14 Oct What’s All This About My Upcoming Sabbatical?

The Why

I have been writing, teaching, traveling and counseling pretty much nonstop since 2000. It’s been a great gift every single moment, but it’s also taken a toll on my body, especially since I’ve been navigating a chronic illness the whole way.

For a while now, my whole being has been calling for deep rest. With the help of one of our inspiring community members, Ann Thompson Cook, I finally found a way to make that happen. Next year, I will take a three month sabbatical, February through April. Modest, to be sure, but I couldn’t be more excited.

The What

After a week or two of “chill time,” I’m going to turn my whole focus to a project I’ve been putting off for twenty years—telling the unbelievable but true story of my spiritual awakening in 1995.

For a long time I didn’t want to draw attention to what happened behind the scenes of what I usually refer to as an opening of the heart. How my heart actually opened was a wild, chaotic ride, which I was in no way prepared for and could find no satisfying reference to in spiritual literature.

I worried that if I shared the experience, it would make me seem “other,” and that it would lessen my credibility in sharing my core principals and practices of emotional connection. Worse yet, it might cause others to feel like they were missing out on something without having had a “special” experience of their own.

So, I took the advice of most sages and kept quiet about it.

Now, I’m filled with enthusiasm to create new ventures that will bring emotional connection to millions of people around the globe. At the same time, I can’t help but heed a deep calling that says, “Tell your story first. Bear witness. Don’t die without sharing your unique journey.”

And that’s just what I plan to do during my break from facilitating and counseling. I will tell the story using all my creative skills. I will not turn it into a book of lessons, or a guide, but rather just describe the entire phenomenon as best I can.

(Does this actually sound like more work and not rest? Trust me, this project will rejuvenate me like nothing else!)

I suspect that many of you have had your own numinous experiences, and that they haven’t quite looked and felt like what you’ve read about in the great wisdom traditions.

Hopefully, my own project will inspire you to “out” yourself as well, so that we can finally include the full array of messy and mystifying aspects that are often an unavoidable part of waking up.