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Post by marysuss on Dec 15, 2009 4:00:05 GMT -5
Hello, my name is Mary. I'm impressed by what I've been reading on this discussion board. I'm wondering why I haven't discovered it sooner. I'm 32 years old and have been reading spiritual, self help, religious writings since I was about 14. I had some strange mystical experiences in my life so that inspired my seeking. I've read Ken Keyes, Eckhart Tolle and currently Jed McKenna. Buddhism is my favourite religion and I love to read about that. Recently I've being downloading free podcasts of guided meditations and zen talks. Jed McKenna"s work is really stimulating my growth. I am in my final stages of a social work degree and have pondered how I will reconcile being a professional social worker with my spiritual journey. If that makes sense? I live with someone with Chronic depression and I have three children. This provides me with incentive to gather the tools I need in my armory. I have one friend whom I talk to about spiritual matters. He is an avid Catholic. I hope to find friends here that I can share the journey with. Thanks for your time.
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Post by zendancer on Dec 15, 2009 9:56:55 GMT -5
Hi Mary, Welcome to the board. When you get a chance, tell us about your mystical experiences. Did they happen when you were young and if so, did they continue? What did you learn from them?
You wrote that you have pondered how you will reconcile being a professional social worker with your spiritual journey. Consider the possibility that there may not be anything that needs to be reconciled. Is that possible? The two may be perfectly aligned, but only you will know that for sure. One thing that you might find helpful is a simple Zen-like question: "What must I be doing this moment?" When you ask a question like that, it removes abstractions about the future and confronts you with the stark simplicity of here and now. You will almost always know what you must do moment to moment. The more you stay now-oriented, the less thoughts about the future will trouble you. Using this simple question helped me to discover that many of my troubling thoughts about the future were fantasies.
So, welcome aboard, and feel free to ask about anything that interests you. Cheers.
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Post by lightmystic on Dec 15, 2009 11:00:21 GMT -5
Greetings Mary! Nice to have you here. I, would also definitely enjoy hearing your experiences and, we can poke at them if you want. If you don't mind me asking, in what way do you feel like there might be a contradiction between spirituality and social work?
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Post by Mary on Dec 15, 2009 18:16:31 GMT -5
Hi, I'm on my iPhone and forgot to take note of the names of those who responded. First I'll address what I see as a problem with my spiritual knowledge and social work. There are times when people come will come to be wrapped up in their problems and will be so tangled in the self.. That I would like to say to them that they don't exist in the concrete way they think they do.. Say your car gets scratched... What I do is think of the car as a bunch of pieces that together make up a car in my mind.. Its only because we hold the beliefs of me mine and cars shouldn't be scratched that suffering occurs.. But if I'm a social worker i will more likely be helping someone who is possibly suffering addiction/mental health problems.. I can help them through cognitive therapy techniques to recognize generalizing negative thoughts and try and help them rethink those thoughts into more positive ones.. No where at uni have I been taught the concept of no self. When my car gets scratched I smile broadly knowing at one time in my life I would have been very upset. I know I will be able to make a great difference as a social worker but I can imagine myself wanting to awaken people from their hell. As the other responded suggested in every moment I will know what needs to be done and my above ramblings are mere fantasies of my mind.
My mysical experiences.. I have had quite a few but 2 based on dreams come to mind. I went to school with a girl and her mother analysed dreams as her job. Although I knew about this I never had any contact with her mother or heard any stories about it. I'm in Australia and our final year of school is called Year 12. This friend (samantha) left my school in year 10 to goto a performing arts school. We had been close but for whatever reason had no contact in those 2 years. I sat my final exams. When the results came in everyone gets a score out of 100. Such as 57.7 or 88.6.. The night I got my results I had a dream of a circle of people all of whom I knew from school. Samantha was there and she told me her mark 56.7.. When I woke up I thought I really must call her.. So I did. When I called her she said I dreamed of you last night. I told her my dream and her grade.. To our amazement we both knew each others marks exactly and had had the same dream. It might not have been so amazing if it wasn't a three digit number. I have no idea how this happened at all.
Another dream occurance, was related to a horse race. It's called The Melbourne Cup. The whole country stops to watch this one race once a year. Everyone has a bet so you need to choose a horse. It was a few days before the race about 3 years ago and I dreamt the race. The horse who won was named Ethereal which means of heaven. I was stunned a few days later when trying to pick a horse that Ethereal was an actual horse running in the race. I had not seen or heard about this previously. So I bet on the horse and it won. The race played out exactly as he dream had shown. I haven't had any such dreams since.
One more, probably one of the first incidences I can remember. I was about 7 years old driving with my mum and dad. All of a sudden a dreadful feeling overcame me and I was directed by something different from a thought. To get in the back of the car. I climbed out of the front seat and into the back. I got introuble from my parents for moving in a moving car. 10 minutes later our car was hit from the front side by a drunk driver.. The seat I was previously sitting in was completely crushed. I wouldn't have survived if I had remained there. My parents were shocked at the events and both the police and my parents wanted to know how I had known to move. I can't explain that.
My other strange occurances involve being talked to by what I can only describe as God. During childbirth twice and I wasn't on any drugs and also when I was in a bad phase of my life. Although I was brought up Christian I wouldn't say i am a Christian. However when this voice came to me I had no question of who is this I knew this person like a parent. This voice was in my mind and was unmistakable and unquestionably God to me in that moment. I don't know what that means for me. The first time was scarey and the last time earlier this year was not a shock because I had experienced it previously. It's A momentous experience. It doesn't drive me to he bible but when people talk of God I can't deny his existence to myself now that I exprienced him directly.
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Post by zendancer on Dec 15, 2009 22:02:26 GMT -5
Mary: Yes, you have had some heavy-duty non-locality experiences. Many people have such experiences, but they are rarely that clear and that vivid. Such experiences seem to defy common sense because we erroneously assume that everything and everyone is separate. Your experiences have shown you, irrefutably, that everything is connected at the most fundamental level. It is amazing that you realized, even as a child, that your precognition of the impending collision came from some source other than the mind.
It sounds to me like you'll make a great social worker. Cognitive therapy will be appropriate for most people, and occasionally you may encounter people who are open to something deeper. The deeper you, yourself, go, the easier it will be to know what the most appropriate help will be. Thanks for sharing your stories. You might want to post one or more of them on the website spiritual-experiences.com
Cheers.
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Post by Mary on Dec 16, 2009 4:48:51 GMT -5
Thank you Zendancer. It's nice to read your take on those things.. Interconnection is a helpful way for me to consider it. I appreciate your encouragement re social work. Cheers to you.
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Post by lightmystic on Dec 16, 2009 11:46:53 GMT -5
Hey Mary, Thanks for sharing. Yes, the connectedness and synchronicity of it all is AMAZING! And it was a great joy to hear about your very vivid experiences of that....It's almost like we're all different functions of the body of one being. All completely interconnected, all completely working together. It may seem hard to believe that the hand coordinated with the arm to grab the food just in time and then coordinated perfectly with the mouth opening, coordinating perfectly with the teeth and lips that chewed, coordinating perfectly with the throat that swallowed. The connections seem impossibly synchronistic. But, really, it's just that the one cosmic being was hungry. In terms of social work, it may be very true that all these problems don't really exist, or that the people you are working with don't really exist. Fortunately, that goes all the way out: you, as the character of "Mary" don't really exist either. So it frees you up to pretend to be Mary, so they can pretend to be in need of help from pretend problems. They don't really need to be fixed either, even though it is a joy to help people open up to more to whatever extent they can... I'm sure you will find what's right for you, as you strike me as a very aware person who seems to be in the process of reconciling a lot of differences. And that is a beautiful place to be.
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Post by Mary on Dec 17, 2009 1:59:50 GMT -5
Lightmystic, I enjoyed reading your thoughts. It feels good to have got those events out there and such a validating response. I will continue on and watch as my teachers arrive
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Post by lightmystic on Dec 17, 2009 15:33:14 GMT -5
Thanks Mary. Yep, teachers always come when they are supposed to....Life tends to arrange it. And, in my experience, it can look like anyone or anything....exactly whatever is needed is provided....
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susan
New Member
Posts: 1
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Post by susan on Dec 19, 2009 19:51:24 GMT -5
Welcome Mary. I am new to this forum, too. So I suppose I should post an introduction as well!
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Post by lightmystic on Dec 21, 2009 10:56:42 GMT -5
Welcome to the forum susan.
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