if so, this was a big-time cosmic heads up. I didn’t want this. I begged God to take this all away from me. Ending it would be the antithesis of who I thought I was. I liked being in relationship. I wanted this one to go the distance. I felt like my skin was being ripped from my body. I kept thinking that there must be something I could say or do, only to be haunted by pictures of me begging her to slow down to no avail. I had thoughts of staying, even if it was bad, only to flash back on the starving, stray dogs coming for scraps and being hit by the cars. How many times had I told my clients in therapy that they didn’t have to settle for scraps in their relationships, that they were worthy of so much more?
Physician, heal thyself. I couldn’t stop her from driving us over the edge, and I couldn’t even stay for the scraps without being killed. It felt like the ultimate double bind. My interpersonal skills? My psychological awareness? My compassionate heart? All worthless.
I was powerless. I was seeing my future. I was being warned.
Suddenly, as these thoughts collided in my head in the shower, I was given a vision of a railroad track ending directly in front of me. Another track began to the right about twenty feet away. They were totally disconnected. I immediately understood the vision. I would not be following a gentle curve into a new direction in life. I would not be subtly evolving into a more awakened spiritual being. The transition I was about to make would be the life equivalent of getting a locomotive to jump tracks. I would be literally jumping from one karmic track to another.
I was experiencing a quickening.
The next day, I would see my beloved niece get married. Three days later, my father would have a break with reality, not knowing his name, the date, or even the year. Seven days later, one of my best friends would schedule their surgery in an attempt to survive a life-threatening cancer. Ten days later, the woman I had been dating for five years, the woman I thought I was destined to marry, would send me an email telling me the relationship was over.
The barricade was broken; the car was plunging.
2
What Is a Quickening?
“Tones and sounds will be the channel through which the coordinating of forces for the body may make for the first of the perfect reactions . . .”
Edgar Cayce reading 758-38
One way in which the Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary defines the word “quickening” is as an entering “into a phase of active growth and development.” It is a fourteenth-century word that shows up in the King James Version of the Bible in Psalms as a prayer in a moment of desperation: “quicken thou me according to thy word.” (Psalms 119:25) Basically, “Hey God, hellooo! I’m dying here. Throw me a bone. I need some help, and it better be soon: I’m talking pedal to the metal.” Curiously, I was doing some research into the readings of the American psychic Edgar Cayce who also talked about a quickening of the spirit, a sudden acceleration or growth spurt.
You may have heard of what is referred to by psychotherapists as a “breakthrough session.” A quickening may be but another name for this term, which is used by therapists to describe when their clients suddenly take a giant step forward on their healing journey. The inference being that after a certain amount of volition is built up, unconscious resistance to an uncomfortable truth or clarity is “broken through.” A little “death” takes place of an old subjective reality that makes room for a new way of thinking or being.
After the dream of my Prius plunging over the edge, I was propelled into another stage of my spiritual growth. My relationship was at an end; I was powerless to stop it. I had to die a little . . . no, I had to die a lot that day. I died to the idea of becoming that woman’s husband. I died to the idea of a future with her. I died to the idea that since I was a therapist or spiritually awake that I could save the relationship. Not that I wanted it, or welcomed it at the time; to the contrary, initially I fought it. Eventually, the dream led to a return to therapy, a willingness to reach out to others for help in a way heretofore unknown to me and a re-thinking of what I wanted in a partner at this stage in my life. In the therapy business, there’s an old saying that, yes, the truth will set you free, but not before it sends you to hell first.
It was a pretty toasty time for me for a number of months.
Sadly, most of us go along the spiritual path slowly, if with any speed at all. More often, we stay largely asleep until the next catastrophe slaps the hell out of us and—if we are lucky—we awaken to the next level. No doubt you could point toward moments of your own where life dealt you a violent change in circumstances that knocked you off your feet, only to find yourself suddenly propelled forward (a life-threatening illness, the sudden loss of a loved one, a crisis of faith in your belief system). This is Saint John of the Cross’ “dark night of the soul.” Neurosurgeon and mystic, author of the best-selling Proof of Heaven, Dr. Eben Alexander, has called these moments, “the gift of desperation.” These catastrophic awakenings might be called spontaneous quickenings. We didn’t choose them, at least not at a conscious level. They happened to us.
Happily, some quickenings may be ultimately exceedingly positive, while at the same time, life-changing. The American psychologist Dr. Abraham Maslow wrote at length about peak experiences, which he defined as euphoric, ecstatic experiences filled with a deep sense of unity and interconnectedness. Maslow believed that, if integrated, these experiences have life-changing, long-term effects. However, it seems to me that these transformative experiences are seen largely as either a result of painful life circumstances or the grace of God—either of which is seemingly beyond the control of the individual.
Now, you may be saying, not so, there are spiritual disciplines that with practice can lead to these quickenings. To be sure, yoga, meditation, tai chi, among many other forms, may gradually lead to these kinds of awakenings.
But when I was fourteen years old, I studied transcendental meditation. I was the youngest in my class, surrounded by hippies and intellectuals in a college classroom. I think everyone was touched by my dedication. The dudes with the long hair and the love beads told me that if I learned to meditate I would see heavenly lights and hear the angels sing. Frankly, that is why I took the class. I wanted to hear God speak. I wanted colors and lights and spiritual revelation. But here was a typical meditation session from inside of fourteen-year-old Gregg’s head:
“(Repeating the mantra himself) Om, Om, Om, Om, Om, Om, Home, Home on the range, where the deer and the antelope play . . . Range . . . a range is an oven . . . I wonder what Mom is going to cook for dinner?”
I kept going to my TM® class anyway and dutifully received my sacred word, my mantra. But the angels weren’t singing and the lights weren’t lighting and apparently God was taking a meeting with the Holy Ghost or something, because I sure didn’t see Him.
Now, I know that meditation is a spiritual discipline and that it takes time and effort to catalyze those peaceful moments, the “gap between the thoughts” as Deepak Chopra likes to call them. I also know that learning to watch thoughts is essential to developing mindfulness—being fully present in the moment—which I value very highly. I also know that for me, breakthrough experiences came only after years of meditative practice, and even then only sporadically. I can hardly endorse these more typical approaches if you want to move forward rapidly.
Now, before you send me hate mail, I am not suggesting that you give up meditation or yoga or tree
