Do you have a Divine Connection?
If you’ve been following along, you know that in these series of videos, I’m talking about concepts from my book, The Journey to Happy– How Embracing the Concept that Nothing is wrong can transform your life.
In my book, I talk a lot about Connection, because I believe that’s what’s causing a huge amount of problems that people have today. People feel disconnected from other people, even from their own families… they feel disconnected from the larger society… many people even feel disconnected from themselves, and I say that because so many people hate themselves or dislike themselves.
And then there’s the disconnect that results in all the negativity it feels like we’re surrounded by all the time.
What causes that? Why do people come at things from either a “glass half empty” or “glass half full” point of view? We know from the Enneagram (which I talk about in some other videos) that some of this is about how we’re wired, but there are also things that happen to us as we go through life.
My own personal belief is that when we come onto the planet, we all come here – and I mean all of us come here – with a divine spark, a divine connection.
The Bible says that we are created in the image and likeness of God. Hinduism teaches that our Souls are Godlike.
I see this Divine connection that we all have as this beautiful jewel that is perfect and strong, and cannot be destroyed.
But then stuff starts to happen.
Mud & Gunk get splattered all over until all we can feel is the mud and the gunk
until it gets buried so deeply that we don’t even realize that it’s there anymore. All we can see and feel is the mud and the gunk. We lose that connection to the Divine and that feels really awful. It’s in that disconnected state that people can do some pretty terrible things.
I don’t know if this story is true, or just a teaching that I’ve heard many times, but I love this story… A monastery in Asia had a large, beautiful statue of the Buddha made entirely of pure gold. There was a war and the monks knew that their monastery was about to be invaded. They decided that to save the statue, they would cover it over with mud and make it look like a simple ceramic statue. Many years passed and after a few generations, everyone completely forgot that the statue was made of gold. One day the statue was being moved and it was dropped. The stucco cracked. And underneath was the beautiful brilliant gold!
I especially love two things about this story. The primary thing is that the “real” Buddha, the golden one, is hidden underneath all of the gunk. Just like with you, the real (golden) you is underneath all that gunk. The other part is that it takes a cracking in the exterior coat of gunk for the real you to burst forth and be seen.
I believe the trials and tribulations we all experience are just a set up for the cracking to take place. I had to reach my lowest point before I started to crack. Alcoholics Anonymous talks about hitting “rock bottom” before addicts are willing to do something to heal their addiction. The Bible talks about God being able to more easily come through “the cracked vessel.”
If you are reading this and are in a place in your life right now where everything seems to be wrong, let me tell you that I feel your pain. That’s exactly where I was almost 20 years ago when I first came to Sedona. Every area of my life was messed up – work, marriage, money, body… I know how awful it is. I know what it feels like to not want to drag yourself out of bed to face another day.
But the truth is, sometimes that can be the most incredible place to start, being the cracked vessel, because it means you can allow your Divine Connection to get activated again.
Because – and here’s the important part – it’s always been there, it’s never gone away, it’s always been with you. It’s that beautiful jewel that is perfect and strong, and cannot be destroyed.
So how can you connect back up with it? The first part is to start believing it’s there in first place.
Can you do that? Can you take that Leap of faith?
I’m not saying you have to do a complete 180 degree turn here, but could you just try this idea on for size? Because I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of relief when you do that. Just sit with the idea that you have this Divine Connection, that it’s really there and you just to have to connect with it.
And then you’re probably going to need to do something with clearing the mud and gunk… I’ve given you a bunch of processes in these series of videos for how to start doing that with things like Discover the Patterns, Enneagram, and Meditation.
But if you have some heavy duty mud and gunk like I did, you may want to think about coming out Sedona to do a retreat, because we’ll clean that gunk out and bring you back into connection in just a matter of days.
We had a woman here a few years ago who told us, “I hate everything. I hate my husband, I hate my kids, I hate my job. I hate everything. And I’m mad at everybody.”
When we dug a little deeper, we discovered that what was really going on was that she was mad at God. She had two really wonderful, loving parents and they were both killed in a car accident when she was young. She was in the car and she was hurt, but she wasn’t killed. That, of course, completely shattered her world and it resulted in her being so angry because, of course, her thinking was, how could a loving God have done this to her? He must hate her, so okay, she hated him right back.
She also had this huge amount of grief and guilt over the fact that she lived and her parents died, and that resulted in her hating herself for having survived. So here she was, walking around all these years with all this mud and gunk, all this hate, guilt and shame. Of course her Divine Connection felt like it was completely gone.
We did a bunch of sessions with her to clear out the mud and gunk. First to help her to see that the car accident was not her fault. She of course knew that mentally, but before this, she didn’t really get it on a deep level, she didn’t really believe it.
And then we helped her to clear out all that hate, guilt and shame.
But the best part came during her Inner Journey with Breath. The breath took her into the altered state and suddenly, she was there with both her parents. She told me it reminded her of the Harry Potter book where he saw both of his parents in the mirror. She totally felt their presence and was completely filled with love from both of them. But then she said something else happened…
She was filled with this deeper knowing, this deeper love, and she said she felt what seemed to her to be the presence of God. I asked her to describe it and she said there weren’t really any words, that the best way to describe it was that she felt completely filled up with love, that this huge hole that had been there forever felt like it was filled. She was sobbing during the breath journey and she was crying when she was telling me about it because it was so incredibly beautiful.
She came out saying, “It’s so weird, I came here hating everyone, including myself and God, and I’m leaving here just full of love for everyone and everything.” She had made that connection with that Divine part of herself. That was a few years ago and it still feels very real and strong for her.
We all have that – we just have to believe it and take steps to connect with it.
In my book, I talk a lot about Connection, because I believe that’s what’s causing a huge amount of problems that people have today. People feel disconnected from other people, even from their own families… they feel disconnected from the larger society… many people even feel disconnected from themselves, and I say that because so many people hate themselves or dislike themselves. And then there’s the disconnect that results in all the negativity it feels like we’re surrounded by all the time.What causes that? Why do people come at things from either a “glass half empty” or “glass half full” point of view? We know from the Enneagram (which I talk about in some other videos) that some of this is about how we’re wired, but there are also things that happen to us as we go through life.
My own personal belief is that when we come onto the planet, we all come here – and I mean all of us come here – with a divine spark, a divine connection.
The Bible says that we are created in the image and likeness of God. Hinduism teaches that our Souls are Godlike.
I see this Divine connection that we all have as this beautiful jewel that is perfect and strong, and cannot be destroyed.
But then stuff starts to happen.
Mud & Gunk get splattered all over until all we can feel is the mud and the gunk
until it gets buried so deeply that we don’t even realize that it’s there anymore. All we can see and feel is the mud and the gunk. We lose that connection to the Divine and that feels really awful. It’s in that disconnected state that people can do some pretty terrible things.
I don’t know if this story is true, or just a teaching that I’ve heard many times, but I love this story… A monastery in Asia had a large, beautiful statue of the Buddha made entirely of pure gold. There was a war and the monks knew that their monastery was about to be invaded. They decided that to save the statue, they would cover it over with mud and make it look like a simple ceramic statue. Many years passed and after a few generations, everyone completely forgot that the statue was made of gold. One day the statue was being moved and it was dropped. The stucco cracked. And underneath was the beautiful brilliant gold!I especially love two things about this story. The primary thing is that the “real” Buddha, the golden one, is hidden underneath all of the gunk. Just like with you, the real (golden) you is underneath all that gunk. The other part is that it takes a cracking in the exterior coat of gunk for the real you to burst forth and be seen.
I believe the trials and tribulations we all experience are just a set up for the cracking to take place. I had to reach my lowest point before I started to crack. Alcoholics Anonymous talks about hitting “rock bottom” before addicts are willing to do something to heal their addiction. The Bible talks about God being able to more easily come through “the cracked vessel.”
If you are reading this and are in a place in your life right now where everything seems to be wrong, let me tell you that I feel your pain. That’s exactly where I was almost 20 years ago when I first came to Sedona. Every area of my life was messed up – work, marriage, money, body… I know how awful it is. I know what it feels like to not want to drag yourself out of bed to face another day.
But the truth is, sometimes that can be the most incredible place to start, being the cracked vessel, because it means you can allow your Divine Connection to get activated again. Because – and here’s the important part – it’s always been there, it’s never gone away, it’s always been with you. It’s that beautiful jewel that is perfect and strong, and cannot be destroyed.
So how can you connect back up with it? The first part is to start believing it’s there in first place.
Can you do that? Can you take that Leap of faith?
I’m not saying you have to do a complete 180 degree turn here, but could you just try this idea on for size? Because I’ll tell you, there’s a lot of relief when you do that. Just sit with the idea that you have this Divine Connection, that it’s really there and you just to have to connect with it.
And then you’re probably going to need to do something with clearing the mud and gunk… I’ve given you a bunch of processes in these series of videos for how to start doing that with things like Discover the Patterns, Enneagram, and Meditation.
But if you have some heavy duty mud and gunk like I did, you may want to think about coming out Sedona to do a retreat, because we’ll clean that gunk out and bring you back into connection in just a matter of days.
We had a woman here a few years ago who told us, “I hate everything. I hate my husband, I hate my kids, I hate my job. I hate everything. And I’m mad at everybody.”
When we dug a little deeper, we discovered that what was really going on was that she was mad at God. She had two really wonderful, loving parents and they were both killed in a car accident when she was young. She was in the car and she was hurt, but she wasn’t killed. That, of course, completely shattered her world and it resulted in her being so angry because, of course, her thinking was, how could a loving God have done this to her? He must hate her, so okay, she hated him right back.
She also had this huge amount of grief and guilt over the fact that she lived and her parents died, and that resulted in her hating herself for having survived. So here she was, walking around all these years with all this mud and gunk, all this hate, guilt and shame. Of course her Divine Connection felt like it was completely gone.
We did a bunch of sessions with her to clear out the mud and gunk. First to help her to see that the car accident was not her fault. She of course knew that mentally, but before this, she didn’t really get it on a deep level, she didn’t really believe it.
And then we helped her to clear out all that hate, guilt and shame.But the best part came during her Inner Journey with Breath. The breath took her into the altered state and suddenly, she was there with both her parents. She told me it reminded her of the Harry Potter book where he saw both of his parents in the mirror. She totally felt their presence and was completely filled with love from both of them. But then she said something else happened…
She was filled with this deeper knowing, this deeper love, and she said she felt what seemed to her to be the presence of God. I asked her to describe it and she said there weren’t really any words, that the best way to describe it was that she felt completely filled up with love, that this huge hole that had been there forever felt like it was filled. She was sobbing during the breath journey and she was crying when she was telling me about it because it was so incredibly beautiful.
She came out saying, “It’s so weird, I came here hating everyone, including myself and God, and I’m leaving here just full of love for everyone and everything.” She had made that connection with that Divine part of herself. That was a few years ago and it still feels very real and strong for her.
We all have that – we just have to believe it and take steps to connect with it.
