Peter Calhoun is one of these. He wrote Soul On Fire about his experiences. Rather than expound on what he and his wife Astrid have done, I’ll let him give you some hints. His website is www.petercalhoun.com.
Entering into Ecstasy
“Our destiny as human beings is to enter into ecstasy. This is accomplished by achieving a conscious union with All That Is. A number of people today have achieved partial ecstasy, but this is only in group highs such as some religious ceremonies, listening to a symphony orchestra or attending a rock concert. On the individual level, it is sometimes achieved through the runner’s high or edge sports such as rock climbing, auto racing and white water kayaking. Soldiers on the battlefield have been known to experience great ecstasy, but who wants to wait until their lives are imperilled to receive Enlightenment?
But such euphoria can only be experienced under rigid or very limited conditions, and it is but a shadow of true ecstasy. When one has once experienced partial ecstasy, there is little taste for anything else. It always leaves one hungry for more, and the only recourse, for one not engaged in spiritual practices, is to keep reproducing those same conditions. This is not always that easy.
My decision to start an apprenticeship program was to offer a means of achieving that total ecstasy in the only way possible, which is through union with our Conscious Creation – to discover that there is a deep awareness in all of creation: the animals and great trees, the mountains, rivers, canyons, the desert springs, the wind and the fire, and, as I discovered in my numerous trips to the red rock country in the Four Corners area, in the stones themselves, with which I’ve had some of my most loved communication.
And this unity consciousness includes one another! How could it not? Some of you have remarked to me how Astrid is totally present with everyone she meets and is always laughing. And you wondered how she is able to be like that so much of the time. I’ve said that it is her sheer joy and elation of being one with our conscious Creation, with all life on this planet.
Astrid has said to me, “You shouldn’t write such things about me because people would have expectations, and I’m not always like that.”
I’ve pointed out that she has achieved a level in which this is her normal state of consciousness.
“That doesn’t mean you are always like that,” I said. “No one is. When you deviate from that, you always return quickly to that place.”
I told her that when she is in that place, she is a manifestation of the Goddess. And it enables others, especially women, to see their own higher reflection in her.
When an ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church, I was given the directive to teach the Father God, and yet, ironically, all of my direct encounters with Deity, including but not limited to those described in Soul on Fire, have all been with the Devine Feminine. In those encounters, including with Artemis, who is the goddess of nature magic and the Earth Mother, as well as the Cosmic Mother, which has happened on several occasions, I was told that in the years ahead there will be an increasing number of women as well as a few men such as myself who will be manifesting the Goddess in her many faces.
When Artemis Huntress came to me three times in my lucid dream, I knew I’d better take note, and it was on her third visit (there’s that magical “three” again) that she told me accurate things about my future that did come to pass. She also said, “You will bring many back to the Earth Mother, for you are the Servant of the Goddess.”
So it was inevitable, I suppose, that my future partner would be a manifestation of the Goddess.
Recently, the Dalai Lama made a startling statement. He said that western women will save the world. I believe he was speaking a profound truth. Man, today, will have to let go of their egos and learn to step aside and share or even turn over the helm to enormously talented women emerging in every field. To refuse to do so, as some seem committed to be doing, is to become shipwrecked as a species.
Another reason for my offering an internal apprenticeship program is that the time in which we are able to make changes in our lives is rapidly coming to an end.
There will continue to be opportunities for growth on this and other planes, but change can occur only in the context of linear time in which we have no memory of our cumulative past.
We’ve come here not only to bring light to this world but also to change those aspects of ourselves that do not serve us. The vast majority of those persons who live lives of materialism are souls who have given up on themselves – souls who have realized on a level the conscious mind can’t fathom that in the present life and previous ones they continue to fail to correct those aspects of their being they came here for. Of course, those who use their wealth to uplift the masses or help to heal the Earth for the Greater Good are exceptions.”
Our present world economy model of harvesting the earth for financial gain is obviously not working. Our persistence in this endeavor must change if we want our future offspring to inherit anything but a scavenged earth. Our Mother Earth can provide us with everything we need for the lifetime of humanity… yet what she provides may not be what we think we need.
