Grateful Witness: Stories from an Enlightening Journey

By L.S.L. Noble

Truth is stranger than fiction. Stranger is, the truth may be happening to many of you right here right now.

Reading like fiction, this nonfiction account candidly shares with no embellishment stories of magical, mystical, spiritual experiences such as the appearances of beings of light, prophetic dreams, astral travel, the Sri Yantra (blue pearl), NDE (near-death experience), the master-disciple relationship, and more.

The witness and experiencer (author) of Grateful Witness illuminates the process of freeing oneself from misery and illusion, carrying one upon wave after wave of peak experience, breakthrough, illumination, catharsis (processing) and integration. All lead to an attainment of the realization of oneness with God, of God consciousness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: May 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781452572826

L.S.L. Noble

Linda S.L. Noble grew-up on the coast of eastern North Carolina, where, as a small child, she rode turtles into the sea. Having returned, Linda basks in the sun, sand, and surf of her youth on Topsail Island, where she and her son, Lee, gratefully live in Surf City, North Carolina.

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Copyright © 2013 L.S.L. Noble.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7283-3 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7284-0 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-7282-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013907175

Balboa Press rev. date: 04/30/2013

CONTENTS

Author’s Note

With Gratitude

Preface

Introduction

PART ONE

The Pole

Blah, Blah, Blah

Chimney Surprise!

Cry for Me

Mama’s Snake!

On the Head of a Diamond

I Dream of Ethel

Death and the Single Eye

Who’s in Charge?

Hide-and-Seek Lucid Rescripting

Earth Mother

Basic Programming

Causal Jewels

Rainbow, Nikki, and Me

Chimney Up The Spiral

Chimney Light Loka

Dr. Highbrow Aliens Debunked Not!

Cornea Erosion

Near Death

‘Abby Normal’

Tantric Sex

PART TWO

The Call

Meeting the Master

Natural State of Being

Thunk

Name That Tune

Mind Control

What Was in the Black?

Tiny Folded Hands

Picking and Choosing

Distractions

Itches and Spiders

Bam

Butterflies

Brave Caterpillie

Brighttime Stories

Mini-Series Episode One: In the Palm

Mini-Series Episode Two: Beached Starship

Mini-Series Episode Three: Helicopter

Mini-Series Episode Four: Union

Heron Meditation

Who Disappeared?

It Just Popped Out Semi-Private

Between Scenes

Tale of Two Deer

Marionettes

Mundane Questions

Competition

Sherpa Enlightening Guide

Inner Network #30

Oceanic Experience of One

Wardrobe

Many Are Called

Arm Down My Throat

Yellow Beach Butterflies and the Saffron Sun

Yin-Yang on the Mountain

Purple Waves

The Master and Me Unofficial HTE

Telepathy?

Science and God

A Funny Mind That’s Entertainment

Tin Man

Ave Maria

Slapstick

Amber and Indigo Rays and Folks

White-Out

Low Air Pressure

More Than Smoothing

Do Not Touch

Seat Data

Mosquito-tation

Clowns

Clowns vs. Robots

Clowning Around

Buddha Hugging

Golden Buddha

Transmission By the Clock

Money Data

Third Encounter of the Slithering Kind Mine all Mine

Who? Gives and Receives

That’s Who

Full Circle

Putting around Town

Baking Are We Done Yet?

Blank and White

On the Rack

Icing on the Brain

Christmas 2002

Ding!

Stoned Clowns Birthday Celebration

Cherry on Top

Neon Green

Green Room Take 1

Simmering

Summer Retreat Tweak

Aware within the Void

Green Room Take 2

Hard Copy/Software Light Copy

Teacup to Dinner Plate

Glow in the Dark

Hollow Reed

Glossary

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I N THE PROCESS OF PUBLISHING this book, a reader interested in self-realization was given the manuscript to read.

After reading the manuscript, the seeker of spiritual truth had questions. I don’t know what kind of book this is, he said. I think it is a spiritual auto biography, but it is also a love story, or is it the story of spiritual enlightenment, or it is the story of the master and disciple relationship, or is it a story of transformation?

The answer is yes.

WITH GRATITUDE

I    CANNOT BEGIN TO DESCRIBE the feeling of overwhelming love, of grace. I lay in the bed in the fetal position. Why me? Feeling infinitely small, tears of gratitude soaked my pillow. I had been touched by God’s grace. Gratitude, gratitude, gratitude, I whispered into the light.

A moment of complete recognition of one’s divinity opens wide the heart flooding it with gratitude. In that moment wherein one comes face to face with God one becomes tiny.

Gratitude to source for my life, for all life, for my family and friends, for the Mama, the Daddy, for Betty, for Buddy, for Jane, Lee, and Lee, for Master Charles Cannon, Donna, all of Synchronicity, and me.

I can’t name everyone and everything, so I will stop here. If I didn’t call your name, you’re up there in one of those words ‘family’, ‘friends’, or ‘synchronicity’.

PREFACE

U NEMBELLISHED, THESE STORIES SERVE AS a reminder, a reminder of who we truly are right here right now in this very moment. The stories are show-and-tell, a demonstration of the process of an enlightening journey.

Just in case you start to wonder what my life was like at the same time I was having these experiences, I was not living in a cave in India, and not in a nunnery. I was living in America, a normal life as a daughter and a sister, and granddaughter, niece, cousin, friend, student, bride, mother, wife, divorce, breadwinner, teacher, director, choreographer, actress, near death experiencer, heart patient, writer, author, illustrator, and girlfriend. Whew.

I wore all those hats and more, villain, heroine, saint, sinner, lover and beloved, and experienced the experiences that came with each hat. So you see you don’t have to be in any particular place at any particular time doing any particular thing. The spiritual journey is happening for each of us in each moment, in each nuance, in each laugh, in each tear, in each breath.

Key to living as opposed to responding to life like a programmed robot is to make unconscious programmed thoughts and responses conscious, and therefore disempower them. Taking them down one by one is part of the process of the journey enlightening.

Meditation is an ancient technique for revealing one’s unconscious programming. When we meditate, or pay attention, more and more we expose our limiting data and experience freedom, freedom from our data programmed thoughts and responses. Eventually, we transcend the mind and its limiting programming, and ascend into more subtle dimensions accessing more truthful experiences.

In the words of two enlightening masters

Be here now-Ram Dass

and

Meditate, meditate, meditate-MC Cannon

When one is being here now, one is in meditation.

When one is in meditation, one is being here now.

INTRODUCTION

O NCE UPON A TIME… SAID the meditation master. His eyes danced with merriment as he gazed around the room, pausing for effect. I begin this story with the words, ‘Once upon a time,’ for that is how all good stories begin…

Enjoying a little chuckle, the master proceeded to entertain the room filled with retreat participants with stories of his long-ago experiences in India with his own meditation master/guru.

Laughing, my heart relaxed. Smiling, my heart grew warmer. I bathed in the lighthearted glow of love, and later, when able to think again, I offered up my gratitude for the new epic story I found myself experiencing—a story of the time-honored dance referred to as the master-disciple relationship, which can (and in my case did) lead to an ultimate transformation.

9781452572826.pdf

PART ONE

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The Pole

T HERE I WAS ONE RETREAT night sitting behind a pole. Even when I shifted to one side of my chair or the other, I didn’t see any more of the master than I did from the middle of my chair.

Having been in that chair behind that same pole during a previous retreat, I remembered how I had experienced minor agitation at the beginning of that evening that we had that pole between us. But by the end of that evening session, it didn’t matter.

In the close proximity of the master the intoxication is so potent, who cares if one can see or not. One can feel the master’s energetic permeating all and everything, entraining all to more expanded states of awareness.

In the world of live theatre, sets are built.

One of the many ways a fake wall can be constructed is by stretching a very porous material called scrim over a wooden frame—stand it up and paint the front side. Lights are hung just right from up above, the front, the sides, and from the back.

When the scrim is lit from the front side (the audience’s side of the stage), the wall appears to be solid.

When the scrim is lit from behind, the wall disappears, and the audience can see through it, viewing action taking place on the other side of the scrim, now a nonexistent wall.

So there I was, all settled in my chair behind the pole, and one of the usher/residents offered me a better seat. Quietly declining the change of seat, I could tell that the usher/resident was a bit curious did I possibly want to sit behind the pole? and why?

Curious One studied me. I suspected that she was suspecting that I was attempting to hide from the master, but she left me where I sat. (Somebody had to sit behind the pole; why not me?)

All were seated.

The lights dimmed.

We waited for the master to join us in the Environment.

Some retreat guests sat quietly. Some laid on the floor with their feet elevated, propped up on their chairs. Some made a last minute dash to the bathroom and/or for water.

Hushed whispers echoed around the room. The sheer anticipation of the master’s arrival, which grew with every moment we waited, heightened our awareness. Now and then a burst of laughter rang-out. Okay, that was usually me.

The music which tells us that the master is about to enter began playing and everyone stood while Master Charles made his entrance, slowly walked to the dais, acknowledged the crowd, and motioned for all to sit… we did… sit.

Once in our chairs, I immediately scoped the sight-lines just in case the one-others in front of me were sitting cata-whompy in their chairs offering a sliver of a glimpse of the master, and nope!

I could see the master’s left ear on one side of the pole and his right ear on the other side of the pole when he shifted in his seat from side to side while talking, and that was that! Well okay.

I just sat staring at that pole and the master’s ears whenever they swayed into view.

I became very still as I stared at that pole, and Master Charles became more and more active in his chair, leaning first to one side and then the other, peaking around first this side of the pole and then around that side of the pole—making eye contact with me each time like playing the child’s game of peek a boo, I see you.

A goofy grin spread across my face as the master became more and more animated in his seat, seemingly exaggerating his gestures so I’d not miss a thing.

And slowly… the back-light that is the master became brighter and brighter, an amber-golden light surrounding him as he swayed from side to side… and just like the theatrical scrim wall is rendered porous and disappears when lit from behind… that pole disappeared! I sat delighting in the play of one consciousness—watching—as the light of the master and of my Self grew even more bright, blazing a soft amber-gold light, flooding every space, revealing the obstacle for what it truly was… source as an imagined solid, an illusory pole.

My overactive imagination as it was called when I was a child had worked to serve in my continuing liberation, enabling me to see through the illusion to the truth. Barriers between the master and my Self were burned away.

A dear reflection as fellow student since approached me prior to an evening session with Master Charles, offering to swap her seat on the front row with my seat several rows back. I thanked her for her gracious offer but declined the chair-swap, for I felt content to be where I was.

She stood silent for a moment before whispering, I suppose you don’t have any seat data, either, huh?

Bonnie and I shared a moment of silent mutual awareness then she returned to her seat on the front row.

The master uses whatever is available to further facilitate the flowering of the student, even a seat behind a wooden pole.

SriYantra01BW.tif

Blah, Blah, Blah

AND SO IT IS THAT I begin this story, this book of stories, with the words, Once upon a time, because this is how all stories begin, and all life experiences—interpretations, thoughts, projections, speculations, determinations, celebrations, elation, devastation, jubilation, experiences of love and hate, experiences of glory and the gory, experiences of hope and despair, experiences of violence and random kindness, experiences of birth and death, yes and no, up and down, black and white—all—are but stories. Each one of us is the main character in our own story, the star of our own movie.

I made that comment once to my son when he was in a particularly contracted state. Lee retorted with illusory misery in that initial moment, Right now I don’t feel like I have even a walk-on part in my own movie!

We laughed with gusto at the absurdity of that.

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Once Upon a Time…

I was born this body appeared on this earth-ball on March 14, 1946 (though Old-Sister insists it was 1945). As the story goes:

Our parents moved from Raleigh, North Carolina, to Jacksonville, North Carolina, where the largest Marine Corps amphibious training base in the world had just been established.

My father was in the furniture business, and he opened a furniture store, planting roots in this small crossroads of a town on the East Coast.

Over the years, I asked our mother to tell me the details of my birth. She told me about sibling births (younger sister, older sister, baby brother), recounting their many details, but never any details about my birth except this her only story:

When Mama and Daddy decided to have another baby (me) soon after Old-Sister was born, Mother was told there were complications. One, she was anemic, and two, her reproductive organs were cyst covered. She told of how she had driven weekly to Kinston for treatments in which the doctor had painted her ovaries with glycerin.

She told of how she and Daddy had worked for over three years to get me.

But still, she had no memories of my birth.

What I do remember, though, our mother would say, is that the moment I became pregnant with you, Linda, my body was healed. The cysts disappeared, I was no longer anemic, and I was not sick another day. You healed me.

That’s all she said.

At the age of three, while twirling around the room, I announced, I am a dancer. I was enrolled in dance lessons and was quickly labeled as gifted.

Over the years, I flowered, bathed in the positive light of my parents. Mama was always singing and dancing in the kitchen while Daddy beat out the rhythm, hand in his pocket jingling his change, or tapping on the pot lids with the cooking spoons.

On the weekends, our house was filled with laughter and music as the local musicians gathered together for jam sessions. I remember sitting on Daddy’s knee holding a drumstick in one hand and the brush in the other, with Daddy’s large, strong, gentle hands holding mine, playing the drums.

Bouncing on his mighty leg each time Daddy’s foot hit the big bass drum I squealed, and laughed with such delight. And the rhythm was in me. And I was the rhythm.

Mama always called me her sensitive child, and at times she had to remind me to toughen up, that my skin was too thin. I remember her telling me that I was a moody child.

You are so moody, she said. You have only two moods: either you are so high that your feet don’t touch the ground or you are so low that a snake couldn’t slide underneath your belly! And you switch from one to the other so fast it makes my head spin!

I understand, now, that Mama was calling for my balance. Ah, smart one she was—which reminds me of a little quip that goes something like this: Interesting how the older I get, the smarter my mom becomes. Ahem.

How did I respond to the mother’s comments, admonishments of a sort? Well, rather than feel defeated by this information, I accepted it as the way it is and went on my merry way. I danced, sang, painted, played the drums and the piano, gazed at the clouds while lying on my back in the clover, climbed trees and built a fort in the woods, rode my bicycle, jumped on my pogo stick, and played hide-and-seek with my neighborhood friends.

I lived a healthy, normal childhood, except for the fact that I was learning that not all my experiences were normal; for if I spoke of seeing colored lights, I was stared at as if I had suddenly sprouted an extra two heads. Humph!

SriYantra01BW.tif

Chimney

Surprise!

IN MY YOUTHFUL FORMATIVE YEARS, we were the second family in our small town to get a television because Daddy had the mayor’s television delivered first, just two doors over.

Most programming was a snowy picture, even with the rooftop antenna.

In his youth, Daddy was a Golden Gloves boxing champion and he liked to watch boxing on the snowy TV. (He could see what no one else could.)

The whole family had a particular interest in Hallmark Hall of Fame because Daddy’s brother was its set designer.

And The Wonderful World of Disney was yet to be.

The only other programming was the news and weather. Oh yes, there was the radio, which played such happy tunes.

One night when I was not yet five years of age, Mama, Old-Sister, and Daddy sat at the picnic table talking with some neighbors who had wandered over after our grilled fish supper. I was lying on my back underneath the tree in the back corner of the fenced-in backyard watching for the first star of night to appear.

As I stared into the sky, the first star came into sight and seemed to wink at me. In a blink, a tiny person made of a glowing blue-tinted white light appeared in front of me. It did not appear to be a little boy or a little girl, yet it was about my size, no taller than me. It wasn’t really wearing any clothes, either, because it was all the same glowing bluish white light.

Looking into its large soft eyes I felt giggly, and with no fear I took hold of its outstretched hand, which didn’t have as many fingers as my hand did.

We blinked into pure white light, and it lovingly guided me by the hand up a wide arcing stairway made of the same white light, upward to what appeared to be an open window within the light.

All is . . . this white light.

I rose on tiptoe to gaze through the opening and had to look downward, for we seemed to be rising higher and higher.

Standing, watching, I saw my family and neighbors, way down there, still gathered around the picnic table.

Higher. Higher.

The view of the family and neighbors grew smaller and smaller until I could no longer see them.

On the other side of the opening the light changed to a sparkling golden amber light, and I stood bedazzled on my little tippy-toes, staring from within the white light into the golden radiance before me.

My daddy was standing suspended in the golden amber light. What’s he doing there? Making eye contact, Daddy smiled, both of us waving as I continued rising. Finally, Daddy was out of sight. There was only light.

The next thing I knew, Mama was calling me into the house.

It was pitch-dark outside, and the neighbors had already gone home. I don’t know what happened between when I lost sight of my daddy standing in the golden amber light, and when I found myself in the threshold to the house, my foot holding the screen door open.

Pointing into the dark night sky, which now had more stars sprinkled about, I zeroed in on a particular star. Look, Mama. That’s where I come from.

Persistent in my insistence that I came from that star, I stood in the doorway, beseeching the mama to come look. I was told it was time to go to bed. Needless to say, I didn’t go quietly.

Many times in my life I heard these words: Linda, you have an overactive imagination. It’s just your imagination at work. Don’t let your imagination run away with you.

Well, okay.

This same being of blue-tinted white light has visited me many times throughout my life, and I shall share more of these experiences with you as the story unfolds—unless, of course, I don’t.

After this experience, there was a certain knowing about me that I could not, would not put into words—at least not without sprouting a couple more heads. Or is that just my imagination?

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Cry for Me

LIKE MANY LITTLE GIRLS, I adored my daddy, and I loved to climb into his lap, hugging his neck, kissing his cheek, and basking in his unconditional love.

Though his arms snuggled me and I experienced myself safe and warm, after having experienced seeing my daddy suspended in the golden light, I would become overwhelmed with