Jac OKeeffe - How to Be a Spiritual Rebel: A Dogma-Free Guide to Breaking All the Rules and Finding Fearless Freedom

From the moment of our first breath, we begin a long and at times arduous journey of mental conditioning, one of creating our individual and social selves. In How to Be a Spiritual Rebel , Jac OKeeffe astutely guides us how to leave this conditioning and its endless searching behind for a new life beyond boundaries, beyond limitations. In such a life, each moment is lived not by conditions of the mind but rather by your inner spiritual nature, which guides you in an ongoing and ever-blossoming transformation of openness to and participation in life itself. Freedom for its own sake and authenticity are the hallmarks of a life lived free of the conditioned self.

Paul J. Mills, PhD , professor in the department of family medicine and public health, director of the Center of Excellence for Research and Training in Integrative Health, and chief of the Behavioral Medicine Division at the University of California, San Diego; and director of research at The Chopra Foundation

Jac OKeeffe is one of the rare presenters of prior-to, without, or beyond consciousness and non-duality. This provides a context making her unique as both a teacher and educator.

Stephen H. Wolinsky, PhD (Narayan) , disciple of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Jac OKeeffe has brilliantly deconstructed her own deep spiritual process to provide clear, simple guidelines and practices for all others who long for psychological and spiritual freedom. She provides tools to prepare us for living the deepest Truth, free of personal clinging to false identities. Using her own internal journey as a template, she offers a path to freedom and teaches us how to change neural pathways in the brain, freeing consciousness from the conditioned restraints and limitations caused by self-referencing thought and emotion. This unique, modern book on non-dual awakening and beyond will become a classic for those who seek realization.

Bonnie Greenwell, PhD , transpersonal psychotherapist and non-dual teacher; and author of The Kundalini Guide , The Awakening Guide , and When Spirit Leaps

How to Be a Spiritual Rebel illuminates a clear and practical pathway for breaking out of automated mental patterns, and finally living an authentic life. With fierce honesty, courage, and palpable care for her reader, Jac shares potent turning points in her own journey into practices that will serve any lover of the Truth to cut through subtle deception and find their way to Freedom.

Miranda Macpherson , contemporary spiritual teacher, author of The Way of Grace and Boundless Love , and founder of OneSpirit Interfaith Foundation (UK) and the Living Grace Sangha

How to Be a Spiritual Rebel offers potent truths about how mindfulness and compassion can bring greater happiness, health, and freedom into our lives.

Shauna Shapiro, PhD , professor in the department of counseling psychology at Santa Clara University, and author of Good Morning, I Love You

In How to Be a Spiritual Rebel , Jac OKeeffe provides a deeply wise, kind, and practical guide to untangling yourself from limiting beliefs and habits, and points to the intrinsic freedom of the heart that is available to us all.

Hugh Byrne, PhD , senior teacher with the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, and author of The Here-and-Now Habit

Publishers Note

This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering psychological, financial, legal, or other professional services. If expert assistance or counseling is needed, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Distributed in Canada by Raincoast Books

Copyright 2019 by Jac OKeeffe

Non-Duality Press

An imprint of New Harbinger Publications, Inc.

5674 Shattuck Avenue

Oakland, CA 94609

www.newharbinger.com

Cover design by Amy Shoup

Acquired by Elizabeth Hollis Hansen

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file

Contents

Introduction

Our family business was a dairy farm. It was an efficiently run endeavor, not least because of the wonderful, fertile pastures of North Cork, Ireland. A dairy farm is labor intensive, commanding all hands on-deck for at least ten months of the year. The family comprised of my parents, five older sisters, and a sheepdog. We were raised with a strong work ethic; cows require milking twice a day until midway into the last trimester of each pregnancy. Then came calving season kicking off in mid-January. During the six weeks that followed, the farm shifted focus to accommodate a bovine maternity ward and neonatal clinic. The population increased daily with newborn calves that, once taken from their mothers, had to be taught how to drink milk from a bucket. Cows hollered for their newborns, and my father would say, Shell forget her calf in a few days. I wasnt so sure.

When we started going out with boys (who had to have a car due to our rural location) as teenagers, we would find a note on the kitchen table when we came home late at night. The note would ask us to check on an animal that was calving. I enjoyed getting a pair of rubber boots for a date, bringing him to the back stall, watching his horrified face as he saw, for the first time, a calfs front hooves (when all was well) protruding from the birth canal. I had no interest in boys who were of farming stock. I wanted a ticket out of cow dung and milking machines for as long as I can remember. Although I must admit being reared on a farm had many romantic moments: gathering bales of straw, picking wild blackberries, and the gift of living in the rhythm of nature.

The flip side was there also. My father was angry. He had a short fuse and believed that violence was to be administered to children and animals alike. Beatings were frequent and arbitrary. My mother stepped back into the shadows when he was physically violent, perhaps to protect herself. Later, as adults, each of us six girls had to face and process traumatic experiences from childhood. Some of us delved deeper into therapy than others. All in all, we now function moderately well as a family, and there remains much wisdom and maturation to be gleaned from healing our past.

When I left home for college as a young adult, I discovered that students were eligible for free psychotherapy. Within a week of learning this, I began therapy and continued with regularity until graduation. After college I continued with therapy, moving from psychotherapy to rebirthing, past life regression, voice work, sweat lodges, and plant medicine (both in the Amazonian jungle and in Ireland), along with a multitude of other modalities of varying efficacies. My journey continued far beyond finding peace with my father. Through these explorations, I found tools that helped me answer the fundamental questions that had been with me as long as I can remember. What am I doing here? Am I here at all? Whats it all for? Does purpose matter? These questions led me to spirituality, and by my early thirties that was my singular focus. I was guided, and often driven towards, something that I could not glimpse until later. Sometimes curiosity or a desire to be happy motivates our spiritual growth. Other times our motivation is neither personal nor logical. In these cases we can feel compelled by another force, by an innate impulsion that we intuitively know we can and must trust.

During my spiritual explorations, meditation served as my anchor while my external life changed in every way imaginable. Abandoning the home I had set up with my husband and my successful healing practice that had a six-month waiting list, I went towards sunlight. I wanted to know more. What was the light that is referred to in healing and new age modalities? I decided I should start with what I truly knew and understood light to beand that was physical sunlight.