All There is is Lessons...
or
The Cleft of the Rockl...

 

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Discover the Secret History of the World - and how to get out alive!

The Wave Wave Index [ Chapter 01 ] [ Chapter 02 ] [ Chapter 03 ] [ Chapter 04 ] [ Chapter 05 ] [ Chapter 06 ] [ Chapter 07 ] [ Chapter 08 ] [ Chapter 09 ] [ Chapter 10 ] [ Chapter 10b ] [ Chapter 10c ] [ Chapter 11 ] [ Chapter 11b ] [ Chapter 11c ] [ Chapter 11d ] [ Chapter 11e ] [ Chapter 11f ] [ Chapter 11g ] [ Chapter 11h ] [ Chapter 11i ] [ Chapter 11j ] [ Chapter 11k ] [ Chapter 12 ] [ Chapter 12b ] [ Chapter 12c ] [ Chapter 12d ] [ Chapter 12e ] [ Chapter 12e1 ] [ Chapter 13 ] [ Chapter 13a ] [ Chapter 13b ] [ Chapter 13c ] [ Chapter 13d ] [ Chapter 13e ] [ Chapter 13f ] [ Chapter 13g ] [ Chapter 13h ] [ Chapter 13i ] [ Chapter 13j ]

 

He hideth my soul in the Cleft of the Rock
that shadows a dry thirsty land...
He hideth my life in the depths of his love;
and covers me there with his hand...

Note: Writing this segment as background for the events that follow has been extremely difficult; but is necessary. In other places on the site, when I have talked about my personal experiences, I have generally avoided some of these details for obvious reasons - it is painful to remember. I am always concerned that the reader will be either bored or "turned off" by personal data, and I have tried to cover only the salient points that will come up again later in a general discussion, while also making them as brief as possible. Please bear with me in this, though if you find it to be of no interest, do feel free to stop at any time and return later when the discussion returns to more "universal themes." However, my experience has shown me that many of the things that are recounted herein are not unique to me.

As we left me in the last episode, I had decided that maybe having a brain was not such a bad thing even if the "faith trip" frowns on using it to any great extent, other than offering it up as a sacrifice to be hypnotized so it can be twisted like a pretzel and used to justify theological nonsense by acts of cerebral derring-do.

I remember visiting a friend of mine at her office one day, and there was a sign posted on her desk saying: God doesn't create junk. That really struck me in a funny way since I was right at the point of struggling to be free of the hypnosis that says the human being is incapable of using his brain to discover or understand God, and must therefore use only faith and, of course, the Scriptures - whatever they may be in the varying faith trips. How many times had I heard sermons on the subject of the brain being solely the instrument of Satan. Of course, when talking about the "Predator's Mind," we see how this is one side of the coin. But, nevertheless, in was pretty clear to me that whatever existed, existed within the mind of God, whoever or whatever he/it might be, and therefore had a function in finding him/it.

Reading that little sign brought me face to face with the realization that I had bought so completely into the faith trip that I had actually become afraid to think. I had become embarrassed by my own tendency to ask questions, and had been made to feel extraordinary guilt for my capacity to use logical analysis. One of the standard "hypnotic suggestions" of the "way of the monk" is that no thinking is allowed. Thinking leads to questions, and the unwritten 11th commandment is "Thou Shalt not Question!" The obvious thing that part of the creation consists in the fact that we DO have brains, - amazing instruments - for a reason, dawned on me with sudden clarity. (I know that the reader must be pretty sure by now that I am the slowest learner of all time!) But, anyway, this self-evident fact that God had given us brains for a reason gave birth to the next thought: shouldn't we be using them to DISCOVER God, rather than to justify obvious nonsense about God that has been passed down as tradition by folks who clearly didn't do much to improve the state of the world and could, in fact, be cited as the creators of the system that has gotten us into the mess we are in today by NOT using their brains?

About this same time, something very strange happened. I didn't think of as an abduction at the time. It is only in retrospect that I see the clues for what they might be. On the other hand, there could be other explanations.

As I said, we lived in a cabin. A very tiny cabin. Most of it was taken up with our beds, storage and a tiny galley type kitchen. (If I learned anything from this experience, I learned how to design the perfect kitchen!) My bed was a standard double size pushed into a corner with one side flush against a wall. There was a very narrow space at the foot of the bed between it and the baby's crib. I slept on the "inside" against the wall. The only way to get in and out of bed was either to scoot out backwards, or get my ex up so I could get out on the side. In the condition I was in, which made the "scooting" option difficult, once I was in the bed, I was pretty much stuck there for the night.

One night, something woke me up, though I don't know exactly what. It was like a sound, a low humming or a dull "roar," if you could call it that. I was VERY sleepy - feeling almost drugged, so it was difficult to open my eyes. But, I thought that I ought to check out this disturbance, and I forced my eyes open and lifted my head up off the pillow to just look around. I noticed the strangest thing that I cannot yet explain precisely. What I saw was light. But it wasn't an ordinary kind of light. It was actually penetrating the walls of the house through what seemed to be cracks and pinpoint openings all over the walls. Of course it came in the windows, but the needle like beams that came through the walls really were strange. They were almost solid, like icicles or even crystalline shards.

When I saw this, I was, of course, a bit puzzled. I couldn't think of what would be so powerful a light that it would shoot through cracks in the walls that were, for all intents and purposes, almost microscopic. The sunlight didn't even do that, though I knew that the "cabin " structure surely had such fine cracks. The whole room seemed to be criss-crossed with these beams of light.

So, seeing this very strange light, what did I tell myself? I rationalized that it must be a group of my (ex) husband's friends playing a joke on him by driving up to the house in a whole convoy of mud bogging trucks with the hunting lights mounted on the cabs all turned on and pointed at the house!

The only problem was: my (ex) husband didn't HAVE any friends with mud boggers equipped with hunting lights!

But, not to let that little detail bother me, I decided that it was HIS friends playing a joke and I was too tired to laugh, so let HIM get up and chase them off! How dare they come in the middle of the night, playing games, when he had to get up early and go to work! What's more, I needed my sleep!

And, that is what I did. I just pulled the covers over my head and went back to sleep!

The next thing I knew I was in pain. Not any specific place, but I was still so fragile from the many months of convalescence from having the baby (in which, as I have said elsewhere, I was bedridden for most of six months due to pelvic injuries sustained in delivery), that any sort of activity could make me hurt and ache all over. It did seem to have a center point in the abdominal area that penetrated to my back, almost like the early signs of labor.

So, pain woke me up. But, what is so bizarre is that when I woke up I found my face pressed against my (ex)husband's feet! I was completely reversed in the bed. In addition, my nightgown was WET from the knees down. It was a very painful operation to get myself into a sitting position against the wall and pick my legs up one at a time and swing them around to the foot of the bed so I could pull myself to my feet and find out what was the problem, but I managed. I just stood there and tried to think how my gown got wet. I remember feeling almost hysterical in the very act of thinking about it. I struck a match and lit a lamp so I could find something dry to put on. As I took off the wet gown, I noticed that it was covered with little black specks - the seeds and pollen from the bahia grass outside that was about knee high at the back of the property.

How did I explain this to myself? I told myself that I must have gotten up during the night and gone to the bathroom and dipped my gown in the buckets of water kept on hand to flush the toilet in the night. (I had insisted on the installation of fixtures, even if we had to operate them "by hand.") But somehow, I had forgotten that I had done this. I didn't even TRY to explain how I had gotten into bed backwards.

That was my explanation TO MYSELF. It made absolutely no sense because I have never in my life, before or since, gotten up in the night and not remembered it or been unaware of what I was doing. I remember putting the gown in the hamper in a ball so I wouldn't have to look at it and when I finally came to wash it, I did it hurriedly as if to cover something up from myself.

Now, of course, that explanation, considering my physical condition and the logistics of getting myself out of bed at all, just didn't fly. But, that didn't matter to me. I created it and accepted it. The part of it that I couldn't explain, I shoved "under the rug" and avoided thinking about at all. I had to. What else could I do?

I wonder how many other people have similar experiences that they "explain" in such ways?

At this point in time, the heart condition began to worsen, and I began to suffer from more than the "backflush," or fibrillation - I began to have angina attacks every week or so with involvement of both arms though it was mostly concentrated on the left side. I also began to have a recurrence of a former problem - endometriosis, that caused almost constant pain. (I ended up having a D&C and laparoscopy done which revealed that I had a severe case of adenomyosis.)

And then there were the headaches. Pain so monstrous that the very act of breathing was agony. Nothing touched this pain - no drug, no therapy, no solution. The pain began in a strange way with a swelling of my head right at the occipital ridge where the back of the skull sits on the neck. It would sometimes swell as big as a golfball and it was from there the pain radiated in ever increasing waves of pulsating torment until it gripped me like a steel helmet squeezing my head until I felt it must shatter, for how else could such a convulsion of agony end? The only way to cope - forgetting entirely getting relief - was to lie perfectly still in darkness and breathe as shallowly as possible so as to minimize movement. This would continue for up to a week at a time with only snatches of sleep until finally, I would fall into a deep sleep of utter exhaustion from holding my sanity in the face of this wracking torment, from which I would awaken free of pain at last, though living in terror of the next, inevitable attack.

As if all of that were not enough, there was also the constant struggle with ear infections that were so massive the affected side of my head would swell until the ear itself closed completely, obstructing the draining of fluids that poured when the eardrum would finally rupture in a blinding burst of pain that, had I been able to stand, would have dropped me to my knees to beg for mercy! The curious thing about these chronic, regular "blow-ups" in my ear was that I had no warning. There was no slow building of a sensation of something being wrong - I would simply wake up with the side of my head swollen, in pain, and it would develop, in the course of a single day, to a critical situation that required a trip to the emergency room. I have to laugh in retrospect (though it is NOT a funny subject for those who have experienced it!) when I think about one doctor who proposed to obtain a specimen of the fluid leaking from my swollen ear. She just came up beside me with a cotton swab and was going to insert it into the tumescent ear canal for a gentle swipe. The instant she touched it, the explosion of pain immediately transmitted itself to my arm and the reflexive blow nearly knocked her across the room! She understood immediately that when I said it was VERY painful, I wasn't joking in the least! And just for those who think I am a whiner here, let me point out that I had four children by this time, and one of them required the separation of my pelvis to deliver - utter agony - and I never once raised my voice, uttered a single cry, or did anything more than groan discreetly. In my family, pain was endured with dignity, not complaint. One certainly didn't physically assault a doctor tending to the problem!

My solution to this was to meditate even more in conjunction with my reading and endless note taking. I had not entirely given up my quest for subsuming all emotion into the Love of God, so meditating on this was a daily activity - sometimes more than once a day.

For me, meditation is a dual process. I later learned that some paths refer to my method as "meditation with seed." The process really begins as an exercise in contemplation, or a focus upon an idea or image. It's pretty standard, I believe.

My meditation practice rapidly progressed, as I later learned when I read some advanced texts on the subject. Of course, at the time, I really had no guide and had never actually studied it in method except to read books ABOUT meditation pathways per se. Nevertheless, the result of this activity was that, after only a few months of practice, I found myself "zoning out" for up to three hours at a time, coming to myself feeling as though no time at all had passed. The only problem was: I never seemed to bring anything BACK with me. I had no idea what had been going on, where my mind had been, what my consciousness had been doing or anything. I did note that I was far more peaceful and able to cope with the difficulties of my life, but it was still frustrating to not be able to obtain something a bit more "concrete" from all of this endeavor.

As a matter of practicality I generally meditated lying on the bed. Some people cannot do this because they tend to fall asleep, but that was never a problem for me. I could "zone out" in meditation, "come to" some time later, and THEN go to sleep if I was doing it at night. I was generally so uncomfortable in any position, that getting to sleep was problematical if I DIDN'T meditate first.

One night, after a particularly trying day of struggle with the situation - I don't really remember why I felt so extremely unhappy at that moment in time; probably just a combination of the constant pain, the struggles to make ends meet, anxieties for the children, and feeling completely alone in my marriage - but it was standard practice for me to use any unpleasantness or unhappiness as the fuel for the meditative fires. Being able to achieve the sensation of love and peace in the face of some great difficulty was part of the challenge - and the purpose.

So, I went to bed and waited for my (ex) husband to go to sleep. His attitude about the direction I was going was, on the surface, tolerant, but he always managed to say or do something to put some monkeywrench in the works if he was aware of what I was doing. If he thought I wanted it quiet for meditation, he would manage to just "have" to make some sort of noise or disruption, for which he would apologize profusely, and then go on to do it again and again.

After he was asleep, I began my breathing exercises. This part of the process I had borrowed from my hypnotherapy training and was extremely useful. Of course, I later learned that it had been "borrowed" for hypnotherapy from certain meditation systems. At this point, I don't know WHAT happened. All I remember is starting the breathing phase which came before going into the contemplative phase of the exercise. But, what happened seems to be that I sort of made some kind of big "skip" or something. The next thing I knew, I was jerked back into consciousness by a sensation that can only be described as a "roiling turbulence" in my abdominal area. It was so powerful that, at first, it felt actually physical - like there was a boiling agitation in my organs that was going to erupt upward in some way. I could distinctly sense that it WAS building and WAS going to travel upward, and I was frightened that something crazy and strange was happening with my body with which I was completely unfamiliar. I KNEW I had to get out of that bed and get outside before "it" happened, though I had NO idea what "it" was.

I was frantically holding my throat, because I could feel a tightening of the muscles in the throat area, as wave after wave of energy blew upward like the precursors of steam blasts from a volcano before it erupts. I struggled out of the bed, holding the wall with one hand and my throat with the other all the while clenching my teeth so whatever it was would not come gushing out of me and disturb either my (ex)husband or the children. For all I knew, I was just going to be violently sick!

I rushed outside to the porch where there was a lawn sofa and collapsed onto it just as the outpouring began.

I wish I could describe this in better words, but there are simply none that apply other than to use ordinary descriptions that don't come close to the essence and intensity of the event. What erupted from me was a shattering series of sobs and cries that were utterly primeval and coming from some soul-deep place that defies explanation. Accompanying these cries, or actually, embedded in them, were images - visions - complete scenes with all attendant emotional content and implied context conveyed in an instant. Again, it was like the idea of your "life passing before your eyes." But, in this case, it was not scenes from THIS life. It was lifetime after lifetime. I KNEW that I was there in every scene, that the scenes I was seeing were vignettes of other lives, and I was experiencing myself as all these people.

And the tears! My god! The tears that flowed. I had no idea that the human physiology was capable of producing such copious amounts of liquid so rapidly!

Now, if this had been just an hour long crying jag or something like that, it would have to pass into history as "just one of those things," maybe like PMS. But, this activity had a life of its own! It went on, without slowing or stopping, for over 5 hours! I had absolutely no control over any of it at all. If I attempted to slow it down, stop it, or "switch" my mind in another direction, the inner sensation of explosive eruption rapidly took over, all the muscles in my body would begin to clench up and I was no longer in control. I could only sit there as a sort of "instrument of grief and lamentation," and literally sob my heart out for every horror of history in which I had seemingly participated or to which I had possibly been a witness. I think that there were even some that I was simply aware of and in which there had been no participation. And some of them were truly horrible scenes. Plague and pestilence and death and destruction. Scene after scene. Loved ones standing one moment, crushed or lying in bloody heaps the next. Rapaciousness, pillaging, plundering; rivers of blood and gore; slaughter, carnage and butchery in all its many manifestations passed before my eyes; holocaust and hell. Rage and hot anger, bloodlust and fury, murder and mayhem, all around me, everywhere I looked. Evil heaped on evil like twisted, dismembered bodies. And the grief of centuries, the unshed tears of millennia, the guilt, remorse and penitence, flooded through me; melting, thawing and dissolving the burdensome shell of stone that encased my petrified heart; washing away the pain with my tears - an ocean of tears.

At the same time as this release of the worlds of accumulated guilt and grief of many lifetimes was going on, there was the "voice" in the background, ever soothing, ever calming, intoning over and over again: "It's not your fault. There is no blame. It's not your fault. You didn't know." And I came to understand something very deep.

I understood that there is no "original sin." I understood that the terrors and suffering mankind experiences here in life on earth is NOT the result of some sort of "mistake" or "error" or aberration. It is not punishment. It is not something that one can be "saved" from for I understood that every scene of terrible suffering and heart-rending cruelty was the RESULT OF IGNORANCE.

It is easier to see this idea when you think about something such as the Crusades or the Inquisition. You can trace the path of twisted reason that led from the idea of the Love of God, to the idea of imposing that view of the Love of God on others "for their own good." And, taken to an extreme, it even can result in torture and murder in the ideas of a person who TRULY LOVES! Forget for a moment about those who just viciously used such philosophies for their own gain and political maneuvers. Think for a moment about the sincerity of the philosophies behind such events. But, it is based on IGNORANCE. But, even beyond that, those who were seemingly out for gain and self aggrandizment were operating out of ignorance - fear and hunger of the soul that cannot be satisfied. It is only a matter of degrees, but in the end, it is only ignorance.

When the flow of energy, images and tears finally began to subside, the sensation of warm, balmy liquid that was almost airy in its lightness, and so sweet that to this day, I can still remember the piercing quickening of the fire of love for all of creation. It was ecstatic, rapturous and exultant all at the same time. I was lost in wonder, amazed and at the same time bewildered at this vision of the world.

Well, the result of this event was a state of prolonged "elevation," or "loving peace" that persisted for a very long time. You could even say that the effects reverberate to the present time because never again was I ever able to pass judgment on another no matter how wicked their deeds. I could see that all so-called "evil" and "wickedness" was a manifestation of ignorance and that there is no person, no matter how holy and elevated they may think they are in this life, who has not reveled in the shedding of another's blood in some other time and place. The original denial of responsibility by Cain when he cried out "Am I my brother's keeper?!" belongs to all.

But there was another significant point. Ignorance is a CHOICE, and it is a choice that is made for a reason - to learn and grow.

And that realization led to another - to learn how to truly choose - to be able to learn, at this level of reality, what is and isn't of ignorance - what is of truth and beauty and love and cleanliness. But, of course, I understood that it was like the saying of Jesus that some things are bright and shining on the outside, but inside they are filthy and full of decay. And I don't mean that I was seeing this negativity as something to be judged - I clearly understood its reason and place as modes of learning - but I was deeply inspired to seek out all I could learn about this world so as to best manifest what was of light.

I was so excited by this "revelation" that I wanted to go straight back to the church and tell everybody. At that point, the only people with whom we had any contact were members of the church we had attended. They were coming by occasionally to find out why we had sort of "dropped out," and these visits gave me the opportunity to talk about some of my "branching out" in terms of my spiritual experiences. In every single case, I was literally rebuked as having been duped by Satan. Boy, was I ever naive!

I thought about that a lot. I wondered if it could be so, if the whole drama of the visions, the actions of the minister who had been a wolf in sheep's clothing, could have been set up and dramatized just to deceive me. I was truly on the horns of a dilemma. On the one hand, if they were right and I had been deceived, then perhaps my soul was in peril. But, if they were wrong and I was right then what did that make of the whole basis of Christianity? If they were wrong, if they COULD be wrong in such a fundamental thing, how could anything about what they had built on this basic error be right?

This distressed me because, while I was ready to "adjust" my Christian position, I was not quite prepared to toss the whole thing out the window. I mean, after all, through all the years of study and investigation, it had been there in the background. When I took the position that I was questioning the existence of a god at all, that was altogether different. There I was asking a question. But, in deciding that Christianity was just simply wrong, foundationally wrong because if there was no original sin from which to be saved, there was no necessity for a savior, then that was an altogether different thing. It amounted to making a choice.

It was a matter that took a number of years to resolve. So, we will leave it there. What is important is that, from this experience forward, I was never again able to see sin in quite the same light. When I read about murderers and deeds of mayhem, I knew that these were things that I had participated in in times past, in my ignorance. When anyone did something that hurt me, I knew that I had done such things as well. I could no longer feel any judgment or criticism of anything or anybody because I knew that, at some place and time, it was myself I was judging. It had been a learning process, and I grew from each experience. I learned what NOT to do by doing it. And, in a very real sense, this is the reason for pain and suffering. It is like an automatic guidance system that keeps a person on the path of learning. But the trick is to be able to discern the difference between choosing a path that gives immediate physical comfort, and then leads to great psychic or soul pain, and a path that may be physically uncomfortable temporarily, that then leads to peace of the heart.

I suppose that you could say, in a sense, that I had accomplished a good part of the objective of the "love path," but it was not that simple. I was still a very ordinary human being trying to function in the "real world" with real children and real events to contend with and some sort of balance had to be achieved between knowing that everyone is at some stage of learning and avoiding being part of their lesson. That was something that took some time. Had I not had children, I might have simply withdrawn from the world to spend the rest of my life in studious contemplation and repetition of ecstatic exercises.

What actually happened in the "real world" of practical affairs at this point, was a series of events that could be considered more or less ordinary, but in light of the previous trend of events in conjunction with my inner state and activities, can be looked at in a more "miraculous" light. We might even say that they were a direct reflection of the shift in my perspective.

Suddenly, my (ex) husband was offered a congenial job. This happened actually because the man who offered it found himself needing help operating his business because he had "suddenly" decided to expand and found it to be too much to handle. He actually thought of my ex specifically, asked around to find where we had moved to, and drove out in the boondocks to make this offer. At the time, I didn't relate these external events directly to the "shift" in my state, but I was certainly grateful. So, the main worries about being able to live from one day to the next were solved.

Then, a friend who owned a business that included a fleet of trucks decided that it was time to get new ones, perhaps to be able to write it off on his income tax, and offered to sell us one (with very low mileage) for less than a fifth of its market value.

We added onto the "cabin," doubling our living space, installed electricity and plumbing, and basically returned to the "real world." Of course, by this time I had already had to sell my piano and all the jewelry that had been given to me over the years by friends and family before my marriage. If I hadn't, there were times that there would have been no food to eat or no Christmas for the children,

I resumed doing hypnotherapy which had been abandoned during the "faith trip," and began to learn Spirit Release techniques.

It was at this point, also, that my mother "woke up" from her "spell" and realized how horribly she had behaved. It was too late to salvage the business or the real estate that had been sold to keep her "friend" happy, but she did sign back over to me the house I had inherited from my grandparents, from which she had evicted us several years earlier when my grandmother died. In the meantime, she had mortgaged it heavily, so I don't think her motives were entirely selfless because the only thing I could do was sell it. But, I was able to utilize what funds were left after the mortgage was satisfied to buy a house that was big enough for our growing family. But none of that is relevant, so we will leave it.

But even before the move, something else happened. About three years after the birth of my fourth child, a long-time friend of mine who had observed the events of my life from the sidelines without judgment or comment, decided that I needed to "get away" from it for a little break. I had never been away from my children for more than a few days - generally in the hospital - and I was not very comfortable with the idea of it, but the particular "vacation" being proposed was one that was hard to resist.

My friend and her husband owned a vacation home in North Carolina, and we had long followed the work of Al Miner who channels an entity calling itself "Lama Sing." There was to be a meeting of the many people interested in this work in Maggie Valley, organized by a physician and his wife who were close friends of Al. There was going to be lectures, group meditations, dinners and so on. It sounded like not only a lot of fun, but also a path to "something," though I was not sure what. I agreed to go.

At the "symposium," everything was going along as might be expected at such an affair. People were claiming to be seeing auras; folks were wandering around with ecstatic expressions on their faces pronouncing sagely on the "wonderful energy present," and the talks were both lively and interesting.

Then, the doctor's wife - the couple who had sponsored and organized the event - who was, I believe, a psychotherapist or counselor in some capacity, gave a talk about the many people who were coming forward at the time with "reincarnational memories" of the holocaust. This had the most unusual effect on me of producing an uncontrollable spell of crying. I had to leave the room and hide in a stall in the ladies lavatory until this particular talk was finished. I really thought I was losing my grip because NOTHING had ever affected me that way in public! Heck, not only do I NOT wear my heart on my sleeve in the presence of others, I don't even dance in public because I have always felt that, for me, it was undignified!

But then, on the last day of the symposium the headache came. When my friend left to go to a group meditation, I stayed behind in the darkened motel room with cold towels and ice on my head trying to reduce the swelling. Fortunately this time, by the next morning when we were to all meet for a farewell breakfast, the pain had subsided sufficiently for me to be able to pack and otherwise function normally.

At breakfast, one of the ladies at our table remarked to me that the dress I had been wearing at the meditation the previous day was VERY lovely. I looked at her in surprise and said that I hadn't gone because I had been ill. She looked back at me and said, "but I saw you clearly and I am NOT mistaken!"

My friend assured her that I had been in bed, so we all looked at one another and, after an awkward silence, the chatter began again. But I was pretty puzzled by this.

At the symposium, we had met two ladies who were elderly, but very spry and hugely entertaining and funny to talk with. One of them had had some training in hypnosis and advanced meditative techniques, and my friend and I discussed inviting them back to her vacation home where we planned to go for a few days before setting out for home. They agreed that we would have some fun, go digging for rocks at one of the local public "mines," and just generally have a "hen party."

After driving all day into the mountains, we arrived at the house which was quite isolated and located at the end of an old logging road on the edge of the Nantahela National Forest. It was completely peaceful and delightful and perfect for our "experimental" meditations.

Our new friend (let's call her June) was going to direct a "guided" meditation accompanied by musical "tones" on tape. We all found comfortable places, and the instructions began. I remember following the breathing part, and "tuning in" to the musical tones, but from that point, it seems my inner consciousness had plans of its own.

I felt myself lift out of my body and "shoooop!" I was suddenly sort of "hovering" before a rock face on the side of a tall mountain. But there was a sort of "crack," or cleft in the rock. I knew that only very few people could pass through this narrow opening, and attempting it without being "one of those who can," would result in a sort of "shock," but I decided to try. I sort of "aimed" for it with volitional intent, and the next thing I knew I was emerging on the other side at the edge of a beautiful valley. There were meadows of green grass and wildflowers of incredible luminescence and "livliness." The grasses were waving back and forth in the breeze, so it would seem, though this breeze was a sort of "conscious" caressing of the grass and the waving of the grass was a sort of "conscious" response to the caress much like a cat purrs when stroked.

I found myself in a sort of body, and began to walk through this grass which "received" my steps, caressing my feet and legs as I merged with it at every step. It sort of "passed me along," rather than me walking "through" it. There was a striped tent a short distance before me with banners flying from the posts in the "consciously caressing" breeze, but it was on the other side of a small river. I knew that this tent was where I was going, though there was no sensation of "supposed to go." I was curious as to how it was going to feel when I stepped into the water of the river.

I looked at the water which was crystal clear and sparkling in the bright "sunlight," though there did not seem to be a sun in the sky, exactly. You could say that the jumping and dancing light on the water was a sort of "conscious" interplay between this ambient, intense light and the water itself.

I stepped into the water, noticing that my feet were bare and that I seemed to be wearing some sort of white under-robe with a striped over-robe which I hoisted out of the water with my hands. I was surprised to feel the current moving so swiftly, yet giving the sensation of a "merging" with my feet. The sensation can only be described as "delicious" to my feet! I was fascinated by the glittering, jewel-like stones at the bottom of the river. They were smooth, yet constantly flashing with the movement of the water across them. I walked across the river aware that this was an intense experience that had some deep significance. When I reached the other side, I was both glad that I had "passed" some sort of test, as well as regretful that the experience was over.

I approached the tent and there were two men sitting under an "outer" tent that was open sided like a porch, on a carpet spread on the grass in front of the tent. They were also dressed as I was. The tent was striped in the same pattern as the stripes of the "over robes," and the colors of the stripes were red, white and black with a constantly repeating thin border to each stripe of lapis blue.

One of the men spoke to me saying: "We have been waiting for a long time. There is joy in seeing you again."

For some reason, this didn't strike me as unusual. I had the feeling that this "meeting" had been arranged a very long "time" ago. I bowed and acknowledged the greeting. Then, the other one said "He is inside." That, too, was not unexpected. I ducked my head to enter the tent and there was a man, an old man with "young" skin like irridescent porcelain, standing inside. His expression upon seeing me was absolute happiness and satisfaction. He embraced me strongly and kissed me on both cheeks, tears coming to his eyes. "We will break bread first." He said. Again, this was not a surprise and there was no question in my mind as to what "first" might mean though I didn't know!

We sat down on the carpeted ground inside the tent around a small table. The two men outside came in with bowls of bread and milk. There was a golden goblet on the table already filled with something like wine. A large loaf of bread was broken into equal pieces by the old man and each of us was handed a piece. We dipped it in the milk and ate. Then the goblet was taken up by the old man, who passed his hands over it, blew on it, drank from it, and passed it to me. At that moment, I became aware that they were all watching me and I knew that drinking was another test. I drank and expressions of happiness were evident on all their faces.

Then the old man stood up and went through a door into an "inner" room in the tent, and I knew that I was also supposed to follow. I did. In this room was a golden chest about the size of a large breadbox. He went to it and opened it taking out a large necklace. Now, this necklace was about the strangest thing I have ever seen. It was made up of a series of balls of gold that were graduated like a strand of pearls would be, only the smallest was about the size of a playing marble and the largest, in the center, was about the size of a ping-pong ball. Suspended at the center was a figured gold object set with a large stone. The figure of the piece consisted of two spiralling horns similar to Ram's horns mounted to the side of the flat surface on which the stone was fixed. The flat surface was strange in that it was both "circular" yet "triangular." How it could be both, I cannot say, but it was. The "circular" part of it seemed to be a function of the stone which was rounded like a ping-pong ball cut in half. But it was the characteristics of the stone that fascinated me. Imagine a combination between a diamond and an opal and you have some idea of what it was like. It was milky yet crystalline, flashing fire and colors like an opal, yet brilliant and transparent like a diamond. The "living nature" of this stone was apparent, and I was in awe of it.

The old man turned to me and looked at me long and carefully - searching my eyes for something. He held the necklace in both hands, suspended in air as he did so and finally said: "You understand?" I replied, "yes." And the understanding that was instantly "opened" to my mind was that, if I accepted the stone, there were "consequences." The consequences were that any manifestations of falseness in me would "turn on" me and destroy the instrument in which I was operating; i.e. the physical body of my present incarnation. It didn't matter if they were unintended. I was being charged to seek out and speak only truth with no latitude for subjective "wishful thinking."

With this understanding passed to me the enormous responsibility and risk I was accepting. It was sobering, awe inspiring and even a little frightening. But the fear passed quickly. "You accept?" the old man asked. "I do." I replied and bent my head to receive the stone. He placed it carefully around my neck, adjusting the fit at the shoulders so that the stone should rest exactly at the base of my breastbone.

I was embraced again, and pased out of the inner room to the outer where the two other men were waiting. When they saw the stone, their faces lit up with joy and they clasped their hands together and bowed as I passed. I signalled them with my eyes as I did so, knowing that I could no longer speak in that realm.

The next thing I knew, I could hear June's voice calling my name over and over again at a great distance. Like a rocket, I shot through the cleft in the rock and found myself over the mountain where the house was that held my mortal body, and then I was in the body, coming back as though emerging from a dark tunnel into the light of this world. I opened my eyes and my friends were looking at me and laughing that I had "gone to sleep!"

I tried to say that something very extraordinary had happened, but words failed me. I found that I could not really describe this experience in anything but the most prosaic terms and they were making great fun of it, so I decided that I shouldn't talk about it and kept the most of it to myself. They did ask what the stone was when I tried to describe it, and the only thing that came to my mind was that it was called The Speaking Stone.

I should mention that, shortly after beginning meditation practice, I had begun to experience a strange anomaly. "Things" would break in my presence with no apparent "cause." Things like drinking glasses, lamp chimneys (remember, we were living for some time with no electricity), and so forth. I had attempted to try to explain this as "rapid shifts in temperature" such as occurs when you pour boiling water into a glass, but that didn't really work in the summer time, when there was nothing in the glass, and the lamp chimney had been sitting unused all day. Another thing to shove under the rug.

But, on the trip down from the mountains on the way home, I was thinking about the stone and how I was going to cope with this "condition" on my existence in my relations with my (ex)husband, and at that very instant, the back window in my friend's new car exploded with a loud noise like the shot from a cannon. We were both so startled that she slammed on the brakes and we quickly looked around. She looked in the mirror and I turned my head and we both saw the window this way at the same time. It was all milky with the fractures of tempered glass which breaks into little "balls." And just at that moment, it began to rain. We looked in directions and there wasn't another car in sight and no apparent place that a missile could have come from. And, in fact, there didn't seem to be any "impact point." The whole window was still in one piece, but completely covered with those lines of fracture. It was thus impossible to see through.

Swell! There we are, driving along with about 4 hundred miles to go, with a shattered rear window and a pile of luggage and souvenirs in the back seat! But, the window seemed to be holding, and we kept moving, though slowly. At some point we wanted to check the situation out, so when we came to a place to pull off, a closed gas station, we turned in. The instant we hit the bump of the end of the pavement, the whole window fell in on the seat in a pile of thousands of little glass balls!

Well, there wasn't much to do except find a place to stay, cover the car until morning, and then go from there. We found a motel where the owner very kindly allowed us to put the car in his own garage and the next day we drove to the nearest city with a car dealer affiliated with the maker of the car.

The car was repaired, but the mechanics were completely baffled. They could come up with absolutely no explanation as to why the window would suddenly shatter.

A related incident occureed not long after I was back home. By this time, we had a new bedroom built onto our "cabin," which had now become a house, and the room was lined on two sides with large plate glass windows that measured four feet by six. The house was in the middle of a grove of trees and it was like having the outdoors "inside." The head of the bed was against one of the walls of glass and I really enjoyed this room, especially when it rained.

I was meditating on the bed, and my (ex) husband came into the house forgetting to catch the screen door to prevent it from slamming shut with the spring attached to it. When it slammed, I felt an internal "jerk" and the next thing I knew, the window at the head of the bed exploded exactly as the window at the back of the car had done some months before. Again, it was tempered glass, and it was a moment before the balls began to start falling, slowly at first, then all at once, collapsing in a pile on top of me.

Needless to say, at that point, my (ex)husband became just a bit more cautious in his actions designed to "jerk my chain." He was already wary of the dozen or so shattered glasses and lamp chimneys that had gone before, but this was taking the thing to a new level. Heck, who knows? Maybe he was thinking I was some kind of witch! But it was creating a great distance between us because it frightened him.

I have to admit that I was sometimes a bit frightened also. I didn't know what was happening to me and around me. I only knew that I was on some sort of "path" and I could only do as I did because to do otherwise was in a strange way, impossible. I thought of it as a sort of "walking on water." In my mind, I was out in the middle of a vast ocean and there was a certain path for me, but each step was an act of both faith as well as judicious consideration of probabilites. I had a pretty good idea of where the "supports" that were hidden just under the surface of the water were, but I was not allowed to see them before I put my foot forward for the next step. I knew that, at any moment, I might find that my step was NOT met by the support structure, and I would plunge into the waves.

So much for strange experiences while meditating.

So, we jump over a few years to the time that is chronicled in both Amazing Grace and the St. Pete Times piece where I had gone through the "wake up experience" of the Flying Black Boomerangs - another great inner shift. The reader will notice that no single experience was the "last word." Things happened in stages and by degrees over years of time. And that, of course, implies that the process is ongoing. As I noted in Amazing Grace, it was at this point that my physical system broke down completely. My state of functionality had been precarious for years, and now it became a primary issue.

I continued to force myself to function by sheer will, (the way of the fakir?), but I could see that the trend was definitely downhill and I knew that if something didn't change I was going to die. I knew I would die because the will in me was gradually being eroded away by the constant pain. I couldn't stand on my feet for more than a few minutes at a time because the pelvic and lower back pain would make all my muscles go into a spasm that would end in spastic release because the muscles refused to support me at all. The muscles that are used to erect the body, assist in transitioning from sitting to standing, and lifting the legs to walk were involved, and all of those activities - ordinary as they are - were greatly hindered. I needed assistance in and out of chairs, in and out of bed, in the bathroom, in and out of the tub and so on.

However, as long as I was sitting still and didn't try to move, I was fine. And my brain hadn't died, so I continued to read and study to divert my mind, and schedule hypnosis sessions. My ex-husband saw this as "malingering." He complained that I could do what I "liked to do," i.e. read or do hypnosis sessions for other people, but I wasn't doing anything for him, i.e. attend to his physical needs. I was stung and deeply hurt by this because if it hadn't been for reading and my work, I would have felt completely useless; I would have been a vegetable.There were times when I wished that I had no family who would be damaged or hurt if I just ended it all. The angina was so constant a condition that I actually had fantasies of a madman with an axe breaking into the house and chopping my arm off thereby giving me relief. The doctor was baffled by it, and finally suggested that it might just be nerve damage and that doing carpal tunnel surgery was an option that might clear it up. Naturally, he didn't really explain why the pain was in the upper arm and chest area, but go figure. I was desperate and went to have it done.

When I woke up after surgery that was supposed to have been on my LEFT wrist, BOTH wrists were bandaged up like boxing gloves. I was completely horrified! How was I going to do anything with both hands like that. And the pain was close to the worst I have ever experienced. It was worse than having a baby; in the same category as the headaches and ear infections. I was not prepared for that. And it didn't go away as the doctor said it would. The surgery also hadn't done anything to relieve the arm pain. So I was worse than before; and now I was almost completely helpless. I didn't even have the strength in my hands to turn a door knob or take the lid off a jar or hold a potato to peel it. I couldn't lift a pot from the stove, I couldn't even hold a pen or pencil for longer than a minute without being gripped by an agonizing spasm which resulted in my hand turning into a quivering, spastic claw right out of a horror movie. Forget playing the piano. Wasn't ever gonna happen again.

That was pretty depressing. And, for some reason, my (ex)husband took some sort of perverse pleasure in torturing me with the situation. I was constantly reminded that if I wanted anything done that I wanted, I would just have to figure out how to do it myself.

So we find that the situation had "improved" in many ways, reflective of a change in the inner state, but obviously, there was more that needed to be done. I had no idea what, and was not even able to articulate in my mind that this was what was happening. I was aware of the fact that our bodies reflect some "state of the soul," the condition of the "Speaking Stone," but try as I would, I could not find the door to heal my own soul so that my body would begin to heal as well. The only thing I could figure was that there must be something more, something deeper, something I wasn't seeing. I knew that somehow my ignorance was playing a part, but of what was I ignorant? What, in the name of God, was I doing wrong?!

I had seemingly achieved a state of love and acceptance for all people, for all paths, for all who struggled in ignorance. I was working as hard as I could (and even in my state of physical deterioration, it was considerable) to "fix" things for those who asked. I never turned down a request for help from anyone whether they could pay anything or not. I was not "in it for the money." I was, in a certain sense, in as bad a situation as I had been when the "voice" had told me that I must "learn" about evil. Well, I was trying. I was trying to learn how to identify it. What I didn't know, and was about to learn was that very often, that which manifests as light and truth is NOT, it is a deception to folly. This was the still "unlearned" part of the "love lesson." I had already had the lesson that large religious organizations could be a pathway to destruction, what I didn't know was just how subtle and torturous this deception could be and how it manifested on an individual, personal basis.

In early 1994, I had a conversation with Frank in which he enumerated for me the string of strange, synchronistic and even quite miraculous events that had brought me to the place where I now was. He cited point after point down through my entire life story, with which he was familiar, right up to the past few years when the bizarreness and synchronicities had increased to the point that I felt like I was living in a madhouse where normal reality no longer held sway, and the formerly solid earth of my reference system was crumbling beneath my feet. With each point he made, I felt like another wave was washing over my foundation of sand, and I was sinking into the mire of complete lunacy. How can you deal with a life that has gone completely over the edge in terms of strangeness that you neither wish to experience, nor do you wish to perpetuate?

After going over most of my life, Frank came to the more recent times and pointed out how the UFOs had come with the first "abduction" session I had done, and that clearly this was an unusual phenomenon. Not everyone who might be an abductee under hypnosis attracts a whole flap of UFOs. The question was: was it the abductee, or the therapist in whom the denizens of UFO land were interested? I didn't like the way the conversation was going. Then he pointed out the obvious (to him) connection between my deteriorating physical state and my own UFO encounter. When I protested that there may be no relation at all, he pointed out how my dog had suffered and died within a very short time after this "exposure" and how my symptoms always seemed to peak at exactly the time of night that the UFO had come along. What was my explanation for that little item? I had none.

Frank's theory was that the whole drama of recent times was that the whole drama that spread across several counties and included dozens of people, most of whom I didn't even know, was "staged" to get my attention; to wake me up.

I did NOT like the direction the conversation was taking. Like the wet nightgown and the strange lights, I was really struggling to shove this one under the rug.

"Why meeee?" I wailed. I felt a huge pressure on my chest (the "Speaking Stone?") at the very thought. "What am I supposed to DO?!"

At that point, Frank had run out of theories. "I have no idea," he said. "I am just pointing out the obvious. "I guess you have to figure the rest out on your own."

I remember clearly sitting on my bed that night, thinking about these strange "hints" that there was something deeper to our reality than I might have supposed in my years of research and work. The only problem was, as I pointed out smugly to God, I was too sick to do anything. "You blew it, Buckwheat!" I told him. "If there was ever anything you wanted me to do, you let me suffer too much for too long! So there!" I mentally stuck out my tongue in defiance and resentment.

There I was, as non-functioning as a human being can be and still appear to be functional. But an overwhelming sensation of "purposefulness" behind it all swept over me and I immediately regretted my childish resistance. So I resigned to it, accepted it, and told God that if all of these things were being orchestrated to get my attention, it had surely worked, but I was too far gone to pick up the ball and run with it. "If I am supposed to DO anything about it, you gotta fix me up here," I said. "As I am, I can do nothing."

Within two weeks - actually more like 10 days - I found Reiki. Or Reiki found me.

 

Chapter 17