Paul Sullivan

“I was unearthing painful emotions a few months ago with the help of a hypnotherapist when my acute distress gave way to an unexpected state of total calm and bliss, such as I had never experienced before. Following the session (and so no longer in a trance state) this feeling of bliss persisted.

It accompanied me as I walked to the station to catch the train home; every bush, flower, house and shop-sign I passed was like the first I had ever seen. I studied them all with incredulity, the colours more vibrant than ever before.
I stood on the platform in the early evening sunshine as a sea of commuters parted and swept along on either side of me. I remember feeling that if I were to stand in that spot forever I couldn’t be any happier.

The intensity diminished over the course of the evening but I was left with a certainty that I’d experienced life from another place, another viewpoint or another self I’d been previously unaware of.

By stilling my mind (easier said than done!) I have since been able to return to this state of peace and well being, albeit to a less intense version than that experienced during that first revelation. I’ve also been spontaneously overtaken on occasions, fleetingly, by an overwhelming feeling that all is well.

This didn’t begin for me as a spiritual quest but as a medical one. It has taken me in a different, and more significant, direction than I’d anticipated. Whether we might call it a ‘gleam divine’ I don’t know. I feel it is a glimpse of my natural state that has been buried for a good many years.

I’ve come to learn, as a result of subsequent experience (albeit limited), that it isn’t necessarily a question of inhabiting one state of consciousness (the everyday) or the other (the deeper, spiritual) but that it is possible to straddle these two states to allow everyday activities to be guided by this original vision. (And here’s where I’m in danger of being taken for a lunatic, going about my business with a broad smile on my face!). I’m finding this a pretty exciting and potentially life-changing realisation.

I share your perception of a ‘spiritual sense which needs to be acknowledged and nurtured if we are to remain sane’. It seems to me to be about making the space and creating sufficient stillness in order to be receptive to this guidance coming from within.
Perhaps we might beware, as individuals, of being too cerebral as it seems that too much mind activity serves as an obstacle to being receptive to this subtle inner guidance”. ~ H. B.