Sometimes the most important part of a spiritual experience is not what happens during it, but what you do with it afterwards.
This is also at the heart of what I mean by Reflective Coaching. It creates space to explore experiences, beliefs and questions that may not have simple answers, while asking what they mean for the way you actually live.
You may experience a profound sense of connection, Beauty, peace or understanding. For a moment, life can seem completely different. Something feels clearer, bigger, perhaps more real than everyday life. Then you return to ordinary life, with work to do, people who need you and practical decisions to make.
So what happens to the experience? How do you bring something that feels almost impossible to describe into the way you actually live?
That is a question I have been exploring for many years.
A journey into Beauty and Bliss
In 2020, during a shamanic journey, I had a powerful vision.
My journey began by entering through a hole in the ground and travelling down into the earth. There I encountered what I experienced as the Council of Masters of Wisdom, representing spiritual knowledge.
From the Council, I was guided upwards. I journeyed into the sky and encountered a glowing female figure whom I experienced as an Ascended Master. She wore a white gown with a gold rope around her waist and held a golden ball of Light in her right hand.
She took my hand and slowly passed this golden Light through my arm and into my heart. I experienced a profound sense of becoming One with her.
What followed was an overwhelming feeling of Beauty and Bliss. Beauty is the closest word I have, but even that seems inadequate. There simply weren’t words to describe what I experienced.
Yet within that experience I also had a powerful sense that it was connected with my life’s work. Somehow this place of Beauty, Bliss and Light felt like the Source from which that work would come.
But what was I supposed to do with it?
From Bliss to Wisdom
I later explored the experience with Annie Davidson, whose spiritual work involved channelling.
I might have expected the conversation to take me further into the Bliss. Instead, something quite different happened.
Annie repeatedly encouraged me to come back down from it. She described what I was experiencing as a movement beyond Bliss towards “wisdom embodied”.
At first, that seemed almost like a contradiction. Surely Bliss was the higher state?
But the distinction became increasingly important. Bliss could take me somewhere extraordinary. Wisdom had to live here, within my body and within the world.
The emphasis was on becoming grounded. The experience wasn’t something to escape into. Whatever I had encountered needed to become practical and useful.
That idea has stayed with me.
Perhaps the value of a spiritual experience isn’t simply how extraordinary it feels. The question is what happens when you return.
Does it change how you live? Does it change how you treat people? Does it affect what you contribute? Can something experienced at a spiritual level find expression in ordinary human life?
That is where Bliss begins to become Wisdom.
As Above, So Below
“As Above, So Below” is an ancient idea that has appeared in different forms across spiritual and philosophical traditions for centuries. I had known and used the phrase long before my shamanic journey in 2020. In fact, it appeared in connection with an article I wrote about using cards in coaching in 2019.
What interests me now is how closely the idea seems to reflect the movement within my own journey.
I didn’t begin by travelling upwards. I entered through a hole in the ground and journeyed down into the earth. There I encountered what I experienced as the Council of Masters of Wisdom, representing spiritual knowledge.
From there I journeyed upwards and encountered the glowing female figure I experienced as an Ascended Master. She held my hand and passed the golden Light through my arm and into my heart. I experienced becoming One with her and an overwhelming sense of Beauty and Bliss.
The journey therefore moved in both directions. I travelled down into the Earth and encountered Wisdom. I travelled upwards and encountered Beauty, Light and Oneness. But perhaps the most important part is that the Light did not remain “above”. I experienced it entering my body and my heart.
Later, Annie’s message about moving beyond Bliss into “wisdom embodied” gave this another meaning for me. The experience wasn’t about remaining in an extraordinary spiritual state. Whatever I had encountered needed to come back down to Earth, become embodied and find expression in the way I lived and worked.
I have since encountered another expression of this relationship between Above and Below in Herman E. Bender’s research into Native American cosmology, stellar traditions and ancient stone formations. Bender explores the possibility that relationships observed in the heavens were reflected in physical forms and sacred landscapes on Earth. Some of his interpretations are proposals rather than established archaeological facts, but the relationship between sky and Earth resonated deeply with me.
Bender also describes meeting Northern Cheyenne elder and healer Ralph Redfox, who told him that he had come “seeking centre”. Those words stayed with me. Perhaps the centre is not simply somewhere between Above and Below. Perhaps it is the place within ourselves where the two can meet.
This brings me to another way I have come to understand the six-pointed star.
Across cultures and spiritual traditions, people have created sacred geometric forms expressing centre, balance, order and Wholeness. The word “mandala” comes from Sanskrit, but for me the six-pointed star can be understood in a similar way, as a mandala of Wholeness.
The two triangles point in opposite directions, yet in the complete star they are interwoven. Above and Below are no longer separate. The higher and the earthly are brought together within one form.
In NLP terms, I think of this complete symbol as a model of excellence. It does not necessarily describe where we are as human beings. It represents the possibility of greater integration and Wholeness.
But what happens if we pull those two triangles apart?
For me, the separated star becomes a model of the human journey. The upper triangle represents the higher qualities we may glimpse or experience: Beauty, Love, Wisdom, Light and Oneness. The lower triangle represents our human existence here on Earth.
Between them is movement.
We journey upwards as we seek, explore and connect with something beyond our ordinary experience. But the destination isn’t Above. If we simply reach for higher states and remain there, nothing changes here.
There also has to be a movement downwards.
We bring those higher qualities back to Earth. We bring them into ourselves, our hearts, our bodies, our relationships, our work and the way we live.
This is why Annie’s phrase “wisdom embodied” has become so important to me. The purpose isn’t to escape our humanity in search of something higher. It is to bring those higher qualities into being human.
Seen this way, the separated triangles represent the journey towards integration, while the complete star represents the mandala of Wholeness.
Perhaps this is what “As Above, So Below” has gradually come to mean to me. We reach upwards and bring something back. We encounter Beauty and try to live more beautifully. We encounter Wisdom and try to embody it. We experience Oneness and then face the much harder task of expressing that Oneness through the way we relate to other human beings.
The destination, then, isn’t Above.
The destination is integration.
And perhaps that is where my understanding of Universal Brotherhood begins. If an experience of Oneness is to mean anything beyond the experience itself, it has to find expression here on Earth, in how we see one another, how we treat one another and ultimately in how we learn to live together.
Walking in Beauty
There is another Native American teaching that has stayed with me for many years.
Within the Diné, or Navajo, tradition is the concept of Hózhó. Translating it simply as “beauty” doesn’t really capture its meaning. It also encompasses ideas of harmony, balance, wellbeing and living in right relationship with the world.
A well-known English rendering of the Diné Walking in Beauty prayer includes these words:
With Beauty before me, I walk.
With Beauty behind me, I walk.
With Beauty below me, I walk.
With Beauty above me, I walk.
With Beauty all around me, I walk.
It is finished in Beauty.
The prayer ends with the words, “It is finished in Beauty.” Within the Diné understanding of Hózhó, I understand this as pointing towards harmony, balance and completion.
For me, those words also carry another, very personal meaning. I believe that part of the soul’s journey through repeated lives on Earth is eventually learning to see Beauty in everything. If the soul reaches a point where it can truly perceive that Beauty everywhere, then perhaps “finished in Beauty” also describes the completion of that journey. There is no longer a need to reincarnate on Earth because the lesson has been completed.
I don’t present this as a Diné teaching. It is part of my own developing spiritual understanding. Annie once told me, ‘We don’t give you chapter and verse because you find your chapter and verse.’ Perhaps this is part of finding mine.
Those words have a particular resonance for me.
During my shamanic journey, Beauty was the closest word I could find for what I experienced through the female Ascended Master. Yet even the word Beauty seemed inadequate. The experience went beyond my ability to describe it.
Later, during my session with Annie, I spoke about “absorbing the Ascended Master of Beauty”. Annie responded by talking about “Absolute Beauty and Truth” and told me that “Beauty and Truth are your words”.
Looking back, I see another connection with what happened during the journey. I didn’t simply observe Beauty from a distance. The female Ascended Master took my hand and I experienced her golden Light passing through my arm and into my heart until I experienced becoming One with her.
Beauty came within.
I have also carried another spiritual understanding for many years. I believe that part of the soul’s journey through repeated lives on Earth is learning eventually to see Beauty in everything.
I don’t mean simply seeing beauty in what is pleasant, attractive or easy. I mean a deeper Beauty that can eventually be perceived beyond our immediate judgements about what life should or shouldn’t be.
For me, when the soul reaches the point where it can truly perceive that Beauty everywhere, there is no longer a need to reincarnate on Earth. The lesson has been completed.
I don’t present this as a Diné teaching. It is part of my own spiritual understanding. But it gives the Walking in Beauty prayer an even deeper resonance for me.
Beauty before me. Beauty behind me. Beauty below me. Beauty above me. Beauty all around me.
And ultimately, Beauty within me.
Perhaps that is the deeper journey towards Wholeness. Beauty is no longer something outside ourselves that we search for, or a transcendent state that we occasionally glimpse. It becomes part of how we see, how we experience the world and how we live within it.
And that brings me back again to “As Above, So Below”.
The purpose isn’t simply to travel upwards and experience Beauty.
It is to bring Beauty down to Earth, embody it, and learn to walk within it.
Going beyond the cards
Channelling wasn’t an entirely new idea for me.
I had been using cards intuitively with clients for more than 20 years. Over that time I have worked with Angel Cards, Native American Path Cards, Medicine Cards and others.
Sometimes I would draw cards before a coaching session without knowing what the client was going to bring that day. A card might prompt an idea, an intuitive connection or a question that I could explore during the session.
So when Annie encouraged me in 2020 to explore channelling, I told her that I was already quite good at channelling through cards. I wasn’t starting from nothing. I already recognised that intuitive part of the way I worked.
What I didn’t know was how to take it further.
Annie suggested that I begin with automatic writing. Instead of having a card as the point of connection, I could take a pencil or pen and simply write what came. With practice, she suggested, I might eventually speak or type directly, without needing either the cards or the pencil as an anchor.
Looking back, I see that conversation less as an invitation to start channelling and more as an invitation to move beyond a method I had already used for over two decades.
The cards had provided a structure and a doorway. The question was what might happen if I stepped through it.
A multidimensional purpose
There was another part of the conversation with Annie that now feels particularly significant.
She spoke about what she described as “a new move into the Aquarian energy”, leaving old ways behind and moving towards a multidimensional reality.
Within the spiritual understanding we were exploring, my experience wasn’t simply about my own development.
When I asked whether this was connected with universal consciousness, the response was that it involved “many aspects of universal consciousness”.
I also wanted to know how I could connect with what Annie described as the source of the channelling.
Her response was simple:
“You don’t. You trust.”
I kept looking for the instructions. How did I connect? How would I know? What was I supposed to write or say?
But the message was not to construct the whole thing intellectually before I began. I was encouraged to practise and allow my particular way of working to reveal itself.
As Annie put it:
“We don’t give you chapter and verse because you find your chapter and verse.”
Perhaps that is one of the hardest lessons for someone who wants to understand something before acting upon it.
Sometimes understanding follows experience.
Meeting people at their level
The multidimensional idea might sound abstract, but Annie also described a very practical application.
She used the analogy of a “modem”. When working with another person, I could step up or down according to what that person needed.
That distinction matters to me.
Someone may come to see me because they are unhappy in their career, approaching retirement, lacking confidence, questioning their purpose or simply wondering what the next stage of their life might look like.
They don’t need to believe in Sirius, Ascended Masters, shamanic journeying, channelling or even spirituality.
I meet the person where they are.
For one person, our work may be entirely practical. For another, questions about meaning, purpose or spirituality may naturally become part of the conversation.
My own understanding of where an insight comes from does not have to become the client’s understanding. What matters is whether our work helps them discover something meaningful and useful at the level that is right for them.
That is one way in which something multidimensional can become very practical and human.
Universal Brotherhood
But I don’t believe my own sense of purpose ends with helping individuals.
There is a larger idea that has followed me through much of this journey. I think of it as Universal Brotherhood.
Within the spiritual framework Annie and I were exploring, humanity is moving from the Piscean Age towards the Aquarian Age. Annie spoke of leaving old ways behind and moving towards a multidimensional reality.
During our conversation I also referred back to an earlier idea that I was going to write what I had called the “new world order”.
That phrase has acquired political and conspiratorial meanings that are very different from what I mean by it.
For me, it points towards something spiritual: a new way of living together.
Universal Brotherhood is the language I prefer for that.
I don’t mean an organisation, religion or political system. I mean the possibility of humanity recognising more deeply that we are connected. Connected with one another, connected with the Earth and, depending upon your beliefs, connected with something far greater than our individual selves.
It raises a much bigger question.
What might human life look like if we genuinely lived from that understanding?
For me, Universal Brotherhood is not about making everyone believe the same thing. In fact, that would contradict the idea of meeting people at their own level.
It is about recognising connection while allowing difference.
This is where my personal spiritual experience and my practical work with individuals begin to meet.
At one level, I may be sitting with one person having a conversation about their career, relationships, retirement, confidence or purpose.
At another level, my own purpose may be concerned with something much larger: Beauty, Wisdom, universal consciousness and how we live together as human beings.
The individual work does not replace that larger purpose.
It can be one expression of it.
Seeking centre
You don’t have to share my spiritual beliefs to explore the questions underneath all of this.
We live in an age when our phones can tell us exactly where we are. They can show us which direction to travel, how long the journey will take and when we will arrive.
Yet you can know exactly where you are geographically and still feel completely lost in your life.
That often becomes apparent during periods of change. A career ends. Children leave home. A relationship changes. Retirement approaches. We grow older. Something that once provided identity, structure and meaning no longer works in quite the same way.
Our instinct is often to ask:
“What should I do next?”
Perhaps there is another question worth asking first:
“What am I navigating by?”
Your centre might be your values, your sense of meaning, your spirituality, your relationship with nature, the people you love or the contribution you want to make.
Perhaps it is knowing who you are when some of the roles you have used to define yourself begin to disappear.
Finding your centre doesn’t necessarily tell you exactly where to go.
But it can give you somewhere from which to begin.
What does your wisdom ask you to do?
People often come to coaching with considerable insight already.
You may know that your career no longer fulfils you but remain there for another ten years. You may know that you need stronger boundaries but continue saying yes when you want to say no. You may know what matters to you while organising your life around things that don’t.
Knowing and living are different things.
Perhaps that is what I now find so interesting about embodied wisdom.
It isn’t simply what you know. It is what your knowledge changes.
So you might ask yourself: What brings me back to my centre? What do I already know but haven’t acted upon? What am I using to navigate my life? Where am I waiting for certainty before allowing myself to begin? What qualities do I want to bring into the world through the way I live?
And perhaps most importantly:
What would it mean to embody one piece of my wisdom rather than simply understand it?
You don’t need to have had a spiritual experience to ask these questions. You certainly don’t need to share my interpretation of mine.
Reflective coaching isn’t about telling you what to believe. It creates a space where you can explore meaning, purpose and the questions that don’t always have immediate answers.
Bringing it down to Earth
Looking back at my 2020 experience now, I don’t think the purpose was simply to reach somewhere extraordinary.
The journey went below and above. It took me to the Council of Masters of Wisdom and then upwards towards Beauty, Light and Oneness.
But the Light didn’t stay there.
It came into my heart.
And then I had to return.
If Beauty remains only a beautiful experience, nothing here changes. If spiritual knowledge remains knowledge, nothing here changes. It has to find expression through how we live, what we create, how we treat one another and what we contribute.
For an individual, that might begin with one conversation or one different choice.
For me, the continuing exploration reaches towards something much larger: Beauty, Wisdom, multidimensional consciousness and Universal Brotherhood.
Perhaps this is what “As Above, So Below” has gradually come to mean to me.
Not simply that one world reflects another, but that what we encounter at one level must somehow find expression at another.
The spiritual has to become practical.
Beauty has to be lived.
Wisdom has to be embodied.
And Universal Brotherhood, if it is to mean anything at all, has to become visible in how human beings live with one another.
I still don’t have the complete “chapter and verse”.
Perhaps I was never supposed to.
As Annie said to me, “you find your chapter and verse.”
Perhaps, after all these years, I am still writing it.
Walk in Peace; Walk in Beauty.
Johnathan Brooks MA, PG Dip, MAC
Spirit Bear Coaching