’t know how to die and live through it”…

Ah, I don’t even know what all I just said, and it feels good and stressful to get it all out…-because there’s so much that I’m just dying to say, because I can’t believe you’re “real”…

Summing up-I am a 38 yr. old woman with two children (ages 9 and 7)…left my relationship with their father (relationship of 12 years), didn’t bring my children with me, although for now, I am still in the same town, left my job at Penn State because I was dying inside….I clean houses, have had many God-type experiences since this all began and before then (whatever that means)…totally, totally, totally, get the real deal process that occurred as a result of a heartfelt prayer of surrender two and a half years ago…

Could go on and on, but I’ll leave it at that for now…

Thanks for reading, writing and living….

A2

Oh My God…here I go again…

I so get this…I just do.

Yes, I have been awake since 3 a.m., not uncommon on and off for me throughout this process…better to be awake at 3 a.m. than asleep for the entirety of my Life…

I laid there emailing you in my head until finally, I said, “Okay, if the urge is still there after I count backwards from 100, I’ll do it”…well, here I am…

Okay, briefly, I said a prayer in January, 2008, that would change the course of my life and my family’s life forever…very long story semi-short-I called Silent Unity and held hands with my partner and our two children and prayed for the “Highest Good for myself, my partner, our two children and our family as a whole”…I felt so good “placing our situation in God’s hands” as I was truly at a loss (I now know “It’s All Good” and can see this from a detached perspective…still, I think it’s worth sharing)…anyway, I said the prayer because my partner had had an affair and we were coming off of the honeymoon period with a new lie on his part and I basically gave up…not to mention he is addicted to alchohol and I did the Al-Anon thing for 10 years plus and the whole bit…

Within a week, I began waking up at 3:30 a.m. experiencing being “guided to leave my family, including my children”…that was how I put it then…and I see it a little differently now…there is so much to tell, including very sort of mystical experiences around my guidance-at least 10 or so that were really out there, but that’s neither here nor there, I suppose…I’m sure it’ll all come out at some point…in fact, I sense that one day, thought not prematurely a book will be birthed, “Dying to Live:  One Woman’s Journey of Awakening”…

Okay, this threw me for a loop…I mean:

I was:

  • a woman who quit her teaching job to stay at home and raise her kids
  • nursed my children long term
  • belonged to Mom’s Club and La Leche League
  • was the “Peace Curriculum Coordinator” at my children’s Montessori School
  • did Yoga
  • ate organic and forcibly fed my family everything natural and organic
  • recycled
  • did Yoga
  • was a volunteer District Leader for the U.S. Department of Peace Campaign (even met Marianne Williamson-wipty-do)
  • read every popular spiritual author

ALL OF THAT AND MORE TO AVOID DOING THE THING I MOST NEEDED TO DO WHICH WAS-QUIT MY FALSE LIFE!!!

And, after the prayer, it all came crashing down and I had no control over what was happening-and it sucked to come face to face with the reality of what I had done – the peace about “leaving my kids” consumed me and boy did some spiritual insights come from that one–and continue to do so… don’t know if there worth a dime, but they have been priceless to me, in a way…

I began thinking and saying things like:

  • We’re in control. And we’re not
  • This is the choiceless choice
  • I was attempting to live spirituality from the inside-out rather than the outside in
  • God is not there to save you from your Dark Night…God is there to keep you in in for as long as you need to until you finally just give in to dying already…
  • You can die while you’re alive
  • I feel like a stranger in my own home
  • Let’s cut the bullshit!!!
  • My children are strangers to me…
  • I feel like everyone I have ever known and loved (including me) has died and there is nothing I can do about it
  • should I become a nun?…am I a lesbian?…what the hell is going on here?
  • I feel like my body left and it is just waiting for my Soul to catch up with it…

And on and on…more to come…

So much to tell…

I mean, I knew I was dying, but I did not know how to explain that to anyone without them thinking me insane…turns out that’s exactly how it played out…and, getting locked up in the mental ward was the best thing that ever happened to me…not because they knew what the hell they were doing, but because I was forced to go to my Inner Authority…

I wrote to Marianne Williamson at one point (she had been my favorite mentor to that point)…and her response to me made me want to puke…I eventually wrote her back and in so many words said, “You can’t put God in a box.  Either everything is God or nothing is.  You have to burn the  box.  If you aren’t teaching that, you aren’t teaching anything.”

It was sad and scarey for me to “kill the Buddha”, but it was freeing, too…and, at least intellectually at the time, I knew that in “not supporting me”, she was my best teacher ever….

I know what you mean, though, about passing up your teachers…

Even had a similar experience with Neale Donald Walsch (I still go back and forth there a little)…he actually called me on my cell phone two times when I was desperately down and out…truly, that kept me going…

Okay, the “leaving of my kids” is what kept me stumped and still does, in a way, even though, from a bigger perspective, I get it and have had some profound experiences with and without them along the way about it…after all, if a mother was never “guided to leave her kids”, mothers wouldn’t die…

Anyway, if it wasn’t for my kids, I’m pretty sure I’d be living in Savannah, Georgia right now…based solely on an odd sleep experience I had along the way during this process (more on that later)…

Why should being a mom stop me…it shouldn’t and can’t…Life is impartial and impersonal, but still, it has me in a semi-fuckular situation, that’s for sure…

Believe me, the way I am writing about this now is so entirely different than the pathetic way I would have portrayed it when I was in the midst of the muck…I’ve written that other places, but this is where I am now…

I truly felt between a rock and a hard place…didn’t know where to turn (I know that’s the point of this)…it felt so against a mother’s instincts…but, truly, if I can’t “save myself”, I can’t save my kids anyway…the whole oxygen mask thing…in a big way-much more than going to an Al-Anon meeting and pretending I am saving myself…

BTW, Al-Anon is such old energy that it feels silly even discussing it, but it’s part of the story, so, for now, it belongs…chop away at the statue and you’ll get there…(just read that part in Spiritual Warfare)…

I can’t stop without noting how I came upon your books, or, rather, how they came upon me…

A few months ago, I went to Colorado on a retreat…discovered a woman who wrote a book about Walk-In’s, related some to that, and went…met a woman there who lived in Massachusetts-she used to own a metaphysical book store…she invited me to visit her in Mass and a few weeks later, I did…it felt right-also adventurous, fun, etc….

Mind you, most of my obsessive desire to read everything “spiritual” had long since passed…early on in this process, I realized my answer was not in any of my books full of so-called wisdom…if anything, I was more pissed off at the authors than anything…

Still, a few years ago, being at my friends house (with so many books) would have been like a child in a candy store for me…so, I was slightly curious what titles she had that I had not read, but not overly…

One night, we were standing there talking and I looked over at the shelf, and “Spiritual Warfare” literally jumped out at me…okay, not literally, but it does make the story more fun if I say that…anyway, I said “What’s this?” and immediately began reading about the back cover…I think there’s one line about Lisa and I knew I picked up this book for a reason…

I have been devouring and hating and loving that I discovered them ever since (mostly, because “they” seriously have me doubting my already planned and paid for trip to India, but that was there before the books to some extent, so I won’t blame you J…)…also, because they won’t let me stop this process, not that I could or even really want to at this point anyway…

So, swear to God, I could comment on every line…I mean I read and write to you in my head at the same time…

A few minor examples…

Okay, backtracking…this past April, I finally took an outer leap to go along with my inner experiences…granted, I did not leave everyone and everything, sever all ties, run off, change my name and tell everyone to act as if I died (although, believe me, the temptation was there big time and, even now, seems much more appealing than this slow and painful death…although, I am pretty sure at this point, I’ve done the death thing, I’ve been birthed and I am partly in and simultaneously moving toward Human Adulthood)…again, if it wasn’t for my kids, I don’t think this would feel so messy to me…

So, the leap (mentioned this in my first email)-left my relationship, left my job, continued to let most of who I was fall away…thought I was entering the “Next Top Spiritual Author Competition”-oh, actually entered and, thankfully, early-on realized it wasn’t for me-had always dreamed of being another Marianne Williamson-and when I realized what I was here to say wasn’t what too many people want to hear, namely the truth about this process, I was slightly bummed but also relieved that I didn’t have to become popular…anyway, what had occurred for me felt too precious for this competition…no judgment, but that is how it felt…

So, I let that die, too…and poem after poem began to pour out of me…I am attaching them…I wrote most of them in April, which I found out after the fact was poetry month…wrote them for the sheer Joy of it, much like an artist might paint or a person might live…

I admit I do love to read them out loud to anyone who will listen…and, yes, in some ways, they are a journal of my journey…in others, I believe they want to be shared and will serve…

So, I wrote all of them but 3 before I found your books…the last one “Ashes” was written after I read some of your first book and I have two more “Bass Ackwards” and “Bastard” in my journal next door that were also written after your books, but

BEFORE…

-I got to the part where you mention “ass backwards”

and

BEFORE

-I got to the chapter you titled “Bastard”

Weird, but not.

Also, one day, I said to my housemate, “The biggest bummer of a true spiritual message is that you can’t have your cake and eat it, too, and that’s actually the good news!”…She gets me, but I still think she looked at me like I had three heads…not really, she got it…somewhere, she got it…I must say that I’m pretty sure it comes full circle then to, “once you realize you can’t have your cake and eat it, too, paradoxically, you get to have your cake and eat it, too…it’s just different cake.”…or something, I don’t know…

So, the mothering thing, I’ll continue with, I’m sure, but not now…

I am going to go back to sleep (not a metaphor, I mean that literally)…

Oh yeah, the name thing with the poems…more on that later, too…

As if you care…

But thanks for caring in your not caring…

A3

Read what I wrote after I sent it and realized,

  • I meant to write -”I was attempting to live spiritually from the outside in rather than the inside out.”
  • Also, never finished the cake story…right after I said that to my housemate, I went in my room to read the next chapter in the book I was on and at the end of it, you said, “You can’t have your cake and eat it, too.”
  • Oh, and two more things, was reading your book on the way home from Massachusetts on the train and as you were talking about visiting Ground Zero, I was riding past the changed view of NYC and, my friend, the one who lent me your books, she lives in Groton…you mention Groton in your book…

I don’t want to make this personal about me and you…I know it’s not, but, for me, it’s a little like the connected thing you describe with Brett…

It’s fun and a bit of a relief to discover other aliens…strangers in a strange world type-thing…

Anyway, good night…or good morning…

A4

Holy Fuck, Jed.  I just finished the chapter in Spiritual Warfare called “Alternative People”…you are describing this process to a T.

That’s all I am going to say right now.

A5

Jed, you have to read this…I say that, fully letting go of any attachment as to whether or not you do…

Why can I say that?…because I am doing this process tried and true…I have committed metaphorical suicide and inwardly and outwardly, I am going further…

I am amazed at how much of what I am reading in your books reminds me of the poems I have been writing since April, mostly in April and May…

Right now, I am fantasizing about traveling with you, literally, for a while, just like Julie and Lisa did…mostly to say, “Heh, it’s cool and nice to hang out with someone else who truly gets this and isn’t afraid to tell the truth about it…”…and also because I am still looking outside of myself for answers…wait, am I?…I honestly don’t think I am…I am just so in awe that your books fell into my lap when they did…in awe and at the same time, not surpise at all-because I really do get that what we call supernatural is natural and what we call science-fiction is actually closer to true reality (oxymoron) than what we call reality…

Two things:

-just finished chapter 26 in warfare…even the way you describe your synchronicities at the end remind me of how I described mine to you in my last email…

Weird again…but, again, not really.

So, I am thinking in that moment, “I have to get on the computer and write Jed again, but I really want to keep reading”…

lo and behold, the next chapter is about how Lisa’s husband (Dennis) is an angry alcoholic…so is my “ex”….the similarities are crazy….I mean, I am Lisa…I know we are all each other, but I absolutely cannot believe how similar her story is to mine…

BTW, I so get what you say about 12-step programs…and the rest of it, too…

when this first began for me a couple of years ago, I stopped Al-Anon almost immediately….of course, everyone thought that’s when i really needed a meeting…

it didn’t matter…I KNEW I was done…I told them-this is beyond Al-Anon…

…and beyond all of the spiritual books and teachers I had read to that point (enough to keep a metaphysical book store in business)…

I just KNEW.

A6

I am sick inside right now…have been for weeks…

That overwhelming turmoil over which decision is “right”…

I have written to you several times…

Here I go again…

Believe me,  I realize I have to “kill” you, too…but this feels right, so I’ll have at it…

I just ordered and finished “The Notebook”…I can’t tell you how accurately you describe the experience I have been having for the last 2 and a half years…

I could site a zillion things from your books that I’ve either said, felt or experienced…

I leave this Friday for an India pilgrimage…as of two nights ago, I was decided I was not going, $5500 down the drain or not…

I still haven’t called the woman in charge of the trip, because I am torn…I think it’s “indicated” that I don’t go….because that feels similar to years ago when it was “indicated” that I called off my wedding 13 years ago…the whole process has been very similar…

I started questioning not going a few weeks ago when I discovered your books at a friend’s house in Massachusetts (Groton, actually)….not because you said, “you don’t need to go to India”, but because the “feeling” of questioning came up…it was kind of there before your books but really came up when I read them…

I cashed in on my retirment to go, a huge risk, because I recently left my relationship, my home, my children (I moved across town for now), my job and I clean houses under the table for a living…this was prompted by a two year death experience and some guidance that I couldn’t not follow…

I have resisted immensely along the way…

I have also been sort of half-assed following my guidance…

I think my real guidance is sending me to Georgia, based on several nighttime experiences alone-and a few crazy synchronisities, nothing logical, but I can’t bring myself, as of yet, to move that far away from my young children (ages 9 and 7)…

Yes, this is all the story, not the Truth, but anyway…

Blah, blah, blah…

Bottom line, I am kicking myself in the ass for not listening to my gut and not sending in the money for my trip (partly didn’t want to regret it and partly didn’t want to upset the people I was going with…yes, that is still in my to some extent, but not much)…

I could have paid off my debt and gotten on with my life…

India is a distraction, not the next right step for me…

Though, I must say, visiting it for pure enjoyment is very appealing to me…

Still there’s either guidance or there’s not…and following my “guidance” is more appealing to me than India…

I am so torn and could go on and on…you don’t have my answer

And, really, it doesn’t matter if I go to India or not…

Still, what next step am I prolonging or sabotaging by going?

The trip sounds amazing…I am clear that the people I am going with and all of the people in India…none of them are my guru’s!….still, part of me thinks, it’s paid for-just say fuck it and go and enjoy…

I cannot make peace with that decision, just as I could not make peace with walking down the aisle, not leaving my family, etc…..

Canceling this trip and losing this money is something I can’t not do…I am down and out and it seems asinine to eat $5500 dollars right now and I will grieve this….

Jesus…what the fuck happened?…it sounded like the best, craziest thing in the world when I signed up….so appropriate to honor my experience…

It’s not about that….i know that in the depths of my being….

Fuck, I need an answer…this is driving me crazy!!!!!

Still coming undone…