Welcome to My Spiritual Experiences
The Web Site of Betty Jane Rapin
Spiritual Awareness When you are aware you are cognizant and responsive to the happenings in your daily life at your current level That is what I wanted to be aware of—operating from the higher consciousness of Soul—spiritual awareness and understanding the heavenly power from within. For example not to just be aware that the sky has clouds which sometimes form into a distinctive shape of something identifiable but to recognize this is one of the ways Divine Spirit is speaking to me. From the viewpoint of Soul, I am then able to understand the message of this symbolic formation made by the white billowing clouds for me to see and learn from—my personal message from God. The awakening of my spiritual senses to work in conjunction with my physical senses allows me to find the truth (I need to know) so I can better my life. Gathering of information in the course of the day when fully awake and also at night while sleeping, this data is woven together—linked to form a connection—that clarifies the essential facts (truths) revealed to my human consciousness. The following stories are examples of what I mean. Mesmerized by the breathtaking sight, I entered the gazebo, sat on its bench, and watched the butterflies go from flower to flower. Often a butterfly would come very close, so that I could see the unique, colorful design on its wings. It felt like I was watching a moving montage by the french painter Monet. The sights, scents, and sounds of nature brought joy as I sat quietly—a most unusual thing for me to do, that is, sitting still for even a few minutes. The voice of my mother calling startled me out of my private world. I did not respond at first because I did not want what was happening to end. As an adult, I learned about the contemplative Spiritual Exercises of ECK, where one visualizes an inner destination during contemplation that promotes Soul Travel. I decided to revisit this place of my youth that captured my heart via traveling in Soul. A place where I thought I had a dream but I actually had a Soul Travel experience of being one with a butterfly. On the other hand, was a past life as a butterfly what I was experiencing? After several attempts during my daily contemplation's, I would sit and try to visualize from memory the experience, and voila, I was there! In a gazebo, just as a child again with wholehearted anticipation and wonderment, the emotions swelled up inside, and the feeling of being one with nature embraced me. I now recognized and could describe that emotion. It was love! The sweet nectar of God's love had entered my heart that day so long ago. Now once again I drank of it. The life-giving Light and Sound of God that filled the gazebo also filled my entire being with heavenly bliss. I visit this "Temple of My Heart" from time to time to quietly reflect and observe life from the viewpoint of Soul. I am able to connect with a childlike attitude that enables surrender, love and trust. This viewpoint, in combination with the openness of my child like attitude, helps me to recognize and understand the spiritual lessons of life that I have learned to welcome and appreciate. I remember a popular television program from the early seventies that impressed me. The title of the program was, Kung Fu. David Carradine played the role of a Shaolin monk named Caine, who was in complete harmony with all of life. One program in particular got my attention and revealed to me an important insight. Caine either fell or was put into a pit with cobras—deadly venomous snakes. He walked among the cobras without the fear of being bitten. In fact they seemed to not even see him, as he tiptoed among the fifty some snakes. He eventually was able to climb out of the pit, unharmed. This feat utterly amazed me. I thought “how he did that?” My answer came, “He became one with the snakes.” I contemplated on this statement to be able to understand how Caine would be able to achieve a seemingly impossible feat. All things have a vibratory rate, a signal that denotes who we are. Thus, Caine had the ability to become one with the snakes, operating on the same vibratory level. The Cobras gave him space, because they recognized him as one of them. He was in harmony with their vibration—recognition from Soul to Soul. I do not know if I will ever get that far advanced spiritually. I do know when I align my self with Divine Spirit I can more clearly see how my environment is talking to me. I am in accord with my surrounding and have the ability to recognize the subtle insightful messages from Divine Spirit from waking and sleeping dreams more often. This recall of the television program demonstrates exactly what being the HU is about. When you align yourself with Divine Spirit, this fills the heart with love for all of life, thus making it possible to operate from any vibratory level needed for your state of consciousness at the time. In his book, How to Survive Spiritually in Our Times, Harold Klemp writes, Love yourself as you would love God. And love others as you would love yourself, because then you truly love all as God loves you.” That is exactly what the cobras and Caine did; expressed love by giving and receiving it from each other as Soul. Caine had no fear of being bitten as he walked among the snakes because this love. The Karma Coat I could instantly relate to her dilemma. Many times I tried stepping aside from unwanted circumstances happening in my life. The more I tried to ignore and keep away from them, the more they kept coming back as a boomerang comes back to the sender. All the experiences I was trying to escape were a Karmic boomerang. Of course, the situations, places and people were always disguised so that I could hardly recognize it was the same karmic experience. Dolly Parton's song, The Coat of Many Colors reminds me of karma. The lyrics tell the story about the patchwork coat her mother made for her from many different colored scraps of material. I think of the karmic threads of many lifetimes linked together to form the pattern of our lives like a patchwork coat of many colorful experiences. This karmic coat is one of our own making. We wear this coat in our consciousness as a reminder of experiences we have had. Some positive, some a bit negative and some down right awful. Why does it happen? Why do we endure the same experience lifetime after lifetime? There was a clue in the word "resent" that gave me a new outlook and of course a theme for this story. RESENT = RE SENT. The prefixes “re” means back or backward “repay"; again or anew "recapture". The word SENT means something launched to a particular destination. So within the word resent comes the evidence that we need to cope with experiences that we dislike. Know it has come to us for a reason. A lesson to be learned that we NEED and will spiritually benefit from. A quote from Secret of Love by Harold Klemp, sums it up. "There are causes and effects that occur in life, and each time, you learn something. You may learn the wrong thing, but eventually these things add up. You learn that you are totally responsible for everything you do. And that everything that comes into your life has come back to you." Karma has this boomerang effect. It is "RE SENT" to give us the opportunity to relive the incident to learn a spiritual lesson from it. When the spiritual lesson is learned, the Karmic debt is paid. Could the reason we are RESENT an experience be because we have learned the wrong thing from the first experience and we need to redo it until we get it right? The Karma coat we wear can be lightweight with good experiences or a heavy weight burden of bad experiences. The next time we are resend the same type of experience why not rethink the reason for it reappearing in our lives. Try to understand why this repetitive incident is necessary. Why not develop the attitude of gratitude for having another chance to make things right? Why not try to redesign the fabric of our lives to a more comfortable karmic coat of spiritual insight with love? Why not indeed! Recently I was having a difficult time holding back my emotions about a situation. I was talking to God asking for help to get above the image of the mind that was conveying thoughts to fuel my negative emotions. I was so focused on the subject of my anger that I forgot to sing HU. It was extremely hot in the house, which added to my already heated emotional stat of mind. I adjusted the thermostat. Fifteen minutes later, the furnace was still running. I turned it off, but it would not shut down. I was frustrated and overheated both emotionally and physically. I called the furnace technician. He would not be able to come for a few hours. Victim consciousness took over. Why me? Why does everything have to happen to me all at once? My daughter was visiting and she suggested I blow into the wall thermostat. Her reasoning was that sometimes dust could accumulate and cause a malfunction. Sounded too easy to be true but I did what she suggested. I blew one hard puff. As I puffed up my mouth and blew my breath hard into the thermostat, a thought crossed my mind. It was the still small voice of Divine Spirit, “Adjust your attitude!” Okay, “I said inwardly as I listen to the message I added, “And how do I adjust an attitude that has me so angry? HU, was the impression on the mind. Therefore, I began to inwardly sing HU, a love song to God. My daughter interrupted my concentration, “Hey! It worked Mom, the furnace shut off.” How did this happen? When I was blowing into the thermostat, I was blowing out my anger that had me malfunctioning. I surrendered to God when I received the message to adjust my attitude. I listened to God. Was the furnace miraculously fixed, I wondered. Well, it seems the furnace did not need fixing, I did. Divine Spirit used the furnace experience to give me a Waking Dream. The miracle was my change in consciousness form this experience that altered my perception, which in turned adjusted my attitude. I had an attitude adjustment. I called back the technician to cancel and told him if the furnace acted up again I would call him back. I never had to call him back. Therefore, sometimes when I feel the surge of angers getting out of control the thermostat experiences comes to mind and I adjust my internal thermostat, simply by singing HU.
of consciousness, all five of you physical senses are on the alert to respond when needed. Some people are happiest in their current ways it is their comfort zone. They will not budge to open themselves to change no matter what. This inflexibility to resist change holds them back from expanding their awareness to a 360° viewpoint of Soul.
Temple of My Heart
When I was ten years old, my parents took me to visit their friend. However, as there were no children to play with, I was on my own to explore. Walking around to the back of the house, an amazing sight met my eyes—dozens of butterflies all heading in the same direction! I followed.
Their trail led to a beautiful, white wooden structure surrounded by flowering bushes with multicolored cylindrical blossoms. The entire gazebo was encircled with what I was later to learn were butterfly bushes.
Becoming the HU
I often read and heard Sri Harold, Spiritual Leader of Eckankar, speak about living life as being one with the HU—Divine Spirit That was my goal, each second of my life I wanted to be connected with Divine Spirit. So a few weeks ago, I began each morning prior to contemplation say the affirmation “I am one with HU.”
One day I overheard someone expressing her feelings about a situation. She presented a very detailed picture of the source of her resentment. Her solution to the situation was to keep away from the particular person who was causing her this unnerving annoyance.
SH I’m Listening to God
I have a plaque in my office that reads, “SHHH, I’m Talking to God.” In my heart hangs a plaque, “SHHH, I’m Listening to God.” SOMETIMES!
This furnace situation is just one of the many ways that daily practice of singing the HU, a love song to God, has transformed my life. Singing HU opens the heart to God's love and with this love comes more joy because of an expanded awareness.
