I started a process about 15 years ago. At that time I was working in my own medical practice as a pain management physician who had trained in anesthesiology and pain management. I had a lovely family, a very busy practice and a little mind filled with incessant thoughts that was totally disconnected from my bodily impulses. Anxiety and stress was every where, but I definitely kept it up cover when putting on the persona of a medical professional.
I maintained a demanding practice while participating in tennis and karate on multiple days per week. Family interactions were there, but I knew I always made excuses to keep everyone at a bit of an arms length. After being injured at karate, I kept up this persona including caring for a large rural property. As my right hand grew weaker in the months after my injury, I eventually was diagnosed with several herniated discs in my neck requiring a multiple level fusion. That was the first time in 20 years that I had taken off more than a week at a time. I hurried back to work, resuming where I had left off. Only now, there was something there that was a bit different.
I started dreaming. Huge vivid colorful dreams that kept occurring night after night. One of many hobbies, scuba diving was one of my favorite things to do, and it wasn’t surprising that many of the dreams were of large colorful ‘angel’ fish inviting me to come back to the ocean in my subconscious life. Totally contrasting were dreams of war, destruction and atomic bombs. Standing in the destruction of Hiroshima, I was told by a female guide ‘Don’t worry, it will come again,’ as I watched the rising of the most intense bright light I had ever seen. With that, I knew I had to find an earthly guide to help me look at these dreams that were so powerful and unsettling.
With a Jungian trained psychologist, I began to look for the meaning these dreams and were I was in my life. Despite all my successes which seemed to come easy enough, I had become totally depressed. but of course, I could continue my daily medical practice with a totally meaningless smile. At one meeting with the psychologist, I declared, ‘There must be something else to all this.’ I had some insight to my dreams. I had money. I had a large medical practice, and a caring family, but I had no true meaning that I could see in any of it. A huge void was about the only thing that I could see and experience. Everyone else had found meaning through the form of their lives, or so I thought. Everyone else on TV and in personal encounters had love and happiness. Where was mine?
Ever since I was a teenager, I had a recurring theme so loudly spoken in my head that I could hear it as plainly as one might be speaking out loud to a friend. It told me that I was undeserving of joy and happiness, and that if I ever found it, God would allow me to experience it for a split second and then obliterate me for eternity. Believing that obliteration for eternity was not a thing to be desired, I did all I could to sabotage joy and foster unhappiness in all those around me. And I was a master at doing just that!
A friend suggested reading Eckhart Tolle’s book ‘The Power of Now.’ I read the first few paragraphs, and then put the book down saying that it was ‘full of s..t!!’ Obviously, I was not quite ready to make any real changes from an inner perspective. About six months later I picked up Eckhart’s book again. This time, I was ready, and soon I had read the entire book. What struck me upon that first reading were the chapters on ‘pain body.’ Boy, could I relate with what I saw in myself and what I saw in other people. I remember first watching pain body roar into activity through anger over a family member’s misdeed towards me. I could feel the physical-ness of the pain body as it grew through my entire chest as if thousands of insects were eating my heart and lungs from the inside out. Little did I know that this feeling was one I had kept submerged and subdued in my quest to be as unhappy as I could. Like most of us, I was more than satisfied with letting pain body take over without even noticing the total physical nature of the experience.
I read Eckhart’s books several times and picked up a few of his auditory CD’s. Underneath Eckhart’s words was a connection that I had not felt for quite some time. There was a ‘content’ that I knew was absent in all form and all my former relationships. This ‘content’ brought silence to the head for the first time that I could remember. Along with this underlying connection, I read multiple quotes from ‘A Course In Miracles’ in Eckhart’s books. And I knew that I had to get this book and read it as well.
So a connection was made, and through it I learned of a work that I had never heard of before, ‘A Course In Miracles.’ I have now read this many times, and with each reading, I see more of the underlying messages that are being told to us. One of these is that ‘all physical impulses are miracle impulses.’ I did not get this at first, and my impression is that most people don’t get the meaning of this at all, including the pre-eminent teachers of ACIM. Other folks got the meaning of this, but not through the words of ACIM. Another teacher was suggested to me. One that took an entirely different approach to seeing through the suffering we had ‘made’ for ourselves. One that used the specificity of physical impulses to help guide us through more open communion with our sub conscious. A different way of looking at physical impulses was introduced by Scott Kiloby and his ‘unfindable inquiries.’
My work for now, and this website, are to bring these two works together and try to explain them especially for students of ACIM. Looking at physical impulses will be ever so important in looking at ‘what we have made,’ as described in ACIM.
ACIM Embodied 