• Series of doorways, temple in Ankor Watt, Cambodia, 2015

    Accessing Your Own True Being

    May 28, 2026 - By 

    It shouldn’t feel like an experiment, but it does.

    We come into the world connected, then lose that connection seemingly by design. And if you are in growth, and intellectual center, particularly a well trained, hypervigilant intellectual center, it is a fight to find your way back.

    Series of doorways, temple in Ankor Watt, Cambodia, 2015
    Temple Doorways Ankor Watt, Cambodia

    As a professional counselor I made the observation years ago that clients who are particularly bright are also particularly challenging because they can use their brains to work against their own best interests. One young lady falling into the abyss of schizophrenia was a case in point. Her family took her to get an MRI to prove to her that there were no implants in her brain reading her thoughts. Well, that meant the doctors were in on the plot. Ther permutations of this argument were never ending.

    I could steer her back to this 3D reality she needed to navigate within our fifty minute hour, but by next visit, she would find some other truly plausible reason not to believe me or anyone else. And that is true for all of us when our survival brains work to keep us in line with the way it has “always been”. Growth, anything new, feels uncomfortable. And the known produces nothing new.

    So to get in touch with the unknown is required. And scary if you are someone who likes to be in control like I am. For years people seem to think I have the ability to connect, to find and express through intuition. At times this feels plausible. When I work and what comes out of my mouth seems wiser than “me”, it makes sense to me that I have been in touch with my own true being. But mostly I have argued against that. Or tried to find ways to it that circumvented my brain, with some limited success.

    I prefer “true being” to the tag “higher self” as the title for this part of our spiritual nature. I used the title “vertical identity” for a while, but that seemed too mechanical and dry somehow. Anyway, We are part of that system, like our stomach or our lungs. And it can seem disconnected from us, like when we are young. Our first chakra desires to procreate might be dead set on being in relationship to someone we KNOW is not good for us. And those desires outrun knowing better than that.

    But now I am far older. The family has been raised, the world explored. It is time to take time for these experiments. This is the latest method I have come up with, inadvertently witnessed by peers who were so gracious when my microphone had not been turned off in the Zoom.

    I dropped into a meditative space. I had written out the parameters of the topic in a Word document and had then pressed Windows H to turn on the voice to text. Whatever then came to me came out of my mouth and onto the page. When I was complete, the typos got fixed and the experiment was complete. Kath is posting that here somewhere. I will continue such experiments with this new strategy. We will see how it goes.

  • Uplift

    February 20, 2026 - By 

    Finding Wisdom When You Are Stuck

    Marian Haftel Smith / February 20, 2026

    I felt blocked. I’ve been worried about household finances and what path to take forward. So, I meditated like I often do at such moments. What arrived was not reassurance, but a visitor and a teaching.

    I closed my eyes. While I do not “hear voices”, I don’t know how else to express this than to say, this is what I heard…

    (BEGIN) “Having been brought up with the concept of separation, you as human beings are very much focused on the less than 1% of creation that is matter rather than the energy of everything”.

    I felt compelled to open my eyes. I saw a chameleon crawling along the wooden window ledge next to me. It was also now brown with very delicate patterns along its spine. It could see through the window but not get “out there”. It crawled back and forth along the window ledge restlessly, then up the side of a pair of binoculars hanging right there. All to no avail.

    Copyright 2026 Marian Haftel Smith
    Looking out there for what might be in here…

    I opened the window then scooped him up to let him out. He struggled, fought capture and then was free. I closed my eyes and the message resumed. It is not a voice it is more like thoughts that rise from within me.

    “You are like the lizard climbing up your binoculars. You see yourself as ‘separate from’ when you are ‘a part of’ what you notice, looking out there for answers.

    You are no more separate from it than that lizard, who turns brown as he crawls across wood then green if among the leaves. He is cute, beautiful from a different perspective further along in the spiral of creation.

    The lizard is lost, bumping against the glass he cannot get past although he sees beyond it. And your hand, which he fears, helps him to the other side although he struggles against you. You help him anyway and he is now free. Such hands are there for you as you bump against symbolic glass” ( END).

    To receive this message from my inner knowing did not “fix it”. What it did do, with this beautiful synchronicity of this little lizard bumping up against glass then crawling up binoculars of all things, gave me a sense of peace that I am not alone. And for now it is enough. I can trust the way will open, if I’m paying attention.