We Are Soul
Introduction
AT TWELVE YEARS OF AGE, a powerful spiritual force lifted me out of my body into a world of extreme Light, profound love—and bliss. A bolt of energy pierced my heart like a spear; ecstasy took my breath away. Peace overtook me as the weight of the world fell away. I floated slowly upward to hover a few feet above my body, sitting cross-legged on my bed in the soft light of an early winter night.
Amazed and delighted, the world morphed into a stunning, beautiful, eternal Light. My mind was utterly still. There was absolutely no thought in this amazing world. Wave upon wave of bliss-filled me with a wonderful love for all Life. It was a love beyond anything I could have imagined. This love was without measure—blissful, perfect. It was not of this world, yet it belonged to all worlds.
My life goal became to understand and duplicate that experience at will. Soul to God is the story of my journey to reenter that profound state at will, then venture beyond to my life goal of God Realization.
I've always experienced life a bit differently than most. For instance, I've never feared death because I remember dying many times and know what comes afterward. At two years of age, I recalled my life between lives, my friends and teachers before I was born and how rewarding our work was. Those memories stuck with me but made life very uncomfortable. I felt like I was trapped in a dark world and was homesick for my Home in the other world. At five, I began suffering from frequent nightmares of a violent past life death. At fourteen, while attending Catholic middle school, I started experiencing memories of a life in an ancient Tibetan monastery. I learned to hide my abilities and experiences so that I blended in. I was quiet, careful to share only what others were prepared to understand.
I chose to keep my experiences under wraps until the time came when I was comfortable with sharing and felt more confident that the world was ready to listen. For 20 years, I've procrastinated writing this book, unsure that I'd have the right words to explain what happened in the higher worlds. I'm seventy years old now, and I've kicked the can down the road long enough. Wayne Dyer once advised that we need to share our music while it's still in us.
The stories in Soul to God are not meant to convince you of my viewpoint. They are intended to entertain and be contemplations. They are not an accurate history of my life or lives. They are my honest personal perspective, but personal viewpoints are always skewed by the observer. My sincere belief is that I'm not the real observer. I believe God is the true observer through our eyes. The point of this book is to view life through God's eyes and experience God's presence in your heart.
At heart, I am a skeptic who takes everyone and everything with a grain of salt. I have deeply ingrained memories of my life as a Tibetan Buddhist Monk growing up in a Lhasa Monastery in the 14th century. As a part of our study, we participated in sport-like debates in an outdoor courtyard to deepen our comprehension of Buddhist doctrine to advance our studies. I loved the sport of debate and was good at it. I later became a lama instructing debate traditions to young monks.
Within debate exercises, I taught my students how to think logically to challenge all viewpoints, even scripture in holy books. I believed it was essential to challenge one's own thinking. I emphasized that we should take nothing for granted in our efforts to open wide the doors to comprehension and clear perspective. I believed these open doors led to the enlightened state—nirvana.
I confess that I did not reach nirvana in that lifetime, much to my disappointment, on my death bed. I remember lying in a small monk cell, looking up at my young assistant. A single small oil lamp cast an orange light on his young face in the early morning darkness. My last prayer was to use my future lives to attain final liberation. Some five centuries later, I am writing this book after experiencing lives as a Shinto Monk, Zen Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, Hasidic Jew, and Christian.
There comes a time in a person's life when they respectfully set aside the viewpoints of others to claim the freedom to express their truth, then let the chips fall where they may. I realize my life stories are fantastic, and the coincidences seem implausible. I've waited so long to write this book because I was hoping to avoid writing it. I felt that I'd find these stories too difficult to believe if I were in your place. I saw more capable spiritual teachers saying the same thing more elegantly. I reasoned my voice was unnecessary. Why risk exposing myself?
But that was an excuse—a delay tactic. I'm seventy now, and I won't be around forever—so here it is, Soul to God. I remember starting work on this book when I was ten. I had completed about seven pages when my mother asked me what I was writing. I told her I was writing an important story about my life. She asked me how the story ended? I responded, "I don't know, but I can't wait to find out!" She laughed, and I realized that I didn't have a clear plan for the book, only a sense that I had to write it. All my life, I've felt like I needed to document some of the wonders that happened to me, not to impress or seek attention, but to share and encourage others to appreciate the divine.
And so, 60 years later, I'm finally ready to share stories from my lives on both sides of the veil. I remember my guide, Cho Mon, once reminded me, "We didn't put all this work into your life for just you."
During my search for how to duplicate that wonderful childhood spiritual experience, I discovered that the spiritual strength and guidance most of us long for are a heartbeat away. We just need to develop the skill of relaxing our conscious mind to tune into the wisdom of higher thought, to tweak the dials of our perception to experience the consciousness of saints. It is possible to transcend thought and opinion, to enter into a state of pure being and knowing. Soul to God is made up of stories about that experience and is intended to act as a meditation, an exercise in rediscovering our eternal identity.
We are Soul—you and I. We are loved by God and chart our course through universes of Spirit into worlds of matter, sustained by a continual feed of God's Love. We sojourn into these worlds with lost memories of our identity and of how we inhale the breath of God each moment. This God Love sustains us life after life, from heaven to Earth—and back again. Its winds fill our sails, propelling us on the most incredible adventure of all—our return home to the Heart of God, and then back again in loving service to our brothers and sisters of the journey.
Each of us is on this path. There are countless souls ahead of us, behind us, and beside us. Highly evolved souls have been assigned to guide each of us, ancient spiritual friends who have completed their journey long ago. They are always near, speaking to us in ways we don't always comprehend. They work to implant ideas, influence synchronistic events, link people to us, and help pave our way.