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Now
it can be told...the story
of
one special hour with God! The
Monadnock Revelations A Spiritual Memoir Tom O'Connell Sanctuary The Monadnock Revelations: A Spiritual Memoir Published
in the United States by Sanctuary Unlimited No
part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or
information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles or reviews. For
information, address: Sanctuary Unlimited, Post Office Box 25,
Dennisport, MA 02639. 1.
O'Connell, Tom 1932--. 2.
Journalists--United States--Biography.
3. Inspiration. 4.
Spiritual life. 5. Mysticism 6.
Religious experience. 7. Conduct of life.
I. Title. ISBN 0-9620318-5-2 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number (CIP): 96-92248 Dedicated To the God of
Love The Monadnock Revelations Contents...
...sample of the "The Monadnock Revelations: A Spiritual Memoir" by Tom O'Connell
8 Approaching the Mountains On the
morning of September 5, 1985, just before leaving for New Hampshire, I
flipped the Bible open at random, and in Chapter 9 of Deuteronomy these
words leaped out at me: "Thou shalt know therefore this day that
the Lord thy God himself will pass over thee, a devouring and consuming
fire...that the Lord may accomplish his word which he promises by oath
to thy fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." Later that day I would
know what the consuming fire was, but when I read those words I had no
idea. One day
before my trip, I had made a decision to
move to Cape Cod shortly, and on the morning of September 5, as I
read Chapter 8 of Deuteronomy, I saw these words: "The Lord thy God
will bring thee into a good land...." It was a favorable omen. In Daily
Word, a Unity booklet, I also read, "My mind and body are
radiant with God's perfection and vitality." I learned the meaning
of radiance that day. Driving
along Route 128 from Dedham toward Peterborough, I recalled meeting with
Gloria at the writers' conference and telling her of my random
Bible reading. After she asked me to demonstrate with a small
book, I had flipped it open to these words: "Follow your star with
confidence." Later, during my visit to see Gloria, she had pointed
to the solitary star in the northern sky. And here I was, following that
star with confidence. Gloria had
also given me some audio tapes by the
entity Ramtha. Before going to see Eleanor Moore I had been
playing those tapes. Ramtha said we should love ourselves because self
in the purest form is God. And to love self, we should cease to divide
it. The kingdom of heaven is within us and puts us into contact with the
Father, he said, and talked of a divine fire altering the ego. He told of
Jesus's training by great masters, his
confrontation with self in the wilderness, his purging all desire
except to achieve the will of the Father, his victory over death, and
his demonstration of God's will openly and fearlessly. Ramtha quoted
Jesus: "The kingdom of heaven is within you." "The Father
and I are one." "You are also Sons of God." These
thoughts were present in my mind as I drove.
I brought a
manila folder with me, with items to discuss with Eleanor: Meditation.
Rome, Jerusalem, and Cairo. Ikhnaton. Horus. Random Bible reading.
Various symbols. C.G. Jung. Psychoanalysis. Books. Moving to Cape Cod.
Dreams. And other things. In the folder I had a note reminding me to ask
about a command I had received in a dream/vision: "The Work comes
first, everything else second." To me, "The Work" meant
my spiritual quest, including the work of daily meditation. But I wanted
her opinion. I also
brought a description of my only previous experience with a psychic, on
March 16, 1977. The information had been misplaced for several years,
and a few weeks before my visit to Eleanor, while searching for old
notes on dreams, out had fallen the sheet about psychic Pat
Harmon-Smith, who had followed me as a guest on a radio show on Boston's
North Shore. I was talking about highway safety, and had been asked to
stay and let her work on me. Pat noted my
"good lights," "high intelligence bordering on
genius," and being ahead of my time with visions and insights. She
urged me to hold fast to my ideas and said I was working on a secret
project, which was true. She said that in the future I would be
inundated with paper work. She was right! And she said there would be a
Florida or Caribbean influence in my life. In 1983 I became a national
correspondent for the U.S. Journal of Drug and Alcohol Dependence, a
journal located in Florida. As I drove
toward New Hampshire, as I prayed to be shown the right path in life, a
car pulled in front of me with this plate: "GO." I had
recently read in the Scriptures about God answering Moses that way. On
the highway, for a while I had a motorcycle escort, with one bike ahead
of me and one behind, and this felt odd. Was it a sign that I was being
protected on my way to the mountains? Another
experience happened when I stopped for lunch. From a pile of reading
material on my back seat I grabbed a book. It was Thomas Merton's The
New Man. As I waited for my fish and chips, I decided to open
Merton's book at random, and it fell to pages 122 and 123. My eyes went
to section 77. And I knew the number 7 had divine implications. It also
means completeness, synthesis, and safety. In Buddhism it signifies the
"ascent." I read this
in section 77: "He that is of God hears the words of God. To be
aware of God is to enter into contact with One, Who, infinitely hidden
and transcendent, cannot be known as He is in Himself unless He reveals
Himself to us." Flipping to the previous page, 120, and then to
page 124, I read: "Since we are made in the image and likeness of
God, there is no other way for us to find out who we are than by finding
in ourselves the divine image." Merton
wrote, "The recognition of our true self, in the divine image, is
then a recognition of the fact that we are known and loved by God....In
order to make this leap out of ourselves we have to be willing to let go
of everything that is our own....That does not mean that we give up
thinking and acting; but that we are ready for any change that God's
action may make in our lives." These words would have an important
meaning late that very afternoon. Before
leaving the restaurant I read the rest of the chapter titled
"Spirit in Bondage," and I underscored these words: "We
must cast away the 'aprons of leaves' and the 'garments of skins' which
the Fathers of the Church variously interpret as passions, and
attachments to earthly things, and fixation in our own rigid
determination to be someone other than our true selves." Then, at
the bottom of the page I scribbled, "Key--Journey to Self." As I drove
toward the Monadnock Mountains, I had no idea that I was going to
receive the gift of direct conscious communication with my Creator. If
anyone had told me at that time that I would soon have God's voice blend
with mine in a series of messages based on his eternal Love, I would
have reacted with complete disbelief. But at Monadnock my belief system
was radically altered. On my trip I
missed a major turn and got lost, but eventually found myself entering
the familiar village of Peterborough, which was used as the setting for
Thornton Wilder's classic, Our
Town. As I drove into unfamiliar territory, the road got steeper. I
was ascending a portion of the Monadnock range. When I got
home later that evening, I checked "monadnock" in Webster's
Collegiate Dictionary. The word means a "hill or mountain of
resistant rock." Resistance is a factor in electricity, and relates
to reluctance. I had often been spiritually reluctant. A
"monad" is a "unit, an individual, an atom....It is an
individual elementary being, psychical or spiritual in nature,
reflecting within itself the whole universe." Monadism is a theory
that the universe is comprised of monads. It's like William Blake saying
the world can be found "in a grain of sand." Approaching
a fork in the road as I ascended this part of the Monadnock Mountains, I
wondered if I had strayed again. Have I gone too far? Am I lost? Do I
bear left now? I'm running late! It was a bit after 3:00 p.m. when I arrived at the yellow farmhouse. The side door was open, so I went in and found women talking in the living room. Asking for Eleanor, I learned she was still with a client and would be available soon. So I sat and waited for the most important meeting in my life. |
