Are you shy or reluctant to share spiritual experiences?

Carol Sill and Jim Van Wyck talk about some of the benefits to sharing spiritual experiences, and have a little fun while testing the technical aspects of using Google Talk and recording the discussion.

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Rough Diamond

Found on YouTube, “Malvasio” sings All the Diamonds by Bruce Cockburn, an exquisitely beautiful redemption song.

On his Youtube channel, Malvasio2, the singer says “I was a subway musician for 25 years from 1975-2000 here in Montreal, I also played in night-clubs and sang in the summers at a tourist area called the Old Port. After 25 years of trying to make a living as a musician I switched careers and became a computer nerd. About 18 months ago I came upon YT and it hit a nerve, my love of music reared its head and my guitar which in the previous 6 years had remained mostly dormant once again became part of my daily routine….”

His channel features a wide variety of songs, sung with guitar, at home, at the computer, posted on YouTube for all to hear.
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John of God and My Story of Spiritual Healing

by Sheila Verily

In August 2008 I travelled to a small town in Brazil on a sort of pilgrimage.  I was seeking whatever blessing may come of this journey and in particular relief from phobias related to food intolerances and cumulative personal stress.  This had become a considerable problem in my life – an unlikely candidate or so I thought, but at times limited by fear - and although other healing modalities had helped, nothing had taken me back a few years to when the problem did not exist.

So I journeyed the 6,000 miles from Vancouver to see the Brazilian miracle man dubbed John of God [in Portuguese: João de Deus].  John of God is a trance medium through whom spirit healers perform their work.  There is no charge to see him.

I have been interested in metaphysics, have studied spiritualism most of my life, and I was able to sense when the healing began.  It began in the beautiful capital city of Brasilia even before reaching destination.  Fortunately for me, my very capable guide Gary Walker (www.JohnOfGodHealing.com) knew just how to approach this journey for maximum benefit, and our first day of touring included three sacred sites before carrying on our way.  The healing had begun!

What I would soon come to witness in the little town of John of God will be impossible to explain in this one brief story, but it was all nothing short of powerful and moving.  Miracles have been known to happen there.

I briefly met with John of God.

Did I experience healing?

Yes, I certainly did – I have not felt phobic since my return, thank God.

Did others experience healing?

Yes, they have told me they have, some even from life-threatening conditions.

Some people sought physical healing and relief from serious or painful problems, while for others the trip was more about emotional healing.

I met people of all ages and from all around the world who had travelled to Abadiania, Brazil for help and in my opinion no-one leaves that precious little town without being changed for the better.  Since returning home my meditations have been deeper and more meaningful and I look forward to doing them with regularity.  Even my prayers and affirmations have a much sweeter feeling to them, as though they are coming from more deeply within and with even greater reverence.

What I experienced clairvoyantly, was another magnificent blessing.  I wish that everyone had seen what I saw: Saints and other beneficent spirit beings.  [I feel a duty to state here though that it is not necessary to be clairvoyant or to even believe in spiritual healing in order to experience benefit—a young New Jersey man on a return visit to Brazil confirmed that when he spontaneously shared his healing story with me.  Ideally one is sincere, is interested in a quiet although fun retreat, and is simply open to possibility.]

John of God (born João Teixeira de Faria) has said: “I do not heal.  God is the one who heals.”

I so look forward to returning to this marvellous little town in Brazil – a town where an abundance of lush papaya trees, gorgeous small green parrots, and a bounty of quartz crystals are all sights to behold amid the ever-warm Brazilian smiles.

If you have made such a journey or consider doing so, or simply care to share your thoughts with me, I would be delighted to hear from you.

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The Creative Spark

Expressive Arts facilitator and educator Barbara Karmazyn talks with Carol about her work and inspiration.

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A Minor Waltz

This video with pianist Jelaluddin Gary Sill shows him recording a piano improvisation in his Vancouver home studio.

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Sharing Your Gifts

“One of the most important things to get through any blockages to creativity is to really understand that the gift is not yours. Your job is to channel, to express and as you said, the glimmer comes to you and its your job to embellish and make it more beautiful and make it more real and to bring it into expression in the world through your mind and consciousness, which makes it unique.”

Spirit, Creative Life and Sharing Your Gifts: Jim Van Wyck and Carol Sill

C: Hello Jim, let’s talk about some of the ideas we wanted to explore for today. I know that you’re thinking a lot about talent and gifts and creativity, and tell me what you want to explore with that.

J: We have this idea of gifts and talent and creativity. Artistic people are often very spiritual people, and I think there’s a real connection there between creativity and spirituality and living a spiritual life.

And the first thing I wanted to say about the way I think about gifts is they’re not ours. They come from the universe. They come from God or the great spirit or whatever created us. If you think of the gifts as yours, it gives you a certain sort of thing, but if you think of your life and love, talents, as a gift, then it frees them up and ….Clinging, grabbing, holding is the opposite of open source and I think it’s the opposite of true spirituality too, that these things should be expressed.

The other thing I want to say: I’ve thought about this word “gifted” a lot, some of my children – two girls – have been described as gifted, one as an athlete and one intellectually. I think gifts are something that mostly people think in the world a little differently than I do. Some people think gifted means God gave you something.

My take of gifts, to be gifted, means that you have something to give away, something to express in the world. Giftedness doesn’t mean you’ve got a lot of stuff, it means you have things to give away, to share. So when you have gifts that doesn’t mean spirit gave you the gifts, but that rather, you have some gift to give to the world, to the people that appreciate your work, to the community that you live in.

That’s what I think about gifts, what do you think, Carol?

C: I agree with you, and I think it’s something that we should always be thinking about. And maybe what we should do is think about the flow, which is that when you have a capacity to express something, then you almost have a responsibility to enter the flow to enable that expression.

But it’s never really what you think it is, it’s something that maybe is larger than your idea of what it is. So the gift is an ability to open into what’s required of you. So there’s a bit of responsibility there, you’d don’t just toss it to the winds.

On the other hand I think everybody has something, everybody has come with something, some purpose in their life to be evolved or discovered. I would hesitate to name this person as gifted, and that person as without something to offer, because you never know. Once the circumstances, the place, the time, the atmosphere is correct, something pours out. And it could be simple or it could be complex: we have no way of assessing it.

J: Yes, every human is a unique expression of spirit and every human has, I think, things to share. If it’s just simple love, what could be more important or significant than that? Or if it’s an expression, an artistic expression, or an expression in commerce or business or relationships or making people happy, making people laugh, everyone has some way of expressing their own divinity, for sure.

C: And also we know there is the muse, the communication that comes to you, that enables you to have an inspiration, to follow that, to be inspired. I think that’s an important part of what we’re talking about, not simply that you have a gift…

I guess I’d say that you’re given an inspiration which doesn’t necessarily take you all the way. You get the beginning of it and then you have to follow that through. Follow it, then the gift is given. But if you don’t follow it the gift stays wrapped in its package.

J: You know, people, creative people especially… I work a lot with writers and writers talk to me about challenges and writer’s block and stuff, and I had a whole course on that at breakthroughwriting.com.

One of the most important things to get through any blockages to creativity is to really understand that the gift is not yours. Your job is to channel, to express and as you said, the glimmer comes to you and its your job to embellish and make it more beautiful and make it more real and to bring it into expression in the world through your mind and consciousness, which makes it unique.

But if you clamp down and try hard, “My Writing” “My Painting” “This is mine, I have to…” If you clamp in it tends to make it more challenging, more difficult. Still things can happen but it’s sort of constipated, it’s tight, you know? And if you really relax into the expression, then it flows beautifully.

Some people really know how to tap into this better than others. Mozart could write the most beautiful music very very easily and fluidly because he had a good access channel. Different people have different ways of doing it.

One helpful way to meet a creative challenge is to know its not yours, and relax and open and express – that’s my take on it.

C: You know art itself is a path, it is a spiritual path. Those who follow that path, and have that calling, are doing enormously deep and creative work that may not be recognized as “beautiful” in the eyes of society today but later on in the future it starts to become clear that this was actually extraordinary work. And the same with – like the Andy Warhol show that we just saw in Victoria, just extraoridinary how he embodied what it is.

I know you were talking about these challenges, and you said you might have some idea of how to face some of these challenges?

J: Like I was saying before, really it’s about opening to the experience, opening and giving up your ownership of whatever it is you’re trying to make or create, and to give that ownership up to the universe and just act as a unique channel or unique expression. You can do that by meditating, or relaxing, or even just making a psychological shift away from “me” “my” “mine” into “ours” “express gift” “share”. At least that certainly works for me.

And you were saying something about artists not always being recognized, or the creative and the importance of creating. I’d like to really make a point that an administrative assistant to an executive can approach his or her job as an artist and to express it with creativity and talent and craft and experience, too. Or you can be an auto mechanic or a tennis teacher or… you can be an artist – a person who creates with craft and intelligence and beauty in any condition.

And I think it’s really important to affirm that each person can be creative and wholesome and helpful and bring their own unique expression to their work, whatever that work is. It doesn’t have to be daubs of paint on canvas.

C: I think you’re talking about the art of life, or the art of personality, the development of character, the development of a full and whole human being as well as acting in your life as a whole an individual as much as you can. I think that’s the thing: to live in the totality.

Now, with the troubles in the world that we are facing, I know you do a lot of thinking about these things, I’m just wondering what your take is on this?

J: It’s of the theme of what we’re talking about, Carol. Because of the media, we really do have a lot of news about things that happen in the world.

By most objective measures, this is one of the safest and most peaceful times of all times to live in, in any urban environment, or in a rural environment. There’re less murders per 100,000 people than in any time in history. And yet because we have the media and the news, there is the voice of fear.

And sometimes, as creative people, and people hoping to live spiritual, wholesome lives, it can feel like there’s not enough or that we’re separate from other people in the world. That voice of fear, that voice of scarcity: I think nowadays the buzzword for that is “ego”.

That’s your ego talking, the separation, the smallness, the me. But we really used to call that the devil – all the fears and unhappinesses of the world. We can transcend the voice of me, me, me, mine, worry, fear, something bad will happen, because I think this universe is dying for the expression of happiness and love and creativity.

C: I think that one of the things people need to do, and pardon me for saying “should” is to really examine..

J: You say it better than “should” you said “need”.

C: It’s because we are being bombarded by - I don’t know how many, 36000 messages a second or something – that are telling us that we need a certain thing, we are inadequate in certain ways, that there are areas to be afraid of. So our entire desire-body is being pushed and pulled in every direction, leaving us very little self-understanding.

So it’s good to look at our media ecology, the environment that we’re swimming through on a daily basis, to understand who we are. Somehow to clarify that, then to clarify where you stand as an individual: the only way to do this is to remain open to the inner sources. Because then you get some strength.

J: And when you say open to inner, are you talking about open to intuition, or are you talking about practicing some kind of meditation or prayer on a regular basis?

C: Whatever you need to do, whatever kind of approach that you need to take. Both of them work. But basically relying on your inner intuition and refining that. And trusting yourself.

You have to learn that there is a voice inside of you that’s telling you who you are, what you’re to do, what your gift is, where you’re going, how to do it, it’s all there for you and it’s your own, and it’s our birthright. And that’s what we’re going for all the time, to connect there, and then to express out from that. From there you find a way out of the forest of influences.

J: Yes.

C: You wanted to talk a little bit about something to do with the miracle of the loaves and fishes. Can you tell me about that?

J: A metaphor, a way of thinking about it in the form of a story, of everything we’ve said today. All four gospels talked about the miracle of loaves and fishes, and they expressed it very similarly. There were about 5000 people there, listening to Jesus talk. In another version there may have been 4000 – there may have been 5000,4000 two different events, it’s not really clear what happened, but there were five loaves of bread and two fishes in a basket. And they passed the basket from person to person and every person was fed.

And remember when I said earlier the ego is my, me, mine, scarcity and that might be considered another way of thinking of the devil? Think of the miracle as Jesus somehow created an environment where those people kept passing the basket. Just think, if one person gets a basket and thinks, “Oh my god, there’s only two fishes here, I need to grab it and hold it and seize it.”

The miracle was that everyone took just a little bit and passed it on, and that they expressed and kept the flow going. They didn’t grab and they weren’t fearful that there wouldn’t be enough. They were open. And the miracle is that the basket kept getting passed from person to person. There was this openness, this flow that you express.

And I think that, when you have a gift – whether it’s your ability to coordinate your boss’s schedule well, whether your gift is to fix up cars or to manage a rock and roll band, whether your gift is to give your clients the best health insurance that is appropriate to them in their situation, in their company – if you really let your gifts flow, if you don’t stop that basket and think “I’ve got to get mine, I’ve got to get those fishes, I need to put another loaf in my pocket for tomorrow.”

If you can really continue to pass it on, then I think that is one of the real messages that Jesus came to give us, and that the Bible is written for: this sense of openness and sharing, passing things along.

Giving your gift, whether the gift is a basket or something more intangible. That can be a real miracle in our life and in the whole world.

And that may be the solution to our ecological problems too, if everyone really was more open to share and express.

C: That’s great. I know, it is – that’s what open source is all about.

J: And that ties us back to open source, thank you for doing that. Anyone viewing this, we’d love to have you on our little video camera and talk with you about your experiences and your understanding. Write your email down below and we welcome you to join, to sign up for the email up dates, or to get in contact with Carol and I and talk with us about that.

Taken from the video.

Welcome Conversation

“We’d love to talk with you and then take that conversation over to the web for more comments, and we hope by this that we can get a really open conversation going about some of the ideas that really matter.”

Our First Welcome Conversation – Jim Van Wyck and Carol Sill

J: This is the first video conversation of OpenSourceSpirit.org. My name’s Jim Van Wyck, I’m in Los Angeles, and my friend Carol is..

C: I’m here in Vancouver BC Canada. We came up with this idea of working together at a distance to communicate with each other and with the rest of you, to make contact with all people who are working in the spiritual realm, finding ways to take your interior guidance and share it with others.

J: That’s right. Our idea is to take the principles of open source, which mean everyone works together in a collaborative fashion and no one is leader, no one is boss, we just share our ideas – and we’ll apply open source to spirituality, or Open Source Spirit. Could you say a few words please Carol?

C: I’d like to say that every person who’s involved in this endeavour makes a difference. Like you said Jim, there’s no real leaders except the inner guide within ourselves, and we’re getting some amazing information that is really worth sharing with one another. And together we can find out just exactly what we are doing in this big experiment.

J: Yeah, and if you are attracted at all to the idea of Open Source Spirit,  Carol and I, and all the rest of us who are going to come along and join, would like to welcome you to contribute, to share,  and to be a part of our community. You can do that by writing, by putting comments on the blog, we’ll have a forum soon, and you can also do that, if you have a webcam, by having a conversation with Carol Sill or myself about your particular version of spirituality.

C: We’d love to talk with you and then take that conversation over to the web for more comments, and we hope by this that we can get a really open conversation going about some of the ideas that really matter.

J: And we have a lot of exciting conversations planned, between Carol and myself, with some of the other people we know and have met, some of our friends who we’ve never met but we’re going to ask to participate here. If you have anything to say, to contribute, to share, we’d love to hear from you and be a part of it. All you need is a webcamera and an internet connection, and we can have you too participate. That’s all I have to say on our welcome, except I do welcome you, and perhaps I’ll give you the last word, Carol.

C: I’d like to say exactly the same thing: Welcome to Open Source Spirit!

View the video of this conversation.

On Spirit

“But it’s still exquisite isn’t it, to just be able to know that there’s so much more than what we see.”

Jim Van Wyck and Carol Sill in conversation.

J: Carol, we were going to talk about Spirit today, and in open, source and spirit, spirit is the big open grounding concept of it all. I wonder, what’s your idea? How do you think, feel, touch, smell spirit? What happens for you?

C: I think it can’t be seen or touched or felt, but it can be known – from within our own inner sense where we’re also an aspect of that. So because we are that, we resonate with it even though we’re here in this other world, embodied and living and embodying spirit actually.

So it’s very difficult to define, which is why it’s called spirit – which has all kinds of connotations, of that which can’t be touched, seen, smelled, tasted or heard.  In the idea of open source spirit what we’re doing is we’re looking at the code that takes us there, I guess you could say, and everyone finds their own.

J: Yeah. And what we’re looking to do is to create dialogues and conversations and interactions on the internet with you, the viewer, as you also contribute what you feel or think about spirit.

Now spirit, for me - when I was a boy I was raised as a Catholic. And we have very rigorous nuns teaching us – we literally called it “the Holy Ghost.” The spirit was something that only very advanced people got to talk about, and we only got to talk about Mary and Jesus and we were put off, till later to find out about the spirit, which was very advanced. And I’m still waiting to really come to an understanding.

For me, I am most touched by spirit when I’m in nature, when I see something beautiful, when I hear something beautiful. I was at an outdoor concert the other night with exquisite classical music, and I just had a real sense of okayness, and beauty and harmony all around. And that seemed to me like I was able to just about be really in touch with spirit and still be in my total normal consciousness. Sometimes we get very transported into spiritual realms while we’re just doing the most normal things (or at least sometimes I do – not very often.)

C: That’s one of the things that I like to explore, and I like to find out how other people experience that, because it is an aspect of life and it’s something that we talk about. We context it religiously, or as part of a meditation experience, but it is actually our birthright. It’s our everyday life – really infused continually in the life in the spirit. And what is that? And how do we each define it?

And yes, we can dare to talk about it and we can bring that out as an aspect of life, as something that is part of our reality. And how we go forward understanding what is being told to us by the inner voice within, by the “still small voice” inside us that says: “do this” or “look into that” – more than our intuition, a little broader than our intuition. I love that. I love to think about that and I love it when it happens.

J: Last night at the Wednesday night service at the New Thought congregation that I go to, Agape Live, here in Los Angeles, there was a lady speaker who delivered a sermon. She’s a very calm, relaxed lady who’s also a reasonably well-known Hollywood actress, and she talked for 70 minutes in rhyme. It was all spontaneous and it was so interesting. And then at one point she asked us to get really quiet and ask ourselves: What am I really here for? What is my gift, and how will I unwrap this gift?

And after we did this little meditation, for a short time, maybe two or three minutes in silence, we turned to the person next to us. We put our right hand up, and the first person said: “I’m here to…” and then we said it. Something popped out. I don’t know where this came from but it popped out that I should be my genuine self and radiate enthusiasm. The person who was with me put up her hand and her place was to perceive love wherever she went. After we had both done this  we said I am here to do my thing and you’re here to do your thing and we’re all here to support ourselves in spirit. I thought it was remarkably sweet and wonderful.

And so that was my most recent spiritual experience, to look in the eyes of a stranger and tell her what I thought my deepest purpose on this planet was. It was kind of scary actually. You know, to just give it words right out. It’s okay to think it, but to actually say it out loud – it was interesting.

C: That’s it. And that’s why I say if you can dare to actually bring this forward into everyday life, that’s it, I think that’s just exquisite. Without diminishing all the incredible power, magnificence, beauty and love that is unseen and can’t really be touched except by the unseen part of ourselves. But it’s still exquisite isn’t it, to just be able to know that there’s so much more than what we see.

J: There’s always so much more. The way I express it is: 3 lb. brain, infinite universe, what do you expect?

C: Let’s just sign off for now, and have another conversation next time.

J: Thank you very much from Open Source Spirit, if you have any sense of how you’d like to express your spirit, please write in a comment (down below) or send us an email by clicking the link and maybe we’ll talk to you on Sightspeed and see what you have to say about spirit.

View the video of this conversation.

Welcome to Open Source Spirit

What is Open Source Spirit?

Carol Sill and Jim Van Wyck have their first online conversation about Open Source Spirit. This project applies the ethos and methodology of open source to spirituality.

We are creating a place and a space for everyone who wishes to share and express their spiritual insights, experience, beliefs, practices, writings …..

Join us!

We’d love to have YOU share and express YOUR experience with us in conversation, on video.

“We’d love to talk with you and then take that conversation over to the web for more comments, and we hope by this that we can get a really open conversation going about some of the ideas that really matter.”

Link here for the text version of this conversation.

Spirit

The meaning of spirit in our lives.  “….if you can dare to actually bring this forward into everyday life, that’s it, I think that’s just exquisite. Without diminishing all the incredible power, magnificence, beauty and love that is unseen and can’t really be touched except by the unseen part of ourselves. But it’s still exquisite isn’t it, to just be able to know that there’s so much more than what we see.”

An early conversation between Jim Van Wyck and Carol Sill

Link here for the text version of this video.

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