Braided Way has featured many essays and poems by John over the years. He is the author of a dozen books combining psychology, social change, and soul work. He joins us to talk about his newest book.
Say a little about how I Am God: Wisdom and Revelation From Mystical Consciousness differs from your previous eleven books.
A natural mystic, I long sensed that we inhabit God’s consciousness and already dwell in Heaven on Earth. I soon discovered that mystics from across time, religion, and geography have been saying this for eons. It’s the biggest secret on the spiritual path! Drawing on the mystical literature and my passion to reveal the divine world, I have been writing books and articles on mystical consciousness over the past 30 years to share this realization with others. The poems and revelations in I Am God arose directly from mystical consciousness and are intended to evoke the same awakened state in the reader.
How would you describe mystical consciousness?
Mystical consciousness is always present but obscured by thoughts, beliefs, and preoccupations. So, it’s not about getting something new but removing the ever-present smog of ideas. Mystical consciousness is pure, intensified, thought-free, sensory perception in which even you – being an idea – no longer exist. It is God’s consciousness. The “I” is like a cursor allowing soul – that part of God’s consciousness still associated with you, to focus awareness.
Experienced directly, we also discover that all being is God’s being, blissful and perfect. In this state, beliefs are illusions, problems are projections, and the world is conscious and loving. Reality becomes brighter and more beautiful. If you stayed in this state long enough, you’d realize that you were looking directly into God and Heaven on Earth. Numerous practices for experiencing mystical consciousness can be found in my books.
People say it’s impossible to stop thinking as required in mystical consciousness. How do you quiet the busy mind?
You stop thinking all the time, you just don’t notice, like when you thread a needle, paint trim, or look up at the full moon in awe. If you were free climbing El Capitan in Yosemite, would you be thinking about your taxes, the recent fight with your boss, or a new lover? This state of mystical awareness is natural to the right cerebral hemisphere, it’s just that the left brain’s thinking has taken over everyday consciousness. In moments of intense focus, awe, or danger, we shift into the heightened thought-free perceptional state. This state is also the doorway to awakening and the perception of Heaven on Earth.
Have practices like this, approaching the ineffable and being open to responses, helped you be present for these revelations?
Yes. Thoughts, emotions, and beliefs dissolve in mystical consciousness. I see how easily they generate illusions and create problems. It’s like sleep-walking or self-hypnosis. When the mind quiets and we awaken from its projections, the sacred nature of being is revealed. Mystical revelations come naturally in this state. I have written thousands of mystical insights, poems and revelations from mystical consciousness. I understand how Rumi produced over 40,000 poems! Scribes had to follow him around to record the spontaneous outflow of his awakened state.
Can you say more about how these verses come to you?
I sit quietly, patiently. I cease thinking. Shifting into the sharpened sensory awareness of the mystic, I bring whatever is on my mind into awakened, thought-free consciousness. It may bring a dream, an upset, an insight, a question, and immediately mystical understandings emerge. It’s as if I see with infinite clarity what is happening, freeing the right brain to reveal the transcendent nature of divine being. I record the realizations and usually feel amazed at what has been learned. Later I put the words in better order for clearer communication.
The direct “I” in your verses is you, is me, is God. Do you think these source-inspired works have some similarities to say Donald Neale Walsh’s Conversations With God series of books?
I have not read Walsh’s books but have to believe we are describing the same experiential process.
What are some ways your stage in life influences your writing?
With our new longevity and expanding spirituality, aging represents an initiation into a new developmental stage of the human life cycle, offering the transformation of self and consciousness and the revelation of a new and sacred world all around us. This experience opens the floodgates of love, joy, wonder, and service. I feel myself changing and evolving as I age, as if God were entering my cells, expanding my consciousness, and transforming me into something new. Rather than a time of diminishment, aging can be a time of awakening consciousness.
You mention, in your book Mystical Activism, your practice of talking to the dead. Can you tell us a little about this?
Mystics teach that imagination can function as an organ of perception. Following many vivid dream visitations from my father, son, and mother, as well as spirit guides and former patients, I knew we could communicate with deceased loved ones on the other side. Combining the skills of active imagination, free association and spontaneous dialogue, I developed a practice I call Mystical Active Imagination. I was soon having long conversations with loving ancestors and visited Heaven much like Swedenborg did. The veil between worlds grows thinner in mystical consciousness.
Have you been changed by writing these revelations?
I am constantly being changed as I write in mystical consciousness. Everyday I take thoughts, feelings, perceptions, or beliefs into God’s conscious presence and revelations transform everything I am and know. Writing mystical poetry is now my primary spiritual practice.
What are your hopes for the impact of your verses on readers?
I believe that the same divine energy, inspiration, and revelation that gave rise to these poems still infuses them, and when others read their words with an open, quiet, and reception consciousness they can access the same awakened state. This process has been confirmed to me by many readers. My hope is that countless others can take the time to awaken this same awareness and send ripples of divine consciousness through our troubled world. Mystical activism is not doing something, it’s merging with God to transform our emotions, attitudes, relationships, and response to one day meld Heaven and Earth.
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John is looking for a publisher for his next volume of revelations in verse.
