Trust the mystery : questions, quotes, & quantum wisdom / Nina Shoroplova.

1. Spiritual life. I. Title.

A wide variety of teachings have shaped my perception of the spirit’s journey, from the Bible to I Ching, from texts old and new, from various trainings, courses, workshops, and readings, and through the lessons I have gained from the spiritual books I have edited. I have sought out quotes that strengthen what I believe; I hope you find them helpful and provocative. I am very grateful to all the authors, speakers, website owners, and journalists who have granted me permission to quote their words.

Also, as an editor with Influence Publishing, I receive constant opportunities to learn from others—the authors whose books I edit—about some of the intricate ways in which we answer the questions in our lives. I am very grateful to all the Influence Publishing authors who have granted me permission to quote their words within these pages.

I am especially grateful to the entire team that has brought my book from a collection of ideas to a substantial object in the world. To Julie Salisbury, my publisher, thank you dear friend for your constant enthusiasm and trust. To the Influence Publishing team—Gulnar Patel, Alina Wilson, Lisa Halpern, Jennifer Kaleta, Sue Kehoe, Lyda Mclallen, Greg Salisbury, and Marla Thomas—thank you. To Hubert Dumont, for his wonderful photograph of the nuns praising the divine energy of the Atlantic Ocean, merci. And to my exacting editor, Catherine Kerr, for her wise counsel and questions that have raised my book to the next level, many heartfelt thanks.

My sincere thanks to the Honourable Judith Guichon, Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia, for her generous words in the Foreword.

Finally, I wish to acknowledge you, my reader. If reading my book helps you with your spiritual growth, then mine becomes another name in a long list of people who inspire each of us to be our best, to grow during our lives, to progress our spirit. That’s all I want for this work: for it to be a stepping stone along the way. Thanks for reading and growing and contemplating the questions. Let me know how you answer them, at trustthemystery.ca.

Government House

Victoria

June 6, 2015

Lieutenant Governor of British Columbia

Part II looks at phenomena we often ignore or don’t notice, such as early mysteries, effective alternative healing modalities, paranormal events, coincidences, synchronicities, and channelled wisdom. Part II also suggests how we might engage with these mysteries through our time, talent, and treasure. Part III provides examples of how we can expand our ability to observe ourselves and some of the ways we can embody the mystery. It concludes with suggested ways for integrating our body, mind, and soul more effectively.

My decision in favour of first-person narrative involves the knowledge that, despite being individuals, we are also one, for we all come from the same Divine Source. So I shall refer to myself when relating a lesson of probable value to you as well as me. I leave the rest up to you. As you the reader reads “I,” you will know that whatever I state for myself is a potential for you. You can therefore accept it or reject it. I hope that you will experience Trust the Mystery as your own journey, seeing yourself as the person who has lived these stories.

I + II = III.

These three parts have three chapters each, divided into three sections, each of which has several scenes (to borrow a theatrical term) introduced by quotations. The quotations are there to provoke contemplation. Questions at the end of each scene in Parts I, II, and III stimulate self-reflection, encouraging you to witness your personal process. I ask these, because, although we all carry quantum wisdom deep inside ourselves, within our very cells, we sometimes fail to access that wisdom. The questions I ask are designed to provoke you into greater awareness of your part in the mystery of life.

Part IV has just one chapter with sections and scenes, and no questions. After reading the first nine chapters, you’ll be asking yourself appropriate questions. Chapter ten suggests how to stay in the now, to continue asking questions, and to research and trust the mystery.

There are between three and six scenes per section for a total of 128 in all. How interesting that the Kabbalah says there are 125 steps from each of us to our Creator!

The order of this entire book will guide you along a path toward your true self, that unchangeable part of yourself that is your soul. It will also take you further toward that higher aspect of yourself, your Higher Self. As you start to recognize this eternal self, you cannot help but live more fully, with greater awareness.

And the gut and the heart are not the only additional locations of mind; our entire body is mindful, and our mind collides with the minds of others in many ways and places.

Consciousness is greater than mind, being that energetic aspect of ourselves that predates, is present during, and postdates this Earthly lifetime. Thus, it is more expansive than our mind that is connected with just this lifetime. Our consciousness is that part of each of us that continues to exist after the death of our physical body. It is less than our spirit. Our consciousness connects with Divine Mind.

Sometimes, I may use the term “spirit” interchangeably with “soul,” not as in “she has such spirit,” meaning life force and energy, but rather as in “she heard the call of her spirit.” An individual’s spirit includes her Higher Self in the afterlife plus her embodied spirit, known also as “soul.”

Each of us is a spiritual being embodied and living a physical life on Earth. Our soul is that aspect of our spirit that connects our consciousness through our mind and our breath to our physical body; however, it exists as a background to our physical, emotional, and mental self. Our spirit has come to Earth as a soul with a purpose and lessons to learn. These may or may not become apparent through our lives. However, once we recognize our purpose, it becomes hard to ignore. And, if we don’t learn the lessons the first time around, they continue to present themselves in different guises until we understand them.

“Spirit” with a capital “S” refers to the entire aggregate of all beings on the Other Side of this Earthly life. It particularly refers to the more highly evolved beings, such as Ascended Masters, Archangels, Guides, Teachers, and Angels, to all of whom we can appeal for Divine guidance and wisdom.

I would like to define “wisdom” and “quantum wisdom”; let me work up to them, starting with “information.” A bus timetable, a map, and a play poster provide us with information. Combining information about, say, Cuba from a map, a guidebook, a university course, and a history book creates knowledge of Cuba. This knowledge or cognizance is different from experience, which involves actual personal participation in living through time spent in Cuba. A “knowing” is something different again, being synonymous with claircognizance (see the section in chapter five, “The Clairs and Intuition”); it is more of a paranormal awareness. Claircognizance provides us with a deep knowing. In much the same way, intuition, which may be no more than the skillful recognition of behavioural, environmental, and cognitive patterns, can also be brought to an acute level whereby we gain wisdom. Wisdom is the next level in this progression. A person who is able to display wisdom about the potential future of Cuba (this might be called “predicting” and it might also be called “prophesying”) is probably combining a lot of information, knowledge, and experience of Cuba along with claircognizance and intuition. Wisdom involves combining intellect with what many refer to as gut instinct and others value as intuition.

The wisdom that especially interests me is Divine Wisdom: the inner wisdom each of us is able to access via our inner wise self. The Divine is the source of all wisdom, all knowledge, and all experience. We are alive on this Earth to add to that knowledge and wisdom base. We add to it and we can access it whenever we wish. Let me expand on the term “Divine Wisdom” by also defining “quantum wisdom.”

While I explain fully what I mean by quantum wisdom in chapter four, under “Mysteries We Ignore,” I will say here that we connect with Divine Mind, our source of all wisdom, all knowledge, and all experience, through our quantum wisdom. By accessing our quantum wisdom, we are aligning ourself with our divinity. An analogy might be “the still small voice within” that we can seek out at any moment of the day or night.

More terms. Most of the time, I like to use the term “dis-ease” with a hyphen (pronounced ’diss-eaze) rather than the words “disease” (pronounced di-‘zeaze) or “illness,” both of which seem to suggest that an outside force or event has overtaken an unsuspecting victim. Dis-ease instead implies that the participant’s lack of ease has some bearing on why she is suffering, and may even throw light on a possible cure for the malady.

The difference between “religious” and “spiritual” also bears discussion. I consider myself more spiritual than religious, the difference for me being that spirituality conveys a unique, personal experience of the Divine, whereas each religion, no matter which, requires the intervention of other people, liturgies, symbols, ceremonies, rules, and customs. Even so, I believe strongly in the power and importance of adhering to a religion. Although I have A Course in Miracles, The Urantia Book, The Gnostic Gospels, I Ching, and several editions of the Bhagavad Gita and The Dead Sea Scrolls on my bookshelves, the Bible is the religious text I know best. On my laptop, I have even more—Confucian Analects, The Emerald Tablet of Hermes, The Divine Pymander of Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus, and more. I have been reinterpreting and translating the Bible and the Anglican Church’s liturgy for myself for so long that it now makes sense to me in a whole new way. Reading other sacred texts and current metaphysical teachings expands my understanding of humanity’s desire to experience and trust the mystery.

I trust that my stance, with one foot on biblical soil and the other on esoteric wisdom, will help you examine your beliefs, your own stance.

Few of us can remember our birth. We have instead some early memories that usually carry emotions. I have an early memory of fear. I know that, moments before the memory begins, I was holding my mother’s hand on a busy sidewalk in Cardiff, the town in Wales where I was born. We were shopping for groceries using war rations. I don’t know how old I was: old enough to run.

My mother is now ahead of me. Between us are two tall, dark-clad men walking close together. I am frightened of the strange men. But I am even more frightened at the thought of not being connected to my mother. I don’t even think; I just feel the fear. I duck down (even though I am already very little) and run between the two men to catch up with my mother. I hold her hand again.

That’s the whole memory.

I was born right after the Second World War: after my father returned from completing his final war duty as acting Town Major of the City of Graz in Austria. Once he had returned the city to its fathers, he came home. Nine months later, I became one of the millions of children born during the postwar baby boom.

The first emotions we ever feel are our mother’s, when she carries us in her womb. The emotions my mother felt—relief and joy at the return of my father, who had been away for five years during the war; worry for her mother, who was already extremely ill and living downstairs in our three-storey duplex; exasperation at trying to quieten my energetic and noisy older sister so as not to disturb her own mother—became my emotions as I grew within her; I was benefitting from the nutrients she ingested as well as the hormones she released.

Theo Fleury and Kim Barthel explain in their book Conversations with a Rattlesnake how all the chemicals in a pregnant mother that are capable of crossing the mother’s blood-brain barrier are also capable of crossing the fetus’s blood-brain barrier. Those chemicals include the organic substances created by the mother’s brain and the rest of her body, and others ingested as food, alcohol, medicine, and drugs.

The foods my mother ate when she carried me were the ones that fed me. I was blessed; they were all nourishing foods. I was born healthy and I have stayed that way, despite experiencing my share of dis-eases.

Author Sue Dumais knew that the world would be a frightening place, even when she was still in her mother’s womb; even more frightening when all was quiet than when there was sound. She describes this knowing in her book Heart Led Living. “When my mother was pregnant with me, she and my father were still together. At that point in their relationship my parents argued a lot. As a baby I was in some way comforted by the yelling and the noise. At least when I heard them fighting, I knew my mother was okay. I have a memory of feeling the need to protect my mother. I could sense her fear and stress. My father was never physically abusive, but for whatever reason I became afraid of silence while in my mother’s uterus.”³

Barthel explains to Fleury in their conversational bestseller that a newborn baby is hyperalert to the emotions of her caregivers, able to “read” her caregivers’ faces in less than a second. She also explains that mirror neurons in the right side of the baby’s brain mimic the mood of the mother. An unhappy mother thus promotes unhappiness in a baby. Aloof mothering distances a baby. Unwelcoming caregivers give off emotions that their babies absorb. And that’s just in the first few days.

I feel as though I always knew that.

Apparently, “our brains are like Velcro to all negative thoughts and Teflon toward our positive ones. So it’s the negatives thoughts that stick.”⁴ And “stick” they do, in the right side of the brain.⁵ Not until around the age of eighteen months does the left side of a baby’s brain develop; psychologists consider the left side to be “the positive side of the brain.” So in order to grow positively through the first eighteen months of our lives, we have to rely on the emotions of our primary caregivers.

I am deeply grateful that my mother was the loving woman she was. What a fabulous start she and my father gave me.

What are your predominant emotions? Do you know the emotional state of your mother when she carried you? Does that explain anything? Thinking about your emotions as a child, what emotions do you think you might have hung onto? Can you morph those emotions into others these days?

By the time I knew I was carrying my first child—my son Alun—I was married and living at Douglas Lake Ranch in British Columbia’s (BC’s) Interior. It was early 1971. I had emigrated from Wales to Canada two years earlier.

As I carried Alun, I went through a lot of apprehension: around the delivery, around how healthy my baby would be, misgivings about my possible inadequacy as a mother. On one occasion, I attended a very noisy car race. Alun told me in the only way he knew how that he did not want us to be there, by kicking with all his might at the lining of my womb and abdominal muscles. I left quickly.

Once Alun was born, I counted his fingers and toes and marvelled at their perfection. I gradually worked my way through the challenges facing every first-time parent—holding my baby, changing his diaper, bathing him, and taking him out into the world. I remember the first time I took Alun out. It was a cold November day and cattle buyers were bidding for steers at an auction at the holding pens at English Bridge, on the ranch, a short drive from my home. Usually a decisive person, I dithered as I struggled to decide what I needed to take with me. It wasn’t as if I had to take any milk or baby bottles, because I was breastfeeding. Anyhow, I’m happy to say, things became much easier.

As a baby, Alun was content yet curious. I remember wheeling him around in an old-fashioned English pram in the early days. His eyes were wide open, observing; he was quiet and calm. What a joy.

When I carried my daughter, I experienced a lot of false labour. The contractions were strong enough to have me heading off to the hospital—sixty miles away—more than once. Finally, in the middle of the first snowstorm of the year, just days after we had put winter tires on the car and toward the end of a family gathering to celebrate Christmas, the real labour pains came along.

Jessica was a miniature beauty, responsive but also contented. Just two years apart, she and Alun became wonderful if noisy companions, curious and playful together.

Seven years later, during my third pregnancy, I was exceptionally busy; I had to be very determined to complete everything. All through the first and second trimester of carrying Grant, I was completing the publication of my first book, Cattle Ranch: The Story of Douglas Lake Cattle Company.⁷ I was checking galleys, proofreading, and going on a publication tour across BC and Alberta. At the same time, because my then-husband and I were preparing to emigrate from Canada to New South Wales, Australia to a sheep and cattle property we had bought, I was busy emptying our home, packing, planning our journey, wondering what we’d need. And I was probably stressed.

Grant, the child I carried through this stressful time, is the most driven of my four children. He was busy from the start, pushing away from feeding because he had to get on with tackling life. I feel his drive is due hugely to the brain chemicals and hormones that were flowing through my body during the whole nine months of his gestation.

In comparison, my fourth pregnancy was the most laid back of all. I enjoyed being pregnant, I loved being a mum, and I looked forward to holding and caring for another baby. Even though I was caring for three children under ten already and it looked as though we were entering another Australian drought, life was orderly. We were living off the land, raising cattle and sheep, and selling cattle, sheep, and wool. I was growing vegetables, so that when I did the weekly or two-weekly shopping trip to the nearest supermarket—sixty miles away at Armidale or seventy-five miles away at Tamworth—I only bought staples because we grew much of our food on the property. That was a very healthy time.

Ian was a quiet, happy baby, easily brought to smiles by the loving care he received from everyone around him. He and Grant were great pals; they still are. One of my favourite photos of the two of them is of Grant looking straight at the camera, proudly attired as a carpenter, with various tools hanging from his belt. He is aged about four. Ian, aged about two, is looking up at his big brother and he has one small hammer tucked into his pants, too.

My understanding of the ways my emotions during my pregnancies affected my babies has taught me that, sure enough, my babies were bathing in my emotions.

If you are a woman, have you ever been pregnant? What were your emotions at the time? What are your child’s emotions? If you are a man, or if you are a woman who has not been pregnant, have you ever had an opportunity to observe a woman during pregnancy and her children later? Do you see the influence?

Kelli Benis, a woman who decided to come to terms with childhood abuse, has created a life that is now about helping others. “For years, I had stuffed my emotions down so deeply that they could not be found, and now they were bubbling up and I truly felt like I could and would make a difference. I had been called, and I will honour that calling any, and every, way that I can.”⁹

I believe if we can process our emotions, the emotions that inform our words, we can keep the “ice” circulating. If not, we must push our feelings down, freezing them. Our emotions will pack down until they have nowhere else to go. The more densely packed old emotional stuff becomes, the more likely it is that negative emotions will erupt at the slightest provocation into anger or terror or dis-ease. And, of course, the emotion that emerges might be several degrees from its source, way colder or way hotter, having evolved along the way.

Sometimes, stuffed emotions erupt, like a volcano. During my early teens, my mother used a pressure cooker to shorten cooking time. Pressure cookers have a handled lid and a handled base; the two handles lock together and a weight covering a tiny hole in the lid slows the escape of the steam, cooking the food much faster.

The first few times she used the cooker, Mum neglected to take it off the stove in time. The steam built up to such a degree that it blew off the weight, which went flying somewhere in the kitchen, and then the contents of the cooker spewed out through the tiny hole in the lid. You can only imagine how long it would take to scrape steamed potato off the walls and ceiling. Mum adjusted quickly!

We are veritable masses of energy ourselves, ranging from fiery hot to icy cold. And we, too, are capable of being pressure cookers if we do not tend ourselves with care.

As suggested by the words of intuitive Judith Orloff, any good pair of attentive ears can provide a pressure-relief valve. They can belong to a pet, a friend, a hairdresser, or a counsellor; a plant, a fellow traveller, a sibling, or a priest. The advice that sometimes comes back is not an essential part of the exchange. To release emotions, we just need to get in touch with what we’re feeling and put that into words.

World-renowned conservationist and environmentalist Lawrence Anthony describes in The Elephant Whisperer how he would “chat” with one of his young elephants: “As he approached I studied his demean-our and decided he was fine. We had a wonderful ten minutes or so interacting, chatting about life—well, me doing that while Mnumzane contentedly browsed….”¹⁰

I just love that image, the freedom of Anthony being able to say whatever came to his mind in the wide spaces of Africa with his elephant munching nearby.

Shirley Valentine is a one-woman play that was very popular in Vancouver for many years. The character Shirley, acted over six hundred times by BC’s beloved Nicola Cavendish, shares her full range of frustrated emotions with the wall in her kitchen. She addresses the wall: “Wall, blah, blah, blah.” Very funny. Very human. Very efficient.

When something causes me to stomp off in my mind into some nameand-blame space, my first step is noticing what is happening; the second is asking myself why it is happening; and the third is listening to the answers that come. With the answers, I can identify the feelings that are fueling my emotions and go deeper with the “why.” This releases any level of frustration that might build up.

My sister, who lost her husband very soon after they had both retired, struggled during the anger phase of her grief. She experienced a great release when she was driving along the Coquihalla—an Interior BC highway—hollering at her deceased husband at the top of her lungs: “Why did you have to leave so soon? We were having such a good time. I’m lonely. I’m angry with you. Why did you have to go?”

As soon as we give voice to our regrets, our pains, and our concerns, as soon as we name our emotions—e.g., anger fuelled by huge sadness at the loss of a loved one—we allow some of the steam to escape. It can be the start of a healthy ongoing process, depending on how deeply we have packed our emotions into our iceberg or our volcano.

Which of your emotions do you hide from yourself? Do you have a venting process? How do you feel after you share your deepest feelings with your wall, your elephant, the thundering ocean?

Michelle Pilley, Publisher and Managing Director of Hay House U.K., interviewed Diana Cooper during the Hay House World Summit 2015. Diana is a prolific author of books for adults and children, and creator of card sets and DVDs. During the interview—“10 Steps to Ascension with the Archangels”—Diana led a meditation connecting listeners with the Archangels who govern each of the twelve chakras. She went from the throat chakra governed by Archangel Michael, down to the Earth Star chakra governed by Archangel Sandalphon, and eventually up to the Stellar Gateway governed by Archangel Metatron.

My rational left brain so appreciates understanding the equivalence between the Soul Star chakra and my Higher Self. My right brain is already playing the xylophone connection between my Earth Star and Stellar Gateway chakras.

Able to see the human aura from early childhood, another of today’s foremost clairvoyants and metaphysical teachers Barbara Y. Martin applies the training she received from hermetic scientist Dorothy LaMoss to the energies she sees. The beautiful illustrations in her books—Change Your Aura, Change Your Life; The Healing Power of Your Aura; Karma and Reincarnation; and Communing with the Divine—show the chakras and spiritual energies as she sees them. Martin places extra emphasis on four chakras, giving them their hermetic names: she calls the third chakra “the spiritual heart”;¹² the fourth “the hermetic centre”; the fifth “eternal ego”; and the sixth “the trinity chalice.” She explains the benefits to be gained from working directly with these four. She also explains that she sees the seventh chakra, the crown chakra, six inches above the head rather than directly at the crown.