The Beginning: A Bit of an Anomaly

Awakening:  A recognition, realization, or coming into awareness of something.

Mystical:  1. Of or relating to mystics or mysticism which is characterized by a direct experience of the Divine, God or the Absolute 2. Having a spiritual meaning or reality that is neither apparent nor obvious to the senses nor obvious to intelligence 

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"You are a bit of an anomaly," the psychiatrist from the Amen clinic had said after reviewing the brain scans I had come in for a couple days earlier.   It was August 2021, and my sister had been interviewed on the CBS nightly news earlier in the year.  That interview had attracted a donor who donated a $6000 package of sessions to the Amen Clinic which specializes in integrative mental health through brain scans.  The idea was to have me seen and diagnosed by the most cutting edge psychiatry out there, and the conversation with this psychiatrist was the culmination of that process.  As the conversation continued, he further explained that my scans did not fit the mold for any of the more popular diagnoses like schizophrenia, schizoaffective or bi-polar disorder as had been mentioned by previous doctors. (The Amen Clinic uses brain scans and compares them to their extensive database of brain scans of all kinds of mental health disorders.  In that database, the brains of schizophrenics all look similar.  Those with bi-polar look similar to each other as well and so on.)  My brain scans didn't match any of those.  

We were searching for answers because by that time, I had gone into a psychosis on two separate occasions beginning in 2017, and I did not have a life-long history with mental illness.  You see in 2017, the unthinkable had happened.   I had had an argument with my stepmom from whom I was renting a guesthouse, and she had kicked me out.   I had had an incredible month at work as a senior loan officer for a mortgage bank so I wasn't that concerned at the time, but after a month of a nice hotel, a couple months of an expensive new unplanned-for apartment, and a "guaranteed" job opportunity that didn't pan out, I found myself out of money and homeless in my car--something I had never dreamed could ever happen to someone like me.  

It was terrifying to say the least.  There were long nights of staying awake with the engine running--terrified that someone would approach the car, and I wouldn't be able to move away quickly enough.  There was nothing but fast food while there was money and the over-whelming stress of figuring out how to get out of that mess.  After a couple weeks of that, I eventually ended up in what I believe was a response to the trauma of it all--psychosis, and the psychosis yielded two separate occasions where I did not stop for a police officer.  Each time they were attempting to pull me over for a routine traffic stop and both times, because of the delusion produced by the psychosis, they looked unsafe to me so I refused to stop.  These incidences resulted in two felony charges of evading a police officer.

During the second bout of psychosis which set in over 2020 and the beginning of 2021, my sister decided to do the interview with CBS news in what she felt was an attempt to save my life.  This time, after another perfect storm of circumstances including Covid, I ended up on the street with no car, no shelter, and at a couple points, no money for food or anything else.  I was nearly trafficked, and I was assaulted several times.  Out of desperation, my sister had written a letter to the governor asking for intervention because she had hit dead end after dead end trying to save me.  CBS picked up word of the letter and asked to interview her.  That interview yielded tremendous exposure, a myriad of donations and the sessions and testing with the Amen clinic.  Their final diagnosis:  stress-induced psychosis.

And the truth shall set you free.  They say your biggest setback sets the stage for your greatest comeback, and on the other side of all of these events,  I have been looking for the way to restart my life.   Jail terms, assaults, 5150's, debilitating anxiety, months on the street, cops, lawyers, the legal system--these have been the buzz words of the last 6 years.  As I began to look at my options for beginning life anew, I soon came to realize that my forward path would have to be anything but conventional.  

And that's where this project comes in.  After months of racking my brain trying to find a concrete way to move forward with my life, I began to see that the traditional path for someone who has been incarcerated is not exactly an easy one.   It's also not exactly chock-filled with options.  Although I am not a believer in limitations except those that are self-made, the path forward is definitely different than the one I was on before to say the least.  

Ironically, when the events of 2017 unfolded, I was doing really, really well in my life.  I had had the best month I had ever had in my mortgage career making more in that month than I ever had before.  I had a healing practice with some regular clients, and I was in the process of building it with the intention of switching careers so I could help people as an intuitive healer full time.  I was loving every minute of building that practice.  I was also mentoring seven women, and I had just gotten back a couple months earlier from speaking in Philadelphia.  To any casual observer, it certainly looked like my dreams were in the process of coming true.  Instead, a nightmare unfolded. 

Having been involved in the areas of personal development, spirituality and recovery for over 25 years now as my most passionate pursuit,  I happen to believe that much of our experience is created by our conscious and unconscious beliefs and the energy we put toward them.   I also happen to believe that everything happens for a reason and that there are no accidents in God's universe.  Therefore, after surveying the damage and getting my bearings on my current positioning in the world, I decided to design this project--one that would test and hopefully attest to the validity of all of my most cherished beliefs and understandings gleaned over the last 25 years of study in the areas of metaphysics, spirituality, psychology and personal development.  

I decided that I would combine the most powerful tools that I have learned during my course of study along with the teachings of my favorite spiritual and personal development teachers in a daily practice/ treatment plan to heal myself and recreate my life.  I would leave no stone unturned in doing everything I humanly could to get my life back off the ground and heal.  Simultaneously, and perhaps most importantly, I would combine all of the previously mentioned methods with an abundance of prayer and meditation with the intention of opening the door to God-reliance.

The objective of the project is to Awaken to the Mystical--to be lead by the Divine to a solution that is beyond my conscious present understanding.  So much of awakening to the form of guidance I am hoping to glean from this project is about conscious, open-minded listening to and for the whispers of God.  Often, that type of guidance comes in the form of synchronicity, inspiration, a strong hunch, or words, phrases and/or images in meditation or in the silence.  Awakening to the Mystical is about allowing the loving guidance of the Divine in all forms to provide the needed answers when the needed answers are not as obvious as one might hope they would be.  

The Treatment Plan:  Prayer, Gratitude, Journaling, Visualization/ Affirmations, breathwork, Mirror-work, and a blessings practice from Dannion Brinkley (Secrets of the Light p. 195)

The idea is to practice this treatment plan a minimum of 5 days a week and combine it with listening to or reading the top teachers in personal development, spirituality, and metaphysics while integrating their top distinctions into the treatment plan as we go.  The intention is to allow it all to completely heal and recreate my life.   My Hypothesis is that it can and will do exactly that.

I invite you, as the reader, to come along for the ride.  If it has the power to transform my life, I'm trusting it can do the very same for you.

The practice begins now.

Ready. Set. Awaken.