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I was attending a four-day training about three hours from my home. I had made many incredible friends there. This particular training was the fifth or sixth in a series of weekends I had spent.
One friend I made during these events happened to be a Mormon, the religion I had been raised in. I had now been out of the Mormon Church for approximately four years with no intention of returning.
We were outside the training center, taking a break in the parking lot near the door, surrounded by all the other participants who were also waiting for the break to end and the training to resume.
He came up to me during this break and told me he had received the “inspiration” to tell me that I needed to go back to church. I thought this was very interesting, because one of the biggest things they had been stressing in the training, was that no one else on this planet has the answers for you. Only you.
I immediately thought of Thomas Paine and his profound work “The Age of Reason” wherein Paine stated, that if a man receives “revelation from God,” as soon as he shares that revelation with anyone else it ceases to be revelation. It’s now hearsay. The only way it can be revelation to any other individual, is if God Him/Herself tells the other person directly.
So here I was, staring in the face of this man who claimed to be my friend, listening to his diatribe about how he “knew” I needed to return to church, and that he knew I had received a testimony of its truthfulness. He had no idea about the experience I had in the Taco Bell parking lot several years earlier.
He stopped me up short on that one. I thought back to my past as a Mormon and recalled times when I felt I absolutely knew that the Mormon church was true. I remembered the brainwashing, the “testimony meetings” in the children’s and youth groups at church and during Sunday services. I remembered repeating over and over again, “I know the church is true.” The mantra we all feel compelled to repeat until our subconscious is hypnotized into its summons.
That fleeting moment where I shifted my eyes and began recalling the past prompted my friend to pounce on it like a rabid dog.
He said, “AHA! I knew it! You DO still have a testimony!”
I had to laugh inside. I looked up at him, squarely and clearly in the eyes and said, “I made my choice, and I have no regrets. I am not going back. If you intend for our friendship to continue, you will remember that you do not have the answers for me. Only for yourself. If it is right for you to go to church, then do. If it is right for me to stay away. I will. If you continue to push it at me, I will end our friendship without any hesitation.”
Just then it was announced the doors to the training room were opening, and we all made our way inside.
We had a short lecture period, then as we all sat on the floor of the training room, we were invited to participate in a guided meditation.
I don’t remember so much how the meditation began. I remember floating through a forest, enjoying the trees, flowers, and butterflies.
We were told there was someone waiting to see us, someone who had a message for us and we were invited to look in our minds eye to see who it was. I instantly knew it was my father.
I found him standing on a grass covered hill. He looked different. He looked happy, and at peace. I asked him what the message was that he had for me.
He said, “All you need to know is that you are perfect just as you are. There is nothing in this world that you need to do, or to become. You are already everything you could ever desire to be. Be it.”
This was a very happy thing for me to hear, because growing up I felt that my father was very critical of me. It was a very surprising thing to be in a meditation hearing him tell me that I was perfect. I cried a bit, hugged him, and just enjoyed the moment.
He then told me, “Turn around and look.”
I turned away from him and looked out across the hillside. Slightly down the hill from me, and about 50 feet away, I saw a concrete slab. The slab was approximately two feet thick, and about 20 feet wide and long.
It seemed to be floating in the air. It was smooth on the top and on the uppermost part of its sides, but the bottom and lower edge of each side was rough, almost as if it had been originally poured as a foundation, and then by some sort of levitation, lifted up off the ground and there were gravel still clinging to it on the bottom.
Several people were standing on this concrete platform. I immediately recognized my friend and his wife and children there. He was beckoning to me to come and join him in standing on this concrete slab. He was touting the virtues of standing with him and the others who were also standing there with him, and telling me how much joy it would bring to me to be there with him.
I looked at him quizzically and half laughed.
“Dude,” I said, “there’s nothing holding that thing up.”
I pointed out that his foundation was floating on air, that there wasn’t anything underneath. He could not see this from his perspective. He was standing on top of it. He couldn’t see what I could see.
I continued to point at the empty space beneath it and tell him that I could see all the way underneath it, and there was nothing there.
I even told him that I was concerned that if enough people got on it, it might fall or crack and it could seriously injure those on top of it.
He continued to look down at the platform beneath his feet, testing his weight on it, and asserting that I was indeed wrong, that it was most assuredly a very strong foundation. He even went to the edge, looked over the side, and pointed out how thick it was.
I said, “Yes, it is thick, but there is nothing underneath it holding it up. If you see it from my perspective, I can see completely underneath it. It rests on nothing. It is floating in the air.”
While we continued to debate, I noticed a young boy standing on the slab with his family. No one was paying attention to him, but he was listening to me. He had finally dropping down on his hands and knees to peer over the edge. As thick as the slab was, he couldn’t see completely underneath it, no matter how far he stretched himself down, without falling off it.
He finally did fall off, but he didn’t land on the ground. He sort of levitated.
Now he was able to go lower and peer beneath the foundation. He looked up at my friend, and at his parents and announced, “It’s true. There’s nothing there.”
Because he had left the platform, he was now in a position to take a better look at it. His parents only chastised him for falling off, and tried desperately to get him to rejoin them on the slab where it was “safe,” but he wouldn’t.
I looked around and saw many more floating concrete slabs. Some were small, some were very large with many, many people on them. Everyone was beckoning others to come and join them on their slab.
The whole scene was very curious to me.
I turned back as my father began to speak again. “Many people will come to you, and beckon for you to join them on their foundation.
“They do not know that they have no stability, because they cannot see from their perspective. They cannot see what is under it, what is holding it up, when they stand on top of it. It is only when they are willing to look, to step off of it, that they gain the perspective to see what is really holding it up.”
I looked around and saw that this was true.
My father spoke again, “Many people will beckon to you and try to convince you to join them in standing on their foundations because you are a powerful woman. If they can encourage a powerful person to join them, it makes them feel more comfortable about the choice they made to remain there… to remain in their ignorance, in their limitations.
“They are looking for you to give them permission to stay stuck there. They are looking for their answers through you.
“Your power, however, does not come from standing upon slabs or foundations. So be aware that you do not create one of your own for others to stand on with you.
“Because you stand upon NONE of them, you are free to fly. And as you fly, you will see and experience life in a way that only those who fly… can.
