Searching For The Light: One Woman's Journey

By Serena Aubrey (Copyright, 2010 -- All Rights Reserved)

Hark ye O man, and list to my Voice. Open thy mind-space and drink of my wisdom. Dark is the pathway of LIFE that ye travel. Many the pitfalls that lie in thy way. Seek ye ever to gain greater wisdom. Attain and it shall be light on thy way. Open thy SOUL, O man, to the Cosmic and let it flow in as one with thy SOUL. LIGHT is eternal and darkness is fleeting. Seek ye ever, O man, for the LIGHT. Know ye that ever as Light fills thy being, darkness for thee shall soon disappear. Open thy souls to the BROTHERS OF BRIGHTNESS. Let them enter and fill thee with LIGHT. Lift up thine eyes to the LIGHT of the Cosmos. Keep thou ever thy face to the goal. Only by gaining the light of all wisdom, art thou one with the Infinite goal. Seek ye ever the ONENESS eternal. Seek ever the Light into One. Hear ye, O man, list to my Voice singing the song of Light and of Life. Throughout all space, Light is prevalent, encompassing ALL with its banners of flames. Seek ye forever in the veil of darkness, somewhere ye shall surely find Light. Hidden and buried, lost to man’s knowledge, deep in the finite the Infinite exists. Lost, but existing, flowing through all things, living in ALL is the INFINITE BRAIN. In all space, there is only ONE wisdom. Through seeming decided it is ONE in the ONE. All that exists comes forth from the LIGHT, and the LIGHT comes forth from the ALL.

Excerpt from: The Emerald Tablets, Tablet Seven

Searching For The Light: One Woman's Journey

Many of us live blindly with eyes wide open. Living in the morass of today’s society, the pace an ever-quickening chaos, we allow our technologies and habits to assault our senses almost constantly. We sometimes have trouble finding meaning on the surface of life, never mind on a deeper level. There is hardly ever any real quiet to hear the inner voice that tries to remind one of the higher consciousness. And yet an appetence still nudges the hardy soul, not allowing the flickering flame to sputter out. When one is ready, the “Teachers” will most certainly arrive, with the bellows of knowledge that will fan the embers of an inner inkling into a bonfire of desire to learn and to know. This then is the road I have set my shoes to walking upon, one foot in front of the other.

My father once wrote to me, “What I am talking about is indeed, that inner commitment, which is a matter of the soul, of the spirit, the way you really feel; your inward thought, your resolve, your will: the thing that is heard…by God.” (October 16, 1976).

Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, his upbringing was a different brew, certainly. Raised by strict Dutch/Indonesian parents, in the Roman Catholic faith, he was nonetheless influenced by his caretakers, who were of the Javanese culture. With a belief system that is deeply personal, the Kebatinan principle focuses on an inner search for peace of mind and has no rigid dogma. Fasting and meditation, in a private scenario, are spiritual tools used to create a quiet inner space where one’s higher consciousness is free to contemplate the mysteries of “Light”. The goal is to develop an understanding of the laws of the natural universe, the Almighty God and what one's life means in this current of cosmic energy. One can liken the Kebatinan style of meditation to the “Vision Quest” of many of the native North American peoples.

As a very young girl, I used to experience prophetic dreams. I found them to be quite traumatizing. These vivid, lucid dreams were most often of very unpleasant events, and would not fade over time. I would wake up crying, scurrying to my father for comfort. He told me, after one such dream, that I was not to worry. He said that it was a “gift” passed on to me from his mother. He told me about "witte and swarte magi" (white (good) and black (evil) prophetic dreamers). He said the dreams could be warnings, or messages. I really didn’t want anything to do with it. I think, over time, I must have repressed the gift. The dreams stopped, for the most part, for many years. As a migrating family in the 1960’s, we had long since left the sphere of the extended family and I certainly did not receive any direct teaching from my grandmother on how to deal with this so-called gift.

By 1993, my life was a boiling cauldron of dysfunction. I had married a man, in 1976, severely damaged by his childhood. The father of my three children was a good man, but he had a raging alcohol problem and when in the grips of an alcohol binge he had a mean mouth and fast, flying fists. In utter despair I had embarked upon a search seeking for some light to illuminate this darkness I lived in. I had read a few metaphysical books, had tried a nine-day fast --hoping for clarity on the direction I should move my life in (towards the fridge, I finally decided) -- and had even bought some Viking Runes to try a toss or two. One day, I was waiting in line in a neighbourhood convenience store with my three children, when a total stranger standing beside me, looked at me directly and said, “Some people look, other people see.”

That was it, nothing else. I was a little stunned, a bit puzzled, and just a tad freaked out; truth be told. I was in the midst of reading The Celestine Prophecies (Redfield), a book about the concepts of a changing world consciousness, of critical mass and of synchronicity. Redfield wrote of people -- strangers -- appearing in your life to give you a message when you are ready to hear and understand its meaning. My good Lord, I hadn’t even finished reading the book yet! Perhaps I was not quite ready for so much bright light just then. More inner trauma and more repression. Following swiftly on the heals of my hesitation to accept the gift of inner knowledge were more twisted, shadowy roads of despair, more guilt, more weaknesses, and more darkness. There are no limits to the depths of debauchery and depression that can befall one when closing the door on light is what we pick. The negativity in this world is more than happy to suffocate us with the almost insurmountable weight of bad choices. William Walker Atkinson (1902,) expresses this splendidly:

The man with hate in his heart gets all the Hate he can stand. The man who thinks Fight generally runs up against all the Fight he wants before he gets through. And so it goes, each gets what he calls for over the wireless telegraphy of the Mind. The man who rises in the morning feeling “grumpy” usually manages to have the whole family in the same mood before the breakfast is over. The “nagging” woman generally finds enough to gratify her “nagging” propensity during the day. This matter of Thought Attraction is a serious one. When you stop to think of it you will see that a man really makes his own surroundings, although he blames others for it (p.3).

When The Secret (Byrne) was released, I was right there with the initial buyers. Having found myself on yet another pot-holed path I was eager, once again, for a beacon to lead me towards a better way. Maybe I could accept what I would find this time. The Secret is a book that fits into the New Thought Movement genre. It is a book about positive thought and attracting positive outcomes into every-day life. It is about changing thoughts to adjust attitude. It is about visualizing the preferred life one would rather live. It is about developing strong-will in order to propel oneself into a better reality. It is about climbing out of dark places into a place of bright light. It is about seeking and striving. It is about punting negativity off the path. Again, Atkinson (1902, ) wrote:

You can order fear to go to the rear; Jealousy to leave your presence; Hate to depart from your sight; Anger to hide itself; Worry to cease troubling you; Uncontrolled Appetites and Passion to bow in submission and to become humble slaves instead of masters -- all by asserting the power of your will…will-power is the tool of the “I” and the mind is the tool of the will (p.10).

Differentiating between the self and the I is the separation between the physical “self” and the higher consciousness of “I”. This is one of the biggest concepts in understanding spiritual advancement, or enlightenment. It is the “self” that dies and returns to the dust of the ground. The “I” continues on in its energetic impulse when it is released to its tie to the earthly body. The “I” journey is never ending (Atkinson, 1902, p. 10)

Although these concepts are called “New Thought”, they are actually aeons old. Thirty-six thousand years ago (yes, that’s right -- thirty-six thousand), the ancient Atlanteans had the same concepts. Thoth the Atlantean, was said to have delivered the Emerald Tablets to the earthly beings. They contained valuable wisdom -- the secrets of how to produce what one wills, the secret of how to connect with the vast universal energy, the secret of how to connect with the Highest Consciousness of God. Hermes Trismegistus, an Egyptian god (who was Thoth the Atlantean in the former incarnation), as legend would have it, buried the tablets under the Great Pyramid of Giza, in Egypt. Although there is some evidence that there is a passage under the pyramid and some sort of chamber within, the Egyptian government steadfastly refuses any breach into this great and mysterious monolithic testament to ancient knowledge and capabilities. The Great Pyramid of Giza is purported to have been one of the great ancient Egyptian Schools of Mystery. It is widely believed that Jesus Christ studied there during the years he spent in Egypt. Some other students were supposedly Moses, Pyhtagoras, Plato, Solon, Herotodus and Pliny -- all great ancient thinkers and philosophers. The Emerald Tablets were originally written in ancient pictoglyphics. Mysteriously, in 1925, a fellow by the name of Dr. Doreal received a translation of these tablets from one whom he claimed to be Hermes Thrice-born (or Trismegistus). Believers of metaphysical mysteries suppose that Dr. Doreal received the translations through “channelling”. However he came into possession of these wondrous writings, he mimeographed them and passed them around extensively to the underground esoteric students of the divine, around 1930, in Britain. As quickly and quietly as he appeared, Dr. Doreal faded away. There was never any real documentation available for him. Just another mystery…..

All of the New Thought materials, no matter what age they come from, describe thought as a vibrational wave with the capability of attracting like thoughts, or waves. Herein lies the secret of reality being the sum of thought. Negative thoughts attract other negative thoughts, and soon negativity surrounds one like a mantle. Likewise for positive thought. It makes absolute sense.

By 2008, I ended up in Courtenay, B.C., having come from Alberta, accompanying a lost soul who was trying to re-establish himself. I had agreed to help him and gave up everything I had going for myself to back him up. After a few weeks, I found myself despondently walking the beach at Goose Spit, having realized, that yes he was on his way, he had recovered and was back on the good path; I on the other hand had no job, had become disgustingly dependent on someone else for everything and felt direction-less. Immobilized. Oh woe was me. I found a collection of books at Courtenay’s JobShop and I read them all. All were New Thought genre. All encouraged positive thought. All promised that something good would occur. Did it? Well, yes it did. It most certainly did. I decided to go back to school and I ended up in Judy Johnson’s essay class and was directed to pick a subject and write an essay.

I can not begin to describe the volume of ideas I have had since choosing this topic. While researching the concepts I have come across amazing stories, illuminating truths, mesmerizing mysticism. I challenge anybody to check out the web site http://www.akiane.com/ and not come away touched to the very core of one’s being. I pinned a sign above my desk that says, “When the student is ready, the Teacher will arrive.” For me that Teacher was Ms. Johnson. Her curriculum was the encouragement I needed to pull myself together and start thinking right.

Earlier I said that my prophetic dreams stopped, for the most part. But a few months before my father wrote me the letter I quoted him from, I dreamt of his death. In my dream he was the pilot of a fighter jet and he was headed straight up into the sky. My mother stood on a hilltop watching his flight. Suddenly, his plane turned in the air and nose-dived into the ground, crashing behind the hill my mother stood on. All I could see were clouds of white smoke. I was afraid of telling him about my dream, because I thought he might draw it upon himself -- funny, but even way back then I was marginally aware of thought attraction. I did eventually write to him about it and he wrote back on October 16, 1976:

Just a short letter today, to let you know we got your long letter about…your dream. You see Serena, you should never worry about us; our time hasn’t come yet...When the time comes, I’ll tell you…Everything is in God’s hands.

In 1978, at the beginning of August, my father called me one day, out of the blue and said,

Serry, I want you to know, that I will always be with you in the spirit. No matter what, I will always be with you.

Two weeks later my oldest brother called me to tell me my father had passed away. When I went home for his funeral my Mom told me that he had dreamt, two weeks prior to his passing, that there was a great gathering and there were bishops on a big stage, standing behind a podium, and that there was a plane, flying back and forth over the gathering. On the day of his passing, he sat in the living room watching Pope Paul VI’s funeral on the television, when he suddenly said to my Mom, “That’s it, that’s what I saw in my dream. Those are the bishops, there’s the podium. But what did the plane mean? What about the plane?”

Later on that evening, while out dancing with my Mom, he suffered a major coronary thrombosis and was gone before he hit the floor. He knew, and because he had promised he would tell me when it was time, he had called me the morning after he dreamt his dream, knowing that the plane in his dream was the plane in my dream. He wanted to say goodbye and to reassure me that we go on after death, that this is not all there is. There is Light to move towards. Here then, more of his words from another letter to me, on God and……thought:

“God IS thought. WE are thought. That is what it means, when it says we are made in his image. Your thoughts are important. It is important to have good thoughts, and do good deeds. That way you become a little bit like God; and the world with you.”

April 8, 1977

I believe in the power of thought and thought attraction. Yes I do. I have known spirituality all my life. I have struggled with it, but I can not deny it. I believe we can be the Master’s of our own realities. I can not believe that so many people have written the very same things for aeons and ages if it really isn’t out there. I am astounded at the simple, yet complex truths that come from the mouth of a young girl with the talent of five Masters. There is no reasonable explanation for a six-year old girl's poetry other than she speaks the truth. From her poem The Hollow Compasses (2001), Akiane Kramarik writes,

The doubt we paint is always a prison

The dried up light escapes last Hail…

The darkness sheds its poisoned voices

With hollow compasses we sail…

And so I say, it is so true; without the Truth and the Light, we are but ships adrift at sea, sailing with hollow compasses -- in prisons of our own making.

My Father - Walter Jozef Bloemhard, 1928, Indonesia - in the arms of his Babu, the Javanese children’s nurse.

In the next image, a self-portrait he made for my Mom’s photo album. He jokingly labelled himself the “Dreaming Bicycle Thief” because my Mom used to chide him for dressing like a bohemian - she told him he looked like a bicycle thief. She describes him as being a hippie before his time, back in 1951. The drawings are all his. They were his dreams for his life. He accomplished almost all of them. He was a yacht designer in his younger years and then he got into design engineering, working on some pretty major projects; at the time of his passing he worked at the UBC Triumf KAON facility, where they smash atoms into tunnels for research. One of my older brothers went on to work there. Note the fighter jet in the far right corner. His life came full circle.

As I was putting the finishing touches on this post, I thought to look to see if it was possible to add a video directly into this piece. I knew that YouTube has a video posted of an editor's cut from The Secret movie that was not used. I was trying to put that in here. Amazingly, I found a new posting of The Secret. They have graciously posted the first twenty minutes of the movie as a gift for the public on YouTube. Although I bought the book when it was first released (twice, I gave one copy to my younger brother), I had never had the opportunity to see the movie. I felt the thrill of synchronicity yet again when I watched it. In the first few minutes of the video The Emerald Tablets are mentioned as a piece of the puzzle -- they even show it being buried in the sand of the Egyptian desert. Is this not the Law of Attraction in action? I used to get freaked out when things like this happened, thinking it was just too spooky. Now they make me smile and even LOL! How fascinating is this life. Through out the writing of my essay, Searching For The Light: One Woman's Journey, I was busy doing a massive amount of research in order to figure out the angle I wanted to pursue with it. I knew I wanted to focus on the topic of positive thought, and I knew I wanted to honour my father's memory through his letters. The wealth of other positive thought material I found can not be described. However, I now see that my search for truth unfolded exactly as did Rhonda Byrne's, and we found exactly the same things. Why? Because that IS the Law of Attraction. Please, press PLAY below and enjoy the show!