Challenging Childhoods and Spiritual Experiences

I have been sick so I am reading a lot. I love libraries, and I found a book called Extraordinary Awakenings, by Steve Taylor, a Psychologist from the UK. It’s a book about Post Traumatic Growth and how Trauma can lead to Transformation. I recommend it, especially for therapists and healing professionals.

The author shared that spiritual experiences, breakthroughs or awakenings can alienate us. There is no framework to talk about them, especially for children who lack the vocabulary. I felt outcast in my own mind for my experiences. And, coupled with my life experience at the time, I feared telling anybody. I tried a few times with my family, but I didn’t have the words. I sounded crazy.

I am sharing these experiences because I think they are important. I wonder how many others have had similar ones, especially those from difficult childhoods. I am happy to hear from anyone who would like to reach out to me about their experience.

One that stands out is a recurring dream, or nightmare, I had when I was around 6 years old. I am walking down my street in front of my hometown house, and I hear a whirring sound from above. It is a big balloon. It explodes and in an instant everything on Earth is reduced to dust. I am floating around space with other dust particles and there is no memory that the Earth ever existed.

This dream was overwhelming, and when I tried to explain it to my family they laughed because all I could say was, “It was so big!” I was trying to express the enormity of the experience. There are many, many layers to this dream, but I will go into only a couple.

First and foremost, this is a spiritual experience, a horrible and difficult one for a child to have, but it speaks to my situation directly. My mother was mentally ill and in and out of mental institutions. My father was molesting me. And, my sense of self was coming apart even as it was forming at that tender age. The dream speaks to an ego dissolution, one that I am still going through. I’ve written exclusively about The Work in this blog. The Work is about helping the egoic mind to let go.

Ironically, my father had an LP with the radio broadcast of the Hindenburg disaster, a derigible, that exploded in 1937 killing 38 people. The broadcast was horrifying to hear, but I don’t think I heard it until I was in my teens. This won’t be the first time that my experiences call into question our collective experience and definitions of Time and Space.

Not all of my experiences were horrifying. When I was between 4 or 5 years old, my other siblings, 3 and 6 years older, were in school. At home, it was me and my mother. We lived in a small, country town in upstate New York called Red Hook. Our neighborhood consisted of 4 or 5 streets, very small. Of course, at that time, it was my life and felt very safe. I remember going to see friends on the next street. To get there I walked a dirt path as a shortcut next to a field. It must have been late April or early May. It was a beautiful, clear and spectacular northeast morning. I returned from seeing my friends and walked down the dirt path towards my house.

Before I descended down a small hill to our street from the path, I looked up. My mother was an Italian immigrant and often hung sheets out to dry in the windows. I saw these white and light blue sheets billowing in the cool, fresh breeze, and I was captivated. It watched as they danced. I became transfixed and then I felt an overwhelming sense of sadness, beauty and grace. For a moment I was connected to EVERYTHING, and I knew that I was okay. I stood in that experience, tears rolling down my cheeks, and then quietly walked home.

I never shared that with my family or anyone. There were no words for it. Absolutely none. And it came at a time in my life with tremendous suffering. I felt a heavy burden because, like most kids, I took responsibility for it all. This experience was the complete opposite. It was a letting go, and I felt at home in myself and in my body. I knew there was something more. I felt a connection to God, to something, to all things.

Several years later I took to hiding in the hedges in our backyard. It was a way to put off the abuse. I knew when my father was “in that mood”, and I would go outside, and hide, and bide my time. I’d sit on the ground and watch ants, bees, beetles and listen to birds. I would get into a mindful state and forget about everything. Especially what was going to happen. My anxiety would settle and I’d get lost in quiet thoughts that were peaceful and kind. It was a sanctuary. Eventually, my father would find me. It was a way to submit without being totally overwhelmed. During those times I felt very connected to the natural world and to all things, my definition of God.

After one particularly difficult episode of abuse around age 8, I returned to my room to become immersed in the early spring sunshine coming through my window. I watched the dust particles float up and down in the light. I was barely in my body, dissociated, and then I started to experience peace. Somehow, I knew that everything was going to be alright. It was a very clear message that my future was going to be okay, good even, and that I would be happy.

I taught myself to meditate in my early 30’s. After leaving an engineering career, I was broke, out of work, and had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I sat in front of my window every morning for an hour. I had no idea how to meditate, but I was a Wayne Dyer fan, and I decided to heed his advice and make sitting in silence my top priority. What did I have to lose?

I had some interesting experiences in those first few months. Once, I felt myself leave my body, go into space and then come down to that same 8-year-old inside my room. I saw little Chris sitting alone on the floor, and I sent myself as much love as I could and reassured him that he would be okay, that we were going to find a way to happiness and a life that worked for us.

When I came out of that meditation, I cried. I made the connection that perhaps it was me who was sending that message to myself all of those years ago. Sounds nuts, right? But here’s that Time and Space issue again.

I hope sharing these childhood spiritual experiences encourages one of you to share yours with someone or even me. Try to remember those little tykes inside of us who had these experiences are just waiting for the opportunity to enlighten us. They are outside the box of culture, but it’s okay. There are more of us out there than you think:)