Written by: Bill O'Brien, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
What I am about to describe could happen anywhere to anyone. It could happen in a chance encounter with a stranger. It could happen at a workshop or while watching a movie. It could happen in myriad ways but this is how it happened to me.
Many years ago I was a novice in the Jesuit Order. At the time I was a Catholic. The Jesuits are an international Roman Catholic religious order of priests and brothers.
We were in the midst of an eight-day silent retreat. By the fifth day, I was getting antsy and annoyed. We were meditating in five one-hour sessions per day. My prayer times were going nowhere, or so it seemed. We had been given a passage from the Christian Gospel of Luke for our reflection.
It seemed very old hat. It seemed to be saying simply this: be on your guard to behave well because you do not know when your life will end. Behind this was the thinly veiled threat of painful outcomes when you met your Maker. I’m sitting in my room thinking, “Okay, I get it, but I’m supposed to spend an hour on this? It’s obvious what it means.”
As the minutes ticked by I noticed I was becoming increasingly angry. I realized that I was angry with God. I began to rant and rave, inwardly, silently. I told God, “Look, I’m sure you want me to be a good priest. I want to be a good priest. This means I want to be authentic and I cannot be authentic unless I have a meaningful prayer life. So how about it?”
I knew many priests who did not seem authentic and I knew how ineffective, even alienating they could be. I did not want to be one of them.
As I continued to present my case, (it escaped my notice at the time), I had begun to actually pray, i.e., I was communicating my actual feelings. Gradually my anger spent itself and a quiet came over me. Some inner movement led me to read the passage again. It describes servants waiting for their master to return from a wedding feast “ready to open the door as soon as he comes and knocks”. Later I would realize that a peacefulness was coming over me at this point. It goes on to say,
“Happy those servants whom the master finds awake when he comes. I tell you solemnly, he will put on an apron, sit them down at table, and wait on them.” (Luke Chapter 12. Verse 37).
At this moment ordinary consciousness left me. It was as if I was suspended in a void. It’s very hard to put into words. It was as if a spell came over me. I was swept away. In a way I cannot describe, I experienced “the master” waiting on me. My whole system was caught up in this event. It was very real and very felt in my whole self.
It went on for quite a while, maybe two hours. It had been 4 o’clock in the afternoon when it began that October afternoon. When I began to come down, it was dark out. For a long, long time I just sat in my room, in great peace, just wanting to stay with the experience.
I missed dinner.
At some point I arose and went to the chapel and just sat there.
When I finally came back to my room, it was about midnight. I went to bed but I did not sleep. I just wanted to be in the afterglow.
In the days that followed I discovered that I could see inside the meaning of most scripture passages. I could complete the Novice Directors sentences in my head as he was speaking during our conferences.
From that day on my passion was about expanding my own consciousness and helping others to experience what I had. I could not make it happen for them but I could position them and help them to open themselves to it.
The years went by. I guided hundreds, maybe thousands of people through silent retreats.
After about twenty years it became apparent to me that all religious doctrine, at least as I had known it, was just the left brain operations of a group of mostly white males. Only one word really mattered and that was LOVE.
I left the Jesuits and the priesthood and pursued consciousness unfettered by institutions and doctrinal formulas. I pursued the Love in the depths of my soul, a place I came to call, with Buddha, the True Self, the vast realm of the Unconscious.
I attended Hindu retreats, I attended Buddhist retreats, I attended Stan Grof’s Holotropic Breathwork workshops. I began absorbing the science of the brain and its relationship to consciousness. I studied Jungian psychology.
I established a non-denominational spiritual center in Washington DC. It flourished for a while but after some years I was condemned by a local Catholic auxiliary bishop. This had the effect of damaging my ability to advertise my activities and so I moved on.
My passion for spreading consciousness led me into the inner cities of the United States and to the barrios of Mexico. It led me to the corridors of Congress and to the edges of the United Nations. It led me to the dark inner depths of prisons and to the inspiring heights of spiritual centers. It led me to learn how to be a shamanic practitioner so I could bring healing without a lot of talk. And it led me to walk my talk in peaceful protests against injustice
Most of all it continued to lead me ever deeper into my depths where I have discovered that what we have called “God” all these millenia is actually a pulsing energy field of Unconditional Love, is actually Love itself, Love at the Source, Love as our home, Love as our destiny. This Love is alive inside us and all of Nature. It desires to gift us with ever more lavish expressions of our infinite potential.
In short, Love is all.
This is why consciousness continues to be my passion.
You can get in contact with Bill here!
Bill O'Brien, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Bill O'Brien has decades of experience helping individuals and groups expand their awareness of the capacities of their inner selves, their full, or divine, potential. He utilizes a range of methods to expand consciousness from meditation to self-knowledge techniques to guided imagery to shamanic healing methodologies such as Illumination and Soul Retrieval. With his Consciousness Coaching, experience is the touchstone. The goal is drawing up into conscious awareness the infinite contents of the individual unconscious. Bill spent twenty years in the Jesuit Order before launching out on the great adventure of the discovery of the Self. His Wisdomkeepers reach a worldwide audience. He is the author of "Wise Guyde: The First Forty-Five Columns" available on Amazon. His mission: feeding the spiritual hunger of the world by healing and elevating human consciousness.
