Will the Real God Please Stand Up; My First Eighty Years

By Dorothy May

This is a memoir that reads like a novel. It is the story of one woman’s path out of organized religion into a spiritual identity of her own, written in the cultural context of 20th century mid-America and into the 21st century.

The narrator describes the factors and events that led to a change in consciousness for her. Conversations with friends, imaginary discourses with favorite dead authors she loved, a breakdown or breakthrough of her soul, the early deaths of people all around her: these were all contributors over the decades. However, the biggest contributor was her experience with the God-Moments in her life.

Stories within stories within stories is an ongoing theme for this memorist as she travels the long road of soul evolution. Life lessons she has learned from each decade lived are described in this story of chaos, creativity and change, juxtaposed against historical events which move her life along.

She began her public writing in the academic world through the unpublished dissertation on a subject dear to her heart, Women Returning to School: Lifelong Learning. After she began her professional life, she wrote and published two books about what she knows best and has lived through:

Codependency: PowerLoss, SoulLoss, Paulist Press, 1994.

Archetypal Reiki Healing Kit, Tuttle Publishers, 2000.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorothy May
• Release date: Jan 11, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301934966

Book preview

Will the Real God Please Stand Up

My First Eighty Years

Will the Real God Please Stand Up

My First Eighty Years

A Spiritual Memoir

Dorothy May, PhD

Dancing Light Productions

With the exception of my family and my husband, Don, names have been changed to protect the privacy of those mentioned. These are my memories and my interpretations and form the poetry of my life. Others may remember differently. The Truth remains as it is told.

© Copyright 2013 by Dorothy May, PhD

ISBN: 9781301934966

Published by Dancing Light Productions

All rights reserved. No parts of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher.

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Dedication

To Ruth

My Anam Cara

Table of Contents

Title

Half Title

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

Part I: A Sleeping World

Story One: Sleeping Girl,

The Thirties and Forties

Story Two: A Soul Fissure,

The Fifties

Story Three: Babies Bras and Breakthrough,

The Sixties

Story Four: Changing Woman,

The Seventies

Story Five: The Earth Shakes,

1981

Part II: The Between World

Story Six: World Changes,

The Eighties

Part III: A New World View

Story Seven: The Continents Shift and Time Stops,

1996

Story Eight: Confrontation and Peace

Acknowledgements

Appendix: Glossary

Study Guide

References

In Praise of Will the Real God Please Stand Up

About the Author

Preface

Consciousness is not a function of mind. It is mind, deep mind. It is the light of mind. In direct experience, consciousness is all, all of experience. Consciousness is beyond time and space and well beyond matter. It is the all of being. If we include consciousness as an element of physics, then the phenomenon of light or enlightenment is a topic worthy of study today as science and spirituality merge and blend. The God-Moment is a moment of illumination when the conscious mind’s chatter is still and only the light of awareness exists, in sharp relief. It is the now moment of illumination. I braid the moments of consciousness, spiritual insight––AhHa moments––into a skein of changing consciousness as my vibrations are raised ever higher.

I remember the day when time stood still. I knew then that my story must be written. Much of my story has been lived in another time, another place. My story is written in the space between lifetimes, between realities, between breaths. This memoir begins with a time-warp, a time-warp of death. I see the story unfold in the light of an awareness of a moment in time that is beyond time and space and death and life. It is written in a moment in which one is irrevocably changed. This is a God-Moment out of time when, in a flash, all that has gone before disappears and becomes an integral part of the now.

The time space of which I speak is similar to the Bardo of traditional Tibetan thought which defines the unformed and uninformed time between lifetimes. The Bardo is an in-between world, an island, a marking point in the time-space continuum. Bardo-time has been described as a state of consciousness in which a bubble of time rises up and forms a land mass, a cultural earthquake that must be traversed before we return to the sea of time space. This is a place of liberation and a liminal situation in which the soul can free itself from endless karma. In an endless stream of change, events rise up and open themselves.

When I hear the call, I stop, heart and soul frozen by shock. Yet my conscious mind is slow and calm, moving like a small boat on the quiet lake of my thoughts. I become aware of a critical mass of energy deep in the cells of my body, which precedes great understanding and wisdom. Someone calls my name. Dorothy, I hear. Dorothy. Wake up. You are alive. You are here. It is now. Perhaps you have had such a moment in your life when a stab of understanding like an epiphany reaches inside your soul. After that, you are never the same.

This is a memoir of my life across time. It begins in the twentieth century, 1936, and continues into the twenty first century, 2012. I am aware that some of this time exists only in the distant past, like a history of ancient times. I am aware that some of the time, the twenty first century beyond 2012 exists only in the future. It is from the perspective of the historical time through which I have lived that I write.

Though non-verbal, infants remember much of the life before they chose to express themselves in the physical. Physical life on earth begins without conscious awareness. It continues without awareness until the first time a Bardo is experienced. The Bardo-Times in my life occurred when outer events of life intersected with my internal processes and caused chaos, the chaos of crisis. The first time it happened, it was called a nervous breakdown. More specifically, it was an event in which I symbolically died to myself and to the world. Out of the chaotic state in which I found myself a new consciousness grew. The change in consciousness that occurred within my body, mind, heart and soul had a beginning and a purpose. The end included and transcended the old form. I was not an entirely different person, though I felt that way. I knew that I had made a personal and spiritual advance.

Individuals have Bardo-Times and so do cultures. The Bardo can happen once or more in a physical lifetime. A person can have a symbolic death, a near-death experience or even a physical death at one of these times. Culture mirrors human nature. We are conditioned by the specific culture in which we live. My life was indeed a reflection of the culture in which I lived. Did I, then, have no choice?

I knew that I had consciously helped to evolve my soul by the choices I made. The breakthrough I personally experienced had three phases: a death of the old form, a Bardo-Time, and a rebirth or breakthrough in a new form. As a global culture, collectively we have had a nervous breakdown, a collision of old forms. We have had a crashing of values, meanings and worlds. At this point in time, our entire culture seems to be in a Bardo consciousness. It can be a breakthrough.

When the purpose of one lifetime or one chapter of a life is complete, we enter a Bardo-Time as does the culture which reflects our awareness. We are hurled into a Bardo-Time by the friction of crisis, through an altered state of consciousness, and we traverse through the Bardo by our evolving consciousness. The key to a spiritual life is the evolution of our soul through our consciousness.

A Bardo-Time is spent wandering alone, disconnected, exploring the past that lies in the future. Bardo-Time is confusing, terrifying, exhausting. This is our collective experience right now. In our world culture, this is a time of reassessment, when the quality and features of a specific lifetime are examined in the light of a decision to be made: life or death. The ways in which we negotiate and travel the Bardo-Time help us to decide whether to symbolically or physically die, or move into another lifetime or another segment of this life. The new lifetime begins with the birth of a new consciousness. The new lifetime has a purpose and an end. This process continues on earth until the individual or collective consciousness makes a decision to physically die and thus to move into another dimension of reality. We are certainly a world in crisis. We are living through a crisis in consciousness, a crisis in ethics. The choices we make are powered by continuous crises in our world. Some of the choices are made by individuals; other choices are made by governments.

The Harmonic Convergence is the starting point for the second half of this book. It is a most important event and needs explanation. The harmonic convergence is a planetary event during which all known planets will come together in perfect alignment, causing great earth changes which include mental changes in human beings. Many interpretations of this event have been put forth. Millions of people have been meeting physically and on the internet to pray and meditate on world peace, knowing that thoughts shape reality. I believe that these global meditations have already affected our thoughts and possibly even our world. I have a vision that I would like to add to these meditations. Since this book has an historical perspective, we will look at how we arrived at a place where we need to restore harmony and balance to our natural world and to our inner world.

At every major turning point in our history, we have had choices. Since the advent of mechanization which we call the industrial revolution, we might have chosen to become machine-like. In the present age of computerization of daily life, we may choose to communicate only through these informational devices. To my mind, we have arrived at an even greater choice-point in historical time. In our search for a perfect world, we have not explored our innate spirituality. Once again, we are on the threshold of possibilities for a better future. This may not result in a Utopian world, but we do have an opportunity to choose our future rather than allowing machines and electronics and other factors to turn us into something less than human.

On a particular date in 2012, we are not going to turn into light and ascend into the clouds. Nor will we destroy our planet and ourselves. What can happen is that we explore our inner landscape, our minds, with the same vigor we have applied to other areas in our past. We walk our pilgrimage into our inner world. We listen to the call of our soul and allow our God-Moment to enter us and make us its own. Your God-Moment may be the still, small voice of intuition or a logical progression of new thought that has entered your mind. Whatever it is, listen to the call. We can and we must participate in our evolving consciousness. This will be a moment in which we all are permanently changed. This is a moment when time stands still and we hear the call. We stop, frozen in time, like the giant mastodons. The day when time stands still is a God-moment in the life of a world community. The God-Moment has occurred and we are changed. Perhaps we realize that chronological time does not matter. Experiential time does. Soul time matters even more.

Those of us who engage in conscious evolution each has our own way of working through the soul issues that arise. It is my desire and my hope that in these pages you will find some appealing and useful ideas to carry away with you. Use your imagination, intuition and your innate ability to choose your own path as you travel my journey with me. Many blessings to you, my reader. Without you, the path is solitary. With your companionship, it is joyful and life affirming because it is shared.

Part I: A Sleeping World

We enter an old world. I let the memories swirl around, through and over me…

Story One:

Sleeping Girl,

The Thirties and Forties

Sometimes when people die, a gray distorted form, like a mythical being, is seen rising up from the body and is gone in a few minutes. If you live inside the hazy gray fog, you live your death, neither alive nor dead, with no hope for reprieve from the Real God, because you can’t find Him. I lived inside that gray fog and traveled the Bardo-time for many years. The Bardo and Bardo-Time (time beyond chronological time) are very real in traditional Tibetan thought. It is believed that The Bardo is where souls go between lifetimes, when they are working out their destinies. It has no counterpart in Christian tradition. I respectfully borrow the Bardo and Bardo-Time concept, as it represents a psychological and spiritual plane of my existence at a stressful and traumatic time during my life.

I remember when it began…when the specter, the spirit of gray death, was outside of me. I first saw the formless gray cloud when I was six and my mother’s thirty-six-year-old sister, Clara, lay in the middle bedroom with the big pink roses and the green vines trailing down the wallpaper. Mama had said truthfully, Aunt Clara is so sick, she is dying. Go to her. It will be over soon.

As I sat on her bed, my Aunt Clara talked to me in her rasping breath. Dort, she said, using the diminutive form of Dorothy familiar in our family, I want you to have fun in life. I did. I did it my way and I’m not sorry now. I looked at her blue, watery eyes and I felt like the hole in my stomach just got bigger.

Before I check out, I want you to know that I love you, kid, my aunt continued. She whispered these last four words, but I heard them as clear as the church bells on Sunday morning. I saw through the words as clearly as if they were the window panes my mother washed with vinegar every week. I held my aunt’s hand and knelt beside her bed to pray.

I prayed the only prayer I knew, the one I prayed with my mother every night. I remember kneeling at the side of my small bed, long brown hair spilling onto the white cotton nightgown. The little white nightgown had pink roses at the neck and my tiny ankles were crossed over my bare feet…

"Now I lay me down to sleep.

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take."

And in my mind, I hear again the questions I’d asked so often that they became a Silent Refrain:

"Where do people go when they die, Mama?"

"Why, they go to heaven, my child."

"What is heaven, Mama?"

"Why, it’s a perfect place filled with angels, my child."

"Where are the angels, Mama?"

"Why, angels live with God in Heaven."

"Then why can’t I go there, Mama?"

"Because, my angel child, you have to stay here and keep me company."

I knew my mother thought I was her little angel-girl. I said Amen and I believed. Oh yes, I believed. But the very next year, there was another oblong pine box in our front parlor. My stout, white-haired Grandma Dorothea Schlee lay in that box, in her good navy dress that she’d never worn in life. Her rosary with the smooth black beads was wound around her blue-veined hands. Her face was soft and pure––the face of death––with the wrinkles all smoothed out. I had been named after this Grandmother. My mother sobbed as she knelt to pray in front of the coffin. Mama, be at peace, I heard her whisper.

That time in my childhood was the very beginning of my bizarre affair with death and with the god who designed it. I didn’t know then that there are many kinds of death, many kinds of endings, all dark cliffs over which we are dragged against our will. The memory lies still, unmoving, a pain in my adult throat.

I didn’t know then that the day would come when I would walk across the montage of my life to traverse an unusual Bardo, the Bardo inside the gray fog, the fog of death that wouldn’t leave. To live inside the gray fog is to see the demons of hell, to hear their moaning, screeching voices rasping on my raw nerves, to feel their ragged breath on the back of my neck and to know the smell of death as it enters my skin through every pore and slides up my nostrils into my most tender membranes. And I wonder who the hell I am. To live inside the gray fog is to walk around inside the specter of death. It is to be in the fire that burns but does not consume. It is to feel every nerve fiber screaming to be heard and yet to be mute, unable to speak my Truth. It is to know that my world has ended. And I wonder where the hell I am.

But the sticky fog wouldn’t lift. I didn’t know it, but I was in Bardo-Time. The fog swirled around me and I began having panic attacks.

I can’t breathe! I’d scream, sitting straight up in bed, sweat spilling from my pores like putrid water from a hole in the ground. My husband Don would jump up and try to help––at first. After a while, he’d just half-open sleepy eyes and reach out a hand. He knew he couldn’t help.

When I tried to go over to my mother’s, I’d suddenly be unable to drive and would have to pull over, head pounding. After a while, heart bumping around and short of breath, I pulled up on the gravel in front of her house. I wanted very badly to go in and stay at my mother’s home. I did not want to return to my husband and the pain I found there. But I wasn’t ever able to admit that.

I can’t breathe! My heart’s racing and pounding––it’s going to leap right out of my chest, I yelled toward my mom. She would just look at me and helplessly pat my back. That happens sometimes when you’re pregnant, honey. Just relax and you’ll be okay.

But I knew the truth! Pregnant or not, I no longer could be a good daughter. I no longer knew the rules. I tried to relax but sometimes I had to breathe into a brown paper bag, like my friend Julie told me to do. The gray fog swirled around me. I knew in my heart of hearts that I was a traitor. I no longer could be a Catholic. I no longer believed in any of the teachings of Holy Mother Church. I knew what happened to those who broke the rules. I was terrified. I might be in the sticky, gray fog forever, never to see God, never to be Good. If I couldn’t believe what my Holy Mother