Awareness

This week I participated in a retreat for a leadership development program I am currently engaged in. It’s a 15-month program and we meet quarterly in person and roughly weekly remotely. This was our 3rd in person retreat so we are really starting to get to know each other and digging into some deeper topic.

Overall, it was an impactful experience. I learned a lot, made deeper connections with the other cohort members, and felt I was able to spend some quality time on important topics relevant to my development.

The 2 day session closed with a talk from one of the leaders of the organization, Steve. I would have felt fulfilled in the session had Steve not talked, but his talk impacted me in a profound way. I am going to try to explain the experience as best as I can.

The discussion was on awareness. A few key messages still stand out:

• “Until you make conscious the unconscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate” – Carl Jung
• Without awareness, there is only habit.
• Is this all there is? Yes. And no.
• Connect with the heart of service. Life will tell you.
• Wake up. Grow up. Show up.

I was concentrating on the discussion and present in the moment feeling that the wisdom Steve was sharing was relevant and important. I don’t recall exactly when, perhaps near the middle of the discussion, uninvited, my mind suddenly began to have vivid memories of what I can only describe as moments in my life where my life was in mortal danger.

Many of the memories were a blur where I don’t recall each moment individually, only a sense that they were all moments where I lived, but where it could have easily gone either way – near car accidents, near ski accidents, etc. One moment, however, was very vivid. I was in middle school in the woods behind our house, but fairly far from the house. I came across a snake slowly slithering across the path I was on. For some reason, I stopped and decided to pet the snake and then went on my way. Turns out it was a rattle snake, which was common in the area we lived.

At this point, I had flashes of what I can only describe as alternate outcomes from this event including the snake attacking and biting me with a clear understanding that I was too far from the house or anyone else to get help.

One would think these memories or images in my mind would be frightening, but instead what I felt was a presence of the spirits of family that had passed. Not anyone in particular. Perhaps my grandparents. I had the clear and strong feeling they wanted me to know they were with me helping steer fate where they could and that they were doing this out of a purity of love I have never felt possible.

I am not a particularly spiritual person. I do not believe in being visited by relatives that have passed. I am much more a man of science than faith. So this experience was unexpected to say the least, but I cannot escape the intense feelings I had of support, love, connectedness, and safety. The feelings were so real and strong that I became emotional and frankly, somewhat confused and scared by the experience as it was like nothing I had ever experienced before.

Over the past day or so since that experience, I have had time to analyze and consider the experience from many angles. Typically, in an “odd” experience like that, I would have rationalized and explained it away somehow. I can’t do that here. It’s too real even after the passing of time.

What I am realizing is that I don’t think Steve was talking literally about awareness or if he was, he was also speaking at a deeper level as well. He was not only asking us to notice what’s happening around us and to be present. The Jung quote on making conscious the unconscious, the nearness of the definition of awareness to consciousness, connecting with the heart, etc.

I believe he was speaking on a deeper level as well as a traditional level and saying there is something beyond our daily awareness. I believe he was speaking of something akin to transcendence, interconnectedness or enlightenment, a dissolution of the walls that our minds create allowing an awareness of and connection to other energies in the world that we normally block out. I believe that, for a moment, I was more fully aware, I achieved a state of enlightenment that I have never experienced before and may not have truly believed existed until that moment.