Bill Scheffel is a meditation and creative writing teacher and videographer, who has directed meditation retreats since 1980. Bill was a student of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and taught classes in meditation, creative writing, and poetry at Naropa University for thirteen years. In addition to several films, he authored the book, Loving-Kindness Meditation: Meditations to Help You Love Yourself, Love Others, and Create More Love and Peace in the World. In 2017, Bill founded Transcending Madness and is co-leading a series of workshops and retreats related to working with extreme and non-ordinary states. He also teaches online classes in creative writing and the I Ching. For more on Bill and his work, see his websites: Transcending Madness, Vertical Time Yoga, and I Ching and the Human Body.

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“We are the bees of the invisible. We wildly collect the honey of the visible, to store it in the great golden hive of the invisible.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

We have no memory of being in the womb or emerging from the birth canal. Dreams are quickly forgotten if remembered at all. We experience emotions but may not always know why. The most fundamental dimensions of our experience cannot be found in any solid way, quantified, or even seen. How can we understand spiritual emergencies and other spiritually transformative events if, as R.D. Laing wrote, “We can see other people’s behavior but not their experience?”

Of course Laing sought above all to understand the experience of those he saw psychiatrically; initially he was nearly alone in his belief that psychosis held meaning. After experiencing my own spiritual emergency, I recognized I needed a new language for what I’d experienced as well as allies who believed my experience had value. Six years later, I advocate that, for those in extreme states, the greatest first aid is honest inquiry into their experience, and humility and patience in the face of the ineffable dimensions they experience. Those who have such experiences must be encouraged to speak, and we must all cultivate the inquisitiveness and courage to listen.

In the 1970’s, I dove into the spiritual life. As a student of Chögyam Trungpa, I became a pioneer—along with his other students—in what is now called the mindfulness movement, though that phrase does not capture the rigor and passion of our study and practice in those early days, much less the depth of Vajrayana Buddhism. In the early 1990’s, as I pursued a creative writing MFA, I studied with contemporary lineage holders of spiritually transformative poetry: Allen Ginsberg, Diane Di Prima, Anne Waldman, and others.

The Beat poets were transmitters of consciousness who helped pave the way for meditation to enter the West. They understood that poetry could be “an exploration of consciousness itself” and that writing could point one toward enlightenment. “With pen in hand, awake” is how Ginsberg once put it. It was this experience that also anchored me in the necessity of valuing the stories of our journey, something not necessary as appreciated in the meditation tradition.

In the early 2000’s, my long-time practice of meditation and poetry seemed to open into another dimension—one for which I have no adequate words. I could say mystic, shamanic, highly synchronistic, one of guidance. The “unseen world” of spirit and what it asked of me became the most compelling part of my life. The unseen was an intermittent but reliable visitor who co-shaped my life and urged me, above all, toward extensive travel. How to tell a thousand stories in a single paragraph? Here’s something I wrote years ago:

The unseen will make itself felt in our lives if we have a longing for and openness toward it… or “them.” It’s not necessary to have the foggiest idea of who they are as much as it is to trust the moments that arise in which we feel them in our heart. Along with those moments comes a kind of crossroads or ‘synchronistic short-circuit.’ Intuition occurs suddenly and unexpectedly and asks us to act and commit ourselves to it. It is a sudden opportunity to escape habit and conventional belief, to chart a more daring and compassionate course. This unseen dimension is a profound expression of love. We fall into it through our heart, but it also takes us into a life far beyond the personal. To answer the call of it often means to find one’s personal life turned inside out!

At age 50, committing to the intuited messages I received, I left my career as a college professor, sold my home, downsized, traveled around the world, and eventually lived part-time in Cambodia over a several-year period. Cambodia became the place where I experienced the unseen world as a profound source of wisdom and guidance that was always with me. R.D. Laing wrote:

It is not surprising that someone with an insistent experience of other dimensions, which he cannot entirely deny or forget, will run the risk either of being destroyed by the others, or betraying what he knows.

My experiences in Cambodia left me with the conviction that I could not betray these spiritual messengers, and that I must attest, through my writing, teaching, and personal relationships, to the potential we all have for making these connections. I felt like an explorer who’d discovered a new continent—telling others about it felt at times thrilling, at other times absurd or futile.

In 2012, seven years after my penultimate experiences in Cambodia, I experienced three “dissociations” that landed me in the hospital; twice I was admitted to psychiatric wards. I have tried on a number of words for these experiences: dissociation, psychosis, spiritual emergency, shamanic initiatory experience. No matter the label, they were spiritually transformative, especially in the terms Pema Chödrön speaks of: when things fall apart! After the third experience, and with little place to turn for alternative support or resources, I accepted the conventional diagnosis of bipolar disorder and the recommendation to take medication.

After three years of medication and adverse side effects, my doctor agreed with my plan to withdraw from psychiatric drugs. In doing so, I temporarily experienced a worsening of the side effects, but eventually I emerged from that experience with a profound blessing. I had clarity and a new vision. I realized that I must contribute to the field of spiritually transformative experiences, as well as to help others make informed decisions about psychiatric issues.

I would also bring my experience of meditation, poetry, creative process, intuitive work, experiences of the unseen, and my psychiatric journey into workshops where I would share resources for mental health. I am grateful that those with “lived experience” are not only being increasingly given a voice but are also being offered seats of authority at the table of psychiatric and spiritual dialogue.

Through years of teaching poetry and creative writing to others, I have witnessed the power and transformative necessity of story, the truths discovered in the act of writing. In this short essay I could only disclose the briefest outline of my own story—and like all stories, perhaps my most important ones are liminal, marginal, scarcely able to be described, possibly taboo.

To approach such experiences as the poet approaches that strange and wondrous moment in which a poem might arise, may have has much or even, at times, more value than seeing these experiences solely through a therapeutic, clinical or even spiritual lens. In the domain of the spiritually transformative, the meditator, poet, and mystic are essential guides and therapeutic fonts of healing.

ACISTE Executive Director Katrina Michelle recently wrote:

I believe that we are all spiritual experiencers. It is just a matter of time before the dominant system can be perforated to embrace the integrative scientific research that will broaden the scope of how we understand the human experience that is the spiritual experience.

I aspire to contribute to this transformation.Buy Kamagra https://www.wildstrawberrylodge.com/three-days-left/. And I like the verb “perforate” with its implications of opening, penetrating, linking together—and bringing with it breath, water, and the other necessary elements for healing so that our lives may have meaning and genuine spiritual growth.