The Voice of the Soul: A Journey into Wisdom and the Physics of God

By Judith Pennington

If you hunger for something, but do not know what it is, this journey of science and spirit may be the most fulfilling and exciting one that you will ever take. Its the true story of Judith Pennington, a busy writer, peace group director and single mother who, at age 38, denies the existence of God, yet finds herself in a fascinating search for the identity of a voice giving the wisest, most sensible guidance shes ever heard.

Who or what is the source of the lyrical "writings" that guide her out of darkness into light over a period of twelve years? Finding out takes Pennington into the depths of her own psyche and on life-changing journeys in Medjugorje, Findhorn and the Scottish isle of Iona.

In this adventure of consciousness, the author walks in the light of the psychic, and, in these expanded senses, reaches her destiny, higher perspectives and the blossoming of her unique gifts and talents.

This is the universal path promised to one and all by The Voice of the Soul, a personal journey through the self, inspired writing, the secrets of the soul, and the science of spirituality, meditation and God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Aug 7, 2001
• ISBN: 9780759605428

Judith Pennington

Judith Pennington is a freelance photojournalist and author living near Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She writes on a variety of topics including people, art, education, music, social justice, and spirituality. While finishing this book, Judith was surprised to find herself doing just what her writings always predicted: she stepped out as a spiritual teacher. Her mission is to guide and inspire others to find their wisdom and inner peace. To this end, she shares her own wisdom and leads diverse groups and individuals in the art of meditation and the science of higher consciousness. In the year 2000, she established an education outreach, Eagle Life Communications, and may be reached through its web site at www.eaglelife.com.

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Contents

Preface

PART I.

NARRATIVE

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Epilogue

PART II.

SELECTED MEDITATIVE WRITINGS

The Call

The Path

Self-Knowledge

The Struggle

The Soul's Mountaintop

Select Bibliography

About The Author / About The Photograph

Dedication

To my beloved daughters, my grandson Blake, my life companion Steve, the rest of my family, all seekers, all souls, and the words of Jesus:

For nothing is hidden that will not be disclosed, nor is anything secret that will not become known and come to Light.

Preface

Writing this book has been a wonderful journey. It’s made perfect sense of my life, my destiny and the belief system I have forged out of years of intense study, research and experience. So this is my truth, and I don’t claim it as anyone else’s. But I suspect that you will find in it a universal path through the evolution of body, mind and spirit.

The first half of this book is the story of my personal life, my spiritual search, and the truths that I have discovered. I was guided to these truths by the voice of my soul, whose wisdom I recorded with pen and paper in hand late at night. The second half of this book is a selection of the most meaningful and evocative of these writings.

They taught me, over a period of twelve years, that if we disregard the guidance of soul, it will nevertheless attract what we need without our knowing it. But when we cooperate with soul, we step into an adventure in consciousness leading to oneness with Universal Mind and the blossoming of our unique gifts and talents.

Embarking on this adventure requires nothing more than a vibrant desire to manifest our unlimited potential and a willingness to work toward our own highest good. If you hunger for something but do not know what it is, this journey of science and spirit may be the most fulfilling and exciting one that you will ever take.

Judith

Prologue

"Ask and ye shall receive.

Knock and the door will be opened."

Jesus Christ

When I was a child, I was aware of a sacred, loving presence in all things: sunlight glinting on my fishing pole and the lazy currents of Louisiana rivers; the shady embrace of a live oak tree with broad, curving limbs made for lying down to read; time’s knowledge gathered and written in books; the mystery and wonder of life. By age nine, I was so much in love with the world and so happy to be alive that I skipped the mile or so to a Catholic church that fully opened my heart to the mysterious and unknown. Ethereal music, fragrant incense and the soft, muted colors of stained glass and candlelit statues carried me into a contemplative love for the beauty of art and, from there, to a hushed, indwelling peace that meant more to me than anyone or anything else in the world.

I brimmed with happiness in those days and, after church, lit up with anticipation: the best was yet to come. I walked slowly along the streets of modest, neatly manicured houses, jumping up to touch the frilly pink blossoms of crepe myrtle trees and daydreaming of articles to write for my neighborhood newspaper. I would hand out each edition in person: Here, Mrs. So-and-So. There’s a special article about your son on page one. Or I would write a thank-you note and leave the newspaper on the stoop: You were such a pleasure to interview. I hope we meet again someday. (No, that was too prissy. It wasn’t quite right, I’d correct myself, rephrasing the words in my head until each sentence sounded exactly as I meant it to sound.)

I loved being alone, but the best of my Sunday walk back from church lay just ahead. In the cool, shadowy doorway of our white bungalow home stood my big, jolly stepfather waiting to tease me.

He would drop his chin and chant in a deep, priestly monotone, I can play dominoes and eat biscuits better than yoouu caaaann, getting the last, plunging note exactly right, somehow, despite being a fallen-away Methodist who claimed the ceiling would fall in if he entered a Catholic church.

"Dominos Vobiscum, daddy!" I pretended to scold him, playing along with our little charade.

He and my mother, Betty Jean, a fallen-away Catholic, laughed at my piety, but I knew they took quiet pleasure in my being such a good, happy child. They kept no rules and I was delighted with that because it left me so free. I understood how to behave and couldn’t have asked for a lovelier childhood.

Weekends were the best. My stepfather, Frank, always ready to laugh and joke around, liked to crazily widen his eyes and lunge after my sister, brother and me, bellowing and dragging one leg behind him in a shrieking chase around and around in the spacious rooms of our home. In the kitchen, my beautiful, brown-haired mother laughed at us and deftly turned golden fried chicken in a heavy black iron skillet.

In the summertime we gathered in the back yard, where Frank grilled tasty burgers and ribs on the barbeque and my mother cut our hair. While my brother and sister, wary of being scalped, dodged the scissors and slid off their sweat-slippery naugahyde chairs, I climbed into my reading tree, always the observer, to watch our boisterous family at play. We had a rare happiness, one I seldom came across even in the hundreds of books I read while lying on the curved limb of my oak tree.

I can see, even now, a kaleidoscope of happy memories. On Saturdays and holidays before sunrise, our parents shook us awake, carried us to the car and drove to the shady banks of a muddy bayou or river, where we fished all day with cane poles or scooped up crabs with chicken-baited nets. Some Saturday nights, we kids spread newspapers over our living room floor and feasted on real corn husk hot tamales, then stuffed ourselves into cotton pajamas and piled into our shiny, red Nash Rambler. Within minutes of parking on the speaker hill in front of the giant movie screen, we kids curled up and fell asleep, exhausted after a full day of fun.

Sometimes I loved my family so much that I filled with joy and my breath caught in my throat.

Everything changed by the time I was eleven years old. I don’t know how we ended up on those dark, winding country roads, my parents drunk and our car weaving to the edges of dreary, forbidden swamps. In just two years’ time, their weekend six-packs gave way to sickly-sweet bottles of wine and empty whiskey bottles that clinked together and littered our lives. The disease of alcoholism crept up on them somehow, and no one seemed to see it but me, the oldest child. I watched in frightened helplessness as my parents, caught up in the confused, hazy thinking of addiction, took the long, slow slide into oblivion — by day yelling and fist-fighting and at night staggering drunkenly into the house in sight of our pitying neighbors. The whiskey poisoned my mother and as the medical debts piled up, bill collectors rang our phone off its hook and pounded on our doors. I kept the grass mowed, but the white paint slowly peeled off the walls of our home.

On Sundays, I walked to mass and asked God to help us. But there was no longer any joy in my heart, and the church seemed distant and cold. I looked around at the people bowed in prayer, and I wondered if there even was a God. By age 15, I couldn’t find him. And soon, I couldn’t find myself.

As time crawled by, I put away my diary and went into hiding. Every day at home was different from the next — some rippling with laughter, others exploding with raw, raging anger — so I changed into a chameleon and adapted to each new environment. I could even be invisible, and this was my best magic trick. I escaped into my books or, in an effort to keep peace, anticipated what people wanted and scurried to supply it. Since I could no longer feel my feelings, it was easy to put on a bright, happy smile that seemed perfectly natural. Beneath it, fear and worry tugged at me like an undertow and left a sinking sensation in my stomach. I believed that if I were swept out to sea, no one would hear my cries for help. So I never asked for help and no one ever knew that I needed it.

Soon, I drifted away from the church and did not return. During my first semester of college, a history professor destroyed the last shreds of my faith with the revelation that Christianity was built upon ancient creation myths and recycled pagan holy days. Jesus’ birthdate was really the feast day of Dionysius, the Greek god of bread and wine who just happened to have been murdered and resurrected, too. The church had adopted the pagan rite of spring to mythologize this resurrection.

I was stunned and betrayed, but in an odd way felt vindicated. Years before, when God hadn’t helped us, I’d concluded that the church must have lied to me. Now I saw the extent of its duplicity. Both God and Jesus were mythical figureheads created to attract unruly people into the fold and control them through doctrines of guilt, fear and domination.

I was proud of unmasking the truth, but as I trumpeted the news to my sick, weakened mother, a tiny doubt crept into my mind. I had felt a holy presence that gave me comfort, security and a sense of being loved. Yet I could not dispute the facts. The church had deliberately deceived the world.

This contradiction created a bitter discord in me, and I spent most of my life trying to put my heart and mind back together again. I searched unwittingly for a way to heal myself and soon discovered that I was not alone.

In the 1960s, peace was the sign and symbol of hope for an entire generation. I was only one of many disillusioned young people trying to ignite the change which sparked in America and caught fire across the planet. Television mirrored my inner turmoil in news clips of civil rights marches, sit-down strikes and the Vietnam War. As humanity strained at the bonds of inhumanity, history recorded what may have been the worst and best decade of all time. So it was for me as I struggled to find myself and my place in a world ablaze in utopian ideals.

I had plenty of my own. I was still enchanted by my mother’s vintage copy of the illustrated Grimm’s Fairy Tales, so I believed profoundly in love and happy endings. I would be a nuclear physicist, a U.N. translator, an elementary school teacher, a writer, or maybe even a singer. Unlike my parents, I would create an idyllic life with a wonderful husband, six perfect children and a big country home just like Jo’s in Little Women.

Nothing could have been farther from the truth. During my second semester of college, I studied in a hospital room while my mother slept through a coma. When she awoke and came home, she was unsteady on her feet and half blind. I had always despised her alcohol-induced illnesses, but this time I felt pity. She never worked again, nor did she drink. For almost a year, she seemed content and even happy to cook, clean house and care for my little brother, by then thirteen. I marveled over this change with my sister, at seventeen the married mother of a year-old son. I had already escaped my family by way of a brief, desperate marriage to a witty young alcoholic.

But there was no real escape, especially at Christmas in 1969, which my mother dared to celebrate by pouring a single jigger of vodka and toasting her favorite uncle with it. She was still beautiful and much younger than her thirty-nine years, and she died far too soon. In a hospital emergency room, her eyes wide and frightened, she gripped my hand and pleaded in a quavering voice, I don’t want to die. I’m afraid to die.

At the funeral, I raged at God. I remembered my mother’s beauty and grace, her musical laughter, the vivacious personality that lit up every room. I couldn’t remember why I had hated her, so I began to hate myself.

My stepfather Frank, broken-hearted, died four years later, and I miss him more than I can say.

~~~~~~~~

Over the next two decades, I believed firmly that the loving devotion my mother and stepfather shared would be mine someday. But I was in no hurry to find it. After my nightmarish years parenting my parents and then my first husband, I was free at last to be myself. For awhile I was a hippie in San Francisco, a tall, willowy, blue-eyed redhead dressed in tight jeans, cowboy boots and the best mood I’d been in for years. I marched against the war, smoked a lot of pot, and spent my evenings in bookstores delving into Eastern philosophy and trying to make sense of the world. I despised injustice and railed about it, sure that if there were a God, then war and hatred, intolerance and greed would not exist.

By then it was clear to me that religion, as Karl Marx said, was the opiate of the masses. In the sixties, nihilists shouted that God is dead! and flower children responded (peace-love-dove-like), that no, God is love. For me, God had ceased to exist. I hated the name, ridiculed anyone who used it, and laughed at the fictitious Jesus of the Bible, a book of pretty myths created for the sake of children and elderly people afraid to die. Each brand of religion proclaimed itself to be the chosen one and, in its exclusivity, cruelly fed good, honest people to the lions. Such savagery was common in the Southern Bible Belt, where sins like dancing, rock music, gambling and, worst of all, daring to think for oneself made one an outcast. The way I saw it, religious followers were ignorant sheep content to follow any shepherd, and their petty, vengeful god was no more enlightened than they were.

By the late 1960s, folk music, rock and roll and the hip-shaking sounds of Motown were shattering social and racial barriers, but not back in Baton Rouge, which inexorably dragged me away from San Francisco to stand trial on marijuana charges. I loved to smoke pot and drop acid, as these drugs opened my mind to self-contemplation and exciting new ideas for the first time in years. But this was a trumped-up drug charge. Two policemen had stopped my car one night and threatened to arrest me for hanging out with the five hippies in town and their nigger friends. I laughed and ignored the threat, and late one night, the police scattered marijuana seeds on the floor of my freshly vacuumed car, seized it and put me in jail. Now I had to go back for the trial.

Leaving San Francisco put a thousand songs in my mind, all of them sad ones. I was traveling with a carload of homesick hippies, sitting in the back seat with my guitar in my lap and plunking out Five Hundred Miles (Away From Home) about the time we crossed the Texas state line. I cried the rest of the way across the Lone Star State, but a simple twist of fate dried my tears. Upon arriving in Baton Rouge, busted flat, my friends knocked on a door opened by my future husband, a handsome, long-haired hippie and Vietnam vet with a brilliant mind, sparkling blue eyes and enough wit to be the life of every party. We were the same, somehow, and our hearts rose and fell on waves of sixties freedom, young love and a belonging to each other that was soul deep and eternal.

When hard drugs plunged into our marriage, I reeled out of it for the safety of our two-year-old daughter and never relaxed into love or trusted in it again. Now my hatred for organized religion shot through the ceiling. Joe, like many other unruly eighteen year olds, had joined the military to win approval and respect from the stern, unyielding Christians in his life. He paid a high price. A helicopter gunner and medic for the Marine Corps, he was part of a human bloodbath that could only be forgotten with sizzling spoonfuls of heroin. Later on, he drowned his nightmares and his dreams in booze, anti-depressants and sedatives. Reeling with this loss, I concluded that not only politics tortured my Joe and so many other bright, idealistic young men. Judgmental, exclusionary Christians held the world captive and blind.

In the years to come, I steered away from men and dove into college full-time, majoring in elementary education, at first, because of my joy in little children and because this career would enable me to spend afternoons and summers with my daughter. I paid for school and supported us by typesetting for a radical chic alternative newspaper. Hip, talented men worked there, and because I had a child and was so busy, it was marriage or nothing at all as far as I was concerned. Besides that, I wanted and needed a family for myself and my beautiful, precocious little girl.

My next three husbands — a visual artist, a writer, and an English sea captain — were good men and I loved them very much. But when the music faded, I was the first to leave the dance floor and, finally, with a second daughter in tow. I expected each marriage to work out, but knew that if it did not, I could leave and start over again.

I escaped all right, but with bleeding, self-inflicted wounds. I was deeply embarrassed and humiliated by my failed marriages, which went somewhat public as I became a writer-editor and changed my newspaper byline from one husband’s surname to the next. I felt like the town laughingstock and was guilty and ashamed about the pain and loss suffered by my daughters.

Beneath it all was an aching hole in my chest, which seemed to have been there always. It was somehow connected to my sense of not-belonging and an empty, hollow loneliness for some elusive thing that I could not identify. This restless hunger subsided in the glow of romantic love, but not for long, and it seemed that nothing on earth could satisfy it. I saw this loneliness in others, too, and I wrote poems about it, how we mask it with anger, lies or busyness like mine. I sensed that many people felt as I did, but dared not reach into their hearts for the truth of these feelings. In me, the emptiness created fear and worry, a dependence on logic and a search for meaning and purpose.

By the time I was thirty-three years old, I was a free-lance writer and singer, two of my childhood dreams, yet I’d done nothing, really, to make those dreams come true. Growing up, I’d thought writing was magical and special, far beyond my reach, so it had never occurred to me to pursue it as a career. I didn’t have the courage, anyway, so I was delighted to have fallen into it via typesetting. Writing was the perfect profession for me: I’d always been a quick study with a friendly, talkative nature, a great deal of empathy, initiative, drive and, above all, a burning curiosity to learn and know more. Now I could be a lifelong student and teach what I learned.

A singer-guitarist virtually dragged me onstage to sing (which is where I met my fifth husband, a British sea captain and sound engineer touring America). I was terrified of standing up in front of crowds and usually slugged down three glasses of liquid courage before climbing the steps to the stage. Tipsy on white wine, I could hardly remember the words to our oldies repertoire (Cat Stevens, James Taylor, Bette Midler, Linda Ronstadt and the like), as well as songs from musicals like Evita. So I listened intently to the guitarist and caught the words from him; I was so quick at picking up cues and harmonized so smoothly with him that no one could tell the difference. The real test came with four glasses of wine. The words were still iffy, but with the printed music or a little prodding from a good-natured audience, I could belt out that sultry ballad about Billy Joe and the Tallahatchee Bridge and act out the ribald and breathless spoof tunes from The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I couldn’t believe people were paying me for this. I’d never had so much fun in my life.

My brief singing career landed me in a vicious, two-year custody battle. I fought like a maniac to get my daughter back, but the adversary was my self-righteous, Charismatic mother-in-law, whom I’d loved and trusted; wanting to believe in her alcoholic son, she had betrayed me by helping him snatch custody of my child. Doris returned my daughter to me and I forgave her, but I was deeply traumatized. I’d seen the custody battle coming, but too late, and nothing was enough to stave it off. I didn’t trust myself to begin with. Now I could trust no one, and worse, the custody battle wreaked havoc on my thirteen year old daughter. Now torn apart, she exploded with a fury worthy of the hounds of hell.

Cruelly betrayed, yet again, by a Christian, I vindicated myself by finding proof of the world’s godlessness. It was easy to do. Throughout history, religious zealots committed unbelievably brutal acts, slaughtering and burning millions of people in the Crusades, the Catholic and Spanish Inquisitions, and the holy wars continuing today. Fundamentalist missionaries are still destroying the cultures of native peoples and, very often, eradicate the people themselves — all in the name of God. What kind of God was this? And what about the commandment, Thou shalt not kill?

I watched the misadventures of the religious with a bitter, jaded eye. Where was the justice in the world? I saw nothing but hypocritical, judgmental Christians who seemed to possess not an ounce of love or mercy for the poor and disenfranchised of the planet, unless they converted to whatever religion waved a Bible and a sheaf of dollar bills at them. I was stunned by the power-mongering religious right and by the deliberate campaigns of psychological oppression waged by television evangelists. I took all of it personally and my outrage embittered my life.

When I left my fifth husband, I was thirty-seven years old and happy to escape. Between the custody fight and my oldest daughter’s bouts of running way from home, I’d had enough of marriage and knew that I would never, ever make that mistake again. My girls and I moved into a gracious two-story home in the city’s historic downtown. The house was weatherbeaten, like us, but had promise, so we restored it with loving care. We waxed floors, painted walls, bought lace curtains and hung above the stairwell an old-fashioned wallpaper with tiny pink roses.

It was a big, rambling house with lots of elbow space, so I converted the downstairs into a living room, office and library for a peace and justice group. I was its busy director, fund raiser and sole employee. I worked downstairs in the mornings, and members came by at all hours to watch videos, organize protests and listen to speakers from different countries. We were active in nuclear disarmament, in trying to oust U.S.-funded death squads from Central America, and in racial justice by advocating jobs, housing and education for poor people. I knew this to be my life work, and it was rich and rewarding. I was paid a part-time salary by the peace group and worked long, extra hours writing news features to help support us. But I did so gladly. I was deeply fulfilled by my handmade life.

My daughters, by then eight and fifteen, lived with me upstairs and at first all was well. I had never been happier and it was contagious. When I wasn’t plotting peace actions or writing stories at a big oak desk in my bedroom, I was stirring up gumbo or jambalaya on an antique stove in a huge kitchen with burnished cypress floors. In the evenings, the girls sat in our front porch swing while I played in my colorful flower garden. Late