I am sitting on a hard wood floor. All around me in this room are cold stone walls going up about thirty feet. There is no visible light source. It’s dim. I am sitting in a meditation posture, meditating. I see the figure of a man, sinewy, dark face, with pointed, very defined features. It’s not the face of a man; more the face of a monster! It scares me! Then all of a sudden he’s levitating in front of me and he communicates with me! I instantly realize that this is my guru, my spiritual teacher! I realize I have nothing to fear! I realize this entity is going to take me to the ever-loving bliss of God! Slowly I start to levitate with him, but not with my body. It’s almost as if my essence is coming up! As it does, I feel this raw ecstatic joy, love, and bliss. I can’t even describe how it felt! A feeling of oneness with the universe! I know I am stepping out of dualism and that my time is up in material creation and that I am starting to merge with the infinite!
Most meditators would like to have an experience like Mark had in this dream. Many people would like to find the right spiritual teacher or Guru to teach them how to be one with the divine. Why don’t they? Well, the fact is, they probably already do; they just don’t know it.
That this powerfully transformative experience came in a dream tells us that dreams can and do teach us about meditation. If Mark had not remembered this dream the experience would still have occurred, resonating on some subliminal levels of awareness. That implies that you are most likely having dreams that can and do help you overcome obstacles to your growth every night that you do not remember. How might your life be different if you not only remembered such dream experiences but had a tool to unfold their practical value for your life? How would your life be different if you learned to become your own ideal teacher or guru, that already is where you want to be in your development and knows how to get you there?
When Mark imagined that he was the Guru in his dream it said, “I like my face. I dislike that my face scares Mark, but he needs to see that which is beneath appearances. I could have come as anything. I chose this persona to teach. I’m here to help Mark reconnect with the infinite, for self-realization. Mark has the desire in his heart and his soul to find the truth. He has desire to escape limitations that he places on himself. In his heart he called to me, so I have come to him. I go about levitating because I am one with the universe. I can be anywhere, at any time. I can be a man floating in the air!”
Notice that this “guru” is not afraid to scare Mark, if that is what it takes to wake him up. Mark might have wanted to change this dream so that say, the Guru wouldn’t scare him or so that he became the Guru, or so that all his waking problems were solved. However, these are not paths to enlightenment recommended by the Guru. Instead, he said, “If I could change this dream I would leave it as it is. I most closely personify Mark’s higher self. He needs to see his higher self as a monster because that’s how he wants to see me in the moment. He’s still afraid of the future, he’s still afraid of letting go. So in his fear he creates a monster! My greatest strengths are my oneness with everything, my total realization and understanding of the universe. The reason why I am in this dream is to show Mark that there is hope, that his spiritual development does not have to be done alone and that he is always loved, forever, and that connection is never broken.
Most of us never manage to unmask our fear of the unknown. We misperceive our own greatest potentials as fearsome and then react to them. Rare is the person who is able to see past their fears, recognizing that they are our greatest gifts, in disguise. This Guru places emphasis on attitudes, perspectives, and behaviors that represent different, broader, more inclusive priorities than those Mark currently holds.
Next, the Guru said, “If I were in charge of Mark’s life I wouldn’t change it. He’s doing what he needs to do right now. He changed some things recently and it was exactly what he needed to do. Regarding money, his faith in spirit is strong but his patience is weak. He has little patience. He is learning to experience and have patience and realize that what he desires will come to him when he needs it to. He must continue to do what he is doing, having faith and being patient, not letting anxiety overcome his reason. Let it out, let it go, and give it away! He is going to be a good father, but he knows that. Regarding being a single father, this situation will take care of itself. Nothing is needed for him to do, just to be and to go with it. Mark and Julia learned what they needed to learn. Now they need to be separate to learn what they need to learn. Mark already knows that the child is Indigo and that the most important thing he can do is show unconditional love. He doesn’t yet know how to show it, but he’s getting it.”
Trans-rational and transpersonal perspectives, like Mark’s guru, are often encountered in Integral Deep Listening interviewing, but often appear in mundane forms that do not look at all enlightened. They are easily assumed to be mundane and meaningless left-overs from daytime thought processes. This is in fact the case, but what happens when you interview them? They will generally reveal themselves to possess perspectives that both include, yet transcend, your own.
“Mark will benefit from identifying with me because he will realize that I am always here, that he will grow into me, and we will be one. He just needs to keep smiling and laughing. Play a little more! His lower self has been neglected a little. Follow his heart. Regarding Integral Deep Listening, it’s a wonderful thing for him to learn. He will learn higher forms of meditation and self-realization. His desire to help others will lead him into teaching things that will help them know themselves.”
Such statements need to be objectively evaluated within the test tube of Mark’s life. When the experiment is performed, are healing, balancing, and transformation in his life experienced or not?
Acceptance was another key message Mark received from the Guru: “Let it out, let it go, and give it away!” Mark gained a deep inner sense that his life is on the right track, and that he is headed in the right direction, despite his worries about his impending parenthood and financial struggles.
This interview powerfully influenced Mark. He learned that the Guru he was seeking is within himself, that he avoids awakening because the seeming unattainability of that state intimidates him. This is personified by the scary face of the Guru. Part of Mark intuitively knows that to transform, he must die, and death scares the limited waking self whom we normally think that we are. Mark received a powerful message of love and support and understood better that he needs to look beneath the surface of how things seem to him. He now knew there existed easily accessible perspectives that wanted to help him to learn to meditate and to help him be more fully alive, and that he could access them any time. He recognized that he now had a powerful tool to help him meditate: He could sit down to practice and become the guru! By doing so he was becoming an innate emerging perspective that already knew how to meditate! He could now go forward with his life knowing that he was not alone and that he had powerful sources of inner support and direction that he could access anytime, that were naturally able to meditate, even if he was not.
Integral Deep Listening teaches you to look at your life from the perspective of your inner compass. This is a perspective that includes meditative consciousness, and it evolves as you learn to practice deep listening to perspectives that score high in six core qualities that personify your highest potentials: confidence, compassion, wisdom acceptance, inner peace and witnessing.
