Hello, My Name is Rob. And I'm a Mystic.

I watched them save a dying boy.

I was six years old, watching from above as they tried to resuscitate the small boy on the table. The boy was me.

But I wouldn't understand that for another thirty years.

For my Substack, I've been wanting to write about something more mystical and consciousness-based... about moments like this when I KNEW something was different. My intuition that, when I've listened, has never steered me wrong. This childhood memory? It's where it all started.

The Memory That Wasn't Just a Memory

It was daycare, Kinder Care, specifically, in Westerville, Ohio. Late 80s, summer. I'm standing in the common room where children were corralled when they weren't on the playground. Half carpeted with toys and wooden blocks, the other half with those round school tables, low to the ground for kids my age.

All the children were outside at recess. I was already inside, watching as two or three of the adult ladies carried a limp boy in quickly through the playground. They laid him down on the table on his back, legs bent at the knee dangling over the edge as they leaned over to fish something out of his mouth. His face was pale with a blue tint, and his lips were very blue.

Funny how some memories stay crystal clear while others fade. This one, I'd learn thirty years later, wasn't just a memory.

For all those years, it sat there with the other fragments, making mud pies on the front porch, gluing cotton balls onto construction paper to make Santa's beard at grandma's house. Just another childhood moment that may or may not have great meaning, but you remember it.

Until I was preparing for my first QHHT session, that's Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique. I'm a Level 2 practitioner now, which means I've spent a few hundred hours in sessions with clients, guiding them through past life regressions. But back then, I'd only finished my Level 1 training and hadn't yet received my own session as a client.

During the interview process, she asked if I'd ever had any out-of-body experiences. In an absolute flash, it dawned on me: the little boy I saw on the table thirty years prior was myself. The perspective of the memory, the eyes through which I was looking down at that little boy, at my own body, were of someone standing six feet off the ground, much more akin to my current eye level. At six or seven, I was not six feet tall.

I sat there in my practitioner's office, forty-something years old, finally understanding what my six-year-old self had experienced but couldn't process.

I was hovering above my body. I was in the room as a non-local conscious being, waiting for them to carry my body in. I watched them resuscitate me. And in that moment, I also recalled waking up on the table, looking up at the relieved faces of two women who seemed quite young through my forty-something memory. I remember hopping off the table, and them telling my mom very passively when she picked me up that I had choked on something, but that I was okay. Not quite giving her the whole truth.

During my session, my higher self communicated that I did not go anywhere. It wasn't necessarily a near-death experience, merely out of body. So that I would have it in my memory bank for later in life, to realize that my being, myself, my connection, my memories, my consciousness, are in no way connected to this physical meat suit I'm walking around in.

And that's only one story.

Once You Know, You Can't Unknow

Once you realize you've been floating above your own body, other "weird" experiences start making more sense.

My late best friend Chris and I used to play telepathy games. He'd pick an object, mentally send it to me, and I, with eyes closed, would picture an empty box. When a shape or color would pop in, I'd describe it... and was ALWAYS right. Until I stopped.

We had some friends over and decided to try it with a group. He picked his object. I sat back in the recliner with my eyes closed, surrounded by five or six of our friends from theater. If you know theater kids, you understand. I began to describe what I was seeing: "Pointy on one end, a yellow line, something shiny at the other end, something pink, not quite clear." But I went ahead and opened my eyes, and from behind his back, Chris pulled a sharpened yellow pencil, complete with shiny silver ferrule holding on the pink rubber eraser.

The room erupted in voices of skepticism, challenging its validity and accusing us of pre-staging or cheating. Oddly enough, from that moment forward, I never tried again. We never practiced again. In that moment, we let the collective disbelief and skepticism of other pre-programmed societal beliefs push our own lived experience and inner knowing out of the way so that we could better fit in to that group.

Something I'm sure sounds familiar to a bunch of people. That's basic tribalism, our need for significance and belonging. We don't want to do anything that makes us stand out, because if we stand out as different, we might get kicked out of the tribe. If we get kicked out of the tribe, we might end up outside the cave alone. And if we're alone, then a great big animal is going to come along and eat us. So not fitting in equals death. Our animal instinct is to fit in, to squeeze ourselves into a society-shaped box. Never mind who built the box, who painted the box, who created the design for the box. Don't ask those questions though.

Then there was the high school friend from theater who called me after I was dealing with a particularly strong emotional something-or-other to tell me I needed to stop thinking of her because I was an incredibly strong psychic sender, and she wasn't able to sleep. The thousands of synchronicities I've experienced in my life, the connections, the messages, the visions, the dreams.

Maybe you've had that feeling too, knowing who's calling before the phone rings, or thinking of someone right before they text. How does one talk about these things without letting mainstream culture's programmed self-judgments prevent you from opening up?

I know that logically, other people have had experiences like this. I know that most of them just wave it off, but that's not me. If you're reading this and thinking "that's crazy," I get it. I spent 30 years translating my crazy into acceptable language.

The Military Mystic in Disguise

There are people in my life every single day who have no idea about the depth of spiritual connection, of energetic dependence and oneness that I feel, connect with, and operate within on a daily basis. They know me, they consider me a deep, close personal friend, and they have no idea how much a part of my absolute being this is. How much it informs every aspect of my life when I can remember to take a breath and listen to it.

I had a role in the military later in my career where I was relied upon as an advisor and consultant to my senior officer. I was a Command Master Chief, for people who know what that is. In other services, it might be called Command Chief Master Sergeant. Part union rep for the enlisted corps, part therapist, part camp counselor, part principal advisor on all things human capital or that affected the humans and their families.

The amount of time that I used solely my intuition for that job... Well, frankly, that's what made the job possible. My sense before the conversation even started of how it was going to end. I'd listen completely to the person in front of me, while my intuition read their energy like a second conversation happening beneath the words.

But how did this actually work in practice? Let me give you an example.

I remember sitting across from this young Coastie. His chief had recommended he come talk to me because he was on something we called performance probation. Basically, he wasn't able to do what was expected of him and his boss was using every method necessary to try to connect with the young man to motivate him to be part of the team. His boss, however, had previously been one of my students when I taught at our service's Senior Enlisted Leadership Academy. Having listened to me hold forth on all things leadership at the front of a classroom, his chief sent the young man to me as a last-ditch effort before switching from positive reinforcement to punishment.

In front of me was just a kid who didn't quite know how he got here or what he wanted to do with his life. And so intuitive dad and coach mode clicked on, and I just got to know him. Understood the things that he cared about, understood his values that framed his worldview, the things that he got excited for. And we found some common ground. We found something that the service could offer him that excited him. It was a different path than the one that he was on, and because of that he understood then that in order to get the thing that he felt called to do, in this case, he wanted to go be a cook instead of drive boats, he needed to check a few boxes on the journey. Once he saw the job that his boss was asking him to do as the path to get where he felt called to go, he had no problem walking down that path. And as far as I know, today he's happily cooking away in some tiny, sweaty galley on a ship rolling back and forth for a moderately ungrateful crew. Normal cook stuff.

Now, I could have written that up as "redirected service member's career trajectory through mentorship." But what really happened was I felt this kid's energy shift the moment we found something that lit him up. That's when I knew he'd be okay.

But even in that environment, I didn't talk about how I really made my decisions. I found very logical, military-sounding ways to explain it. Statements like "based on the totality of the circumstances and my training and experience, this is my recommendation." What I really meant to say was: I can't articulate it linearly. However, my gut says this is how that's gonna end. This is what you need to do as a result. Just trust me.

It wasn't without its shortcomings in that particularly spiritually stifling military environment. However, I imagine the experience is more common the closer to life-and-death situations one deals with.

I've navigated my entire career, life-and-death ocean rescues, countless human dramas, using this same intuitive sense. But I've always translated it into acceptable language. Until now.

Why Now?

Now that I'm retired, I find particular joy in my quiet mornings, writing, reading, creating music, staring out the window on a sunny day, drinking coffee while the house is still quiet. Sometimes, when I don't really have the desire to type, I'll sit in an empty room and talk to myself using my phone's voice-to-text feature.

Which brings me back to where I started. How do I begin to share my thinking, my being-ness with those around me in the world? And just as importantly, why in this moment do I feel like I need to? Why do I feel called to open up to the world about that part of my inner life?

I've certainly been plenty successful up to now by keeping it to myself.

Though I know the answer before I even finish writing the question. It's because I haven't been completely authentic in sharing who I am. And let's capitalize that: I AM.

I don't really need to share anything specifically or go on a lecture tour talking about all of the mystical, esoteric, spiritual events, connections, and moments I've experienced in my life. All I really need to do is just show up and be myself. To not self-censor. To talk openly.

But I think I'm writing this to open the door, just a crack, to see how those not quite in the inner circle, but the next layer beyond that who think they know me well, will react. My intuition says they won't react; they'll just accept, because they already know me. Any misgivings or judgments I have are really only judgments against myself, based on programming from my childhood, from society, from pop culture, from a set of predominantly conservative Western spiritual beliefs. Never mind the 70% of the world who believe something differently.

Being the Change

So perhaps I'll start sharing more. Write once or twice a month on topics more mystical or esoteric. I'd ideally love to help my local hay farmers and retired prison guards feel something a little bit more spiritual in their day-to-day lives, no matter how they choose to frame it. I just want them to feel okay talking about it, believing in it, ultimately just accepting it.

And just like I've preached time and time again about what a Freemason needs to be or what a lodge needs to be, our best advertisement is the far-too-overly-used line: Be the change you wish to see.

So that's it. Now I will introduce myself as a member of my new twelve-step program. I don't know what you'd call it, Ego Addicts Anonymous or something similarly clever that still respects the fundamental framework of a very successful program without making light of it.

Because here's what I've realized: The hay farmers and prison guards I mentioned? They probably have their own stories. Their own moments of knowing. They're just waiting for someone to go first.

Hello, everyone. My name is Rob. And I'm a mystic.

What about you?