53: "Go to the Casino," Reflections on the Voice Within

53

“Go to the Casino”

Reflections on the Voice Within

This is a dangerous musing, and I don’t want to write it; but when my Muse whispers into my ear I have no choice but to do what I have been called to do, for such is the nature of the mysterious relationship between the writer and the source of his inspiration.

The idea for today’s spiritual musing has been gestating in my unconscious for years waiting for the right conditions to set it free, which came with an experience that my life partner Penny Lynn had this past summer when she went to work one day and heard a voice say to her, not once but three times, “Go to the casino,” but I would never write this musing had she not given me permission to share her incredible experience.

But aside from Penny’s experience, which gives today’s spiritual musing on the voice within anecdotal credibility because I trust Penny Lynn implicitly, I have a reputable precedent in my favorite philosopher Socrates whom Plato tells us in the Apology was guided all of his life by an inner voice that he called his oracle. “This is a sign I have had ever since I was a child,” said Socrates at his trial in Athens for sedition and heresy. “The sign is a voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my being a politician.”

Socrates had inner guidance, as we all do; but not all of us hear an inner voice, and if we do it speaks to us according to our needs and destined purpose as it did to Socrates and my life partner Penny Lynn. And I, too, heard an inner voice when I hit a brick wall with Gurdjieff’s teaching of “work on oneself” and did not know where to turn; the voice within was loud and clear, and it said to me: “Why do you lie?”

This simple question was like a stick of dynamite that blew a hole in my life and set me free from my false self (which Gurdjieff called our “false personality” and Carl Jung called our “shadow,” the unconscious side of ego), because the more I focused on what I said and did the more acutely conscious I became of my own falseness; and this simple question that came from within set me on the path to my true self which I finally wrote about forty years later in my memoir The Summoning of Noman.

So, the question that is crying to be asked today is this: what is this inner voice, this guidance that comes from within that said to Penny Lynn, “Go to the casino”?

Socrates, best known to the world for his philosophical pronouncement “the unexamined life is not worth living,” called his oracle “the divinity.” And Eileen Caddy, one of the founding members (along with her husband Peter and Dorothy Maclean) of the New Age spiritual community of Findhorn in northern Scotland, which became world renowned for its legendary garden of giant vegetables, called her guiding voice “the God within.” She also referred to her inner guidance as “the still, small voice within.” I call it my intuitive, or Higher Self; but why would this be a dangerous musing to write?

When Eileen Caddy first heard the voice within she had just written a letter to her husband Andrew Combe stationed in Iraq asking him for a divorce, and he replied immediately forbidding her to see their five children. It was at this time that a traumatized Eileen visited a private sanctuary in Glastonbury with her future husband Peter Caddy where while meditating she heard the voice within say to her, “Be still and know that I am God.” Eileen thought she was having a nervous breakdown, but over time she began “to love the voice as an instrument from the God within us all,” and she continued to be guided by the voice within which helped her to found the spiritual community of Findhorn that went on to become a beacon of light for the world; and I can’t help but feel that this is a dangerous musing because in this spiritually suffocating materialistic world of ours anyone who talks about hearing the voice of God will inevitably invite ridicule, which is why I refer to the voice within as our intuitive, or Higher Self. But I didn’t come to this insight lightly. As a matter of fact, it took many years of anguished living before I made the connection…

We all have hunches, nudges, gut feelings, and compulsions to do certain things—“I just feel I have to do this,” we say when we’re caught in the grips of our destined purpose—and more often than not, the course of our life is changed; but why did we feel compelled to do what we did, like my inexplicable compulsion to take up Gurdjieff’s teaching?

Without going into a long and detailed explanation, which I’ve done in The Summoning of Noman, in my quest for my true self I had seven past-life regressions; and in one of my regressions I was miraculously brought back to the Body of God where all new souls come from, but I had no individual self-awareness.

I was an atom of God in the Body of God, and I had consciousness but no self-consciousness; and in the same regression I went back to my first primordial human lifetime on earth as a higher primate where I experienced the dawning of my reflective self-consciousness, and with each successive incarnation I grew in the consciousness of my reflective self through the natural process of karma and reincarnation until in my current lifetime I felt compelled to take evolution into my own hands with Gurdjieff’s teaching and realize my true self, which I’ve written about in The Pearl of Great Price that was inspired by Christ’s most sacred parable.

I discovered reincarnation, which Socrates called “a doctrine uttered in secret,” in my teens, and in my long journey of self-discovery I came to see that we all have two destinies—one personal, which is born of our will to choose freely, and one spiritual, which is teleologically pre-scripted by our divine nature; and our purpose in life is to grow in our personal destiny until we are evolved enough to align our personal destiny with our spiritual destiny and realize our true self, which Jesus called “the pearl of great price.”

“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls. Who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it,” said Jesus in coded language for the call to one’s true self; and it is this mysterious call to one’s destined purpose that I refer to as the “omniscient guiding force of life” which I also believe to be voice within that speaks to us in our moments of need and destined purpose, as it did to Socrates, Eileen Caddy, my life partner, and myself and every person in the world though few people make the connection, because it implies that we’re all divine beings in the process of becoming one with God which is too much for people to deal with. But then, didn’t Jesus say, “I and my Father are one”?

“There is a doctrine uttered in secret that man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away,” said Socrates in Plato’s Phaedo. “This is a great mystery which I do not quite understand. Yet I, too, believe that the gods are our guardians, and that we are a possession of theirs,” added Socrates, again speaking in the coded language of the secret way that we are imprisoned in the eternal cycle of life and death (karma and reincarnation) and the purpose of life is to grow in who we are (our individual self) through the natural process of evolution through karma and reincarnation until nature can evolve us no further and we have to complete what nature cannot finish by taking evolution into our own hands to realize our true self, which Gurdjieff’s teaching helps us to do—and Christ’s teaching, along with other teachings in the world like Sufism and Taoism, and always aided by the omniscient guiding force of life that speaks to us as the voice within.

This implies a benevolent intelligence that watches over us, which over time I had no choice but to believe because of the many inexplicable synchronicities in my life that always assisted me in my times of desperate need (which is why I came to refer to meaningful coincidences as the merciful law of divine synchronicity), so when Penny heard the voice say to her “Go to the casino”, not once but three times, each time after her objection because she was working and couldn’t justify taking time off to go to the casino, which speaks to her probity of character I had to ask myself—knowing what I do about the omniscient guiding force of life that is forever working on our behalf to help us bring our personal destiny into agreement with our spiritual destiny—why did the voice want my life partner to take time off work to go to the casino? What divine purpose was there in going to the casino?

I had no idea, and the other morning over coffee in my writing room I asked her to relate the whole experience which I recorded on my mini-recorder that I used when I taped my ten spiritual healing sessions with the psychic medium who channeled St. Padre Pio which became the basis of my novel Healing with Padre Pio; and with Penny’s permission, I’m going to include the entire transcript of her incredible casino experience:

         

O: So, what happened that day?

 PL: I was working at Walmart, or I was going to work at Walmart—

O: You heard the voice before you went to work?

 PL: I was sitting in my car. I had a Tcheck’it call to do at Walmart, and I had just arrived at Walmart. I was sitting in my car because my Tcheck’it app kept asking me for my location. The application has a GPS on it, so when you go from town to town it picks up your location so it can give you driving directions to the store. For some odd reason, when I left home that morning I knew there were calls at Walmart in Wasaga Beach, because the application notifies you by text message when there are calls in your area, and I had signed up for this Tcheck’it through MCA (Merchandising Consultants Association). They thought it would be a way for reps to make a little extra money and a kind of a fun thing to do. So anyway, I had come from the Dollarama Store in the morning and was about to go in to do my call at Walmart for Hallmark, and with Tcheck’it you always have to take a picture of the outside of the store that you’re at just to verify that you were at that store, and I thought I would take my picture as I was going into the store first before doing my Tcheck’it call so I wouldn’t have to do it after I took the rest of my pictures in the store and answer the questions for my call. Well anyway the GPS wouldn’t pick up my location, and for some odd reason it wouldn’t load the call; so I’m sitting in the car having my coffee and I’m trying to get my location sorted out on the Tcheck’it app and I hear this voice, and it says to me, “Go to the casino.” Just as plain as day, “Go to the casino”—

O: You herd this voice in your head?

PL: No. I heard it out loud. It said, “Go to the casino.” I don’t know if it was in my head or whatever, but I mean it was like someone was sitting there talking—

O: And it said, “Go to the casino”?

PL: It said, “Go to the casino.” And I said no, I can’t go to the casino. I’m working. But the thing is, the day was August 13^th. It was the 29^th anniversary of my brother’s death—

O: And you were very close to your brother—

PL: I was very very close to my brother, and I felt that that was like a guiding voice from him, or after the fact I thought, I wasn’t really sure; I didn’t really think of it at that particular time; but anyway, I just said no, I can’t go to the casino, I’m working. So anyway, I’m sitting there—

O: Did it sound like your brother’s voice though?

PL: It was just a male voice. No, it didn’t sound specifically like his voice. It was just a voice—

O: A male voice?

PL: Well, you know; it’s really even hard to say whether the voice had a gender. It was a directional voice. That’s the only way I can describe it. For me, it was; it sounded more on the male side. So then, I’m sitting in my car having my coffee and trying to get my application to work, and for the second time I hear this voice talk to me, and it said, “Go to the casino,” and once again I answered, no, I’m not going to the casino, I’m working. Anyway, about twenty minutes had gone by and I’m still fiddling with the application on my phone—

O: Why are you fiddling?

PL: I’m trying to get it to load the location so that the calls would come up. None of the calls were coming up, because for some odd reason GPS wasn’t picking up my location, and without the location the app can’t determine whether there’s calls in your area. So anyway, after fiddling with that for about twenty minutes I said to myself, you know, for a three dollar call, is it worth all of this aggravation? And at that point I heard that voice for the third time, and it said, “Go to the casino.” So I said, okay, alright; first of all though I have to go into Walmart, go to the washroom, and I have to stop at the bank and deposit a cheque, and I will go to the casino. And that’s what I did.

O: Okay, you went to the casino?

PL: I went to the casino, and I wasn’t there very long—

O: The casino is the Georgian Downs casino?

PL: Georgian Downs out of Barrie.

O: In Barrie, okay; which would be about an hour’s drive?

PL: No, about forty minutes. But the thing is, I kind of felt a little bit guilty because I always call you at lunch time, and it was getting pretty close to lunchtime. Actually, it was lunchtime just as I was pulling into Georgian Downs, and I had to tell you a little fib because I didn’t want to say that I listened to this little voice in my head and went to the casino; and, it’s not something that I would normally do. I don’t normally go somewhere without telling you; but I was compelled by this voice to follow this through.  So I thought, well, for now I’m not going to say anything. I can always fess up later. Anyway, I made my call to you, and I got into the casino, and I’m not there very long, and I win money. And I kept winning money. And I had actually won over eleven hundred dollars, but it was too early to come home and I told you I was at work, and I thought if I drive home now you’re going to think, well holy molly, that was really a short day; so I decided to stay there and play a little bit more. I mean, I did play down almost two hundred dollars of what I had won, but it was fine; and I came out of there with nine hundred and fifteen dollars.

O: And that’s it? You didn’t hear the voice anymore?

PL: Never heard the voice anymore, never heard the voice since.

That was Penny’s casino experience, but because she had heard the voice within once before when we were going through troubled waters in our relationship because of my past-life regressions which brought back the memory of our past lifetime together back in Genoa, Italy when we were man and wife and I betrayed our family honor by humiliating my wife on the dance floor with my mistress on the biggest social event of the year, I broke Penny’s heart and she never spoke to me again; that’s why we got together in this lifetime. I had to mend her broken heart, which made our relationship much more than the eye could see, because when I went back to that lifetime in my regression all hell broke loose in our relationship and Penny was ready to pack her bags and leave me; but on a walk one evening she heard the voice within which addressed her vanity, and she decided to stay. But we decided that this was too personal, and I’m not going to mention what the voice said to her; and I mention this only to verify the point I want to make with today’s spiritual musing.

Had I not had my seven past-life regressions I would never have connected the dots and discerned our  purpose in life; but because I did, I know from personal experience that we come from the Body of God to grow and evolve through life until nature has evolved us enough to give birth to a new “I” of God, as I experienced, and from lifetime to lifetime we continue to grow in the “I” of God (our own reflective self-consciousness) until nature can evolve us no further through karma and reincarnation and we have to complete what nature cannot finish by taking evolution into our own hands, as I did with Gurdjieff’s teaching. But I have told this story in The Summoning of Noman and need not repeat myself here; suffice to say that because we are all atoms of God’s Body, God watches over us every moment of the day, and whenever we need guidance to bring our personal destiny into agreement with our spiritual destiny God speaks to us, as it did to Penny Lynn; but what did her going to the casino have to do with bringing her personal destiny into agreement with her spiritual destiny? That’s the mystery of the voice within, and the point of today’s spiritual musing.

From the moment an atom of God gives birth to a new “I” of God, it separates from the evolving consciousness of life and creates its own personal destiny out of its encoded purpose to grow in the “I” of God, or its newborn identity if you will; and when the atom of God has grown enough in its own identity to realize that life can do no more to satisfy its longing to become all that it is meant to be, the atom of God must find a way to satisfy this longing; but how? Where does it look to satisfy this longing?

“As each plant grows from a seed and becomes in the end an oak tree, so man must become what he is meant to be. He ought to get there, but most get stuck,” said Carl Jung; and, sad to say, we all get stuck in one lifetime or another and in righteous anger declare a variation of Macbeth’s lamentation that “life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” But nothing could be further from the truth, and whether it happens in this lifetime or the next the divine logic of life will bring our personal destiny into agreement with our spiritual destiny to fulfill our destined purpose; and after much reflection I finally reasoned out the logic of Penny Lynn’s casino experience.

The reason we get stuck on our destined journey to our true self is because we have created a karmic pattern that will not allow us to transcend ourselves, and Penny had created a karmic pattern in her attitude towards money that inhibited her spiritual growth; and no matter what she did, she could not break this mental habit. That’s why providence intervened with the voice within by telling her to go to the casino.

The only reason that Penny listened to the voice within and went to the casino was because she finally realized that all of her aggravation to do her Tcheck’it call wasn’t worth the three dollars she would be getting. It wasn’t going to change her financial status, and she threw her hands into the air, metaphorically speaking, and said, alright, I’ll go to the casino if that’s what you want me to do; and she went and came home with $915, which paid for our little trip up north to visit her family the following month.

Penny’s casino experience broke her karmic pattern of worrying over money the way she did, because it inhibited her spiritual growth; but because she could not break this karmic pattern on her own, divine providence intervened. That’s why we hear the voice within, to help us get unstuck and bring our personal destiny into agreement with our spiritual destiny so we can continue on our destined journey to wholeness and completeness.

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