Ultra-Embodied Spirituality

When it's so natural and normal, it doesn't even fall under the rubric of 'spiritual'

“Oh honey, everyone thinks those things”

I grew up in a house where it was normal to believe in past lives, ghosts, guides, and psychic phenomena. This was 100% normal to my mom. She’s an example of someone whose spirituality is so embodied, they don’t see it through the frame of “spirituality” because it’s just “what’s natural.”

me: “Mom, thanks for sharing your spiritual perspectives. I really appreciate that you believe in past lives and guides and spirits, because you modeled being open to those kinds of things for me and that’s really enhanced my life.”

my mom: “Oh honey, everyone thinks those things.”

me: “Uh, no, they don’t…I’m just trying to say I appreciate your spiritual perspective on things.”

mom: “Well, it’s natural honey” (proceeds to rebuff all my efforts to extend gratitude for her spirituality and insists everyone is like this so there’s nothing to thank her for).

me: (gives up)

Spirit animal or just “your animal”?

Growing up, my mom and grandma had what to any outside observer clearly appeared to be spirit animals.

Given that my great-grandfather, Charles Matthews, was half Seneca (half Spanish), this makes sense.

So both my mother and my grandmother had what they called “their animal.”

My grandmom’s house had elephants and we would often give her cards or gifts with elephants—everybody knew elephant was her animal.

I grew up in a house with an entire wall covered with owls—owl sculptures, owl paintings, owl drawings, owls! Gifts and cards for my mom often featured an owl motif.

But no one ever explained anything about “their animal.” Not a word about the spiritual aspect of having “your animal.” It simply existed. It was part of the landscape. Full stop. Nothing more to say.

Natural Hallucination

I have the capacity to hallucinate at will. I discovered it as a teenager. I laid on my bed, closed my eyes, and saw—worlds of white horses can-can dancing over beaches of peach shells two feet tall! Three-dimensional cities with roads and buildings M. C. Eschering around each other in every shade of blue: bright, aqua, navy, turquoise. A little yellow bus in the midst of darkness, snaking its way along a wavy uranium-green road fringed by hanging fronds of seaweed, as if underwater, but somehow in outer space.

Unfortunately, my hallucinations took a turn for the worse, when horror-movie images began to emerge (actually disembodied images from my repressed childhood memories). So I had to stop my forays into natural hallucination—and that’s the reason I’ve never taken drugs. I know that once a hallucination starts, it can go South, and I would NEVER sign up for that!

One day when I was seventeen, I mentioned this capacity to hallucinate at will to my mother. You can guess how that went!

mom: “Oh, honey, that’s normal.”
me: “Uh, no, it’s not.”
mom: “Oh, honey, everyone can see things if they close their eyes.”
me: “Can YOU see things if you close your eyes?
mom: “Of course.”
me: “Mom, that’s a…an unusual ability.”
mom: “I don’t think so honey. It’s natural.”
me: (giving up the conversation, as usual)

While this absurd conversation was taking place, I was thinking that it would have been extremely helpful to me, if it had occurred to my mom to explain ANYTHING about being able to hallucinate at will. I knew it was NOT a normal thing, and I also knew it might have been helpful if she’d offered me guidance about it.

But like every other “normal” thing—ghosts, guides, spirits, past lives, spirit animals, hallucinating when you close your eyes…it was all just too quotidian for her to say anything about.