An Email from a listener:

[Christopher O'Brien]

I love it when I get the occasional letter from someone that has read one of my books or heard my on-the-air and it has sparked something in their reality or mind striking enough to write me. A PROACTIVE investigator of these hidden realms can't ask for anything more rewardingly gratifying.


Chris, can't tell you how much I've enjoyed your interviews lately. I've heard you
on Coast to Coast, the Paracast and with Greg Bishop. Finally decided I'd write to
agree with you and so that I can say this to someone, anyone!. And I'll be buying
your book when I end this missive. Been meaning to get to it anyway.

Let me just preface with the fact that I'm almost sixty years old, married to a
regular guy, but he and my kids have always thought me pretty weird just because of
my interests. I am, but I don't live in the middle of an enchanted valley, rather
I'm in a suburb of Houston, Texas and most of my life can be summed up as normal,
whatever that really is.

I'll skip a lot of the strange things that have happened around me over the years
since I began meditating in my late thirties. An epiphany at that time and the
resulting rather miraculous occurances (at least for me) seemed to be the beginning
of a different life for me.

At the time, I still had kids to raise and I shut down all interest in the
paranormal because I was plagued with dreams of firey things trying to dissuade me
from my interests. I took them up on their threat with the hope I might pursue them
when I eventually had time to myself one day.

A knowledgable friend told me many years later that my experiences at the time were
classic rituals of shamanism and suggested I was a natural in that regard. I still
don't feel he is correct, but I seem to be now experiencing some things in the realm
of the mystic, something I think we are all capable of manifesting in a Trickster's
manner.

Oddly enough, in the past and in my most recent life, I've agonized over some
behavior or worry (in the recent past, having to do with the state of the economy)
when I finally turn the agonizing questions I had over to my dreams. In a couple of
weeks, a dream answered my questions to my satisfaction.

But I'm sure that the act of giving up, surrendering, whatever one needs call it,
the letting go of all that worried me has been the catalyst for strange things
beginning to happen again. Sometimes, it seems that just accepting a strange idea
as natural rather than paranormal will do the trick. (Empaphsis on the word
"trick.") Once I decided that people weren't lying, for instance, that they were
indeed seeing something in the sky, ufos to be exact, I saw two of them within six
months.

The things that are happening in my house now, mostly rapping on the ceiling or from
the insides of cabinets are of a Trickster variety. My cat and I have heard a dog
growling in a hallway just outside my kitchen. I hear bells ringing occasionally.
I'll hear my kids call my name when they aren't here. In fact, they don't live here
anymore.

There are plenty of instances that most would call ghostly, but I'm of the opinion
that I have a hand in making these things happen, which is why they don't scare me
at all but indeed interest me. I put on my old investigator's hat and go looking
for a rational explanation, but there never seems to be the traditional rational
explanation.

When I get particularly busy with family or duties and away from esoteric thinking,
something usually happens to call me back. That's pretty weird. It's as though
someone (maybe me?) is reminding me that life is much richer than the mundane things
I must do all the time.

In truth, I think I've engaged my Trickster. At this point, it's benign and I am
thoroughly entertained. But I spent years looking at my fears and destroying them
one by one. Each time I let one go, I find all this entertainment going on around
me. I seem to be on the reward-system!

Thanks, it's really nice to say this out loud, in a way, so that my family can go on
and be who they are while I trip out on this stuff.

 

[Gareth]

Great letter man.

Thanks for posting.

 

[Poi]

Chris, I wrote you the email posted in another thread. I did it when I had a moment to myself and after listening to your interview with Bishop. Haven't piped up before because I've dealt with an 85 year old mother, whose mind is "going," at an imaging center this week when a spot was found on her lung. It's probably nothing, but I've spent hours with her trying to move through lengthy lines of medical procedures.

Then I hospitalized my husband for the pain he experienced trying to pass a large kidney stone. Yeah, ouch. And today I'm hauling my son back to a hospital for a colonoscopy. While it appears all will be okay, the week has been disconcerting enough that I didn't and don't feel up to defending your position with any sense of credibility.

I applaud the hours you've spent considering your subject matter as well as the chutzpah you've had to muster to defend your position ... so here I am for what it's worth. I won't be back for a while to defend myself, but I don't feel I need to defend anything anymore. Comes with age, I guess.

The path I've traveled to come to my very similar beliefs about the Trickster is very different from yours. But as I said, I've learned that in throwing off bits of myself that no longer serve me well, after careful consideration and soul searching, I've been rewarded with mystical experiences that loom large in my personal sphere of influence.

Within a larger picture, they don't appear to amount to much, but all I really have to go by is what happens to me anyway. It's all any of us has. So speculation isn't worth much in the end. Finding a sort of faith in what life has told you personally is worth a lot, however. I do appreciate your effort, because no matter how we got to where we are, we're here, stepping into unpopular territory.

I'm good at seeing patterns, always have been. I'm good at dissociating from events in a personal manner to view bigger pictures. I feel myself rise above my head to note how much an argument deals in emotion for me as well as other people involved. When I have more than the personal upon which to rely, I deal effectively with tense situations.

Call it middle child syndrome, whatever works for you, but I'm a healer of tense situations around me. I also have a very good sense for the practical so I have a foot in two worlds naturally. I've never used drugs to come to some of the same conclusions McKenna reached though I don't agree with everything he said either.

I do believe that has led me to experiment with my Trickster and to the delight I find the odd things that happen around me when I have the time to veg out. The truth is, when I lose myself in a quiet task, my Trickster starts acting up, always in my own home and sometimes with people in the room with me. I believe I inadvertently sought her out (hey, she's mine therefore she's female) one day by setting an intention to see what is beyond my normal awareness. It worked and I saw and heard many unusual things, not outside the realm of modern mythological archetypes. I saw and heard more than I expected for some time until I just let the intention go by the wayside. I'd gotten confirmation so it was enough for me. Now I'm still visited and always in new ways of communication. It happens when I least expect it.

Call me haunted, call me crazy, but in one of Deepak Chopra's books he mentions numerous steps humans seem to progress through in a life time if they are very lucky and astute. One of those steps is the miraculous where pretention and expectation have fallen away from an individual. The miraculous begins to happen and the individual is transformed to another stage of development.

I don't pretend that I am there. I've always wavered from one state to another, even wildly at times, but I've had my forays into the unexplained and it all has always had to do with what I'm willing to lose in order to gain something else. My personal Trickster is at the heart of reminding me there's more. There's always more to do and to see.

So if it's only happening to me, maybe I am a bit of the mystic or shaman. If so, it's only because I embrace more than scientific materialism. Sue me. Because I am that way doesn't negate my finding science today that is backing me up. I look for it instead of wrestling in my armchair.

Rationalists will never get that because rationalism is a stalwart defense against matters esoteric and yes, spiritual. To always pose a question with no expectation of learning an answer will get one exactly that. Safety and righteousness, two overblown tools to discount the abstract so visibly present in the sky. We have no defense against rationalism, not because materialists are right, but because they think they are. Their fabric making skills are well honed and defended by great numbers.

In defense of them, we need rationalists to keep us grounded. Rather, we need to a base from which to work and remain grounded ourselves lest we become mired in the woo woo which is also inherent in worlds beyond the physical.

My argument is that no matter what we experience, it's the experience that counts, not necessarily what we see or hear, simply that there is more to us than what meets the eye, much, much more.

Sometimes we are pushed toward movement and finding meaning because long periods of stasis are unnatural to a universe filled with life giving properties inherent in its mix. Entropy, while natural, can be deadly.