It began as an experiment in telepathic communication.
View of Mt. St. Helena from Franz Valley Road off Highway 128 north of Calistoga, California.
The secrets of the universe are hidden in the details of our experience. -Pete
ENCOUNTER WITH THE ENERGY OF UNCONDITIONAL LOVE
By Roger A. “Pete” Peterson
It began as an experiment in telepathic communication. I live in Santa Rosa, California, and since 1981, I’ve driven buses for a living. Until 1986, I drove for the large school bus contractor, Laidlaw Transportation, under a special contract. Our job was to transport construction workers to and from geothermal plant construction sites at The Geysers in the Mayacmas Mountains. Located in Northern California and surrounded by Sonoma, Napa, Lake, and Mendocino Counties, this area has long been famous for its natural geysers, fumaroles, and mineral-rich hot springs. Because of its ability to produce steam, The Geysers is now home to the largest geothermal plant complex in the world.
One day in late 1985, my friend Michele and I were assigned to pick up passengers in Clearlake Highlands on Highway 29 in Lake County, sixty-five miles northeast of Santa Rosa. The assignment was unusual for me because it only required that I drive a twelve-passenger minivan. Normally I drove a large bus to The Geysers and provided service to passengers from Santa Rosa to Middletown. To reach Middletown and Clearlake Highlands from Santa Rosa it is necessary to drive over 4,344-foot high, Mount Saint Helena, which is part of the Mayacmas Mountain range.
It’s 4:15 am when I leave home for work on my bicycle. The bus yard on Sebastopol Road is just over a mile away. To keep my hands warm, I take them off the handlebars and shove them deep inside my jacket pockets. As I approach the bus yard driveway, I swing wide into the empty street so my front tire will hit the concrete lip at the edge of the driveway squarely. This keeps my tire from twisting sideways and throwing me to the ground while my hands are in my pockets. As I enter the bus yard, my attention is drawn skyward for the first time. Strangely, there’s a large number of dark, towering storm clouds filling the sky. Unlike any clouds I’ve seen before, these stand tall and vertical, like a man. Captured between the glow of the moon and city lights, they look kind of ominous. With more curiosity than concern, I enter the dispatch office to get my bus assignment. On the way out to check my bus, I pass Michele and say Hi!
While checking the tires, engine compartment and outside lights, I keep compulsively looking up at the the clouds. After completing my brake and instrument panel check, I lean over the steering wheel to take a longer look up at the clouds. They seem endless in number and look like they’re trying to silently and innocently tiptoe across the sky. Following their line of travel, I can see they’re heading straight for Mt. St. Helena, the mountain Michele and I have to drive over on our way to Clearlake Highlands. As I continue studying these strange cloud beings, they morph into heavily armed soldiers on a secret mission. What mission could that be, I ask myself? Are they preparing to ambush Michele and me in the mountains? The thought, even though it seems a little whimsical, sends a shiver down my spine.
After dropping the DBR (Daily Bus Report) off at the office, I drive out of the bus yard at 4:45 am, just ahead of Michele. At the edge of Sebastopol Road, I stop long enough to check for traffic, and look up at the sky again. Driven by concern and curiosity, I leave my body and fly to a point high in the air, above Mt. St. Helena. Silent and, hopefully, invisible, I watch as the giant warrior clouds arrive. Much to my surprise, they gather and mill around deep in conversation on top of the mountain. They act like patrons in a theater lobby!
These aren’t heavily armed soldiers preparing for battle; they’re large, harmless ghosts waiting for a show to begin! When one of the cloud ghosts looks up and sees me, he alerts the others; and in Stooge-like fashion, they all scatter and fall over each other as they hurry to find impossible places to hide in the hills and valleys of Mt. St. Helena. Apparently, my spiritual presence signals the show is about to begin. With relief and laughter, I return to my bus and step on the gas with just a twinge of concern for this strange force gathering in the mountains ahead.
I think most mountains are magical and Mt. St. Helena is no exception. Crossing it four times a day (two round trips) for almost five years, I’ve personally experienced some of its magic. For example, there was the voice of actor Henry Fonda. Early one morning as I drove up the western slope, there it was repeating a familiar phrase from one of his westerns. I was amazed that it grabbed my attention because, as usual, I was deeply engrossed in my own thoughts. How could this be, and why Henry Fonda? He has a remarkable presence in movies but he’s never been one of my favorite actors. He always seemed distant and cold, making it difficult for me to warm up to him as a person.
Henry’s voice became a semi-regular feature on my early morning runs over Mt. St. Helena. It always happened in the same spot, the middle of a short straightaway marked by two right turns about halfway up the mountain. Even though he used a different phrase from time to time, I always returned with, Hi, Henry, how are you doing?, in an attempt to get something more than a mindless phrase back from him, but I never did.
Once, I even asked if he had a message for a friend or family member but his response didn’t change. Like a “Thumper” set to attract giant worms on Frank Herbert’s Dune, his mindless voice kept uttering the same phrase over and over again. Since I was always on a tight schedule and there was no place to park nearby, I never stopped to investigate the matter further. Who knows, if it really is Henry, maybe he’s just waiting for the right person to show up.
Something I did have time to do when I drove over Mt. St. Helena was experiment with telepathic communication. The mountain itself made this seem possible. Only a few people live on it, even today. As I drove up toward the peak it would feel like I was rising above the din of human thoughts in the valley below. It was like rising through fog into sunlight. When you looked down all you could see were clouds, but when you looked up, visibility seemed clear and unlimited.
Driving home at night my telepathic experiments normally took the form of asking my wife, Sandra, what we were having for dinner. This question never failed to produce a word description or an image of a meal in my mind. Even though we shopped together on weekends, she took responsibility for planning and preparing our meals during the week. When I wanted to have a particular meal for dinner, or something special from the store like a deli sandwich, burrito, or fresh pizza, I’d communicate that to her telepathically. For example, I’d say, Hey honey, I sure would like to have a Grilled Steak Burrito from Pepe’s tonight. In anticipation, my mouth would water and I’d lick my lips. When I got home, it was easy to check on the result of my experiment—all I had to do was look at what I was eating!
Although I didn’t officially document my many telepathic experiments, the number of correct hits went well beyond chance or informed guessing. In reality, the results were almost perfect. On those few occasions I didn’t get what I wanted it was because I didn’t ask for it soon enough. In these cases, Sandra had already purchased or committed herself to preparing something else for dinner. Later, when I’d tell her what I had asked for, she’d say she had thought about it but too late to do anything about it.
One evening, after cresting the peak of Mount St. Helena with a busload of passengers, I burst out laughing. I had just finished asking Sandra what we were having for dinner when I noticed the similarity between fax machines and telepathy. Unlike ordinary face to face communication, where give and take can clear up questions, faxing a message requires clarity and completeness. This is what I would do when I’d send Sandra a telepathic message. I would clarify my message before sending it to her. Not only would I send her words, I would also send her a clear visual image of what I wanted, including all the emotional components that went along with it, like salivation, smacking my lips together and making pleasurable sounds like, mm, mm, boy, is that good!
Magically, a ghostly fax machine materialized out of thin air in front of me. With great joy, I composed a new message to Sandra. When it was done, I loaded it into my phantom fax machine and dialed her imaginary fax number. Through my Inner Senses, I watched with delight as she read it while standing under the shade of an olive tree next to her car in an almost empty parking lot. As she read the fax, she had a big smile on her face.
This morning, as we approached Mt. St. Helena, I decided to try communicating with Michele telepathically. Thinking I would get better results if I directed my questions to her Higher Self, the larger consciousness surrounding each of us, I asked a question and then listened for an answer. At first, our exchange seemed one sided and purely imaginary but with each new question, the answers became clearer and more real. That is, until my fourth or fifth question. Then it happened! In the process of reaching out to deliver my next question, I literally slammed into an invisible wall of energy that had inserted itself between the two of us. Like a stretched rubber band, I snapped back into myself, sobbing uncontrollably. While one part of me reacted with shock, another part of me calmly observed my emotional reaction with amazement. The calm observer in me thought, I haven’t bawled like this since I was a baby!
After blubbering for what seemed like twenty minutes, I decided to check my location because it only takes twenty minutes to drive over Mt. St. Helena. Shifting enough of my attention to the outside world to determine my location, I was totally surprised to see I was only about a third of the way up the mountain and that it was raining.
Still curious, I telepathically reach out again to Michele’s higher self. Wham! Incredibly, the wall of energy is still there and, again, I snap back into myself like rubber band that has been stretched to its limit. And, like before, I sob just as hard. This time, though, I can’t help but wonder, did something happen to Michele? Otherwise, why would I be having such a strong emotional reaction?
With increasing anxiety, I go through a checklist of possibilities. Was Michele involved in a car accident? Did she accidentally drive off the side of the mountain? I know she’s running several minutes behind me because I lost sight of her headlights as soon as I started up the mountain. In response to my question, a voice inside my mind (her higher self?), says, No, a vehicle accident or driving off the side of the mountain is not something she would choose to experience. I wondered, do each of us attract certain experiences to ourselves while rejecting others? What an intriguing thought! As my concern for Michele began to fade, more immediate concerns pressed in on me.
Near the top of Mt. St. Helena, the rain has become a downpour with water, driven by powerful gusts of wind, sheeting across the road. Pausing my experience for a moment, I wonder if Michele is aware of this amazing drama now playing itself out in the invisible and timeless world of possibilities around us. My question remains unanswered so I return to the business at hand. This time, if I’m able to make contact with the wall of energy, I’ll stay with it until I know what it is. Wham! It’s still there and, again, I have the same intense emotional reaction. This time, though, I stand my ground. I refuse to budge one inch and, suddenly, I’m inside the energy!
After waiting to see if anything bad is going to happen, I ask, what are you?
“This is the energy of unconditional love,” says a deep, soothing male voice that seems to come from every point within the energy field.
Wow, I sob even harder now because I know it’s true. That’s why I burst into tears every time I touch it with my mind! Intuitively, I must have known all along what it was but, intellectually, I didn’t have a clue.
What I do now completely astounds me but seems perfectly natural under the circumstances – I open up. I utterly and spontaneously open my life and being to this loving Energy. And just as quickly, I begin to shut down as feelings of vulnerability and shame fill my mind. It suddenly occurs to me that every thought and feeling I’ve ever had and every act I’ve ever considered or committed is exposed to view and I can’t bear the thought.
Sensing my anxiety, the Voice of Unconditional Love says: “Nothing you can ever say or do can keep you from being loved unconditionally.”
Both shocked and relieved by this unconditional acceptance, I cry even harder. I’ve never experienced this kind of love before, at least, not in human terms! As I experience it now, I know there is nothing I have to do to earn it. Just being is enough! Here, unlike the human world, there are no demands, no expectations, and no pre-conditions to satisfy before you can receive love. It is simply here to experience and enjoy!
Literally bathing in this loving energy, I wonder if the anger, misperceptions and imagined sins of my past will wash away forever. I use this moment to imagine they will, if not forever, at least for awhile. Even if it’s just the beginning of the end for these negative thoughts and feelings, that’s good enough for me!
As my love begins to flow, I find myself joyfully wanting to perform miracles for this Loving Energy, to honor it for the loving regard in which it holds me. A superman in this alternate reality, I am able to perform feats of magic and strength that are impossible to perform in the physical world. Then I stop to think about how important it is for me to fulfill my own unique potential as a human being here on earth. Suddenly, I “know” that the Energy of Unconditional Love is home, my real home! It is my birth place or point of origin as a living soul, and my final destination.
As I ponder my thoughts about the nature of Unconditional Love, I remember it’s more than just a “place” – it’s a state of mind and being. I can create and experience it wherever I am, no matter what I’m doing!
With an almost imperceptible shift in consciousness, I find myself standing naked in the middle of a dimly lit room with golden, metallic walls. The walls are separate and meet at sharp 90 degree angles like most earthly rooms. Realizing that the energy of separation and hard angles doesn’t fit my mood or the soft golden glow of the walls; I reshape them with the power of my mind. I make the separate walls coalesce into one continuous, smoothly curving wall, including the angles between the floor and ceiling.
I’m not satisfied until the room looks and feels like the inside of a large womb.
When I stop to admire my handiwork, the air in front of my face begins to crackle and pop with dark, exploding points of energy. Suddenly, the dark points turn into golden rays, which shoot out to form an oval frame of shimmering, radiating light. Materializing within this amazingly beautiful frame is the face of a man with long brown hair and a beard. Before my eyes become completely lost in his, I notice his serene, Christ-like features.
As He looks through my eyes and into my soul, He says, “Roger, you’re delightful, just the way you are!”
Oh my God, here I go again! The impact of His kind face and loving words starts me on a new round of intense sobbing. Strangely though, while the Outer me sobs, the Inner me calmly reaches out and lifts the bottom edge of the energy field that surrounds us. Gently raising it above my head, I look out across the sloping fields and vineyards of Calistoga lying at the foot of Mt. St. Helena. The Christ-like Entity is now standing on a grassy knoll a short distance from me. Raising His arms, I watch as He sends waves of loving energy rippling out across the earth and into the universe. Like air over hot pavement, the energy ripples and expands outward in all directions. I know it is meant to include everyone and everything in All That Is.
Meanwhile, the outer me is struggling to keep the empty minibus in my own lane on the narrow, twisting mountain road. The emotional intensity of this mystical experience is so great my body it is wrenching back and forth with each new sob. Making matters worse, the tightly stretched muscles of my face have narrowed my eyelids to tiny slits. Through brimming tears, I can only see a blurred image of the road ahead.
As if this isn’t bad enough, after cresting the peak of Mt. St. Helena, a disembodied head appears outside my driver side window. It’s traveling at the same speed as the bus. A quick glance reveals my own face smiling back at me. Despite my intense surprise and curiosity, I force my attention back to the road and attempt to revisit my Inner Vision; but to no avail. The face outside the window is once again commanding my attention. It’s now laughing at me with tears streaming down its face. It’s gut-wrenching, knee-slapping, finger-pointing laughter!
In confusion, I wonder what I must look and sound like from the outside. Why, oh why, did I ask? Suddenly, a channel opens up and I’m able to hear the full volume of my own sobbing from a point outside my body. It’s deafening! It reminds me of those few times I remember as a baby when I cried with every fiber of my being. Now, as an adult, it’s much louder!
Not only can I hear myself from the outside, I can see myself from the outside. The skin of my face stretched tight from the intensity of my emotions has formed a rigid mask that at once looks sad and grotesque. Out of curiosity, I re-enter my body with the thought of testing the strength of the rigidity in my facial muscles. Can I overcome their rigidity by force? As I begin the experiment, the thought that this effort might disrupt the continuity of my experience, makes me stop.
Moving back outside myself, I continue to watch my body jerk back and forth behind the steering wheel. It looks totally absurd! While laughing at myself, my attention is again drawn back inside my body and I begin to see my behavior with new eyes. My body’s movements feel contrived. It feels like someone is deep inside me pulling strings or pressing buttons. First, the abdominal and lateral muscles on my left side tighten and pull me to the left. Then the right set of abdominal and lateral muscles tighten and pull me to the right, jerking me back and forth from side to side in tune with the sound of my sobs.
As the spell of unconditional love disappears, I wonder how my supervisors would react if they knew I was indulging in this experience while driving over Mt. St. Helena in a company vehicle. They would undoubtedly freak them out and the air would fill with reasons why no one should ever allow their inner senses to take over while driving, and I’m sure I would agree with most of them. What would Michele think if she could see me now? For that matter, what would any sane person think if they could see me wrenching back and forth behind the steering wheel with a grotesque, mask-like expression on my face?
Through a cartoonish flight of fantacy, I turn the minibus around and watch as two people approach me in a car from the same direction I had come. Parking on the right side of the road facing west on a short straightaway, I turn night into day and wait. When my fantasy travelers get close enough to see the rigid, tear streaked look on my face, they both react in exaggerated horror. The female passenger throws her hands up in an attempt to stifle a scream, and the driver’s eyes bug out in alarm as his hands tighten their grip on the steering wheel. Slamming on his brakes, he turns the steering wheel hard to the left and comes to a screeching stop, parked sideways in front of me. Quickly putting the car in reverse, he backs up far enough to complete a turn and peals out as if the devil is right behind him. After imagining several more wacky scenarios like this, the tension breaks and I begin to laugh. Soon, I am laughing with the same gut-wrenching, knee-slapping, finger-pointing intensity as the earlier “me” outside the window.
Taking another quick look out the driver’s side window, I’m surprised to see a new face staring back at me. It’s no longer my face looking back at me but the face of an older man with shoulder-length white hair. His upper chest and shoulders are visible and I can see he is wearing a dark colored, well-made, quilted coat over several layers of clothing. He obviously lives in a cold climate. A large ornate medallion hangs from a chain around his neck and there is a look of wildness and magic about him. I wonder, is he responsible for orchestrating the floating head experience?
He nods at me in approval and smiles, leaving me to half expect a wink. As I continue to watch him, his face starts to change. His smile disappears and is replaced with a look of anger. Then, with a look of hateful contempt. As his face continues to transform, it ecomes younger and more ancient in origin. Soon, his features are coarse and brutish, the hair on his head thick, black and tangled. He’s now wearing a thick, dark animal skin wrapped around his hips with a wide strap going over his right shoulder. With a large club in his left hand, he looks like he wants to hit me but then changes his mind and runs off into the woods (and into the past?), his hair streaming behind him. Before he completely disappears, he stops and looks back at me. The look of hatred on his face is gone now, replaced by a look of sadness and loss. Does he feel a sense of connection between us? Is he another me in a past lifetime or alternate reality? Would this make me a future aspect of him? Finally he disappears and my mind fills with questions concerning his role and that of the magician in this amazing experience.
With a start, I remember that in less than twenty minutes I’ll be loading construction workers on my bus in Clearlake Highlands. Taking a look at my puffy face, runny nose, and red eyelids in the mirror, I laugh nervously as I wonder how to handle the situation. Pulling a handkerchief out of my back pocket, I blow my nose and wipe my eyes. Even though time is short, I feel a need to check the Energy of Unconditional Love out one more time. I want to know if it’s real or not. To hell with what the men in Clearlake Highlands think about the way I look! With that issue settled, I reach out to my own Higher Self, Robert, who I met in a dream years ago.
Wham! The Energy of Unconditional Love is still there and again I sob just as intensely as I did before. With my question answered, I spiritually hug Robert with a sense of profound gratitude. I then thank everyone involved in creating this amazing and profound spiritual drama. I thank Laidlaw Transportation for the timely job assignment and the bus that brought me here. I thank the earth spirits, including my ghostly cloud friends, for the cover of this dark and stormy night, and I thank the Energy of Unconditional Love. This experience would not have been possible without the willing participation of all these elements working together. For the fourth and final time this morning, I leave the Energy of Unconditional Love to get on with the business of waking reality.
As I continue my journey toward Clearlake Highlands in the afterglow of my Encounter with the Energy of Unconditional Love, I ask myself, Why me? What did I do to deserve this amazing experience? I roll this question around in my mind and travel back in time to a point two years earlier. At home alone, I’m sitting at my desk wondering what to do next and start feeling sorry for myself as I think about all the times I’ve tried and failed to achieve my greatest goal in life, changing the world for the better.
What can be more exciting, or worth doing, than changing ourselves and the world for the better? What can offer more hope when the future of mankind looks so dark?
As a child, I was unhappy with life. In my world, people didn’t treat each other very well and I didn’t like that. I knew I had two choices. I could either withdraw from life or do something about it. I chose to do something about it! Specifically, although I couldn’t put it into words at the time, I wanted to help create more love, truth and joy in the world. I knew I was asking a lot of myself but, hey, what’s life without a challenge? It seemed to me that trying to change the world for the better was preferable to giving up.
I had decided to climb Mt. Everest but here I was, in my early forties, still stuck in the foothills with too little time and too little money to do more than maintain the bare necessities of life. My salad dressing business after college was a failure, my several attempts at multilevel marketing failed, and here I was, still working full time driving buses for a living, even though I liked my job. In a moment of supreme frustration, I threw my arms up in the air and asked the universe, what do I want more than anything else in All That Is?
In response, a clear male voice, about six inches in front of my forehead, said, “LOVE!”
Despite my surprise, I shouted, that’s it! More than anything else in All That Is, I want love – I want to give love and I want to receive love, unconditional love! In a flash of insight, I realized everything I had ever done in life was for love. I was either responding to love or the promise of it, or reacting to a lack of it. When I felt or acted badly, it was because I felt unloved and unappreciated for who I was and what I was doing.
As a young person I felt great anger and frustration because I found it so hard to love myself and others. Many of the people around me seemed petty, mean, critical, insincere and vindictive most of the time, like me! It didn’t occur to me we might all suffer from the same problem, a cultural mandate to make value judgments, to constantly compare ourselves and one another to outside standards of being and performance. We even compared ourselves to one another, and still do. It was and is the kind of behavior that leads to conflict, anger, fear, resentment, violence and contempt. Unwittingly, many of us become Master Fault-Finders and a source of pain and anguish to ourselves and others. It is a behavior or reaction pattern that is as relevant today as it was yesterday.
For better or worse, we live in a fear-based value-judgment world of right and wrong, good and bad, guilt and punishment. It is a world of external values and in this world unconditional love is an ideal, not a reality. Out of learned fear and distrust of ourselves and one another we place conditions on almost everything we do. As parents, teachers and civil authorities we tell each other, whether spoken or unspoken, “Act ‘good’ (by my definition) and I will reward you. Act ‘bad’ and I will punish you.”
By treating ourselves as little more than mindless masses of protoplasm that need to be poked and prodded into predefined forms of order and behavior, it is no wonder we find it hard to like ourselves, let alone love ourselves. Our current belief system lacks imagination and appreciation for who we really are and what we are capable of becoming. We can and must change that!
As Pogo, an old comic strip character created by Walt Kelly, once said: “We have met the enemy (and savior, I might add)… and he is us.”
Even though it took two years to gain alignment, the universe gave me what I wanted, an Encounter with the Energy of Unconditional Love!
Dawn was breaking as I pulled into our temporary parking lot in Clearlake Highlands but, thankfully, it was still dark enough to give me some cover. To keep the men from seeing my face as they boarded the bus, I opened the driver’s side door and turned my head as if looking at something interesting outside the bus. Even though the overhead light in the bus was dim, you could still see expressions on people’s faces if you looked closely. Once the men were seated, I closed the doors and turned forward to drive off. I couldn’t tell if they had noticed my raw emotional state but if they did, they were kind enough not to mention it. Putting the bus in gear, I stepped on the gas and headed for The Geysers.
It took several months for me to screw up the courage to ask Michele if she remembered anything different about that morning. I knew she would remember it because it was the only time she and I did the Clearlake Highlands Run alone together. Her answer was “No.” Even when I described my fear that she had been involved in an accident or driven off the mountain, she could remember nothing out of the ordinary about that most extra-ordinary morning. (Read Jay’s Story)
Copyright 1999, Roger A. “Pete” Peterson
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
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