Suzy Ross - The map to wholeness: real-life stories of crisis, change, and reinvention

Copyright 2020 by Suzy Ross. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher. For information contact North Atlantic Books.

Published by
North Atlantic Books
Berkeley, California

Cover art gettyimages.com/hqrloveq
Cover design by Nicole Hayward
Book design by Cody Gates, Happenstance Type-O-Rama

Printed in Canada

The Map to Wholeness: Real-Life Stories of Crisis, Change, and Reinvention is sponsored and published by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences (dba North Atlantic Books), an educational nonprofit based in Berkeley, California, that collaborates with partners to develop cross-cultural perspectives, nurture holistic views of art, science, the humanities, and healing, and seed personal and global transformation by publishing work on the relationship of body, spirit, and nature.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Ross, Suzy (Susan L.), author.
Title: The map to wholeness : real-life stories of crisis, change, and
reinvention / Suzy Ross, PhD.
Description: California : North Atlantic Books, [2019] | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019017338 (print) | LCCN 2019021627 (ebook) | ISBN
9781623173838 (e-book) | ISBN 9781623173821 (pbk.)
Subjects: LCSH: Life change events. | Change (Psychology) | Self-realization.
Classification: LCC BF637.L53 (ebook) | LCC BF637.L53 R67 2019 (print) | DDC
155.2/4dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019017338

This book includes recycled material and material from well-managed forests. North Atlantic Books is committed to the protection of our environment. We print on recycled paper whenever possible and partner with printers who strive to use environmentally responsible practices.

To Jane and Dave

The lives of Kenny and Radha are shared in this book. Each agreed to share their stories of transformation, opening their lives to you so that their struggles, pain, suffering and triumphs might be of some help, guidance, or even inspiration to you. It is for them, a gift they wish to give to others.

Each was willing to divulge not only their victories and accomplishments but also their raw, private, and most humbling moments. My request to the reader is that you respond to the details of their stories with a gentle recognition that it is difficult to recount with perfection the details of ones life across a fifteen-year (and more) period. It is my hope that as recipients of their story, we offer them a bit of forgiveness should they have imperfections in their memory shared within this book. In an effort to protect privacy, many of the two interviewees friends, family, and colleagues have been assigned pseudonyms.

Although I spent years interviewing, checking story details, and rechecking again, it is entirely within the realm of human error that they or I might have misunderstood or mistranslated a situation or person along the way or remembered the words spoken or timing of a circumstance incorrectly. In short, this is a note to let you know that Kenny, Radha, and I have worked altruistically towards the greater good, to recount in earnest, the details and experiences of their lives.

In 1991, I had an epiphany while leading backpacking trips for teenagers in the Rocky Mountain wilderness. During one of those trips, I was with a group hiking along a mountain ridge at about 10,500 feet when I unexpectedly experienced what exists both beyond us and deeply within us. Drunk only on the grandeur of the majestic slopes that soared into panoramic vistas in all directions, I expanded into a different state of consciousness. I distinctly remember becoming all that I could seeand not seeand I was introduced to God itself. No longer limited by any form, I became immersed in the kind of love I had read about in the stories of people who had died and lived to tell about it. Its a love that would make the hardest of hearts weep. I felt the molecules of my body and all that exists in the entire universe as one. It was easy to understand how I could exist in many different locations simultaneously. I becameas opposed to felt likea rock, tree bark, a cloud, stardust, and countless other things, named and unnamed. Although I have vague memories of feeling tears streaming down my face, I did not experience an emotion, nor could I see the landscape with my physical eyes or feel my body as I continued to walk. It was as though my body was on autopilot while I was very much outside of and distant from my body. I experienced the magnificence of our true nature.

A little while later, we were heading down from the heights of the ridge when I felt my spirit reenter my body. As this occurred, I saw dark clouds coming toward our group and forming around the mountain range, promising a good soaking. We had endured eight solid days of rain, and I was tired of being wet. Unhesitatingly, I knewwithout knowingthat all I needed to do was to move the clouds (which were me) so they wouldnt rain on our group. This idea seemed perfectly normal at the time; it was as easy as moving my elbow. The clouds circled around us and did not rain on us. Instead, rainbows formed nearby as we continued our descent into the valley below. The response of the clouds brought me back to my normal senses. My knees nearly buckled as I felt and understood the immensity of what I was experiencing for the first time. With each step down the mountain I sank more deeply back into my body and became completely overtaken emotionally by the infinite love, knowledge, and power that exist inside and all around us at all times.

The experience left me with a visceral and cognitive memory of the vast consciousness, compassion, and interconnectedness of the universe, which continues to inform my daily life. Because of this event, I know rather than believe that we live in a benevolent cosmos in which nothing is separate, and each atom holds the knowledge of the whole.

For years, I said very little about what had happened to me, but in private I pored over books related to the topic and pondered expert perspectives on transformation and mystical experience. I discovered that what happened to me in 1991 is well described by scholars and spiritual leaders. I found the work of respected Canadian psychiatrist Richard Maurice Bucke particularly helpful. He was one of the first Westerners to study experiences similar to mine, and his writing gave me the language to make sense of what I had endured and validation that my experience was indeed real. I also found solace in the Indian teacher Krishnamurtis poetic description of his mystical experience by a pepper tree, where he could feel the wind passing through the tree, and the little ant on the blade of grass I could feel. The birds, the dust, and the very noise were a part of me. I was in everything, or rather everything was in me, inanimate and animate, the mountain, the worm, and all breathing things (Lutyens 1997, 158).