Recently I was reading The Red Book by Carl Jung, and one passage deeply struck me. Jung said that by the age of forty he had attained honor, riches, and power, yet in the process he had lost his soul. It immediately reminded me of Christ’s words:

“What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”

I realized these are the same two poles I have been circling within myself: the desire to become a “badass,” powerful, admired, successful - and the opposing call toward humility, purity, compassion, and holiness. One path seeks power through the ego; the other seeks transformation through surrender.

More and more, it seems that Christ calls us into deeper communion through humility, prayer, chastity, obedience, and service. Yet we often resist that call, turning instead toward our own devices, distractions, compulsions, ambitions, and illusions in search of fulfillment.

After a recent slip, I sat down and wrote what I truly desire with my whole soul in order to reorient my life:

What: Become who God created me to be.
Why: So my life reflects God, truth, love, and authenticity instead of illusion and fragmentation.

Lately I have found myself deeply inspired by Saint Francis of Assisi and discerning the possibility of joining the Third Order in order to give my life more fully to Christ and the Gospel. What moves me most about Francis is not merely his poverty or asceticism, but his radical love - his love for God, for people, for creation, and for the forgotten.

I sometimes wonder if, in some way, we are all being called toward this deeper life: a life rooted not in endless stimulation or self-glorification, but in simplicity, charity, contemplation, and love. Not necessarily withdrawal from the world, but a transformation in how we live within it.

Perhaps the real revolution begins quietly - in prayer, in forgiveness, in honesty, in serving others, in loving our families more deeply, and in becoming more fully human.

As Paul the Apostle wrote, three things remain: faith, hope, and love - and the greatest of these is love.

Maybe the healing of the world begins there.

“Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.” — John 14:9

“For now we see through a glass, dimly; but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” — 1 Corinthians 13:12

Many people in the Bible speak of directly encountering God. Some stories that stand out are:

• Moses, who is not allowed to see God face to face, but instead sees Him as He passes by in the cleft of the rock (Exodus 33)

• Jacob, who wrestles through the night and says, “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been spared,” naming the place Peniel (Genesis 32)

This brings me to the first practice: icon gazing, or gazing into someone’s eyes. This can even be followed by looking into your own eyes in a mirror.

Start with 5–10 minutes. You can gradually increase to 15–20 minutes.

Here are the benefits of icon gazing in simple point form:

• improves focus and attention

• quiets a busy or distracted mind

• builds a sense of connection to Christ

• creates a feeling of being seen or in relationship

• calms the nervous system (less stress and anxiety)

• helps with grounding during urges or restlessness

• redirects attention away from temptation or negative habits

• shapes inner imagery in a more ordered and positive way

• supports emotional regulation and inner peace

• deepens faith through direct attention, not just thinking

• reflects biblical practice (e.g. Hebrews 12:2)

• leads to gradual inner transformation (2 Corinthians 3:18)

• may open gentle symbolic or meaningful inner experiences

• keeps your spiritual life centered and grounded in Christ

The second practice comes from the prophet Elijah.

God was not in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire, but in the still small voice (1 Kings 19:11–12).

This practice is learning to listen in silence.

“In quietness and trust shall be your strength… in returning and rest you shall be saved.” - Isaiah 30:15

“Only in silence can we fully know ourselves.” - Thomas Keating

I outline this as effortless observer meditation, working up to 20 minutes twice a day to rest the nervous system, in Ascension and Healing: The Path of the Christian Mystic (2024), and the gazing practice in Enlightenment: A Journey Through Vision (2025).

These two practices can radically transform your life.

May God be with you.

Jesus did not simply repeat the commandment to love God and neighbor. He deepened it in a radical way.

Love one another as I have loved you.

This is not sentimental love. It is not abstract.

It is a self giving, sacrificial, humble love. The love of the Son who gives himself fully for the sake of humanity. A love that confronts pride, the pull of the flesh, and everything in us that creates distance from God.

Anyone walking the spiritual path knows this inwardly. There are ways of living that draw us toward God, and ways that quietly separate us from Him.

Christ reveals the true face of the Father, not as condemning, but as saving.

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Through Christ we are invited into a living relationship with the Father.

Returning to Scripture After Awakening

After a series of intense experiences, what I can only describe as a metaphysical awakening, encounters with Christ and Yahweh in a kind of blank whiteout, and an ascension vision, I made a decision.

To return to scripture. Cover to cover.

Not out of obligation, but out of recognition.

So far, I have read from Genesis through Lamentations, steadily and intentionally.

Why?

Because something in those experiences, what I perceived as an inner guide, left me with a simple but powerful truth.

The Bible says we are meant to be together.

That stayed with me.

Discipline of Body and Spirit

My path is not just spiritual in theory. It is embodied.

I fast, skipping breakfast unless I am training.
I walk and do cardio regularly.
I alternate hot and cold showers.
I practice breathwork and meditation.
I eat intentionally.

A year ago, I was 288 lbs. Now I am 228.

Progress has not been easy, especially on medication, but the direction matters.

The body is not separate from the spiritual life. It is part of it.

The Heart of the Mystical Path

If you study the saints and mystics, one thing becomes clear.

They were single minded.

Focused on Christ.

Many lived lives of service, embodying the teaching that whatever you did for the least of these, you did for me.

But they also understood that his kingdom is not of this world.

There is both engagement and detachment. Action in the world, rooted in something beyond it.

Seeing Christ in Everyone

One of the deepest transformations is this.

To begin seeing the Beloved in every person.

For me, that Beloved is Christ.

Scripture points toward a reality beyond division, where identity is no longer limited by categories. From that place, we are called not just to admire Christ, but to participate in his way of being.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.

A mind that does not grasp at status or power, but empties itself.
A mind that humbles itself.
A mind that loves, even when it costs something.

The Divine Feminine Sophia

Scripture speaks of Wisdom, Sophia, as present in creation, working alongside God in the formation of the cosmos.

Mystics and thinkers like Carl Jung have recognized this dimension, sometimes expressed through Mary, sometimes through Sophia.

You could call this presence the Beloved.

For me, everything returns to Christ as the center.

The Invitation

To cleave to the Lord is to become one spirit with Him.

This is not just belief. It is practice. It is discipline. It is lived love.

If you want to grow in relationship with God, return to scripture. Stay with it. Let it shape you over time.

A Grounded Note

If you are in the London, Ontario area, I offer personal training and fascial stretch therapy.

Your spiritual life should not come at the expense of your body. Strength, mobility, and physical health are part of the path as well.

Books and Further Reading

If this resonates with you and you want to go deeper into this path of transformation, I have written more on these themes in my books.

You can find them here:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FSCT4C5B
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0FSCT4C5B

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DJJ8SX81
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0DJJ8SX81

If you have read this far, you already understand.

This path is not about ideas alone.

It is about transformation.

And it begins again and again with love.

“I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”
— Ephesians 3:18–19 (NRSV)

“And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”
— 2 Corinthians 3:18 (NRSV)

No matter what spiritual practice you enter—whether it be prayer, service, work, or creative expression—it is, at its core, a response to the quiet and persistent prompting of the love of God within you.

Every breath, every movement, every turning of the heart draws you nearer to your ultimate end: the Beatific Vision.
A vision so radiant, so all-consuming, that it seizes the heart and transfigures desire itself—awakening a love that first deepens your union with God, and then overflows into a lavish, self-giving love for others.

“They were all molded as though by the magician of the beautiful.”

Create, then, an environment that nourishes your highest and most sublime affections—and live from within it.

Whether through the Rosary, the Daily Office, art, study, or service, give yourself wholly. Hold nothing back. Enter it fully.

Meditate as Christ did—losing yourself in love. As Maharajji said: “He lost himself in love.”
This is the state of divine intoxication—the soul immersed in God.

“And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
— John 12:32 (NRSV)

“Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable—if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.”
— Philippians 4:8 (NRSV)

Let your mind dwell on the beautiful.
Let your heart be shaped by the good.
Let your life become a living reflection of divine love.

If this reflection resonated with you, consider going deeper—through my Christian Mysticism course, my newsletter, and my books:

Ascension and Healing: The Path of the Christian Mystic
Enlightenment: A Journey Through Vision

May God be with you.

Most people think enlightenment has nothing to do with Christianity.

They hear the word and imagine something Eastern, abstract, or impersonal—detachment, emptiness, dissolving into nothing. Meanwhile, Christianity is seen as belief, morality, and worship of a distant God.

But this is a misunderstanding.

At its core, Christianity is a path of enlightenment…

Read more

The Lord’s Prayer, given to us by Jesus, reveals a way of living in harmony with God, ourselves, and others. It is not merely a prayer to repeat, but a pattern for life.

As Meister Eckhart said, “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”
In the same spirit, if we orient ourselves toward goodness—seeking God’s will, forgiving freely, overlooking faults, seeing the good in others, and giving thanks continually—we begin to experience an abundance of grace.

But what about disbelief?

We must remember: the Christian mystery is just that—a mystery beyond full comprehension. While reflection and understanding have their place, the deeper call is not simply to think about God, but to come to know God through love, through perception, and through the way we live.

This path is not about having perfect belief.
It is about a sincere turning of the heart.

As Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, “The Little Flower,” expressed so simply:
“I want to believe.”

Through even that small desire, something begins.

Christ’s love is unconditional.
And as we open ourselves to that love, we are transformed—not through force, but through the quiet renewal of the heart.

Julian of Norwich, in her Showings, captured this truth beautifully:
“What did He show you? Love.
What did He show? Love.
Why did He show it? For love.”

This course is not about control, power, or perfection.
It is about encountering the Divine in a way that transforms us through love—not the love of power, but the power of love.

As the poet Kabir said:
“Who is a spiritual person? One who understands the suffering of others.”

And as wisdom from the East reminds us:
“One who controls others may be powerful, but one who has mastered himself is mightier still.”

This is the path we will walk here:

• A path of contemplation

• A path of humility

• A path of inner transformation

• A path of love in action

You are not required to have everything figured out.
You are only invited to begin.

And to return, again and again, to love.

I’ve created a course exploring the path of Christian mysticism - drawing from my books Ascension & Healing: The Path of the Christian Mystic and Enlightenment: A Journey Through Vision, along with classic mystical texts.

The course explores contemplative practice, spiritual transformation,…

Read more

The call for every human life is to grow in love. As Madame Guyon wrote, it is impossible to love too much. And as Dr. David R. Hawkins observed, dedicating one’s life to love and peace inevitably brings us face-to-face with everything in us that resists it, which is why forgiveness and compassion must become a way of life, not just an ideal.

For many years, I sought peace through intense devotion, study, prayer, and reflection on what it means to be united with God through Christ and to live for the good of others. That journey unfolded over nearly two decades and carried me through seasons of breakdown as well as profound healing. What I’ve come to understand is not that the journey ends, but that it matures, moving from seeking to embodying, from striving to living.

Today, my focus is simple and grounded: sobriety, service, honest work, love, devotion, and joy. Devotion no longer feels like strain, but like participation, something alive and natural rather than heavy. The task now is not to chase extraordinary experiences, but to let love take form in ordinary life.

We live in a time that calls for clarity, humility, and light, not as abstractions, but as daily practice. To be attentive, joyful, and sincere before God, and to extend that same care to one another, is work enough for a lifetime.

If these words resonate with you, I invite you to explore my books, where I share this journey openly, from struggle to integration, and offer reflections on living a more peaceful, joyful life in service of God and our fellow human beings.

To read the full story and reflections behind this journey, you can find my book here:
https://www.amazon.ca/dp/196501626X

We speak often of enlightenment as a rising — an ascent into light — but every true ascent begins in descent. The soul descends into the depths of its own darkness so that the light may be born from within. This is the mystery of Christ’s descent into hell: not punishment, but redemption. He redeems what has been cast away.

Lately, I’ve been realizing that the same is true in our own inner life. The shadow — those parts of ourselves we deny, repress, or fear — is not evil by nature. It is our unlived life, our guilt, our unmet longing, our forgotten power. When we face it, we don’t become dark; we become whole. The light doesn’t fight the darkness; it fills it. Like a lamp turned on in a dark room, the shadow doesn’t vanish — it’s assimilated into the glow.

Desire and the Shadow

Even desire itself, especially in its distorted forms — lust, addiction, obsession — points toward something sacred. When desire is unconscious, it becomes destructive. When it is integrated, it becomes divine eros: the longing of the soul for union with the Beloved. What once enslaved us becomes the very fire that liberates us.

The Integration of Opposites

Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
This is the sacred marriage — the Hieros Gamos — within the soul: the union of masculine and feminine, heaven and earth, light and shadow.

When the masculine (the active, discerning Logos) and the feminine (the receptive, intuitive Sophia) unite, the Christ-self emerges — not as an external savior, but as the awakened consciousness within. The sword of light cuts through illusion, not to destroy, but to reveal.

In my own visions — of Christ and Yahweh within the white-out light, of riding the cosmic spider into the luminous net, of holding St. Michael’s sword at the top of the universe — I see now that these images are not distant myths but living symbols of integration. The spider’s web is the net of being; the sword is truth; the light is love itself.

The Path of Redemption

When we face our guilt and transform our relationships — even the painful ones — into altars of compassion, we break the cycle of guilt and retribution that binds the world.
As we release judgment and embrace understanding, we mirror what Christ accomplished in descending to the depths: the redemption of the shadow, the illumination of what was unconscious.

This is not a personal task alone; it is cosmic. To integrate one’s own shadow is to heal a portion of the collective. Each soul that awakens contributes to the awakening of the world soul — the Anima Mundi.

The Age of Light

The visions I’ve received — from the “Other Eye” to the “White Book,” from the spider’s ascent to the luminous net — form part of what I call the Arc of Vision. It is the revelation of an age now dawning — an Age of Light. Not a utopia, but a collective illumination: humanity seeing itself as one body of Christ-consciousness.

We are all eyes of the same Godself, each soul reflecting the infinite chain of being. The light is not coming to us — it is emerging through us.

Closing Prayer

“God of Light and Darkness,
May I not reject what is wounded within me,
but offer it to You for transfiguration.
Fill the shadow with light,
and let my desire be purified into love.
May the darkness reveal its hidden radiance,
until all becomes one in You.”

Friends, I’m excited to share that my new book, Enlightenment: A Journey Through Vision, is officially out! This work gathers years of vision, prayer, and lived experience into a three-part journey through descent, revelation, and living Presence. It’s the culmination of a dream and a calling that began with a white-spined book simply titled Enlightenment.

📖 You can order here:

• Amazon Canada

• Amazon U.S.

Bonus: Audiobook Snippet 🎧

While I prepare the full audiobook of Enlightenment, I’ve also recorded a sample snippet from my last book Ascension and Healing: The Path of the Christian Mystic. You can listen here:
👉 YouTube – Introduction Sample

Thank you for your support on this path. Every share, listen, and word of encouragement helps bring these teachings of Presence and vision to more seekers.

With gratitude,
Clark

• Betrothal: The soul is engaged to Christ — drawn close by moments of sweetness, visions, or deep intimacy. Yet the ego, the false self, still lingers, sometimes hiding in pride or subtle attachments.

• Marriage: The consummated union. The false self is emptied out, and the soul lives wholly in Christ — no longer “I,” but Christ in me, resting in perfect love.

Mystics such as Teresa of Ávila and John of the Cross teach that the path from betrothal to marriage is not achieved by effort alone, but by surrender: humility, detachment, perseverance through trials, and abiding love.

This journey is central to my recent book:

📖 Enlightenment: A Journey Through Vision

• Purchase in Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0FSCT4C5B

• Purchase in the U.S.: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FSCT4C5B

If this message resonates with you, I’d be honored if you left a comment or a review. Your reflections help this conversation reach others who are on the path of soul-union.

With gratitude,
Clark

This book has been years in the making. It carries the heart of my journey: mystical visions, encounters with Christ and the Godself, the descent into shadow, and the dawning of what I call the “Age of Light.” Every page is woven from lived experience, prayer, study, and the desire to witness to the Presence that is always here.

I’ve written before about glimpses of the Other Eye, the blank white-out where Christ and Yahweh appear as One, and the sword of light dream that marked the turning of an age. In this book, I finally bring all of those threads together—offering not just my story, but a vision of wholeness that I pray will speak to seekers, mystics, and everyday pilgrims alike.

✨ Why this cover matters
The cover feels like a culmination. In a dream years ago, I saw a white-spined book with one word on it: Enlightenment. That dream guided me here. Holding the finished design in my hands, it feels like that dream has stepped into reality.

📖 What’s next
The book will be available very soon. In the meantime, I’d love for you to:

• Share this post with a friend who might resonate with it.

• Reply and let me know what the cover stirs in you—I’d love to hear your impressions.

• Stay tuned here on Substack for the official launch announcement.

Thank you for walking this path with me. Your encouragement, questions, and presence have been part of the fabric of this work.

Here’s to the dawning of the Age of Light. 🌅

With gratitude,
Clark

Eighteen years of visions revealed themselves as a single arc — each one preparing the way for the next.

The Arc of Vision

Looking back, I see that the visions were not random. They formed a single arc across nearly two decades, each one preparing me for the next.

• 2007 – The Salvia Encounter

At the edge of the earth where everything meets — the Axis Mundi — I looked upward at the veil separating heaven and earth. Before me appeared the Other Eye, the World Soul, surrounded by eyes — and yet one so close I could not move. It was terror and awe at once, the first shattering of separation. As Matthew Fox says: “Without awe there is no faith.”

• 2008 – Symbols of Exile

Soon after, I was confronted by false idols — Kehlog Albran’s The Profit “666” hand sign, money symbols, and voices saying: “Man will never leave earth without a rocket.” I sensed even then the struggle between illusion and transcendence.

• 2008–2016 – Striving in the Body

I tried to fulfill my potential through basketball, weightlifting, and work. Outward striving carried me for years, until it collapsed in a psychotic nervous breakdown in 2016.

• 2016 – The Counter-Sign of Christ

Broken, I walked into a church and saw a black-and-white photo of three hockey players wearing 888 — the number of Jesus — countering the 666 I had seen earlier. Around the same time, during art therapy in my first rehab, I drew the great Eye from my Salvia vision. Someone said it resembled Alex Grey’s work, though I had never heard of him.

Not long after, I discovered DMT: The Spirit Molecule in a Chapters bookstore. On its cover was Alex Grey’s Dying — eyes ascending into the Light, nearly identical to what I had seen. Later, while staying with my uncle in British Columbia, I wandered into a spiritual bookstore and picked up Yogananda’s The Second Coming of Christ, with its teaching on Cosmic Consciousness.

• 2016 – Godself and the Net of Being

In my second rehab, I still doubted God, though I believed in the soul. Someone in recovery told me: “Ask God to reveal Himself to you.” I did. Soon after, I encountered Alex Grey’s Net of Being with the Godself blazing on the cover. This was the confirmation I needed that God was real. As Alex Grey wrote: “Religion is a way to connect self to God.”

• 2017 – Yahweh in the Heart Center

Hovering between waking and sleep, I saw a vivid imprint of Yahweh in the heart of the Kabbalistic Tree of Life — not suspended in heaven, but rooted in the earth. It was a prophecy of descent, the marriage of heaven and earth.

• 2024 – The White Book Vision

In a dream I was shown a closed white book with black letters on its spine reading ENLIGHTENMENT. The book was complete, yet it also pointed forward — calling me to expand my manuscript into its destined fullness, a work of 65,000 words, a testament meant to shine as a light for others.

• 2024 – The Red-Haired Anima

After watching William Henry’s Halo Christos Masterclass, I dreamed of a red-haired woman. She looked at me and said, “You’re a math wiz.” Then, with piercing clarity: “The Bible says we’re meant to be together.”

Carl Jung, in his commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower, wrote: “I have defined the anima in man as a personification of the unconscious in general, and have therefore taken it to be a bridge to the unconscious, that is, to be the function of relationship to the unconscious.”

In my dream, the anima appeared as this living bridge, awakening my interest in nuptial mysticism — the mystical marriage of the soul and the divine. This encounter prepared the way for the visions that would follow.

• 2025 – Christ in the Dream

Not long after, I dreamed of Christ Himself. His presence was both intimate and cosmic, the Beloved drawing near.

• 2025 – Christ and Yahweh in the Blank White-Out

One morning, hovering between waking and sleep, I entered a blank white-out of luminous emptiness. Christ stood before me, Yahweh behind Him. I reached out to touch them, unable to tell where one ended and the other began. Distinct yet one, they revealed the nuptial mysticism of heaven and earth united, the consummation of all visions.

• 2025 – The Age of Light

Soon after, I was shown a vision of radiant symbolism. I beheld the sword of St. Michael placed into my care — not to destroy, but to illumine. The whole cosmos became eyes looking back at me. Then I was carried on the back of a great spider into a luminous web stretched across creation, every soul a shining node of light.

When I later read Matthew Fox’s The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, I discovered that Spider Woman was part of the Indigenous myths of the Americas — the great weaver binding creation together. My vision echoed this archetype: the dawning Age of Light, when humanity is entrusted with the sword of love and clarity to burn away shadow.

The Center of the Arc

All of these visions, spanning from the terror of the Other Eye to the luminous net of light, surround a single center: the nuptial union. Whether revealed through the anima, through Yahweh rooted in the earth, or through Christ and Yahweh together in the blank white-out, the mystery is the same — heaven and earth, spirit and flesh, lover and Beloved, united as one.

This is the heart of my forthcoming book Enlightenment: A Journey Through Vision — a testimony of how exile gives way to union, and how the Age of Light begins.

Many of you already know I’ve been writing my next book, Enlightenment: A Journey Through Vision, Purgatory, and Union.

Right now, the manuscript is at about 6,000 words — just the first foothold on a much larger climb toward 65,000. What I have so far feels like the clearest, most distilled draft yet. Shorter, more concise, and carrying more weight than earlier attempts.

This stage of writing is both humbling and energizing. The vision is there — the dreams, the encounters, the insights — but the real work is in weaving it together into something whole. Some days the words pour out; other days they trickle. Still, the light remains steady.

Over the next while, I’ll be sharing excerpts here on Substack: glimpses into the visions, the mystical encounters, and the themes that are forming the backbone of the book. My hope is that you feel part of this unfolding.

Excerpt from Enlightenment: The White Book

Not long ago, I dreamt of a white book.

It was sitting on a coffee table among other books. It didn’t glow or call attention to itself — it was plain, almost ordinary. On its spine was a single word: Enlightenment.

I picked it up, but the pages resisted me. They shone in a way beyond letters. Not a single line could I read, yet the whole of it was somehow known. It carried everything: the story of the cosmos, the story of my life, the story of God.

The message was clear without a word being legible: the truth is already written. My task is not to author it, but to awaken to what has been written from the beginning.

That dream has never left me. Each time I return to it in memory or prayer, I feel its silent command — to stop striving to invent meaning, and instead to let meaning reveal itself.

Perhaps this book I am now writing is only a shadow of that White Book. And yet, by grace, even the shadow can point toward the light.

Thank you, truly, for walking with me in this. Your encouragement reminds me that I’m not writing into the void — I’m writing into community.

With gratitude,
Clark

The vision of the “Other Eye” showed me that what I feared most was not some external enemy, but the Beloved gazing back at me — through both God and the face of the Other. This Eye was at once terrifying and luminous, because it saw through every mask I wore and called me beyond myself. Scripture says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” and it is indeed a “terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” That was the essence of the encounter: my small self quaking before a Presence it could not control or domesticate.

At first, I could only experience it as a threat. Why? Because the ego always interprets the presence of God as its own annihilation. A Course in Miracles says the ego perceives God as attack. David Hawkins makes the same point: at the lower levels of consciousness, the infinite Presence seems like danger, even though it is only safety and love.

In truth, the Other Eye is the eye of the Beloved. It belongs to God, and it belongs to every human being — because God is mirrored in every soul. Alex Grey’s Net of Being depicts this endless chain of Godselves reflecting one another in a sacred mirror. Richard Rohr calls this the Universal Christ: not only Jesus of Nazareth, but the Christ-presence shining in all creation.

Ram Dass once said the work of the spiritual life is “polishing the mirror.” Until the dust of fear, shame, and shadow is wiped away, we see the Beloved as a threat. But when the mirror of the heart is made clear, we recognize that the Other Eye is nothing less than the Godself looking back at us through the faces of others.

The movement is always twofold:

We turn inward toward the One who is God. Through surrender, forgiveness, and love, the heart becomes transparent.

That transparency reflects outward. We begin to see Christ alive in everyone we meet — friend, stranger, even enemy.

The Other Eye is both the gaze of God and the gaze of the Other. When my own vision is healed, I no longer flinch. Instead, I see the Beloved everywhere. And in that gaze, there is only love.

I’ve realized something lately: I’m not used to being without my practices.
The breathwork, the effortless meditation, the way of resting awareness in awareness — they have become my daily bread. Without them, I feel like I’d lose the ground beneath my feet.

And yet, when I read the Christian mystics, I find that they too speak of this same resting.

St. John of the Cross says that when a soul is ready, prayer shifts from effort to a kind of quiet, passive contemplation. “The soul rests, content, without acting, in peace and quiet, listening with loving attention.” That is not striving. That is non-doing. That is exactly what my Eastern teachers call effortless meditation.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux describes the soul as restless until it is reduced to love. His language is fire, but the essence is the same: stop clinging, and let love breathe you. Bernard read the Song of Songs as the soul inhaling the kisses of the Beloved. Breath itself becomes prayer. Spiritus — Spirit, breath — is what carries us.

The Eastern teachers remind us that meditation is not about effort but about dissolving into what already is. And the mystics remind us that the One into whom we dissolve is not abstract awareness, but the living God of Love.

So yes — my practices are necessary for me right now. They keep me awake, they keep me open. But the mystics hint at something even deeper: a moment when even practice falls away, and only Love remains.

Maybe that’s the summit both East and West are pointing to — not breathwork, not silence, not technique, but God Himself, who is nearer than breath.

Gazing as a Spiritual Practice – The Sacred Mirror of the Beloved

"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." – Matthew 5:8
"I look at Him and He looks at me." – Brother Lawrence
"A lover may be solitary, but he is never alone, for as a companion he always has the hidden Beloved." – Rumi
"The Beloved is the mirror in which you see yourself." – Rumi

One of the simplest, yet most universal practices of the mystics is to gaze with love. The Dead Sea Scrolls counsel: “Gaze on the veil day and night, and know the path of everything that lives.” Jewish mysticism calls this ayin be-ayin – “eye to eye” – where the soul beholds God directly, not as concept but as Presence. Isaiah wrote that God’s people would one day “see eye to eye when the Lord returns to Zion.” Mystics read this not only as prophecy, but as an inner vision: God beholding us, and we beholding God, in a shared gaze of love.

The Zohar deepens this by teaching that to gaze with kavvanah – holy intention – is to align the heart with divine light. Kavvanah means focused devotion, the directing of one’s entire being toward God. In Jewish tradition, prayer without kavvanah is considered empty — mere words. But prayer or gazing with kavvanah becomes a living channel of grace.

This depth of focused attention is not casual. Frederick Dodson writes that Bhakti is the yoga of single-focused Love and Devotion to the Most High, and he places it in the 800s — among the highest qualities of consciousness. Dr. David Hawkins likewise calibrates deep surrender to the will of God at 850. Two teachers, two perspectives, one essence: whether through devotion or surrender, the soul enters the same rarefied atmosphere of divine union. To gaze with kavvanah is to consent to be drawn into that frequency, where focus becomes worship, and worship becomes surrender. Every such gaze is auspicious — not because of effort, but because grace itself makes the meeting possible.

This is why the Christian tradition of icon gazing is so powerful. An icon is not merely art to be looked at — it is a window into eternity. When the believer gazes upon Christ Pantocrator, the Theotokos, or the saints, it is not just the human eye that sees; it is the soul beholding God eye to eye. The icon gazes back.

The Fathers of the Church taught that icons are written, not painted, because they speak silently to the heart. To look at an icon with kavvanah — holy attention — is to participate in the same current of Bhakti that Dodson describes in the 800s, and the same surrender Hawkins places at 850. Focus becomes devotion. Devotion becomes surrender. And the surrender itself becomes vision.

When gazing at an icon, the boundaries between subject and object soften. What begins as looking outward becomes an inner recognition: the Christ within is gazing at the Christ before you. This is the auspicious moment of icon gazing — not when you see an image, but when you realize you are being seen.

Jesus said it more simply: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” Purity of heart is clarity of gaze — the willingness to look through appearances until the Face of the Beloved shines everywhere. As another ancient saying puts it: “Close the two eyes to see with the one eye.” This single eye of the heart perceives what the divided mind cannot.

Christian contemplatives describe prayer as a gaze of love: “I look at Him and He looks at me.” Icons, the Eucharist, even the face of a neighbor can become veils through which God gazes at us and we at God. Richard Rohr calls this mutual mirroring — the gaze of love in which God reflects Himself back to us, until we are transformed into what we behold.

Other traditions echo the same truth. In Sufism, Rumi and Shams gazed into each other’s eyes until they saw only the Beloved. In Hindu bhakti, darshan is the act of seeing and being seen by God through the sacred image. In Buddhism, compassion practice trains the eyes of the heart to behold Buddha-nature in every being. All point to the same mystery: to gaze with love is to awaken the divine eye within.

For me, this mystery began not in peace, but in terror. In my Salvia vision I encountered the “Other Eye” — vast, unyielding, alive, filling my entire sight. At first it felt like exile, as if the Eye turned away, declaring: you are cut off. Years later, in Alex Grey’s art, I recognized the same pattern — the Infinite Chain of Godselves, reflected in the Sacred Mirror of the Beloved. What once felt like separation revealed itself as Infinite Love. The exile was an illusion. The gaze had never truly left.

The Beloved — whether God, a partner, or even a stranger — becomes a sacred mirror. To spend enough time in the presence of one who reflects divine love is to awaken the capacity to mirror it outward, until God is seen in every face. This is how the circuit of love completes itself: God gazes at us, we gaze at God, and through us His gaze flows into the world.

In the end, gazing is not effort but consent. Consent to be seen. Consent to be loved. Consent to let that love move outward. Gazing prepares us for the deeper surrender, where the gaze itself dissolves into trust, and trust dissolves into union.

Union With the Divine

"It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." – Galatians 2:20
"The higher forms of Yoga are only possible for the soul who has awakened its spiritual aspiration and longs to transcend the cycle of rebirth." – Dr. David Frawley
"The essence of all spiritual discipline is Bhakti Yoga." – Ramakrishna
"We change the world not by what we say or do, but as a consequence of what we have become." – Dr. David Hawkins

Mystics across every tradition speak with one voice on the deepest question of existence: the true purpose of human life is union with the Divine. Beneath differences of ritual and language, there is the same heartbeat – the longing to return to the Source from which all things arise.

In Christianity, this union is revealed in Christ. To follow Him is not only to imitate His compassion or obey His teachings, but to share in His very being. As St. Paul declared: "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me." To be united with Christ is to enter the mystery of the Trinity – the endless exchange of love between Father, Son, and Spirit. Here, self and other dissolve, not into nothingness, but into a current of infinite giving and receiving.

Whether we merge with God or with another, it is all the same mystery. Jesus basically says: love. "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself." You just love, and you keep loving, until the boundary dissolves and you and the Beloved are one.

Eastern mystics tell the same truth in different words. They speak of awakening to the Self, dissolving into the Absolute, merging with the ocean of consciousness from which every wave arises. Where the Christian mystic beholds the Trinity, the Eastern sage perceives the undivided Whole. Where one speaks of communion, the other speaks of nonduality. At the summit, both gaze upon the same Reality.

Modern teachers echo the same vision. Eckhart Tolle points to the power of the Now, where the separate self dissolves into Presence. Ramakrishna declared that the essence of all spiritual discipline is bhakti – the yoga of love. Ram Dass, when asked how to meditate, recalled his guru’s words: "Meditate like Christ. He lost Himself in love." Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee speaks of surrender into the Beloved. Carl McColman reminds us that contemplation is not escape, but deepening into love.

Dr. David Hawkins frames it simply: enlightenment is the complete surrender of personal will into the infinite will of God. What we thought was "me" dissolves into Presence. This is not annihilation, but liberation – the discovery that what we surrendered was never ours to begin with.

Whether we call it Christ-union, Trinitarian life, nondual realization, or awakening to the Self, the destination is the same. The summit belongs to no tradition, because the summit is God Himself – the One beyond all names, who nevertheless calls each of us by name. To stand at this summit is to recognize the most auspicious truth of existence: that all paths culminate in Love.

And the path? Always the same: surrender, love, and grace. We surrender the illusion of control. We allow love to dissolve the walls of separation. We open to grace, which carries us where effort cannot.

Union with the Divine is not reserved for saints or sages. It is the hidden purpose of every breath, the secret destiny of every soul. Though the languages differ, the invitation never changes: lose yourself in God – and in doing so, come home.

I want to let you in on where I’m at with the book. After months of wrestling with the draft, I realized it wasn’t quite the book I was meant to write. The vision has grown clearer, and the only way to honor it was to begin again.

So I started fresh. Right now I’m 6,000 words into what will be about 65,000. In some ways it feels daunting, but more than that it feels alive. The writing has new energy, a clearer voice, and a deeper alignment with the message I want to share.

This restart isn’t a step back — it’s a renewal. Sometimes you have to clear the ground so the foundation is strong enough to hold what you’re building.

Thank you for following along. Your support means a lot, and I’ll be sharing pieces of the journey here as the work unfolds.

— Clark

Prologue - At the Edge of the Earth
I am falling through darkness.
Not the ordinary kind, but a darkness that is alive - dense, endless, swallowing everything. Mystics call it the dazzling darkness. Jesus said, “If that light be darkness, how great is that darkness.”
I am pulled forward through a tunnel until the ground seems to drop away. I find myself at the edge of the Earth - where everything meets. Above is a veil I long to pierce, the passage into what I somehow know is Heaven, Cosmic Consciousness, the ultimate Source. I reach upward with all that I am... but I cannot pass through.
Something shifts. I am no longer looking up but across - into a vast, conscious eye. It feels like the world soul, or what the East calls the Third Eye, the mirror of samsara, the endless cycle of rebirth. It meets my gaze, then turns away, as if to say, “We are stuck here in exile.”
The fear that floods me is total - like dying, like falling without end, like the shame of the fall itself. And yet, somewhere on the outside, I am laughing. I don’t understand why. Not yet.
This was my first meeting with what I would later call the Other Eye. I was eighteen years old. I thought I was taking Salvia for a trip. I didn’t know it would change the course of my life.

Introduction
I began writing this book in the summer of 2025, not from ambition, but because a vision left me unable to remain silent.
After a series of events that led me to believe in God, which I will describe, I prayed that if Jesus is real, for Him to reveal Himself to me. The answer came in a dream vision - a blank white out, like the Self Joseph Campbell describes, the Ultimate Source of Existence - with Christ standing before me and Yahweh behind Him. I woke hovering between sleep and wakefulness, reaching out to touch them, unable to tell if I was still dreaming. This was only one of several visions that would take me from the depths of despair to the threshold of union with God.
But my journey began long before that dream. It began with an early brush with death, first glimpses of something beyond the ordinary, and finally, the night in 2007 when Salvia Divinorum flung me to the edge of the Earth. It would take eighteen years to find the words for what I saw.
In 2016, during art therapy at rehab, I drew my vision of the Other Eye. A man remarked it looked like Alex Grey’s work. Later, in an Indigo bookstore, I picked up DMT: The Spirit Molecule by Rick Strassman, its cover showing Grey’s painting Dying. My vision had been shrouded in darkness, but his showed all the eyes ascending toward the Light.

Alex Grey once wrote:
All Souls are conjoined.
When one realizes itself,
The others are stirred
By the presence of Infinite Love
That shimmers through the
Web of Souls.

Around this time, I encountered the 12 Steps of AA. I believed in the soul, but still doubted God. I was told to pray for Him to reveal Himself. Not long after, I discovered Grey’s painting Godself, which he saw on Ayahuasca - a far more powerful entheogen than Salvia - and which allowed him to see God face to face. He asked, If God didn’t want us to know about Him, why would He allow access to the entheogenic visionary realms?
I share all this not to claim I am special, but to show you why I feel compelled to guide others toward encountering the Godself in their own heart. After years of study, practice, and devotion, I realized the vision of the white book was my calling. In that vision, I saw a simple cover: a white book, black letters - Enlightenment. No author’s name, but I knew it was mine to write, and mine to live.
This is my testament. It is my offering to help guide you on the path of love and devotion. You may not agree with everything here. You may not follow me to the end. But if even one sentence touches your soul, this book will have served its purpose.

The book is divided into three parts:
Part I - The Descent and the Vision
Part II - The Trinity of Revelation
Part III - Living the Vision

Part I tells the story of my awakening - how visions and life experiences revealed that we are caught in a cycle of birth and death, and the longing that arises to step beyond it. Part II goes deeper, sharing visions that opened a universal pathway - a map back to the Source from which we have never been separate. Part III offers simple, direct practices - not means to an end, but ways of clearing what obscures the light already shining in you.

This book does not give you something you lack. It invites you to remember what you are.

A Witness, Not a Teacher
We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard. - Acts 4:20
Revelation is intensely personal and cannot be meaningfully translated. - A Course in Miracles

I don’t speak as a scholar or a priest. I don’t speak because I earned a title or mastered a tradition. I speak because I have seen.
I was given a vision - not once, but many times - through dreams, through prayer, through the sheer mercy of God. I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t earn it. But it came. And with it came a quiet knowing: you must not keep this to yourself.
I don’t claim to have reached the end of the path. But I have glimpsed the Light that stands at the center of all paths. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Once you touch the Real, you are no longer content with the unreal.
This is not about superiority. It is about faithfulness. I write because I must. Because the vision will not let me go.
So we begin - at the edge of the veil, where the first light of the journey breaks through.

The First Fear of Death - Age 7
My first encounter with the fear of death came when I was seven years old.
I was upstairs in my bedroom, listening to old Buddy Holly tapes. There was something about the music - the way it carried the echo of another time - that stirred something in me I didn’t have words for. The nostalgia in those songs seemed to open a crack in my young mind, and through it poured a terror I had never known.
It wasn’t the fear of pain or injury. It was the fear of nothingness - the black void I imagined death to be.
I remember running downstairs in a panic, yelling to my guardian, “No! No! I’m going to die!” His response was calm but blunt: “We are all going to die.” Strangely, those words steadied me, but something had shifted.
From that moment, a thinking mind appeared - a constant inner voice that questioned, analyzed, and worried. The effortless openness of early childhood was gone. One morning on my walk to school, the thought rose almost on its own: Is there a God? I didn’t have the answer then, but the question never left.

First Glimpses Beyond the Ordinary
At twelve, I felt a sudden, overwhelming wave of euphoria move through me. The air felt charged, alive, like invisible water flowing through everything.
At sixteen, I felt it again while using marijuana - the world moving in pulsing waves, light and sound flowing in the same rhythm. These moments were brief but unmistakable. I didn’t think of them as spiritual, but I knew I had brushed against a doorway - and it would not be the last time.

Return to the Edge
By the summer of 2007, I wasn’t seeking God. I was seeking escape. Salvia was still legal, so I bought a 20x extract from the local headshop.
With two close friends beside me, I packed a huge hit into a zong, inhaled, held it, and exhaled. I felt like I was lying beneath linoleum tiles, and then they seemed to dissolve. The tunnel opened. The edge of the Earth appeared, and the Other Eye stared back. The same fear returned - but so did the strange laughter. My life had quietly crossed a threshold.

Chapter 1 - Between Ascent and Resistance
The Profit and the Forgotten Laughter
The next confirmation didn’t come in prayer or on a mountaintop. It happened in the living room, on a quiet afternoon, when I noticed a slim, unusual-looking book on the shelf: The Profit by Kehlog Albran, a parody of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet.
Its publisher’s logo - a stylized hand making the 666 sign - felt like a sly wink, a mark of something dark hiding in plain sight. I opened it and read:
Man will never leave Earth.
Man will never leave Earth without a rocket.

The words echoed my Salvia vision - stranded at the edge of the Earth, the Other Eye watching, the veil unbroken - and carried the same demonic resistance urging us to stay earthbound.
In my earlier books, Ascension: Becoming One with the Beloved (2020) and Ascension and Healing: The Path of the Christian Mystic (2024), I mapped the climb toward union. Now I was seeing the other half of the story: not only the pull upward, but the force pushing back.

A Course in Miracles gave another confirmation:
Into eternity, where all is one, there crept a tiny, mad idea, at which the Son of God remembered not to laugh… (T-27.VIII.6:2)

This tiny mad idea - the thought of separation from God - is impossible, yet taken seriously because we forgot to laugh. From it came the dream of exile, with all its suffering. The Course reminds us: Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.
If separation is a dream, the crucifixion wasn’t to settle a debt. Yet within the dream, it became a shock strong enough to break our forgetfulness. Richard Rohr writes that it was not to appease God’s wrath, but to turn humanity back toward divine love. In Christ, God entered our condition - vulnerable, wounded, grieving - so we could know Him not as distant, but as one who understands human suffering.
On the cross, Christ absorbed fear, hatred, and violence - and answered with forgiveness. He revealed God as a Presence willing to enter our deepest darkness and stay there until we remember the way home.
The crucifixion is more than history. It is a mirror of love in a world of separation - love that does not strike back or defend. When I remember my Salvia vision - the fear, and the laughter from somewhere beyond - I see the same truth: darkness has no power over the Real. The cross says, Even here, you are not separate from Me.
If the Second Coming is Christ returning to consciousness in us, then every meeting with the cross is an invitation: to let love stand undefended, to meet hatred with forgiveness, fear with presence, and death with life.
The crucifixion was the world’s great turning point. The Second Coming will be its completion - when the light that began in Him rises in us all, and the dream of separation ends in the laughter we forgot.

I began writing this book in the summer of 2025, not from ambition, but because a vision left me unable to remain silent.
After a series of events that led me to believe in God, which I will describe, I prayed that if Jesus is real for Him to reveal Himself to me.

The answer came in a dream vision. A blank white out, like the Self Joseph Campbell describes - the Ultimate Source of Existence - with Christ standing before me and Yahweh behind Him. I woke hovering between sleep and wakefulness, reaching out to touch them, unable to tell if I was still dreaming. This was only one of several visions that would take me from the depths of despair to the threshold of union with God.

My story, however, began much earlier - in 2007, at age eighteen, with a powerful encounter with Salvia Divinorum, The Seer’s Sage. It has taken me eighteen years to put that vision into words. I was drawn through a dark tunnel to the Axis Mundi - the edge of the Earth where everything meets - pulled by a deep desire to ascend beyond the veil into Cosmic Consciousness, Heaven. Instead, I found myself trapped in a kind of soul purgatory, staring into another eye - what the East calls the Third Eye, the soul, and samsara, the endless cycle of rebirth. The message was clear: We are stuck here, and there is no way out.

It was a terrifying experience, though I found myself laughing - a strange reaction I would only understand years later. That moment sparked a relentless drive to find a way beyond this cycle. That realization would shape every prayer, every practice, and every choice I made from then on. Over the years, I came to understand that the only way out is to embody the state known as Enlightenment.

In 2016, during an art therapy session at rehab, I drew my Salvia vision of the Other Eye. A man remarked that it looked like Alex Grey’s artwork. Later, in an Indigo bookstore, I picked up DMT: The Spirit Molecule by Rick Strassman, its cover displaying Alex Grey’s painting Dying. My vision had been shrouded in darkness, but Grey’s painting showed all the eyes ascending toward the Light.

Alex Grey once wrote:
“All Souls are conjoined.
When one realizes itself,
The others are stirred
By the presence of Infinite Love
That shimmers through the
Web of Souls.”

Around this time, I encountered the 12 Steps of AA. I believed in the soul, but still doubted God. I was told to pray for Him to reveal Himself. Not long after, I discovered Alex Grey’s painting Godself, which he saw on Ayahuasca - a far more powerful entheogen than Salvia - and which allowed him to see God face to face. He asked, If God didn’t want us to know about Him, why would He allow access to the entheogenic visionary realms?

I share all this not to claim that I am special, but to give you a sense of why I can guide you toward encountering your own Godself in your heart. After years of study, practice, and devotion, I realized that the vision of the white book was my calling. In that vision, I saw a simple cover: a white book, black letters - Enlightenment. No author’s name, but I knew it was mine to write, and mine to live.

This is my testament. It is my offering to help guide you on the path of love and devotion. You may not agree with everything I say, and you may not follow me to the end. But if even one thing you read here touches your soul, then this book will have served its purpose.

And so we begin - at the edge of the veil, where the first light of the journey breaks through.