SAGE LIFE

Four Hours Beneath the Surface

(Over Coffee, Two Souls Wander into the Mystery of Becoming)

July 16, 2025

Story # 30

Written by Bill Pautler

Tina ( Faerie Godmother ) Photo by Author

' It is not his form, it is not his appearance, it is not what he says. It is his atmosphere, it is what his presence conveys to you, it is what his atmosphere tells you. That which he may say, that is nothing.'

Hazrat Inayat Kahn

(speaking about Gurus)

Yesterday I had a four-hour coffee with a dear friend. We haven’t seen each other or talked in years. Maybe a handful of texts in five years. She was instrumental in awakening me. We met how all soul friends meet, through a “coincidence” of events. At that time, her behaviors and questions began to put an itty-bitty crack in the glass sphere I had constructed around myself.

What is the Glass Sphere?

The glass sphere, I am referring to, is a 360-degree clear bubble we construct around ourselves. No matter where we look, we perceive everything through this sphere. The glass in the sphere is made of the false beliefs we hold in our mind.

Anytime we say things like: “I deserve this”, “I am the victim”, “I am not good enough”, “If I would have done this”, “If my mother would have”, “If I _______________” (you can fill in the blank), we give our power away and reinforce our false beliefs.

We think we are clearly seeing reality, but we are actually just seeing reality through a construct of beliefs we have built in our minds. It is amazing how easily we deceive ourselves, as we thicken the glass of our sphere with untruths.

Back to Our Story

Tina, known here forward in this story as Faerie Godmother (FG), helped put an itty-bitty crack in my sphere. I was ready for it, I had been searching, and it started slowly, but it didn’t take long for much of my false matrix to disintegrate. I remember the exact moment; I was in my car at a traffic light, and it was like the house I was living in crumbled to dust all around me.

As a side note, we can’t wake people up, that aren’t ready to be woke up. But people that are searching and ready to wake, those are the ones we can assist. In the Hazrat Kahn quote from above, it is not our words that wake people up; it is our presence. Being in the presence of great spirits rubs off on us. It is their energy which helps with our transformation process.

So, Faerie Godmother and I sat on the old comfy gold Chesterton sofa at the coffee shop and dropped into our friendship like you drop into your most comfortable piece of clothing. The topics weren’t around what we have done, accomplished or any externals. Our topics were about how we were building our lives in peace, joy and quietude.

We shared sadness about how lonely the spiritual walk can be. We also shared the deep joy of solitude that we’ve reached, after the learned restlessness of the world starts to subside. We talked about what it was truly like to love ourselves. For years I believed I loved myself, but it wasn’t until the last few months that I came to a deep feeling of self-love.

Energy Shifts

We talked about energy shifts. FG shared how one day she woke up and she said to herself, “I Am Done!”. FG didn’t mean she was going to kill herself; her spirit just told her she was done playing in the drama of this realm, in the same way she had been playing in that drama. Things were going to shift. It is hard to explain how an energy shift works, until you have been through the experience. But here are some things I can share.

a) You can feel the energy shift. It often happens upon waking, and it just hits you like POW! You come to realize that what was working for you will no longer work for you going forward. And there is no turning back. It’s very unsettling, refreshing, and scary.

b) You don’t really know what “DONE!” means. Every energy shift is different, and each one will have a different word/feeling associated with it. But when IT hits, you literally don’t know what it means. You have a feeling you know what you are leaving behind, but you have no idea where you are going. This shift is spiritual, mental, and physical.

Evelyn Underhill writes about these energy shifts in her 1914 book "Practical Mysticism". Eveyln wanted her readers “to obtain mystical consciousness and to be able to see eternal beauty.”

In this short book she describes the unsettling nature of these energy shifts. She describes them as standing on a large piece of floating ice in the ocean and then stepping onto a different piece of floating ice. Both chunks of ice are bobbing up

and down in the ocean; you put your front foot on the new piece of ice, and your

back foot is on the original piece of ice. You are clearly in an uncomfortable position, you are not in the new space, but neither have you left the old space.

FG didn’t tell anybody about this “Done” thing for weeks. An energy shift is uncomfortable and hard to understand yourself, so it is hard to explain to others that haven’t been through it. It is also a lonely place to be. The world around us just can’t understand, it’s a profound feeling. No words can describe it. So, we hold onto it in the silence, wondering how it will unfold.

That is probably one of the hardest things about the spiritual walk, it is intentionally lonely, because it is about healing one's self.

a) We also can’t control when energy shifts come and how long they last. It is kind of disconcerting. One day we wake up and go “I Am Done”! We didn’t ask for it, it completely shifts our life, and we don’t know how long it will last or take to transition through this energy.

b) Every energy shift has different qualities and purposes. FG’s was a sense of Done. I have had many energy shifts, and they come in all different flavors and varieties. They are all custom fit to our needs and what issues need to be honed inside of us.

In summation. The spiritual walk is not for everybody right now, but it is for some. If you stumble into your spiritual journey and have access to a friend or a guru that has traveled the path, consider that a blessing. It is comforting and enlightening. It will enrich your soul and hasten your journey. FG is one of those for me.