Awakening To The Journey Home: A Farmboy, The Mystery And Mysticism

By Bill Turner

My interest in meditation and other mystical states of consciousness began in my early twenties. For over forty years I have practiced, studied, and contemplated, the mystery in the mystical side of life.
In my later years working in soil and water conservation, I felt an increasing pull, a nudging to work with others through a broad spiritual perspective. I struggled with what this role might be. After retirement and some discernment, I attended the Prairie Jubilee two-year program, which strengthened my desire to share my life’s mystical experiences with others while also encouraging others to be open towards their own unique journey.
In publishing “Awakening To The Journey Home – A Farmboy, The Mystery and Mysticism” I desire to share my experiences relating to the mystery of spirit and intuition. In doing so, I hope to reach out to others who are curious about these subjects, but have been reluctant to explore and share these experiences. Ultimately, relating to spirit is part of what it means to be human. I hope reading about my spiritual journey will reassure you that you are not alone in your journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bill Turner
• Release date: Oct 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310052361

Bill Turner

My interest in meditation and other mystical states of consciousness began in my early twenties. For over forty years I have practiced, studied, and contemplated, the mystery in the mystical side of life.In my later years working in soil and water conservation, I felt an increasing pull, a nudging to work with others through a broad spiritual perspective. I struggled with what this role might be. After retirement and some discernment, I attended the Prairie Jubilee two-year program on Spiritual Direction. This strengthened my desire to share my life’s mystical experiences with others while also encouraging others to be open towards their own unique journey.

Book preview

Awakening to the Journey Home

A Farmboy, the Mystery and Mysticism

Bill Turner

Copyright © 2014 by Bill Turner

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise copied for public or private use without prior written permission from the publisher and copyright owner at [e-mail]

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publications

ISBN 978-1-77136-305-1

Cover by Bill Turner; cover photo by Lynne Cawley

Interior design and layout by Gail Horvath and Art Bookbindery Inc.

Ebook formatting by Maureen Cutajar, gopublished.com

To order additional copies contact:

[e-mail]

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter 1 – The Nine-Year-Old Farmboy

Chapter 2 – 1960s Bread and Fish Meditation

Chapter 3 – The Aura Journey

Chapter 4 – The Bluff of Trees

Chapter 5 – Mind Control – Entering the Psychic Field

Chapter 6 – The Big Green Door

Chapter 7 – Feeling the Spirit Nudging in Sacred Discoveries

Chapter 8 – Energy Work Experience

Chapter 9 – Challenging Perceived Limits

Chapter 10 – Meditative Prayer Vigil

Chapter 11 – Prairie Jubilee Program Journey

Chapter 12 – There Is More to This Than What Is Perceived

Chapter 13 – Blue Dot and Red Ribbon Image

Chapter 14 – Reflections & Summation

Closing Comments

Works Cited

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I’d like to express my deep appreciation to:

• My wife of more than forty years, for all the love given to me and our four children, for all the years of support and patience she gives me in attending the many spiritual retreats, and her funny ability to tune me out when I’m too long winded.

• My four wonderful children who have given me the privilege of being their dad, for sharing the joys and sorrows of life and for supporting me through my mystical journey. And their amazing gift of enabling me to experience love as a grandfather.

• All those who have encouraged and supported me in the process of creating this book; the editors, in particular Anna Olson for her patience and wisdom; the many authors who willingly gave permission to use citations from their books; my older sister who listened to my many stories, sometimes wondering where her little brother is going; did the final edit on my book and assisted with cover photography; my younger brother who has been my journey buddy through life; those who gave me permission to use their presence in a particular story; my daughter-in-law Gail for contributing her gift of interior design in this book, and my son Paul who has an amazing ability to take my disjointed five pages and say the same thing in two or three pages; and the supportive, patient people at Art Bookbindery.

• And last but certainly not least is the intuitive emergence of Spirit that has accompanied and encouraged me to move onward, to seek out this mystical journey and share the story with others.

PREFACE

Preparations for the Journey

To begin this book, I’d like to explain some of my thoughts and difficulties in sharing these very personal stories, and why I have chosen to share them.

I have encountered many people who carry a fear, a sense of high emotions, an un-willingness to open the window of the mystery, of the unknown by even sharing their experience with a most trusted other, friend or family. I have seen this with my deceased father, whose story I share in this book. This type of unfinished work or soul work as some may call it, can be a heavy load to bear.

In sharing these stories, I initially wrote them in the third-person perspective and past tense, looking for a safe place to start. Originally, this third person perspective was written as in the Farmboy, then from my name perspective. But with strong suggestions from wise people including editors and respected others, I have chosen to use the first person. Yes, that entailed a complete re-write and reliving the journey of each story.

Some readers may question why I would choose to disassociate myself from I to Bill or even a Farmboy in the story. I hope the following lines satisfy such curiosity.

To begin, I needed to search for a safe place to tell the stories. Secondly, I feel the constant use of ‘I’ can leave a sense of the story being too egotistical. Thirdly, I would like to use my name or Farmboy to serve as an anchor of imagery. We all have our origin stories, and little bits and pieces of these stories become woven into who we become, or perhaps more accurately, how we are perceived by others. For me, my farm heritage is an essential part of my rural past, which in turn is a fundamental part of my identity, even though I left farming decades ago and have long since become an urbanite.

Some may point out that carrying the farmer image forward is creating a stereotype. This is true, however I believe my stories will serve to challenge any person’s farm stereotype and in a similar manner, provoke readers to further question their own presumptions of others. Yes, this is a story of a farmer who wore coveralls, drove tractors and combines, grew crops, fed livestock, and threw bales, but who also embarked on a lifelong spiritual and often mystical journey to understand the mystery of physical existence and its non-physical reality.

So now that I have hopefully set the stage, I would like to introduce you to the young farm lad. My name is Bill. I was born in the fall of 1945, the oldest son in a family of six children. I grew up on the Manitoba escarpment in south central Manitoba, Canada. As a child I had a fascination with the natural world around me and my family. As a teenager I loved the natural processes that are part of the farming reality: growing and caring for the crops, raising and caring for livestock, and working with the landscape. It is the best first-hand introduction to ecology a kid could possibly have!

In the early 1960s I eagerly entered the farming business. This was a progressive, forward thinking family farm business. To provide a constant cash flow for the expanding family farm in the early 1970s, the hog side of the farm business was expanded into a modern up-to-date facility. During that time period, the farm became the largest family farm hog producer for two years in all of Manitoba. A facility of this size did provide some difficulties during price fluctuations, but the majority of the time it provided the farm with a constant cash flow. During good times, the farm continued to grow in other directions, such as enlarging the cropped-acre land base through purchasing and renting land; modernizing equipment; operating a cattle feed lot; growing pedigree seeds; establishing a mechanized grain drying system for on-farm use and custom work; and eventually incorporating a backhoe for on-farm use and custom work. There was rarely a slow day.

After 24 years of farming, not only had the farm grown but so had each partner’s family. It became more and more evident that the cooperative business model of the farm did not fit well with the varying desires, aspirations and expectations of each of the growing families. The eventual outcome was that the farm was sold and the family members went their own separate ways. Although we walked separate paths, we all managed to retain a close friendship to this day.

I left the farm with my wife Cheryl and our four young children. I followed my passion for the natural world and took a job working in soil and water conservation. For the next 24 years, I tended the delicate balance between agriculture and the natural environment on the Manitoba escarpment. During the last 12 years, I served as field manager for a first-of-its-kind watershed research facility on the South Tobacco Creek watershed. The research included evaluating the optimal conservation management practices for agriculture and their impacts on the land, water quality and quantity.¹

Over the period in which these stories take place, I worked hard to maintain a decent quality of living for myself and family. These stories are a sort of behind the scenes glimpse beyond the normative roles I’ve filled as farmer, conservationist, husband, father, and grandfather, but all these roles have been essential to my being.

Over time I have shared my experiences with those closest to me and those walking similar paths. With some encouragement, I decided to write this book in hopes of sharing the mystery of these experiences with you the reader.

The Journey’s Signpost

The intent of this Journey’s Signpost is to assist you in the reading of these stories. I ask that you keep the various sign circles in mind as you move through the stories. The circle rings or signs will appear woven throughout the mystery present in these stories, just as they appear in your own life experience. Be still and listen. During the experience of living these stories, doors were opened to mystery, a mystery that crept into my life’s perspective from every direction.

As this journey has continued, I have begun to see an underlying connectedness in all the unfolding of creation, our natural world, including our humanity. Over time, I began recognizing this mystery as the Essence, the Spirit, the Holy Other, or the Oneness that is the basic underlying energy rooted in our experience of physical reality. It’s an interconnectedness beyond our perceived separateness from this Other.

Original art design by B. Turner, Graphic layout Eagleye Printing & Design

¹ This research project was a collaborative initiative with the local landowners, the farm organization Deerwood Soil and Water Management Association, and numerous research partners including federal and provincial government departments, universities from across Canada and private companies. The primary government lead was Agriculture and Agr-Food Canada. http://www.agr.gc.ca/eng/?id=1297269073820

CHAPTER 1

THE NINE-YEAR-OLD FARMBOY

I start this story with myself as a nine-year-old farmboy, near the mid 1950s. My two siblings and I are walking the 3 3/4 miles home from school. Our father is busy with spring seeding; we children have more time than our father, so we walk home. As a nine-year old I am a very inquisitive boy, always taking time to check out something in the natural world that catches my attention. Walking home always offers many opportunities to stop and investigate some part of nature in the escarpment hills, valleys, many creeks and potholes.

While walking home one day, I stop to investigate the small culvert and out-flowing pool of clear water to look for tadpoles and frog eggs. Glancing up, I notice my two siblings have left me behind and are continuing with their walk. I know I can catch up to them in a minute or two. But, as I get more engrossed in the various frog egg clumps and hatchlings, time