A Christian a Shaman and Unconditional Love Walk Into a Bar

Apologies if you thought the title was part of a joke… I’m serious.

After some weeks building conversation and context, processing and sharing experiences, at times stranger than fiction, I was invited to share a meal and more of my own story with with author: Lawrence Hall Dawson.

Lawrence allowed me to record and share our conversation that day. Here’s a tiny vignette – from what was one of the most unique conversations of my life.

Lawrence has written several books, the most recent of which document his unfolding personal relationship with God, which accelerated following a spiritual awakening experience during the late 1990’s. It was during this awakening that Lawrence was taught his “Communion Process” through which he engages in daily question and answer sessions with God. Utilizing these sessions to explore what he was taught within traditional Christian institutions, he shares his experience and teaches the Communion Process through his writings. Click here to view his books & publisher’s page.

I had opportunity to get to know Lawrence over the Summer and Fall of 2009. Word of mouth brought Lawrence to my work, as he was focusing on embodying and balancing the intense energies that his spiritual communion brought into his life daily. This happens to be the substance of my gig: helping others comfortably embody their spirits.

He returned the favor by inspiring me with his bravery in open sharing, and authorship, of his experience. I suppose ultimately inspiring me to open up about the spiritual aspect of my life and work, cracking the door a bit for you with this video. Thanks Lawrence.

It is not easy to have experiences that go against the grain, or defy what culture teaches us is possible and/or OK. It is almost impossible to integrate such experiences without community support or external validation. Many of those who attempt to do so, outside of a supportive community or alone, end up diagnosed somewhere within the mental health spectrum.

Even the act of seeking help to understand these experiences demands that self-doubt and isolation be overcome through the baring of our deepest vulnerability- the trusting or showing of your true self to another. This requires rare individual bravery, not taught or encouraged in conformist systems. It is terrifying to face judgement in the here and now, as we share ourselves.

Especially sharing experiences stemming from a voice -not your own- heard in your mind.

Terence Mckenna said something like this: “It’s no great feat to hear a voice in one’s head, the challenge comes in knowing if it’s telling the truth or not.”

My path to be a healer is, and was originally oriented by an experience I went through when I was 19 (July, 1994). I stumbled into an experience which was my Shamanic Initiation, involving hearing a voice -not my own- in my head. Alas, this was the only time I’ve had the simplicity of a voice giving me the low-down of the situation. Spirit now presents information much more metaphorically, but does continue to present, and guides my healing work.

To keep a long story short, I had opportunity to experience the vibration of Love in every wave/particle in every atom in every molecule in every cell of my body and all of creation around me, as one unified, interconnected web of wholeness. At this time I was informed by a deep, gentle, yet firm voice (yeah, that’s right- a voice in my head) that I was experiencing my spirit, that my spirit was this vibration of Love, the Unconditional Love that is all-that-is. The experience deepened into what can be described as what some would call an out-of-body experience, or as I’ve come to prefer, an in-axis experience. An in-body experience of journeying through and within my own center to explore the world of spirit.

I met spirit guides who could read my thoughts as easily as you can read this. The only things novel or original that I possessed, and of true interest to these spirit guides were my feelings. There was nothing I could think they didn’t already know about me, and accept in loving trust about me, by the time I had finished thinking it.

My guides led me on a tour through every person that I had-was-would loved/love, and home I had-was-would lived/live in, as my guides reiterated and reconnected my existence within the universal fabric of Love, providing me the atmosphere of complete non-judging love and trust. I struggled to make “sense” of this experience as it occurred, “make sense” through the culturally indoctrinated intellectual lenses and filters my 19 year old brain had learned to date, and was failing.

The voice again intervened and informed me I had the choice to either force my understanding and attempt to make sense of it all “now”, at that very moment,- which meant I’d return to my body insane. Or, the voice informed me, I could let go of, and surrender my need to understand at that moment, and trust in knowing that the information I’d need would be there when the time was right. – This choice meant I’d get to come back to presence in my body sane.

I chose sane, and gave up attempting current understanding. BOOM, I returned to full presence in my body, felt confused but sane, humbled, amazed, and as though I just had valid experience of my true nature and spirit, for the first time in my life. Since then, I’ve followed the warm-fuzzy sensation I learned in my cells during that initiation, while my researching my own experience. This feeling pops up from time to time and pulls me toward what I need, like the game kids play where they say hotter/colder to guide a blindfolded person to the goal.

This process of listening to my heartfelt sensation truly has guided me to the information I’ve needed, at the appropriate time. It has led me to the healing I’ve needed personally, and taught me how to help others in their healing. While this experience placed me in an upstream journey against mainstream culture, I would not trade it, as it taught me true peace and interconnectedness rests at my center, which is a comfort at all times.

While from very different origins and vocabularies, Lawrence and I share a common experience. Namely, being initiated and internally (voice-in-own-head or feeling-in-own-heart) recruited into a spiritual culture that is interested in transparently propagating Love; while being far different, more pragmatic, and far more interactive than Western Culture’s Institutions and Religions care to share is possible. A spiritual culture that empowers individuals to journey into their own unique relationship with the Love that is the foundation and Spirit of the Human experience.

Thanks for watching and reading, enjoy comfortably, ask questions and follow your heart,

Aaron

Have an experience to share or get off your chest?
-I provide a safe place for it. Get in touch.

“Absolute authority can withstand all questioning, absolutely.”
-A wonderfully inspiring quote from my friend Virginia.