5- Easter Orchids

5- Easter Orchids
We are all more than we believe ourselves to be.  It is this inner essence that cries out for unconditional love.  Giving this to ourselves and others is the journey we have embarked upon in this experience we call life.  It is why we are here.  If we can come to know this essence within ourselves and embrace it, we will see and embrace it in others.  We will know peace and the unwavering power of love.  Compassionate non-judgment is the path I have consciously chosen to take me there and I can honestly say the experience I share in this story anchored and expanded my dedication to this choice.  

In the last years of my grandma’s life she needed someone to stay with her around the clock.  While my aunt was her primary caretaker, occasionally I’d go spend a week or so with my grandma to give my aunt a break.  My uncle would drop off groceries from time to time so I could cook for us, but other than that we were pretty much on our own.  Grandma’s growing dementia prevented very much conversation.  She mostly watched TV soaps she could no longer follow, slept in her chair and drifted from time to time into some distant daydream she was having.   This woman, who had been the backbone of our family for almost a hundred years was coming to the last stages of her journey here.  She had taught me so much about life through example.  Compassion, dedication, unconditional love and acceptance were as natural to her as breathing.  She had also taught me to cook, crochet and sew.  Every creative bone I have I got from her and I knew that once she was gone from the family, the family would lose it’s center.  I also knew that it was largely because of her, that I had found mine.

I had a lot of free time to read on these visits so I always brought some esoteric material I was studying.  I would often read late into the night and throughout most of the day as I sat with my grandma.  This focused my mind and informed much of the things I pondered about life and the meaning it held.  Watching the woman I admired so much near the end of her days, magnified my introspective inquiries.  Being one who has experienced time and again that we do indeed find answers to the questions we seek, I sought to further understand the soul’s journey.

On one particular visit I had been reading from The Book Of Enoch and pondering the mystical type of experiences the text is centered on.  This is not reading for light weights, and as any serious spiritual student will tell you, old Enoch had himself quite an adventurous time!  Enoch’s  travels to heaven in the form of dreams, visions and revelatory experiences were very profound.  I didn’t study esoteric material just for the content shared or the lesson’s taught.  I believed I could have the same revelatory experiences these teachers shared in their writings.  Having been proven right in my assumptions time and again, I always sought first hand communications with my own higher mind.  However I wasn’t at all prepared for the revelatory experience I awaiting me on this visit.

My grandma perked up whenever my uncle visited.  I never really had a relationship with him even though his wife, my mom’s sister, was my favorite aunt.  The truth is he was never around much in my childhood.  He worked shift work and most holidays, so while I was with my aunt a lot, this was not the case with her husband.  As an adult I didn't see very much of either of them due to geography.  He was a fastidious man, starched and pressed. He had very strong opinions and the way we viewed the world was very different.  He was a conservative, a republican, and very outspoken on his opinions.  I was so far away from anything political there was not even a category for my views.  He freely spoke his mind and sometimes displayed a prejudice I just couldn't warm up to, but I had grown up being taught to respect my elders so, for the most part, I didn’t engage his comments.  Besides, he loved my aunt and was good to my grandma and I figured that was all that mattered.  I had no way of knowing this man was about to be the conduit through which one of the most profound spiritual lessons of my life would flow. 

It was the week of Easter, and not being religious, I hadn’t celebrated any of the holidays in more years than I could count.  But because my uncle didn’t know this, when he went grocery shopping for us and saw the orchid corsages being sold for Easter, he kindly bought one for both grandma and me.  As grandma opened the kitchen door to let him in, his tall frame filled the small room.  I sat at the kitchen table as he reached in the grocery sack he carried and presented my grandmother with a corsage.  I remember thinking what a sweet gesture it was, when he surprised me with one as well.  As he extended it and our hands connected on the small package, I was literally catapulted into a profound mystical experience.  

Time stood still as I experienced my uncles spirit expand from his being and fill the room.  His divine essence merged with mine and communicated the pure energy of unconditional love. I was suddenly caught up in the most profound realization that this is the substance around which we are all formed.  In a moment that I am quite sure only I experienced, I was transported into revelatory awareness and clarity.  I felt as though I had been given a glimpse through the veils Enoch had pierced, and never again would I mistake the personality for the essence of a person.  

9- Photo-realism

9- Photo-realism

Despite the mystical experiences connected to my spiritual journey, I had never researched or entertained any kind of paranormal explorations.  Not that I avoided them…they just weren’t on my radar.  Despite my own mystical experiences, I was a clinician who primarily believed in addressing the here and now with the here and now. But an antique photo in a tiny shop would expand that understanding, proving that the ‘here and now’ also holds the ‘there and then’.  

Each time I put the antique photograph down and walked away to explore other things in the tiny shop, I felt myself unexplainably drawn back to the woman in the portrait.  In those days there was something about old things that called me.  Along with my sister and girlfriends I often perused dusty old shops and antique malls, and this day was no different.  These places resonated with a kind of timelessness that we each found captivating.  Our homes were furnished and adorned with treasures from such places.  For me it was not so much a shopping adventure as an appreciation for the craftsmanship and beauty that I feel has all but disappeared in our modern, make-shift world of the instant and disposable.  But my attraction to this particular photograph had nothing to do with any of that.

For some time I had been collecting antique cabinet card portraits of women for a Women’s Issues class that I was scheduled to teach.  I had planned to use such images to connect the students of today to the energy of women in earlier times.  However, I never expected to connect so deeply to an image myself.  Having more photos than I needed, despite the attraction, I put the photo down and left the store with my sister and girlfriend.  Halfway down the sidewalk I was compelled to return to the shop and the photograph.  As I picked it up and looked into the depth of the eyes staring back at me, I was completely captivated and clueless as to why.  But to free myself from the pull, I marched straight to the counter, purchased the seven dollar obsession and tucked it into my purse.  That was that…or so I thought.

All day long I felt the urge to take the photo from my purse and look into her eyes.  Time and again I found myself staring into them as if they held some great mystery.  I even asked those with me if they got any vibe off the picture and they both denied any kind of draw what-so-ever.  My sister further commented that she didn’t even find the woman particularly attractive.  This threw me because I found her to be quite captivating.  It wasn’t that she was a beauty, but there was an undeniable strength and presence about her that I found compelling. 

That evening I sat with the photo and wrote whatever came to mind as I imagined the life of the mysterious woman from the turn of the century.  Alone on my sun porch, I fashioned a character study of sorts that was impossible to verify, but verification wasn’t what I was looking for.  I simply wanted to understand what was calling me to this image so I wrote whatever filled my thoughts.  The things that came spoke to a strength of character and her determination to be heard and unrestricted in an age where women had very little freedom and even less voice.  The message was one of self-knowledge with regard to her personality; a quiet type of inner-strength that was unmistakable in her presence.  Not foreboding or arrogant in any way,  I felt she held a kind of self-awareness that was purposeful and directed, without ego yet very centered.  

A few days later I had the image copied and enlarged so I could frame and display it prominently in my home.  I knew this was very unusual behavior but I just went with it.  I intuitively felt the need to ‘be with her’; to have her share my space.  Fortunately I lived with people who didn’t question my quirky ideas or spontaneous notions.

It was the early nineties and we had a nice apartment just outside of Dallas, Texas.  I say this to emphasize that there wasn’t anything in our area of the bible belt that openly addressed the paranormal.  Quite honestly, despite the mystical experiences connected to my spiritual journey, I had never researched or entertained any kind of paranormal explorations.  Not that I avoided them…they just weren’t on my radar.  Despite my own mystical experiences, I was a clinician who primarily believed in addressing the here and now with the here and now.   But the woman in the photo, unbeknownst to me, had come to show me that the here and now held more than I realized.  Being all that existed, the ‘here and now’ holds everything!

A few days after finding the portrait and writing down my thoughts, I randomly turned the TV channel following a local home-school program my son had just finished watching.  An interview type talk-show I had never heard of caught my attention.  This episode featured a detective who used the services of a psychic to assist in finding missing persons.  The detective, a credible sounding, middle-aged man, introduced the psychic and sang her praises with regard to her assistance in his cases.  Curious, I watched the interview through to the end.  When an invitation to call the number on the screen reached out to anyone with a story they would like to share about the paranormal, I found myself jotting the number down. 

Not only did I know nothing about the paranormal world at this time in my life, I had certainly never entertained the idea of calling a television show, much less a psychic!  But there I was, only minutes after the show aired, dialing the number. Hoping to get information for contacting the psychic, my mind was questioning my actions even as I watched them unfold.  I had no idea why I was calling to connect with a woman on a TV show in California simply because I was obsessed with a photograph I’d found in an antique shop in Texas, but there I was.  Imagine my surprise at being told that the psychic actually lived only three hours from my home!  For Texans, that’s a day trip! Without missing a beat, I called, she answered, and the synchronistic breadcrumbs continued to fall into perfect alignment.  As it turned out she was in my area twice a month seeing clients.  Needless to say, I scheduled an appointment.

On the phone I was careful not to give anything away.  I told her that I had seen her on the TV show, and being a counselor, I wondered if she had ever assisted in that field in some way.  She said she had and we agreed to discuss the possibilities when she was in town. Two weeks later I waited outside the office she used when she was in town.  The photo tucked inside my purse, I thought about how I was going to approach the subject.  When it was my turn to see her I found the woman to be just as she was on TV.  Warm, friendly and very approachable.  After introductions and pleasantries the two of us went into the room she used as an office.  We sat across from one another at an empty table, but for a small cassette recorder next to her.   I reached into my purse, took the photograph out and said “I was wondering…”.  Before I could finish my sentence the woman reached to take the photograph from my hand, and upon touching it she gasped slightly, drew it to her and hit the record button and said, “This was you in a past life.”  I sat speechless and suspicious until she began independently stating much of what I had written after finding the photo….and then some.  I’d probably taken it all with a grain of salt had her reading not been so close to the things that I had intuitively written.  However,  I had never even remotely considered a past life connection.  In those days I didn’t even think in such terms.  Since then however, I have had three other very gifted psychics confirm the connection and I have no doubt they were honestly telling me what they saw. 

While it is fun to imagine that I actually connected with a photograph from one of my own past (parallel) lives, that has never been what most astounded me.  Connecting with that photograph in such a profound way marked a trajectory that opened me up to a much larger picture of life.  After that experience and hearing about the possible connection, my studies turned to exploring life as an ongoing continuum rather than a single appearance.  Weather she is indeed one of my own past/parallel lives, I don’t know.  However, those who knew me during that time can certainly attest to how strongly her energy influenced my life, and the doors that opened up for me following our uncommon introduction.  I eventually began to explore past life regression.  I assisted a friend in unraveling and validating her young son’s comments about the lives they shared prior to this one.  And my world view expanded far beyond the limits of my five senses.  

I came to understand that we simultaneously project our eternal essence into many incarnations at once in various dimensions.  These fluctuate along bands of frequency and actually influence one another across what we experience as time and space.  I’ve learned that shifts in awareness which I experience in this life literally impact other lives that the larger self is projecting which I’m not even consciously aware of and vice-versa.  I have also been shown that our life is not one of continuity.  We are not limited to a chronological continuum of experience, but do indeed seamlessly pop in and out of experiences according to our perception and focus.  I have felt sudden shifts and become aware of literally shifting from one timeline to another without needing to experience the gradual steps I could have used to get there.  This awareness continues to expand in me as does my understanding of it.  It is these kind of lessons I enjoy exploring and dissecting.  The world I experience today is far from what meets the eye and this has made life quite an adventure.  One that was prompted by a photograph experienced along two timelines which crossed in the eternal now.

The enlarged framed photograph is still in my home and long ago I painted a portrait of the two of us.  Together we are more than I was alone and I feel a kinship to the energy that reached out to me in such a profound way.  Understanding that we all exist beyond the limitations of time and space is what matters most.  When we live from that awareness we open ourselves to infinite possibilities in the seemingly here and now.  The captivating woman in the photograph ushered that awareness in for me. I am both grateful I followed the intuitive nudges that led me to her and forever changed because of it.  

15 - More Than Meets The Eye

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE

My father’s experience in the last days of this life were proof that life will surprise even the toughest skeptic.  Not one for metaphysical or spiritual beliefs, my dad was intrigued by science.  While he believed their was a power greater than himself, he didn’t wrap this notion up in myths or stories.  He was a hard working, practical man.  It was in fact, his journey into agnosticism during my early teens, along with his exploration and abandonment of religious philosophy that laid the groundwork for my own fascination with exploring the nature of spirituality.  I also watched him struggle and overcome a family history fraught with alcoholism.  So with more than thirty-five years of sobriety at his passing, it was also his reaching out for help that inspired my career in counseling.  

15- More Than Meets The Eye

My studies and my own personal growth work led me deeper and deeper into questions about consciousness and the meaning of life.  As my spiritual journey filled with multi-dimensional awareness and mystical experiences, I explored energy work and became a reiki master. My sister followed a similar path and we, along with my mom often spoke of our metaphysical experiences despite my dad’s scoffing.  Even though he was highly intuitive and very grounded in nature, he thought our take on things mystical was foolish.  However, from his deathbed in the last days before his transition, he began to have experiences that would change this.

As my dad neared the end of his life he was in hospice care in his home.  From his bed he began to see pets and loved ones long crossed over. I gratefully managed to get away from my dying husband’s bedside for a few hours in time to be with him before his passing.  I was able to tell him what his life had meant to me and all he had taught me through witnessing his journey.  This meant a lot to me but what has meant even more is what I experienced at the close of my dad’s life.  As I sat close by his side, terribly weak and only able to whisper he asked, “What are all these people doing in my house?”.  Since only a few immediate family members were there, I said, “Dad, you are seeing things that we can’t see.”  He looked straight into my eyes and with wonder in his, he exclaimed, “I think I know that!”  It was a statement that not only acknowledged what he was experiencing, but that he now knew for himself that there was more to life than meets the eye. A mostly unseen world that eludes us unless we are open to it surrounds us all.  It was wonderful to watch him accept this awareness.  In his last days he knew death was not an end.  His life would continue in other dimensions and he would indeed reach out to us from there, as my mother now experiences continually.

I was so grateful for these hours with him; for witnessing such a profound transition at the closing of his incarnation.  Once again, watching another of my father’s life experiences, shaped and strengthened my own journey.  We all have an opportunity to come to such realizations at the close of our lives. Some of us, those who desire to awaken before death, will experience our multi-dimensional nature at will.  This is the way of true self-realization, stepping not onto a path, but directly and experientially into our true essence.  I have had and so many personal experiences of this expanded state that I have no fear of death what-so-ever.  I know it simply as a transition from one state of being to another. I am grateful that in his last days my Dad began to experience this awareness as well.  My brother was with him as he departed this realm and the story he shared with me about his transition was quite fantastic and other-worldly. My mom is visited by him often and she has told me of seeing him and also waking to him cradling her in his arms. My mom’s sister also had a vision of her husband following his passing and my grandmother was connected to many of her relatives after their passing.  I share this to emphasize that life does not end and death is a fallacy.  We move from physical expressions, yes but this is not death.  The more we embrace this truth the more we can remain in contact with one another following these transitions. I have heard and experienced countless stories from people who have done just that.  Hopefully we are moving into a time when this will be the norm and we can let go of our conditioned ideas about death.