The Quickening. Gregg Unterberger

directly to the source materials, which I list in the back of this book, to get a deeper understanding of these breakthrough modalities. Or get on Google (or get your grandkids to get you on Google), and let your cursor go wild. You will be amazed at what you find.

      Second, these techniques offer such radically profound results in relatively short periods of time that they certainly appear, at first glance . . . okay, even at second glance, to be “too good to be true.” I understand. Can you imagine what a breakthrough the typewriter was after pen and ink? Are you old enough to remember your first word processor? Maybe you recall the first time you heard about a voice-recognition system that could convert speech into words on a page.

      I remember being a very young boy and sitting in a restaurant with my mother and one of her friends and hearing about a microwave oven for the first time. My eyes went wide! Hamburgers cooked in three minutes? Plates don’t get hot in them, but the food inside does? Impossible. It sounded like a magic trick; too good to be true! But, of course, it wasn’t. It was simply new technology. These modalities are, too.

      Arguably, Edgar Cayce offered in one reading, “there are no shortcuts, [spiritual progress is made] line upon line, precept upon precept.” But surely, we can agree that some paths are faster than others. You can get to Los Angeles from New York faster if you don’t go by way of Tampa, Fla. One way to account for how a quickening can be accomplished is to look toward a concept called gauge symmetry.

      Imagine for a moment, that you are at the foot of a very steep incline. There are two paths before you: one is a very steep ladder that goes straight up the side of the mountain; the other is a series of gently sloping switchbacks that zig-zag back and forth, first left and then right, with mild inclines, all the way to the top of the mountain. Which path should you take?

      You say to yourself, on the one hand, the switchbacks look a little easier; they won’t take as much energy and effort. On the other hand, don’t they say that a straight line is the closest connection between two points? Doesn’t that mean that the ladder is the faster path?

      It is, but there is more to the story than that. As any physicist will tell you, setting aside minor calculations like extraneous friction, either path takes the same amount of energy. Fill in the variables in the equation, and you will see that you can exert yourself more on the ladder for a shorter period of time or take the switchbacks and exert yourself less . . . but over a longer period of time! So, it may be that engaging in a conscious quickening takes every bit as much energy—expressed as faith, commitment, and emotional vulnerability—as more traditional approaches, but like the ladder, it gets you there faster!

      So, for those of you who are looking for a “magic bullet,” a pill you can take to make you a Tibetan monk overnight, may I remind you that these are accelerated techniques, not presto-chango David Copperfield tricks. But they can save you time. A lot of time.

      Finally, people believe that hard work is required to “earn” revelatory experiences. This is very much a Western mindset—the Puritan work ethic applied to spiritual growth. As children, our good behavior got us rewards from our parents and teachers. Our dedication and loyalty at work (theoretically, at least) earn us a raise. At first blush, it doesn’t seem fair that God, Our Father, would grant us a free pass to the front of the line, since Dad, Our Parent, told us if we didn’t behave he would yell at us or ground us until we reached adulthood.

      There is no free vegan lunch and the like.

      I understand. Let me be clear, without question, spiritual discipline has its rewards. But millions of people have had spontaneous spiritual experiences that have changed their lives apropos of nothing. How do we account for these breakthroughs? Most of us have had the bootstrap ideology hammered into us, even when it comes to revelation. But one doesn’t have to look any farther than the New Testament and the story of Saul “seeing the light” and becoming Paul on the road to Damascus to discover that transformative experiences can happen unbidden to the so-called “undeserving.”

      I think some people associate this with God’s grace—a special gift. Who is to say? Once I saw a painting of a beautiful woman, gazing toward heaven, flanked by angels—cherubs, actually, floating by each of her ears. They seemed to me to be ready to whisper the secrets of the Universe, to sing the song of all of heaven. There was only one problem.

      This chick had her fingers in her ears.

      Perhaps we are no different. Perhaps angels are whispering to us constantly, but we are too distracted by the temporal world and our noisy egos. I want to believe that if we go seeking God that She will only be too happy to respond! A Course in Miracles, a powerful spiritual pathway lauded by teachers such as Eckhart Tolle, Marianne Williamson, and Dr. Wayne Dyer, reminds us that “there are many answers you have already received but have not yet heard.”¹ “Knock and the door shall be opened,” Jesus tells us. Maybe we just have to take our fingers out of our ears and find the right way to knock.

      This book is a result of researching, training in, and practicing these new breakthrough methods—what might be called spiritual technologies—all over the country for the last fifteen years. I have seen them work for thousands of people both in individual sessions and in workshops. While some techniques have been around for decades and are rooted in years of research, others are relatively new. Many are well established and have extensive track records. All have been developed by leaders in the fields of psychology and spirituality. Each has tens of thousands of hours of clinical observations by trained professionals who would testify to their potential. And, yes, some of these modalities have their share of critics. In my estimation, many of these criticisms are simply uninformed naysayers, a bit quick to dismiss something out of hand. And yes, some critics have valid points. But all of the modalities in this book have been demonstrated to be effective—over and over and to my satisfaction—as having the potential to help you leap ahead on your spiritual journey. For my clients and workshop participants, the proof is in the pudding. They would tell you, almost to the number, that they are very different, happier, more spiritually awakened people for having tried these approaches. More than a few would tell you their very lives have been saved.

      So obviously, spiritual sweat and tears are not, part and parcel, a prerequisite for spiritual awakenings. According to a 1997 poll commissioned by U.S. News and World Report, an estimated fifteen million people have had near death experiences.² (We have no figures for how many did downward dog daily as a way to “earn” these experiences.) An estimated forty percent of Americans³ believe they have had direct contact with loved ones who have passed. But even these transformative moments can be seen simply as “the grace of God,” a gift. Perhaps they are. But the danger in this thinking is that we simply have to wait around, a-hopin’ and a-wishin’ that the Divine will make a little time for us. It seems to resign us to a God who is somewhat fickle and who sometimes bestows grace and sometimes doesn’t.

      Could it be that the convergence of these techniques are, in fact, a reflection of God’s grace? Dr. Helen Shucman, the “scribe” of A Course in Miracles, was given information by her own Inner Teacher, a voice that she described as Jesus. The Voice suggested that the world situation was devolving at a dizzying pace (imagine that!) and that a kind of “celestial speed-up,” an acceleration in global consciousness, was called for. In fact, according to the Course, “the miracle is a learning device that lessens the need for time. It establishes an out-of-pattern time interval not under the usual laws of time.” These same miracles, sudden shifts of personal clarity from fearful thoughts and bodily identification to loving ones, filled with the recognition of our Unity with the Divine, had the ability to abolish the need for certain intervals of time “within the larger temporal sequence.” In other words, one way to think about these miraculous quickenings is that we can literally leap ahead in time, thanks to an intense, but relatively brief instant in which we download an entire piece of cosmic jigsaw puzzle and understand the bigger spiritual picture. Interestingly, the work of Edgar Cayce and the Course, among other “special agents” were seen as a part of this speed-up.

      “Though the way may seem long,” Cayce observed, “a moment in the presence of thine Savior is worth years in the tents of the wicked,” (Edgar Cayce reading