Two of my most profound experiences as a therapist were with people who I thought at the outset were the least likely to be in therapy at all. One was a man whose wife was about to leave him because she was starving for more emotional connection, and he was desperate not to lose her. The other was a woman who had been severely abused, suffered pervasive anxiety and terrible nightmares. Her heart was locked behind a wall of protection. Neither presented as particularly open or receptive, but there they were, perched on my couch session after session, week after week, determined to have a better life. The man did not have major trauma as far as I could see, but he suffered from his parents’ unavailability and impossible expectations of him. He had become an over-achiever who lived in his head. The woman could not get close to anyone. These two clients had nothing in common except their commitment to healing. And their commitment was everything as it turned out because they both transformed dramatically and emerged from the cocoon of therapy as unrecognizable versions of who they first appeared to be. That might have been the end of the story…but it wasn’t.

What is truly remarkable about these two people (but in hindsight perhaps not remarkable at all) is that their process of recovery took them far beyond what they came to therapy for. It led them into a totally unexpected connection to spirit, a place beyond healing in the way we ordinarily think of it. They both became more peaceful, positive, and relational adults, still very human and fallible, but also kinder, more loving, and more fulfilled, which was spectacular in and of itself. But it was not the endgame. Somehow the work they did, without any conscious intention on their part, and certainly not on my part either, cleared the path and opened a doorway to what I would call spirit or soul– a deep connection that changed their lives forever.

I never gave this much thought beyond remarking to myself how we just don’t know what’s possible or where healing can take any one of us, and of course I felt very blessed to have been on their journey with them. I never actually put their experience together with my own. The connections we make to our own souls or essential selves is unique to each of us, yet their story is also my story. At the darkest time of my journey of recovery I made a miraculous connection to spirit, to a consciousness more profoundly loving than anything I had known before that communicated a wisdom about our human existence my own mind was incapable of knowing on its own. In my case, I have been blessed that my relationship with another consciousness comes in the form of distinct messages that I write down as I hear them, some of which I have written about in two books, A Light in the Darkness and Into the Fire. I am also a psychotherapist, which has always felt like a much more acceptable identity than, say, a channeler or spiritual seeker. I have struggled with how to appear “normal,” sometimes clinging to my wife, mother, and therapist identity, while still accepting and sharing the connection I have to a level of consciousness that is beyond the ordinary.

I have not navigated this struggle particularly well. By default, I have tried to keep the two worlds separate, because I believed they were separate. And even though I know that the level of consciousness I contact is extraordinary, something I consider Divine, and which holds wisdom and answers to some of the great mysteries of human existence I have not found anywhere else, I have often felt a great measure of fear and even shame, like I am dangerously too far from the norm or just plain full of myself. At the same time, the need to share is undeniable. I have stayed in an excruciating tug of war inside myself for many years, sometimes talking, sometimes hiding, sometimes being received and at other times experiencing exactly the negative judgment I have so feared. But suddenly I am talking on podcasts about the book I am writing about bringing America to therapy, and people are looking at my website and they are seeing my two books that are all about the messages from a Divine consciousness I received. I was startled, shocked even, to find I was not rejected out of hand but that many people were interested in where my healing journey had taken me on that level, just as I had been fascinated by the journeys of the two clients I mentioned.

And so it happened, without any intention or warning, that I was unable to keep the two worlds apart. Following my own inner guidance to write my current book, which is fundamentally psychological and not spiritual in nature, I had inadvertently opened the door to be seen in all the places I felt most vulnerable, and I had a revelation! I suddenly asked myself– How did we get stuck in thinking that the emotional and intellectual development that human beings are capable of as of 2023, is the pinnacle of our brain’s and our psyche’s evolution? How did I get stuck in believing that our actual consciousness has reached a plateau of sorts, and that if my (or anyone’s) consciousness goes beyond that plateau in the process of healing on a psychological level, as was the case for my two clients and the case for countless others today, I am somehow suspect, weird, and a liability to myself? In all these years, I have never been able to fully shake that belief, even though I know it is not true.

Until last night.

I was lying in bed trying to fall asleep when it came to me that all the things I have considered signs of healing—the ability to feel more joy, give and receive more love, stand up for myself in appropriate ways, make better boundaries, reflect on my shortcomings without defensiveness and even laugh at myself, make changes when I am able, tolerate distress with more patience and skill, say I’m sorry, see the good in others, and accept that I still fall short in all these areas — all the things I consider signs of emotional growth and the qualities I believe are so needed to heal the pain of the world and keep us from extinction—I suddenly realized that making the leap to another realm of consciousness is part of our actual growth and the necessary next step for humanity. It not an aberration occurring in a random group of strange people, and it is not a special gift for a select few. It is where we are headed.

It came down on me like a bolt of lightning—that the evolution of our consciousness, our ability to connect with the Wisdom and the Love of all Creation, even in the smallest measure or for the most fleeting moment, and understand and make use of it right here on earth with our fellow man to the very best of our ability– in some measure not now believed to be possible– not only is possible but it is where all our hard work of healing is taking us as a race. And that some people have been given that Grace, not because they are more worthy, but because the time has come for the next leg of our evolutionary journey to be revealed. Grace slapped me upside the head last night and I hope and pray I will never be the same.

The two clients I spoke of earlier had their own unique experiences of transcendence out of ordinary consciousness, and it brought them not only more love and acceptance of themselves and others, and more peace and fulfillment in their daily lives, but an experience of the Divine that took them beyond the outer limits of their personality and personal history. There are countless people suddenly moving beyond the realm of what has been considered ordinary thinking and feeling, and I can tell you unequivocally that the consciousness they tap into never takes them toward violence or hatred. Violence and hatred are the source of the suffering we are healing from. Healing takes us to love and connection. We are moving in that direction. Period. But bright as that star may be shining on the horizon for more and more of us, we are not yet moving en masse. We have not yet reached the tipping point. My hope is that we are gathering our momentum, that the evolution of human consciousness will inexorably take us to a place where connection to Creation and one another is not a theory or a far-off possibility, but an undeniable reality of experience that infuses mainstream thinking, mainstream conversation, and becomes the light we hold for each other as we make our way through the darkness.

As a nation and as a world we are not far from where my two clients began, and where I began— buried and suffocating under a dense cloud of fear, violence, and severe disconnection from others and ourselves. It is a collective journey we need to make, the exact same journey we are now making as individuals. The work is to transform our collective pain and dysfunction the way we are learning to transform our own. We need each other to make this healing journey, to share our stories of the roads we have walked and the markers we have found along the way. I am writing a book about bringing America to therapy to address the urgent need to make the psychological part of this journey together now. My book deals with the nitty gritty of the difficult but not impossible road we must walk through the darkness of widespread, human-inflicted suffering and its terrible after-effects, and all I have learned that provides the greatest hope that we can come out the other side and heal our nation and our world the way we are now beginning to heal ourselves. We may be in our very first therapy session as a country. There may still be many of us who don’t want to join in. But I believe America is ready… I believe humanity is ready.