The Wave Chapter 16: All There Is Is Lessons, or Laura Finds Reiki and Ends Up in the Soup… Pea Soup, That Is

Laura Finds Reiki And Ends Up In the Soup… Pea Soup, That Is

Remember what I said above:

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.

What this meant, in practical terms, was that I had expanded my concepts to the more or less standard New Age version of “Unconditional Love” — that one loves everyone and everything and surrounds the self with love and light in meditation or affirmation on a daily basis, and just sort of sails along through life in the belief that if you believe in love and light and that everything is love and is to be loved, then that is what you will experience.

It also means forgiveness in wider terms: a constant “canceling out of the other person’s weaknesses” because, in the grander scheme of things, no one has weaknesses! They are simply who and what they are and it is our job to love them and get along — go with the flow; accept everything and everybody as they are and hang out together in one grand orgy of love and light! What else are you going to do with the realization that there is no original sin, that all are one?

That sort of does sound like what my experiences were teaching me, yes?

Yes and no.

But, again, to give a practical example of how the next lesson transpired, we go back to the events of the “school,” i.e., my life.

The day after my little “talk with God”, a letter arrived in my mother’s mail, and she called me to come and have a look at it. It was from a local retiree organization which was offering a course in home health nursing to retired people who were physically fit and able, and who wanted a new career that would get them out of the house, make them useful, end their boredom, and pay them money to boot! What a deal! To my mother, it sounded too good to be true. It was entirely free to retirees, all supplies, including uniforms, provided; even transportation to and from the site of the course was to be provided. Those who were interested were supposed to call right away and reserve a place in the class.

Mother was pretty excited about this opportunity for action and involvement in the world again. I agreed that if she wanted to have a new career that she ought to do so. So, she called and discovered that she was among the last few to be accepted since there had been such overwhelming response to the offer. Not a surprise.

About a week into this course Mother told me that a lady in her class had invited her to an open-house on the following Wednesday evening and she felt obligated to attend since this lady had sought her out in the class to share their lunch breaks, and had spent so much time being friendly and agreeable. The thing was that she needed me to drive her to this evening affair. I was happy to see her “get a life”, so to speak, so I was all for helping her in her new pursuits. No problem.

At that point in time, after the UFO experience, which had brought all my health issues to a crisis state, I had to be very careful to budget my energy so that I could get done in any given day what was essential. Still, even with taking such care, I often had little energy for anything. I had been forced to cut way back on doing hypnosis sessions, using the in-between days to recover. And every night I was plagued with almost constant angina and the swelling of the eyes and mucous membranes of the throat, which I interpreted as allergy overload; I was living on Benadryl, which worked to alleviate some of the symptoms, but had the side effect of knocking me out. Not a very nice way to be living. I was about as minimally functional as a human being could be and still appear to be functioning normally! It was certain that no one could look at me and see anything wrong, but I was trapped in a body that seemed to be like a machine with one circuit after another shorting out or burning up. (Of course, it never occurred to me that new circuits were being formed, but that was a realization that would only come later.)

So, mother had this invitation, and I planned for it so as to be able to provide her with transportation. But, on the day it was supposed to happen, I was in so much pain and I was so exhausted that I just didn’t see how I was going to be able to do it. Mother knew the state I was in and didn’t push it. Somewhere around the middle of the afternoon, I collapsed on the bed and fell right to sleep. I awakened a couple of hours later — amazingly — feeling almost normal! I remembered that I was supposed to do something and I looked at the clock and saw that I had just enough time to collect mother and take her to her open house. I called her and told her that I was feeling better and she should get ready, as I would be there in a few minutes.

When we arrived at this open-house affair, I was not quite sure what was going on. There were about fifteen people standing around with their hands resting on individuals who were lying on three massage tables. There was incense burning and New Age music playing in the background, and some of the folks were standing with their eyes closed in meditative tranquility. I wasn’t sure if I had stepped into a new version of the fundamentalist “laying on of hands” deal or what!

Being a person who tries to find a balance between good manners and my curiosity (which sometimes makes for funny situations I can tell you!), I settled in a chair after the introductions were made and asked something to the effect of, “What exactly, are y’all doing here, and what is the idea behind it and the precise procedure being followed?” No reason to beat around the bush! I expected something like, “We are praying,” or, “We are meditating on wellness,” or something like that. But instead, the answer was “we are channeling Reiki.”

Okay. “What is Reiki?”

The various participants recounted the whole story of Dr. Usui to me as they stood there with their hands on the patients. Every movement and placement of the hands was explained to me, and as it went on, I became more and more skeptical. I mean, out of all the healing methods I had heard or read about or tried, this was truly the most nebulous and least likely! It seemed patently ridiculous to me that someone could “initiate” or “attune” another person in some way so that they had new powers to channel energy to another person that was supposed to be so amazing and miraculous! I expected them to say next that Reiki could help you walk on water! When that one came, I was gonna be outta there! I was urged to give it a try, but managed to decline almost gracefully. I would have felt perfectly silly on that table with five people laying their hands on me for 45 minutes or so. Wasn’t gonna happen!

But I was working at being polite and gentle in my skepticism and soon the conversation turned to astrology — safe ground for me — and I mentioned in passing that I had a computer program that did pretty good charts, so the woman who was holding the Reiki open house offered me a trade: three Reiki treatments in exchange for an astrological chart.

How dense can you be? I was wondering how bright this gal was since she was offering me several hours of her time and effort in exchange for a few minutes of data entry and printing! Didn’t seem too fair to me but I figured if she was silly enough to be convinced that she could “channel healing energy” to me through her hands, and was willing to go to that length to do it, I was game for the test. I was convinced that it would be another flop, but I also had the thought that maybe it was her way of getting a chart done that she otherwise could not afford. So, to “save face” for her, I agreed. An appointment was made for the following day, and sure enough, she showed up.

So, there I was, in such lousy condition that I actually had to be assisted to lie down on the massage table that was set up in my living room. And more embarrassing, I fell asleep during the treatment! When she had put her hands on me all I could really feel, (and I was paying close attention with a lot of skepticism), was warmth that didn’t seem to be much more than the normal heat that would be evident when one person puts their hands on another. But the real surprise was to come when I got off the massage table at the end of the treatment. I could barely stand! I was so dizzy it was quite literally like being drunk! When I tried to walk I had to hold onto the furniture and walls to keep from falling down. I had to be helped to my bed where I collapsed and closed my eyes. But that didn’t help because I had the exact same sick, spinning sensation that comes with having had a bit too much to drink! When I opened my eyes and tried to focus on the ceiling and walls, they spun dizzyingly as though I had been a child spinning in circles and then fallen to the ground to watch the sky and clouds keep moving. I was really concerned that something was going completely berserk with my system and I hoped it would pass. I was nauseated and felt a creeping tingling just exactly like being drunk! I just tried to breathe deeply and stop the spinning into the void in my head and soon fell asleep.

That night I slept better than I had in over 18 years. But it wasn’t until well into the next day as I was unloading the dryer when I suddenly realized that my back didn’t hurt. Not only that, but I realized that I had already done a lot more of my housework than I had been capable of doing in a very long time! I had just started tackling one chore after another, moving from one to the next, without noticing anything unusual. It wasn’t until I had been working for several hours that I realized that something was different. There was something missing here. It was the long familiar pain.

Now, for someone who has gotten used to functioning with pain; who has developed ways to maneuver through life accommodating this pain; and who is never out of pain, this was so startling a realization that I actually sat down and began to mentally go over my body to discover if I didn’t feel some little familiar twinge here or there. There was no pain. I was sure that, at any moment, I was going to get slammed with it again so I got up carefully and continued with my work, constantly monitoring myself for the return of the pain. Actually, I think I even wanted the pain to return because otherwise, I would have to think that Reiki had worked! And we certainly could not believe that sort of nonsense! What a dilemma!

Now, the clear thing here is this: I did not expect the Reiki to work. Further, I expected the pain to return. But something objective was going on that I didn’t understand. I had become pretty convinced that what you think about or expect was what you experienced and that faith was an integral part of healing and I was working on digging up whatever might be buried in my own subconscious that was responsible for my suffering; which prevented me from having the faith to effect a healing; but, here I was, experiencing an effect in which I had had no faith of any kind. What is more, my skepticism about Reiki was rather deep rooted, yet it seemed that the Reiki had worked anyway. Or so we might think. What other explanation could there be? I actually began to cry with gratitude. Only those who have suffered long and constant pain can understand how I felt to not be in pain.

But, I was still on guard. Even though I had momentary relief, I expected the pain to return.

I had to go pick my daughter up and while we were driving home I told her about the pain being gone and that I thought the Reiki had done it. She laughed at me and said it only worked because I believed it would work. I pointed out to her that my belief had been exactly the opposite. And since that was the case, I was wondering now exactly what this Reiki business was.

Needless to say, it only got better. After two more treatments and the passing of a week, I was convinced that whatever was happening was working. I went to the open-houses regularly after this, not only was I healed of the back pain, the angina attacks lessened almost to non-existence, the swelling of the eyes and throat stopped entirely, my energy level soared and I was able to see more clients and be more active, which suited me fine! But still I was thinking that it wasn’t the Reiki itself, but was merely transference of energy that anyone could accomplish if they just stood around for 40 minutes with their hands on another person. So, even though I was receiving benefits, I had my own theory about what it was. Surely it was an absurdity to think that someone could confer this almost magical ability on another in some way! And, to make this point, I was anxious for the Reiki Master who had initiated my new friends to come to town for a scheduled class — which seemed to be the point of the open-house — to attract new students. I was going to bring all my powers of observation and skepticism to this new investigation. If there was anything to this Reiki business, I was going to find out. I had no intention of believing it unless there was more or less objective proof.

When the day arrived for the first initiation, I was there, “loaded for bear”, as they say, actively looking for some sort of hocus pocus or mumbo jumbo that would reveal the truth: that people were being charged large sums of money to be made to think they could channel Reiki, when the real effect was merely a natural energy flow that was available to all who had the patience to stand around with their hands on another person. The only thing I can say I felt during the attunement process was what seemed to be a sort of generalized rush of heat from my abdomen up through my head and a little popping sound in my head. But it was so nebulous that I considered it to be discountable as a subjective observation.

What happened later that night was surprising. We were told that, after the attunements, the body would experience some symptoms of adjustment such as excessive thirst and urination or even diarrhea. But what I wasn’t expecting was the fact that when I put my hands near any of my children I felt a clear and distinct rush of heat against my palms exactly like the sensation of a blow dryer. This rush would be felt before the hand was close enough to be able to detect the normal heat exchange between bodies. I would say that it occurred at about 6 inches. There was a distinct magnetic feeling to this heat; a feeling that was similar to the pulling you feel when you hold two magnets close enough together that they begin to act on one another. The first time it happened, I jerked my hand back as though I had been burned. And then I began to experiment with it. I would start moving my hand closer and closer until I could distinctly identify the point at which the sensation occurred, the attraction was felt, and then I would deliberately move my hand closer by very small degrees in order to feel the effect at every stage of nearness. It was definitely there. No question about it. And the kids could feel it also.

Later that evening I was sitting on the sofa and my son came to sit on the floor in front of me and leaned back against my legs. As soon as he did, I could feel the heat begin to pass from my legs to his body exactly like the blow dryer effect. Apparently this was not just restricted to the hands! It was a whole body thing going on here! We soon became so hot from this contact, in an air-conditioned room, that he complained, “Mom! It’s hot in here!” and moved away. By this time, we were both dripping with perspiration. It proved to be several months before this effect dissipated where the children were concerned. It continues to this day when I touch anyone who has an energy deficit. But I suspect that, after a time, the children became “energized”, and so no longer pulled energy as strongly. Of course, if one of them is ill, there is a drawing of energy, but nothing like there was at the time of the Reiki initiation. (Some time later when I took the Master Level attunements, my palms actually blistered and peeled for several weeks.)

So, the end result was that I realized that there seem to be objective realities in which no belief is necessary or required. If you know about, or have access to, these objective levels, you can discover those principles with which to align your actions for subjective results.

But, talking about Reiki per se is not the point here. It was the people involved and the lessons obtained from them. But it seems that the healing I obtained via Reiki was the “set up” in which the lesson played itself out.

This Reiki group was a pretty funny collection of people. The general outline of their affiliation, as far as I could determine, was that they all attended a local Metaphysical/Spiritualist church that had brought the Reiki Master in as part of their many program presentations. Apparently, they also arranged seminars of other teachings and were involved in promulgating many popular modalities such as Hawaiian Huna teachings, psychic surgery, Kabballah, Tarot classes, meditation classes, channeling classes, Native American shamanism classes, Sweat Lodges, and on and on and on. It was a veritable supermarket of New Age Goodies!

Now, having had my personal evidence of the usefulness of Reiki, I was pretty excited to see what else was on the menu! Heck, if that worked, who knows what things I had been passing by in the years that I had been a student and not a participant! A whole new world opened up for me here and I was ready to dive in! I had never been much of a joiner or a group person, but this Reiki crowd that met every Wednesday night was so wonderful and fun and had had such a profound effect on me in terms of healing that I knew that it was time to get over this little loner glitch in my personality. After all, I had found “my group”, or so it seemed.

I shared a little bit about my Spirit Release work with the group and they all nodded sagely that they knew all about such problems and their minister down at the Metaphysical Church had talked about such things, telling them that they had only to surround themselves with love and light and they were okay. I pointed out that some serious clinical research did not support this, but they assured me it was true. People only had attachments if they were not sufficiently adept at this “surrounding oneself with love and light,” and the only way to do that was, of course, to learn the proper techniques from such a teacher as the Great Reverend Ruth down at the church. Reverend Ruth also seemed to be an expert on about everything else, so I was pretty interested in meeting such a paragon. Not only that, but the Reiki attunements were supposed to “set the direction of energy flow” so that no negative energy could enter a person’s “auric field”. So, I no longer had to worry about attachments and so forth. I had become a veritable “light being” and any problems in my deep psyche or any idea of darkness in the outer world could not survive in such light! Wow! What a deal! I even had the idea that all future clients who came to me for spirit release should have the Reiki attunements to keep them protected from that point on. Heck, I wanted to give the whole planet Reiki! Having such a healing sure does get a person all fired up!

So, I was invited to the Church. Reverend Ruth, the “Maven of Mystery” was introduced to me by one of the Reiki group. I was a bit surprised at the adoring devotee manner that all of the Reiki people took on once they had entered the environs of the Church. And, I didn’t quite know what to make of Reverend Ruth sitting there in her wheelchair. But I felt a frisson of something cold when I looked in her eyes, and it almost seemed that there was something else in there for a moment looking back at me before it quickly retreated. And again, I doubted my perception. Surely the teacher of all these wonderful, loving people with whom I was now associated could not be less than holy! After all, hadn’t she been the wellspring from which Reiki, my salvation, had been drawn?

Just as in an ordinary church, the service included singing hymns. Well, that’s fine! I’m a hymn singer from way back — always my favorite part of going to church. The problem here was that the selection was a song that no one had ever heard before. Not only that, it was evident that the organist who selected it had never heard it either! To make the matter worse, the organist had only the most rudimentary skills with the instrument, and took so long to place her fingers on the keys in response to reading the notes, that the tempo was something akin to a funeral dirge mired in quicksand. The congregation — mostly women — was all waiting for each note to be able to follow. The note would come, obscured in a bass chord that was a lot like the bellowing of a rutting elephant, and the voices would all tremble into action trying to match the identified pitch… only to have the organist suddenly decide she had hit the wrong key, fumble to the right one, and then all the congregation would jerk their voices in mid-warble to the amended note. At least nobody was going to be hypnotized by this, I thought!

Fortunately, my sense of humor did not desert me, even though my aesthetic sensibilities were being savaged to the point that it was actually painful! Since I could not only read music, but could sing as well, I decided to help the situation out a bit by singing the correct notes, at the correct tempo, just loud enough so that the people around me could catch on and follow. I was hoping that this would help both the organist and the congregation to make it through this performance, bringing it to an earlier conclusion than the next ice age.

That part worked well enough, and soon everyone was getting it and singing along. The only problem was the organist was still lagging behind, and the singers were leaving her in the dust. The song was finished with grace and aplomb; but still the organist kept plodding along to her ill-timed and tardy finish. By this time, the entire congregation was struggling to suppress giggles and there was a lot of coughing into handkerchiefs to cover the outright laughter. The final chord was tortured out of the poor instrument, (the rutting elephant “scored”), and everyone sat down in relief wiping tears of laughter out of their eyes, in the perfect mood to get in the spirit. I sat down and glanced around to find Reverend Ruth glaring at me with all the friendliness of a coiled rattlesnake. So much for humor! She obviously had none.

The sermon was being delivered by a woman we will call “Hillary”, who channeled somebody or other who was supposed to be something like an Ascended Master or a dead dude (I have forgotten which). Hillary was a very sweet elderly lady with blue hair and wearing a print silk dress, looking for the entire world like anyone’s grandma. She just radiated grandmotherly comfort as she talked. She started off in a silvery tremulous voice talking about love and opening the “heart center” and so on. There were overtones of Helena Blavatsky and Alice Bailey in her descriptions of “planes and bodies” of the individual soul. As she got warmed up, her eyes began to glow with subtle power. Her voice became stronger and more urgent and the message turned to saving the world with this love that was supposed to manifest when one’s heart center was opened and connected via these “planes and bodies” which were to be activated through certain activities that were not clearly defined as yet. As she talked, she began to walk back and forth in an animated way. Every part of her body was being involved in the action — the words — the message. She was talking with her whole body.

Now the strange thing happened… as she was walking across the little dais in this animated delivery of love and light, she suddenly stopped, frozen for a moment, and sort of trembled slightly and then snapped to attention. She looked around the room at all the breathless, expectant faces — a cool-eyed assessment in the midst of the feverish anticipation of the audience. Her head suddenly snapped back and her “control” was in full control. Hoo, boy! Time to rock and roll!

I don’t know who this guy she was channeling was, but I can say that he was really good! He must have been a Pentecostal preacher in his last life. It was like being at an old time Southern Revival at its best. There was hooting and hollering and drama. Strutting and stomping and pounding on the podium. The only thing was, the message had changed ever so subtly. Most of the people in the room were hypnotized at this point by the drama they had been drawn into and didn’t realize what was going on, but I was remembering the Church I had attended with my ex-husband where I had been exposed to so many preachers of this type. I had already learned about this showmanship and the old “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” syndrome and I could see that here we were dealing with the same hypnotic factors that were at work in most Christian churches.

The message had gone from love and light and opening the heart, to guilt and chastisement for not being successful in giving enough love and light or opening the heart sufficiently, and this was to be rectified, of course, by more attendance of classes and meditation sessions, more giving of time, resources and most especially money. Attend church, give money, take classes, and get salvation. Simple formula. Nothing terribly unusual. Same song, different verse.

After the sermon was over, a couple of the people who were in Reverend Ruth’s channeling classes were going to demonstrate their “powers”. One of these was Trudy. I was watching with great interest to see how effective these classes might be.

Trudy put her hand to her head and tried to tune in. “There is someone here who has just received unhappy news…” she began. And, of course, in any group that is a pretty good guess; so the person who had just received an “unhappy” phone call raised her hand excitedly and said, “Yes, yes! Me! Me!” So, Trudy tuned in to her further and made a series of pronouncements that either evinced a nod or a puzzled look.

It was a pretty poor performance of cold-reading. Years ago I spent a lot of money checking out various readers and psychics in the area. I had quickly learned their form of reading cues in the face or response of the person in order to gradually weed out what did not apply, and then they were able to make a final, definite and “amazing” pronouncement of the facts that were bothering the individual at the end of this exercise in subtle probing.

Of course I had noticed that many times, things were “received” which were clearly out of the cold-reading loop, and quite accurate, but it was statistically no more or less amazing than two friends who have the same thought at the same time. No special rating as a psychic is needed. And my estimation was that everyone was psychic, to one extent or another, so “no cigar”.

The problem arises when the subject of a reading gives away the anticipated answer in their voice or the phrasing of the question. This enables the reader to know what the client wants to hear, and they feed this wishful thinking.

There were dozens of instances, when I was younger and playing with this sort of thing, that the reader would make “predictions” based on what the client wanted to hear, and because it was the desired thing, the person seeking the information felt en rapport with the reader and then ascribed to them all sorts of powers and abilities that simply were not there. Then later, when the prediction did not transpire as described, the individual was so invested in their belief of the powers of their chosen reader that they would go to all kinds of ridiculous extremes to excuse the failed prediction.

This is a very common situation. These failures are the clues we are given in these kinds of things, they are little alerts to the larger picture, but we tend to ignore them; to cover them up; to excuse them; to continue to believe what we like rather than what is true — simply because it matches our preconceived notions of how things would be if we were creating our own reality!

After Trudy was done with her rather embarrassing demonstration, another student that I did not know got up to do readings. For some reason, she picked me — probably because I was a new and unfamiliar face.

I had long ago schooled myself to be able to keep a poker face and a flat voice when checking out readers, so I kept my face a blank while at the same time providing ambiguous feedback such as “maybe”, or “it could be described that way,” and so on. At the same time, I was inwardly open to contact so that if there was a real talent going on here, there would be no deliberate blocking. I was trying to neither hinder the tuning in nor give anything away externally.

To make a long story short, the reading was worse than would have been accomplished by just random guessing. I was not impressed by the graduates of Reverend Ruth’s classes.

After this non-event, a healing circle was formed where everyone gathered around Reverend Ruth and her assistant, laying on hands, praying and giving “love and light” and energy. It was pretty much like any laying on of hands in a Pentecostal church. The only difference was, Reverend Ruth seemed to sort of swell from the contact. I wasn’t sure if my eyes were deceiving me, but everyone else was perfectly exhausted after the service, so something was draining them.

Again I was wondering why a service that was supposed to “feed” and “energize” a given flock, was actually doing the opposite.

On the drive home, I heard nothing but the praises of Reverend Ruth and her “great works”. And, now, since I was considered to be more a part of the group, it being assumed, I guess, that I had been taken in by the recent performance, a new thing was revealed to me. Apparently Reverend Ruth had a secret circle which admitted only those who had proven worthy or had passed certain tests administered in her many classes. The members of this inner group were promised that Reverend Ruth was going to give them many great secrets. My hostess had already signed up for the next series of lessons and sessions with the Great One in hopes that she would be able to pass the tests and be admitted to the inner group.

I said nothing, but I knew I didn’t want to go back to that church because it made me feel ill at ease and was clearly a waste of time. I couldn’t understand how the members of the Reiki group, which seemed to be so much more advanced than other groups I had encountered in past, could be so taken in by that drivel. But, on the other hand, maybe it was me who had the problem because it was clear to me that everyone involved in the Reiki group was certainly full of love and benevolence and good intentions.

The Reiki group was a gathering of people of many ages and backgrounds. “Louise”, the woman who had approached my mother with the initial invitations, was an older lady, of retirement age (otherwise she would not have been in the class) but she physically appeared much younger. She didn’t look a day over 35. She had a knockout figure and such a charming and feminine presence that you just had to be in awe of her ability to control by seeming not to do so! She had an almost breathy voice like Marilyn Monroe, gorgeous red hair and alabaster skin. She was also the one who had brought the idea of the original Reiki class to Reverend Ruth, having lived in Virginia Beach and spent some time with the A.R.E.¹ crowd up there, and that was where she had learned about Reiki and had taken her attunements. (It was impressed upon us that we were so fortunate to have our initiations from one of Takata’s original students since Reiki had later split and been corrupted after Takata’s death, but that’s another story.) Louise had spent most of her life working as a domestic on wealthy estates in the Northeast.

Then there was “Trudy” and her husband “George” who were also past retirement age. Trudy was a tall, rangy woman, more like a man in many of her characteristics than a woman. In the beginning, I thought she was very funny and engaging with her snappy comebacks and wry humor. But, as time went by, I began to see that there was a certain element of cruelty in her remarks, especially when addressing or talking about her husband. I wrote it off as great familiarity of people long married. And who was I to say that he hadn’t done things to invite such remarks? Maybe that was their way of showing affection? George was a retired businessman — owner of several patents and former owner of several factories. Trudy had been his secretary when they met, divorced their respective mates, and married each other. They were considered to be the wealthiest members of the group, and thus had some status.

There were several others of this older group who remain in the background, so need not be mentioned specifically — about 4 or 5 who were regulars. Two of them were nurses, and I can’t remember much about the others.

Then there was the younger contingent — some my age or a little younger — the most active being “Candy” and “Sandy”. In case the reader has not already guessed, “Candy” is the same as “Maryann” in the first section of High Strangeness. At the time I began writing these pages, I had no idea that I would end up talking about Candy in any terms other than to introduce the subject. I did not intend to get into the further details involved which include the name clues. Thus, she was given a pseudonym there that was simply a name pulled out of the air. In the present instance, since the name was part of the clue system, I have had to get more creative and select names that are more functional so to speak.

Sandy was an ex-bartender who had been “awakened” to spiritual issues by the death of her fiancé. After that, she decided to go to school to become a massage therapist and get out of the bar environment. Until much later, I didn’t know any more about her.

And last, there were the very young members, which included “Tim”. Tim was a very young fellow who seemed to be very advanced in the spiritual sense. It was unusual to see someone so young who was so devoted to helping others. He stated his religious affiliation as Wiccan, and this later proved to have some interesting effects.

As we continued to meet on Wednesday nights for Reiki sessions, a lot of conversation took place over the tables. Since Reiki really doesn’t require meditative focus or any kind of “Mumbo Jumbo” type concentration, we were all basically free to do two things at once — Reiki and talk. These conversations really ran the gamut when the topic was about our various experiences with spiritual development. I was a bit reluctant to talk about my own; but after awhile, I felt more comfortable sharing some of it with the others, and we were able to begin to form a real bond of closeness.

I very quickly brought the Reiki group up to date on my ideas about channeling and the experiment that was going on with Frank. One of the ladies from the older group pronounced balefully upon our selection of the board as an instrument, citing the movie The Exorcist as proof of its direful consequences.

I countered with the facts of the real case on which the movie was based which did not indicate that a board was the main player in the demonic possession, and further cited the fact that most of the greatest material in the history of channeling has either come through a board type instrument, or began with one.

Everyone began asking more and more questions about the experiment, so I told them all I could and also talked more about my hypnosis work. The subject of hypnosis led to my recent revelations about UFOs and abductions which had sort of set me up to be led to the Reiki crowd to begin with, and everyone had a really good laugh that I had to be chased by aliens before I found Reiki.

All were having a good time, and there was a lot of laughter and fun and playing around. Before I went home that night, I mentioned that if anyone wanted to participate in our experiment, they were welcome to come on Saturday nights when we sat for contact. Four or five of them were excited and agreed that they wanted to try it out so it was planned that they would come.

The next day, Candy called me and was very mysterious sounding when she said, “There is something I have to tell you and I don’t really know how, but you had better beware of Trudy.”

“What?” I said. “What do you mean?” A serpent in Reiki Eden?

Candy explained: it seemed that the previous night after I had left that Trudy had made very nasty remarks about me being a “know it all” and that anybody who participated in anything I suggested was definitely being taken in and led down the primrose path to destruction; words to that effect, anyway. I was terribly hurt because I don’t preach, but tend to share by describing my experiences and the research of others who are far more qualified than I am to give opinions.

“But you have to understand,” Candy continued. “Trudy is like a mother to the rest of us. She’s just being protective. She means well, but she’s from the old school. She grew up with Cayce and all that. She likes the robes and rituals and things. Reverend Ruth is even saying that she is sort of preparing Trudy to take over the Church, so of course she feels responsible for all of us like we were her own children.”

The upshot of the whole conversation was that Candy wanted me to be careful what I talked about to Trudy and the others because they were old fashioned and narrow minded, even if they meant well. It was a maneuver designed to spare their feelings. This, of course, was deemed proper in my mind because it was part of the “love and light” philosophy of acceptance. At the same time, Candy wanted to participate in our experiment and also to have some hypnosis sessions done to speed up her spiritual advancement, since she had in mind that she was destined to be the next Jeane Dixon. Apparently Reverend Ruth had told her that she was showing promise to be admitted to the deeper lessons, but not yet. And Candy was sure that she was ready and that it was just more of the old fashioned, narrow mindedness of the older crowd who weren’t part of the New Paradigm of very advanced souls in young bodies. They just didn’t understand how fast people were able to progress in the present urgent time.

I wasn’t sure that I agreed with her all the way on her ideas that she was supposed to move so rapidly, but I reserved judgment until I could make a better assessment. But at least there was a reasonable explanation for the funny undercurrent that I had sensed at the church — the old fashioned attitude of the older folks as opposed to the younger ones. It made perfect sense. I could finally get some rest from the worrisome little glitches. And I also knew that Trudy was deeply involved there with the church itself. I didn’t know what to make of the “robes and rituals” remark, because I hadn’t really seen anything of that specific nature there, but I let it pass. Another thing that was clear from this conversation was that Candy wanted to be my friend and have a much closer friendship than just the once weekly Reiki meeting.

Candy was a lot of fun! She was always laughing and joking and mimicking other people’s little foibles in the most hilarious way. She could tell a story so that you were reduced to holding your sides from laughing so hard while the tears would stream down your face with glee at her portrayal of everyone’s little egotistical hang ups. It was always prefaced by, “You know I love so-and-so, but…” It was “all in good fun”, and she didn’t mean any harm!

But I wondered. If she was saying all these things about other people, was she saying similar things about me to them?

Of course not! Candy was my friend. We had a special rapport which was in evidence from all the many, daily, synchronous events that occurred when we were in contact. I would be talking to someone about something, or thinking about something, and Candy would call and start talking about the same exact things. When we talked on the phone, there were strange clicks and buzzes on the line and after we had begun to investigate the parameters of her alien abductions via hypnosis, we joked that the government was eavesdropping on the line. I laughed at the thought of anybody tapping my line to see what we knew about aliens, because it was a certainty that we knew very little. But Candy was convinced that she had something they were after, that the objective of any surveillance was herself. She was even convinced that a man with whom she had interacted in a seeming abduction at about the same time I had been led to the Reiki group was a government agent sent to keep an eye on her. On the other hand, she felt that he was her soul mate and that he was being used to lure her into some kind of government conspiracy and it was her job to rescue him in some way.

The next Reiki night, I noticed a distinct tightness in Trudy’s face when I walked in the room and said hello. She was distant and cool in her manner. Because I had been primed by Candy to be more patient and understanding, I tried to be especially nice to her and defer to her ideas and opinions and keep my own to myself.

Meanwhile, Trudy and George seemed to be having problems. George stopped coming to the Reiki sessions. Trudy would spend the entire session telling us all how dreadfully George tortured her and how he played control games with finances and how tired she was of living in this hell. She needed to get away, so she went away to visit a friend.

One night shortly thereafter, Louise called me, asking if I could accompany her and Candy on a visit to George, who had called her for someone to talk to since he had been “abandoned” by his wife. Louise told us (on the way to his house) that she felt as if George had shown too much interest in her over the phone, so Louise didn’t want to upset Trudy by having a private visit with her husband, and that was why we were coming along.

At this little pizza and talk gathering, George broke down and began to cry and tell us a terrible tale of how abused by Trudy he had been for the past few years… how she had turned from a sweet, devoted wife to an abusive monster who had even physically threatened him and since he was now getting sick and old, he feared for his life. He was afraid she would kill him to have access to his money.

We listened in horror at the recitation of events and proofs that all was not well in that household. With every incident he recounted, one or the other of the three of us would suggest that perhaps there was just simply misunderstanding. He insisted that his life was in danger; that it was not just a misunderstanding.

With every complaint he made, one of the three of us offered something in the way of a solution, but every idea was turned aside by the fact that it was clear in his mind that she had some sort of “power” and he was helpless in the face of it; he even suspected she might try to poison him! But, in all, he seemed to be so afraid of her that he could do nothing but sit back and be killed by chemicals or mayhem! I was pretty disgusted with that attitude. I couldn’t grasp a person sitting there saying their life was in danger and being unable or unwilling to do anything about it but weep. So, I simply told him that if he really believed that he was in physical danger, he ought to just see an attorney and change the locks while Trudy was gone! That certainly seemed like a reasonable solution to me, if what he was saying was true. And he assured us in every breath that it was!

So, George had a good cry and finally was so encouraged that he said he was going to see an attorney the next morning. Everybody gave him sympathy and hugs, we all went home, and that was that. Crisis solved.

The next Reiki night, I walked in the room and Trudy saw me coming and stopped what she was doing and headed right for me. She stopped in front of me and denounced me for the vile serpent I was, and how dare I tell her husband to divorce her and lock her out of her own house! And then she said she couldn’t stand to be in the same room with such a horrible person as I was, and stormed out!

Everybody stood around looking stupid for a minute. I looked at Louise and Candy who were both there when I said what I said to George (which certainly had been repeated by him to Trudy, though it was not repeated as I said it nor was it in the context in which I had said it).

Neither of them said a word in my defense!

Later, in private, they were sympathetic and told me not to worry, and that Trudy was just going through a difficult time, but I was a little confused that they would stand there and not say something to straighten the matter out immediately, which could have happened if they had pointed out what George had said to provoke my advice!

If Trudy was innocent, as they were suggesting, didn’t she need to be warned that her husband was spreading such lies about her? I was pretty confused, and Louise and Candy were entirely insouciant about the whole thing.

The next day, Louise called me and said that a meeting had been set up at a local restaurant so that we could all get together with Trudy and iron this problem out. Was I willing to come?

Of course, I was. I detested discord and misunderstanding and I never intended to hurt Trudy. I was simply responding to George’s claims that he was afraid for his life. If what he had been saying was true, he should certainly have taken my advice. But obviously, there was some kind of game going on there and both of them were sucking everybody else into it.

I arrived at the restaurant with Louise and Candy. Trudy and several others (who were apparently on her side) were already there at a large, round table. Louise informed us that she had also invited another lady that no one else there had ever met except Louise, and who was reputed to be a very good psychic. She just thought it was a good opportunity for all of us to meet this lady, if she came, and it was doubtful she would, because she was very reclusive. Louise met her while working as a home health aide, and she raved about this unknown lady’s abilities as a “seer”.

Trudy was tightlipped and obviously not happy to be present. I was not terribly happy with the situation myself (having made an innocent honest remark that sort of exploded in my face) but I was determined to make the effort for everything to return to normal with the group, and to assure Trudy that if anybody was playing games, it wasn’t me. I was pretty upset that Louise and Candy hadn’t just talked to Trudy to explain the exact circumstances of the remark that was the cause of all this brouhaha. Had they done so, I felt, the upset would have just evaporated.

Just then, the expected/unexpected guest arrived — Jeanie — and that is her real name, but she has passed over now so it doesn’t matter any longer whether I use her real name or not. She was like a rare tropical bird that sort of fluttered about for a moment and then chose to land in the chair right next to me. But just as she started to sit, the chair (on wheels) actually shot across the room behind her! I had to literally catch her to prevent her from sitting on the floor with a thud! Being elderly and rather fragile in appearance, such a fall could have been completely disastrous. She was startled and confused for a moment, and Candy jumped up and retrieved the chair. We got Jeanie seated and settled, concerned that she would be just overwhelmed by such a thing and go off on some sort of old lady whining and complaining about chairs and so forth.

But Jeanie didn’t miss a beat! She looked at me and said, “Ohhhh! I see all kinds of good spirits around you! You are gonna do big things! Yes. Big things! Oh, my! We have to talk, you and I! But later. Let’s order now; I’m starved.”

Well, that certainly made a shift in the atmosphere and lightened things up a bit. If it hadn’t been for Trudy brooding on the other side of the table, looking daggers at me, and dabbing a tear away from time to time, a good time would have been had by all.

We did finally get to discussion of the matter, and Trudy was just obstinately predisposed to think that no matter what I said, I was an evil person. That was the bottom line. I explained the whole incident from start to finish, and while I was doing so, I looked to Louise and Candy for confirmation of the salient points, of which they were witnesses, and the most they would say was, “Yes, it seemed to be that way,” or, “I think it was that way too, but I can’t remember exactly.” All the sympathy was going to “poor Trudy!” It was maddening! I never in my life was in the presence of such mealy-mouthed people who, claiming to be friends, were unable to offer an opinion of their own much less to simply recount the events as they occurred!

But Jeanie, sitting beside me, piped up with, “You better believe what this girl is saying because I can see the light in her! There are a lot of good spirits around her, and if she says that’s the way it happened, then that’s the way it happened!” So, everybody sort of looked at her in surprise and got quiet. It had to have been one of the strangest luncheons I ever attended in my life!

Well, Trudy was eventually grudgingly mollified and agreed to “let bygones be bygones,” and we all exited to the parking lot to go home. Jeanie asked for my arm to walk her to her car, and on the way gave me her phone number and said I should call her as soon as I got home.

So, I did. What she told me was about the most bizarre thing I had ever heard! She said to me, “Did you see that Trudy make my chair shoot across the floor? She didn’t want me there, I can tell you! She was furious that I came. And I almost didn’t. I could feel her hate when I was getting dressed! But spirit told me that there was a reason for me to go, and I had to do it. That reason was that you needed an ally. And she hates you, too! And she’s messed up with all kinds of dark things. That group at that church — I’d stay away from them if I were you! That Reverend Ruth — she’s at the middle of some evil things, you mark my words!” and so on. When I asked her what was going on with this whole misunderstanding we had just been through she said, “You have the light in you. Those people hate you for that. When the light comes into the middle of darkness, it exposes things. They can’t stand the light. They will do anything to get you away from them. You have to be careful. There are things out there that can really hurt you. I know! They’ve been trying to kill me all my life. Now they are trying to kill you! And beware of Louise! Did you see how she didn’t say a word in your defense? Well, that’s because she’s one of them! And Candy, too. You need to be on your guard.”

By this time I was sure that Jeanie was like “Aunt Clara” on the old TV show, Bewitched. What she was saying just did not make sense. It was crazy talk. But she was so sweet and sincere and urgently concerned that I assured her I would take the greatest care. I promised to keep in touch. I told Candy what she had said and we agreed that the poor dear may have been a good psychic (as Louise assured us) but she was obviously over the hill now!

By this time, Candy and I were on the phone every day. When not on the phone, she would drop by and I would stop what I was doing to sit and chat. I really enjoyed her company, and she seemed to enjoy mine and we both had a voracious curiosity about the alien abduction research, so we spent a lot of time talking about it and comparing it to the different teachings that Reverend Ruth was sponsoring at the church, as well as anything and everything we heard about from any other source. When I could get out of the house once in awhile, we would go to rock shops and metaphysical stores and look at all the stuff that was available, occasionally buying a rock or sage or some other such “energy enhancing” thing.

A few weeks went by and we continued with our Reiki nights, and things were better, but there was still an undercurrent of dis-ease. I was doing my best to put as much love and light around the situation as I could, and to also keep myself in a “bubble” of love and light so that all my words and actions would issue from a deep place of love and understanding in my heart. I was terribly grieved that Trudy had been so hurt by me, and I did all I could to make it up to her. But she began to change in some way; even her appearance changed and she began to get heavier. At the same time, her husband just seemed to be wasting away to nothing. He whined and complained and Trudy rolled her eyes in exasperation.

Meanwhile, Candy and several of the others were coming to the experimental channeling sessions on Saturday nights, and even if all we did was chat with dead dudes, we still had fun with it. And all of them wanted to experiment with the Spirit Release process, so there was a lot of experimenting and investigating going on off to the side of the regular Reiki group. Two events stand out at this point as needing to be included here.

The first one was a phone call I received one night from Tim, the young kid who had been participating in the local Wicca group. He was in a complete panic. He had been trying one of the rituals that he had been taught in the coven. I don’t know if the exact procedure he was given was what he had followed, or if he was improvising, but the gist of it was that he had run hot water in his tiny bathroom to make it like a sauna, and then had been doing some sort of calling forth ritual while staring in the mirror. (Seems to me that he would have had to be constantly wiping the steam off the glass to even do this!) Well, the upshot of it was that a horrible demonic face had appeared in the mirror and had told him that it was his companion and was now going to have fun tormenting him or “feeding” on him or something. He had the feeling of pressure and his heart started beating like crazy and he thought he was going to die.

He was actually calling from the hospital where they had given him some sort of sedative and had told him that nothing was essentially wrong with him except some sort of stress reaction. He was terrified to go home because the demon was there, and what should he do?

Well, I was a little shocked that such a thing could happen to a Reiki initiate, especially since he and Candy had taken their Second Level initiations. But, I tried to calm him down and told him to come right over — I would fix him up pretty quick.

I called Candy and explained the situation to her, and she was pretty excited at the thought of seeing a real exorcism. She agreed to come right away.

It was a long wait before Tim arrived, and when he did, he was in a terrible state. He told us that on his way over, he had actually been in an accident — another car had sideswiped him and spun his car around and into a ditch. He was certain that it was the demon doing it, and his terror had practically gone through the roof!

We got him on Candy’s massage table, which had been set up, and started giving him Reiki just to calm him down. As we did, there were all kinds of strange things going on with his body. Muscles would jump and jerk in a way that was definitely not normal, and he said he could actually feel something “slithery” moving around in him!

Well, we were sort of freaking out too, but my experience with similar things during many hypnosis sessions had schooled me to remain calm and in control of the situation. I asked Tim to recount exactly everything that was done and said, and as he did, he began to breathe more normally and calmed down.

Soon I was able to put him under hypnosis and address the entity directly. It was a new level of Spirit Release — rather bizarre to say the least. As I addressed what was clearly not a dead dude, nor an elemental spirit, but something altogether more powerful, devious, and nasty, poor Tim alternately swelled and expelled the most horrible gas imaginable. This was definitely not a case of finding a poor lost, departed individual who needed to be counseled to “go into the light”, thereby releasing the victim. This critter had no intention of going anywhere! He had been “invited”, and he liked his new “home”, and there was not going to be an eviction!

Well, I had a different opinion of the matter and was equally determined that he was going to depart rather quickly, so it was pretty much a matter of who was going to prove to be the strongest in the dispute.

I did the usual calling on the “guides” and “light workers” of the astral planes to come and assist in the freeing of the victim, followed standard procedures and so forth. No dice. I did the “in the name of Jesus” routine, which can work depending on the religious affiliation of the victim. Didn’t work. The entity was making poor Tim jerk and jump on the table, constantly swelling with gas and expelling it in quantities that were simply abnormal by any pathological criteria. When I directed Tim to join with Candy and me in generating light and heat to encapsulate the entity, it began to complain that it was “hot” and “burned” and for us to just stop and leave it alone. It started to whine and moan that we ought to have sympathy and compassion for him because that was the philosophy we were espousing in the “love and light” New Age trend. It was actually a caricature of the recent machinations of both Trudy and George and I was not fooled one bit.

Finally, I just simply told the entity that I was not going to leave him alone, I was not going to stop harassing him with heat and light, that if I had to, we would stay there all night and all the next day and however many days it took. That seemed to have an effect, and I demanded that the entity leave in no uncertain terms, and with a last “blow up” of Tim’s abdomen, followed by a particularly noisy expulsion of the most horrible sulfurous stench, the entity left and Tim was finally peaceful.

I brought him out of the hypnosis and we discussed the matter. One of the things that the entity had said was that he had been initially attracted to Tim at one of the coven meetings where a whole host of such entities commonly congregated, selecting their prey, and then hanging around, waiting for the opportunity to “connect” in a more permanent way. They would influence the individual to perform certain acts that would facilitate entry, and even though the individual thought that these ideas were their own, they were not. Apparently enough mind contact can be made to plant thoughts and ideas that will lead to fuller possession.

Well, Tim was certainly cured of his interest in Wicca. After such a horrible experience, he was not going to risk going back into that environment and getting another “hanger on” of that sort!

We agreed between us to keep this quiet because of Tim’s obvious embarrassment as well as the fact that we were trying to “protect” Trudy in her “less advanced” beliefs. Candy said that she just could not handle the idea that “love and light” was not the be-all and end-all of all answers.

But I was concerned about the implication that Reiki was not as all-powerful and protective as was being taught. I felt that we needed to convey this to the others in some way. Candy agreed, but urged that I let her do it in her own way and time. I agreed.

The second event of concern was directly stimulated by this incident with Tim. Candy wanted me to do the Spirit Release process on her “just to see”. She had been on a terrible emotional roller coaster for some time, and she was now thinking that much of this could be directly attributed to attachments of one sort or another. I agreed and we scheduled it for the next day.

For some reason Candy wanted to bring Louise in on the action, and with reservation, I agreed. Candy was, after all, the subject and whatever was necessary for the comfort of the subject was to be considered desirable. So, Louise was informed, and after expressing interest in being a witness she invited us to do the session at her house, which was okay with me.

During this session, an attached entity identified himself as “Thomas”. His story was that he had been a practitioner of Voodoo in Haiti and had been killed by a rival Voodoo doctor in 1945. The real shocker was when he claimed that he had been induced or commanded by a “magician” to attach to Candy as a “control conduit”.

A “Magician”? Who, where, when? And all that.

He would not identify the “who”, and it was clear that he was terrified of punishment if he betrayed his “master”, but he did say that this had occurred in the previous few weeks and that Candy did know this individual.

There was another entity that had attached to Candy via marital relations with her husband, but that one was rather glad to be sent to the light, and gave no trouble.

There were two suicides who had attached to the first frequency available host, i.e., Candy, in their fear of having violated a religious taboo in killing themselves. This is not uncommon. One of the biggest reasons for spirit attachment is the ignorance of the individual about what really happens after death. A strong religious belief can be as detrimental as no belief in an afterlife at all. There was also an automobile accident victim, as well as a victim of a shooting. I never found out if that particular entity was involved in a crime or if it was just an accident, because he/she left almost immediately to go into the light, after having followed the process with the previous entities, learning from what was being exchanged with them. This is also not uncommon. If there are multiple attachments, they seem to be influenced by the actions of each other in their “shared host/home”.

Both Candy and I were beginning to get the idea that there was something fishy going on here, and she was somewhat upset to think that even she had been attached in this way by “someone” trying to control her. She was also angry and determined to find out who it was.

Louise, as usual, expressed no opinion. She kept saying, “Isn’t that amazing!” over and over again with her eyes wide and innocent.

Now, what happened next was surrounded by several weeks of bizarre synchronicities that are just simply too numerous to recount. I am also sorry that I didn’t keep a daily journal of events because trying to remember everything in the proper order is surely not easy.

For some time — almost exactly two years — I had been trying to obtain a second copy of Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision without success. I had been to every book store, had called book distributors; had even contacted the publisher who told me it was out of print with no plans for another press run. So, I had gone around to all the used bookstores and filled out little cards for them to look for it and call me if it became available.

Another event that converged at this moment in time was a funny thing that had to do with the murder investigation I had been involved in peripherally back in 1993 which I should divert to recount as briefly as possible since it certainly was a sort of a “doorway” to the later UFO/Alien awakening in my own life.

As our experiment in channeling had proceeded, we discussed the many possible ways that a true higher source might be identified or validated. We both thought that a higher source, by virtue of greater and more inclusive Cosmic Perspective, would be able to make absolutely stunning predictions that would hit the mark every time. But, in a short term feedback loop of testing, how to validate such a hypothesis?

As recounted in High Strangeness, Frank came up with a solution to play the Lottery and even though we did have a few hits in that regard, they usually came up on a different day than predicted.

In January of 1993, my old friend Keith died.² I had driven up to see him some months earlier and he looked terrible. It had been 20 years — almost to the day — since I had sat in his house and watched him brandish a gun with the ostensible purpose of putting a period to his existence.

During my last visit with him, Keith seemed tired and broken. He told me that if he had a switch on the wall to turn out the lights of his life the same way he could bring darkness to his room before sleeping, he wasn’t sure he’d have the courage to do it. “I realize at long last what a coward I have always been,” he said. The bitterness in his voice nearly undid me. Whether it was a new manipulation or just a sad statement of fact, borne of great struggle in his life, I will never know.

When his secretary called to tell me he had passed away during the night of the 23rd of January, I felt as though a door had closed on an entire episode of my life. In his honor, I put on a tape of Puccini. It actually wasn’t too bad.

A few weeks later, a local 12 year old girl was reported missing. I was very shaken by it because, when her photo was displayed on the television, she looked so much like my number two daughter that I almost began to cry! I was surprised by my emotional reaction! And, even more surprised when, watching the news report, I “saw” in my mind’s eye that the girl was dead, naked, wrapped in what looked like saran wrap, lying in a stand of pine trees. I even had a sensation of the general location.

The vision came to me as if remembering an intense experience from my own past. In my mind, the heat shimmered at the edges of the shade in a pine woods. Mottled shadows moved slightly as the rising air softly rushed between the pine needles. I could actually smell the pine sap. The body lay nearly face down with an arm tucked under the side. Flies droned sickeningly as they reconnoitered the rapidly putrefying flesh. I didn’t know exactly where this place was, but I knew I was seeing the missing girl.

I forced my normal awareness back into place, much like pulling a shade down over a window, and continued to listen to the details about the child. She had only been missing since the day before, and, under normal circumstances, no investigation of any kind would be launched for at least twenty-four hours. But, in this case, the family was close to a high ranking member of the sheriff’s department. From his personal knowledge of the situation and the persons involved, he determined that foul play must be strongly suspected. A full scale investigation had been launched within just a couple of hours after she was due home.

The name of the “high ranking sheriff’s department official” was given in the report as Henry Smith (a pseudonym). Good old Henry. Son of a friend and former employer of my mother; two years ahead of me in high school. As I watched the newscast, I wanted to tell them there was no point in looking for a living child. The child was already dead.

There had been a number of occasions in my life when I just “knew” things about crimes I would read or hear about. It’s always an initial flash of insight which, if I try to push it further, sort of disappears. It actually became a sort of side hobby to make predictions about who may have done a crime just to test myself. On the occasions when I did get an initial impression, I was always right. But I never had an opportunity to provide the information to anyone who could do anything about it. In fact, I probably would not have told anyone if I had the chance, because I had no taste for being labeled a “psychic freak”.

The point is, I keep score with myself. It’s a game I play and I win only if I am right on every point and it is certain that I could have no way of knowing what I know by normal means. When I get the information, it is good, but there are times when I get nothing at all. It is as though some people and some situations are simply on another channel.

But this case was one I could tune in to more clearly than others. I had a twelve-year-old daughter of my own who was so similar in appearance. The newscaster described a child very much like my own.

It seems that the missing girl, the perfect child, had gotten off the school bus and disappeared. No physical evidence of any kind was found. She disappeared with books, purse and clarinet. No one saw anything at all unusual, except that the other kids on the school bus seemed to remember a blue truck in the vicinity. The details on the blue truck were vague and there seemed to be nothing else to go on. So, I watched the case with interest.

On the following day Marcia Matthews (another pseudonym) called. Marcia is a local self-proclaimed psychic, hypnotherapist, western dancer and general wise woman. She didn’t waste any time getting to the point.

“Have you heard anything about the little girl that’s missing?”

I acknowledged that I had.

“Well, I just came from over there and I just want to run some things by you to get your reaction.”

“What do you mean you just came from over there?” I asked.

“Well, not exactly there. We were at the fair, you know, and it seems the girl’s parents have been working with some group over there. The cops were all over the place. So I decided to see if I could get some feelings… There’s a van they were checking out… and I tell you, when I got near that van, my flesh just crawled! I mean, there is some nasty stuff there! And I just know she’s alive but she doesn’t have much time. I have to find her! She’s cold and in a dark place and she’s hanging on for dear life… and I’ll tell you, if some of these bastards don’t listen to me they’re going to have that girl’s death on their hands.”

“Slow down, Marcia!” I was used to Marcia getting all wound up. I knew if I was going to make any sense of the conversation I was going to have to make her stop and start at the beginning.

“You and Bennie (Marcia’s husband) went to the fair, right? How did you get involved with the cops? Did they just come up to you and ask you if you knew anything?”

“Well, not exactly. We saw the posters they were putting up all over, you know, the pictures of the little girl, and I went up and introduced myself and offered to help. I told them I’m a psychic and, I was surprised, they didn’t seem turned off at all! In fact, they invited me over to see if I could pick up anything from a van parked behind the fair. They think that maybe one of the fair people had something to do with it.”

“Why do they think that?” I asked patiently.

“Because the girl’s parents belong to some civic organization doing something here at the fair and the kid has spent a lot of time in the past few days hanging out here. The cops think that maybe one of the carnies found out where she lived and abducted her.”

“So tell me about this van,” I prompted.

“Well, I wanted you to tell me what you get.”

“It’s white, full of junk, and has something blue on the engine cover,” I replied promptly. I have no idea where it came from, but then, I never do.

“Yes,” she urged, “but what is the blue thing.”

“I have no idea.” I was getting impatient. I knew the van had nothing to do with the missing girl and I could feel another one of Marcia’s wild goose chases coming on.

“It’s a Bible,” she announced breathlessly. “A Bible! Can you figure that! And I can just see the girl on the floor in the front curled into a ball with rags thrown over her and this son of a bitch driving her down the road. He raped her, man, he tortured her… she’s a mess and I’ve got to find her before its too late!” Marcia was starting to wind up again, so I stopped her with a question.

“Where do you think she is?”

“I’m not sure, but I know it is near her house. I get a well house — a shed, something to do with water. Oh man, she’s in pain!” I could see the conversation was going nowhere so I decided to tell her the truth.

“She’s dead, Marcia. She’s been dead since yesterday.”

“No, I don’t agree. She’s out there calling to me. I’m going to look. This cop named J.D. gave me her card and I am going to go and look. There’s a road I noticed on our way in here. I had a funny feeling about that road and I just know she’s down there. If I can’t get them to look, I’ll do it myself. I have to find her! When I find the spot, I’ll call this J.D. and get her to get some men out there. I gotta go, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Sure, keep me posted.” I hung up the phone wondering just what kind of cosmic drama was being played out with this event.

Marcia had probably called every psychic person she knew, gotten their impressions and was now unable to distinguish between true intuition and all the interference she was picking up. The only problem was that most of the so-called psychics around town were shrewd cold-readers with very little true ability. Oh, they had an occasional flash now and then, but generally they failed miserably. Because of psychics like that, I don’t want to be numbered as part of their group.

Over the next few days I kept my own counsel. Marcia called with frequent updates of her wild goose chase. She told me that another friend of ours, Danielle, worked with the missing girl’s stepfather at the local resource recovery plant.

I called Danielle to pick up any information I could. All she could tell me was a reprise of Marcia’s insistence that the girl was alive and that, as far as she could see, the family was a normal happy one. Obviously, she had been talking to Marcia.

I told Danielle I was sure that the child was dead. She totally rejected the idea. But she did say that the child’s stepfather was at the plant at the time of the girl’s disappearance.

The media appealed for information on the missing child, keeping up an onslaught of endless stories about the family and how “normal” and “upstanding” they were. For some reason, I had no further insights. On the night the family appeared before the TV cameras to beg for the return of their daughter, I watched in horrified fascination. I couldn’t help but put myself in their shoes. They asked for every resident of the county to search every building they owned, every shed, every pump house — again I could see Marcia’s hand at work — to leave no trail un-walked and no stone unturned.

There was something odd about the interview, though. I just couldn’t put my finger on it. The stepfather did all the talking while the mother sat stony faced and silent. It made me wonder. But it’s easy to criticize. What I would be doing myself, I couldn’t know. I couldn’t go that far in my imagination. It was too terrible.

I called my friend Sandra, who was a bigwig at the state social services agency where I had also been employed so many years ago. Sandra was also extremely intuitive. In fact, she was more psychic than those people who hang out their shingle and “practice” at being psychic. As I expected, she had already done a little poking around through the files in the agency to see if there was anything on that particular family. There was.

The scuttlebutt within the agency was that the family had some problems with the girl. There were signs of rivalry between the new stepfather and the girl’s natural father. There were whispers that the child had tried to run away before to go to her father. Sandra was putting her money on the stepfather as the culprit. She was convinced from what was in the social services files that sexual abuse was rampant in that house and that a confrontation on the subject had led to the child’s death.

Like me, Sandra also knew the girl was dead. I pointed out that the stepfather could not have been a party to the fact the child was missing because he was at work with a lot of witnesses at the time as Danielle had asserted. We both pondered the matter in light of this information, but nothing else came up. It was most definitely a curious case.

I wondered about what was in the Social Services files. It was likely that the sheriff’s department was already privy to the information that there had been problems in the home. So why had they launched a full scale crime investigation into what must have looked, at first glance, like a simple runaway?

Something wasn’t adding up.

That night, I tried to meditate and clear my mind of all conflicting ideas and information. I knew the torture I would feel not knowing where my child was or if she was dead or alive, certain that every moment I would be thinking the worst and that the burden of those thoughts would drive me mad. Just thinking about it was more than I could bear. I began to cry. I silently sent a summons to the universe to bring that little girl home! Over and over I repeated it, “Just bring her home”. Suddenly, I felt a flood of peace wash through me and knew that events would soon begin to move.

The following day, I was as tense as if my own daughter was missing. It seemed as if the whole county was holding its breath. The missing girl had become everyone’s child. I was still frustrated because I had no further impressions. But I continually “asked the question”. The only thing I could see was an old road I used to drive as a teenager — a road with hills and curves and fields of hay and cattle. I knew she was there, somewhere in the vicinity of that road.

I picked up the children from school. They were excited with news that the missing girl had been found. Their source seemed to be a school teacher whose daughter worked for a local newspaper. The kids’ story was confirmed by a bulletin on television almost as soon as we arrived home. A body had been found off the very road I had been seeing in my mind. No positive identification of the body had been made, but everyone knew who it was.

The evening news confirmed the rumors. The missing child had been positively identified but no further details would be forthcoming until an autopsy was performed. We could all breathe again but we did so with tears and trepidation. There was obviously a killer on the loose.

The appeals to apprehend the killer intensified. Everyone was now looking for a blue truck that some of the children on the school bus thought they remembered seeing. I paced the floor in anguish, realizing that the only way I would be able to get the answer would be if someone connected to the case “asked me the question”.

This was another thing I had noticed about my abilities. Just as the process of channeling Noah had occurred only in response to mental questions, very often I have no insight into what is not my business until someone whose business it is asks me about it. When they do, the answer simply comes to me.

Finally, unable to just close my mind to the affair, I sat down to write a letter. I addressed the letter to Henry Smith and asked him to please not share with anyone what I was going to say. You just never know who else might work down at the sheriff’s office and, of all things, I didn’t want to get a reputation as a weirdo.

I told Henry what I had seen so far, which had been accurate, and I felt I might be able to see more if only I were asked. I intended to use astrological charts on the subject as the method of focusing. I had the idea that it was possible, in this way, to identify the killer, or at least some things about him to produce a rather specific profile. What I was offering, however, might not be any better than nothing and I said so. But, I was willing to have a go at it.

I really did not expect a response except a polite “thank you, but we have all the leads we can handle”. I certainly did not expect Henry himself to call me the very next day after I mailed the letter! But he did. He told me that he had consulted the family and, on their behalf, and as a friend of the family and not as a public official, he was asking me to look into the matter.

The type of chart I was going to do as my focusing device is called a horary chart. Horary means “of the hour”. The idea is that when a question is asked in seriousness and sincerity, the answer is inherent in the moment of asking. I recorded the time of the question as well as the birth data he gave me for the astrological charts.

During the course of the conversation, he confirmed my vision: the body had been stripped, had been hosed to remove all traces of evidence, and was wrapped in plastic sheeting. I pointed out that this indicated someone who was familiar with forensic procedures and who intended, most definitely, to remove all traces of fibers or other microscopic elements that might have served to at least identify where the murder occurred. Not only had all evidence been thoroughly removed, the body was left just over the line in the adjacent county which most definitely confused investigative issues. Henry agreed with this assessment.

“Would you go out to the site and see if you could sense anything else?” he asked me.

“Henry, this really is not my forte!”

“We need your help, Laura. Isn’t that standard psychic procedure to go to the scene and…”

“But I probably only had the original insight because of my emotional reaction to seeing her face,” I told him. “It was just so similar to my own daughter’s. I’m sure I would get better results by working on the astrological charts.”

“I understand. But for the family’s sake, could you just give it a try?”

It was about 20 miles to the location where the body was found. That’s not a great distance, but it included a lot of driving around the area where the girl lived.

I don’t know what made me think of doing it the way I did, but that’s what I did. My objective was to see everything through the mind of the killer and get into his thought processes.

Well, that was a big mistake. Yes, I got impressions. Yes, I later did all the charts. Yes, I believe I solved the crime, and insiders on the subject are also convinced that my solution is the correct one. But there is not one single, solitary shred of real evidence on which to justify an accusation, much less an arrest. It is also very unlikely that the individual will ever kill again.

But if he does, someone is watching.

As a result of all this traipsing around and putting on that “mind of the killer”, the stress nearly killed me. My whole body swelled with what the doctor called ascites, speculating that I had damaged my liver by taking nine Tylenol a day for the past seven years or so. My heart was backflushing constantly, my kidneys had shut down, and I was as close to death as I have ever been.

The doctor wanted to admit me to the hospital, but I refused. I remembered the horror of my grandmother’s death, which could have been peaceful with me at her side. I remembered how the hospital personnel deprived me of those last few moments with their absurd resuscitation efforts. If I was going to die, I wanted to do it at home.

My doctor shook his head in near despair at my stubbornness, ordered me to bed for complete rest for two weeks or longer, and prescribed medication. He was sure I would give in and he would see me at the hospital by the next day at the latest. I was just as sure he wouldn’t. I had my ex get me home to bed. I almost couldn’t walk.

After a few days of feeling on the verge of death, declining all medicine, drinking only distilled water, I began to feel just a tiny bit better. My thought processes had almost completely stopped working from the build-up of toxins in my body, but I soon began to feel the need for new activity. It was at this moment that Frank brought me the pile of UFO books that I have discussed elsewhere.

I hadn’t had any involvement with the murder case for many months, so I was surprised when the phone rang one day, and it was the Private Investigator friend of mine who had acted as liaison between me and certain law enforcement officials at a later stage in that murder investigation. He had a question about something unrelated to that, but then asked me about a conversation between me and a certain detective in the homicide unit of the local law enforcement agency.

Well, this conversation had never happened, so I asked him what he was talking about. He said, “I called you back in October when he was here in the office with me, and one of your kids said you were in the hospital, so I left his number and a message that you should call him. I was sure you had by now.”

I never got the message. The kids must have forgotten. So, I took the name and number down again and called and left a message on the detective’s answering machine. I was curious to find out what he wanted to talk to me about. His name was “Marion Thomas”. (Not the real name, but the “made up name” relationships are similar here because they were part of the “clue system” as I later figured out.) I knew that “Marion” was often used as a man’s name in the past, but it wasn’t too common in the present time so I thought it odd. Also, Thomas is my brother’s name, and his best friend’s name when we were kids was “Thomas Marion”.³ My brother had been named after my grandfather. All those little thoughts ran through my head at that moment.

I was getting ready to take my mother home since she had been at my house most of the morning. As we started out the door, the phone rang again. I answered it and it was “Marion Thompson”, the owner of a local used bookstore calling to tell me that she had a copy of Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision that I could have for seven dollars. I was so excited that I told her to put a “sold” tag on it and I would be right down. It wasn’t until I hung up that I said to myself, “Marion Thompson? Marion Thomas? What is going on here?!”

But, I brushed it aside as I headed for the door. Mother was standing there waiting.

The phone rang again before I was out the door the second time. I almost didn’t answer it, but decided I had better. It was my cousin — the one I had met for the first time at the first MUFON meeting I had attended after the UFO sighting over the pool.⁴ He was my grandfather’s cousin, being the son of the younger brother of my grandfather’s mother. He, too, was calling to announce that he had just found a copy of Velikovsky’s Worlds in Collision in a box of books in his garage. He knew I had been looking for it, and it was mine if I wanted it!

Well, that was just too much! Two “Marions”, two books, two years of searching for the book was at an end, and all within about 30 minutes of time! I mean, what were the chances of two people named “Marion”, for God’s sake!, calling me within a few minutes of each other? What were the odds of having two people offer me a specific book within a few minutes of each other after two years of no results? Additionally, there was the Thomas/Thompson connection that occurred as a triplet. But, by this time I was used to that sort of thing. It just meant that things were really getting weird. I just didn’t know how weird they were going to get!

It was Wednesday, Reiki night.

When I arrived for the Reiki session, I noticed that there were several people sitting on the patio outside. As I got closer, I was surprised to see that one of them was Reverend Ruth. There was also a big redheaded woman, and a man dressed all in white — white shorts, white shirt, white socks, and even white shoes — with heavy gold jewelry dangling from his neck to disappear inside his partly unbuttoned shirt, and heavy gold chains on his wrists. I spoke to them cordially as I went in the house, but their responses seemed to be somewhat less than friendly. But, I just mentally sent love in their direction and closed the door.

The woman who was up, when I found my place at one of the tables, was a hospice nurse who had been suffering from a lot of physical problems that were probably related to the stress of her job. I was given the head position and when I put my hands on her, it was like the two powerful magnets suddenly connecting — BAM! — in a way and with a strength that I had not experienced before. And the energy began to pour.

Now, the only way I have ever been able to describe my personal sensation of channeling Reiki energy is that it really feels like nursing a baby. The instant contact is made, it feels like the milk “lets down”, only it is in the arms and not the chest. But it is a distinct sensation. I can feel and monitor the flow constantly, exactly like I could feel and monitor my own milk flowing while nursing my children through the years.

This particular woman, the hospice nurse, was pulling energy so hard that it was actually painful! My wrists began to ache like an abscess that needed to be lanced. I knew that this might relate to the surgery I had on my wrists, and that there were obviously some “short circuits” or something, but I had hitherto been able to deal with this discomfort. In this instance, I could hardly stand the pain. I disconnected for a few minutes and shook my hands and rested them, and then put them back. Same thing. This poor woman was sure exhausted of all reserves and I was glad to be able to help her in this way, even if it was somewhat uncomfortable. But soon, the flow began to slow down, the pain eased, the magnetic sensation released, and I knew that she was finished for that treatment.

I was going to take a break and have some punch and let somebody else have my spot, but just then the man in white from outside came in and said, “Don’t go yet!” Louise introduced him as a friend of Reverend Ruth’s who had come to try out the Reiki since he had a phlebitis problem. He hopped onto the table with such spryness — I could hardly believe he had any problems at all! I went back to my position at the head as requested.

There was nothing unusual about this man in terms of energy consumption. In fact, he didn’t seem to be drawing at all. I did smell whiskey on his breath and it had been my experience that alcohol and Reiki do not mix. I have seen people get violently sick if they drank too soon after a Reiki treatment. I thought I would mention this to him as he got off the table, that it might be better if he refrained for a few hours, but I never got the chance.

As soon as we took our hands away (there were five of us per table), the man sat up and jumped to his feet swinging around to face me in the same motion. “This is for you,” he said as he reached out his hand and traced some sort of figure on my forehead with his finger.

That is what he did, described in just a couple of words, but the way it happened was strange. It was as though everyone in the room froze for a few almost imperceptible moments. And everyone remained frozen until he had walked out the door and we were startled back to awareness by the sound of car doors slamming, a motor starting, and a car driving away. Everyone was staring at me and everyone began to talk at once. “What was that all about?” or “What did he do?” or “Who is that man?” or “How dare he touch you without your permission.”

The last was the main issue. It was pretty standard in Reiki classes that no one touches anyone without his or her permission. It was repeated over and over again to us, and we took it seriously.

I asked Louise who the guy was, and she claimed not to know any more than the fact that Reverend Ruth and her friend had brought him. Candy and the others were all exclaiming in outrage and examining the smudge on my forehead to see if they could make out what had been drawn there. Nobody knew who the man was. Nobody knew the meaning of his actions. Nobody knew what was going on with the sudden visit of Reverend Ruth and her friends. That was the consensus.

After the hubbub died down, we all settled back to our work, and I was surrounding myself with love and light, certain that whoever the man was and whatever the purpose of his strange behavior, it couldn’t penetrate my shield.

That night, at about midnight, I woke up in so much pain that I knew I was having a heart attack. There was not only an elephant sitting on my chest, there was a fence post driven through my breastbone and I was encased in an iron maiden that was slowly squeezing the breath out of me. I woke my ex-husband and he took me to the emergency room.

As soon as we arrived at the hospital, the pressure and pain began to subside, but with the symptoms I described, they took me in right away. Since I seemed to be stabilizing, there wasn’t a huge rush (you know, like grabbing the little electric paddles and the “jump start” machine) but they were still working rather quickly to get me prepped. The doctor said I would have to be admitted for tests and kept under observation for a few days, so that was fine with me. I was pretty terrified at this sudden activation of a condition that I believed to have been long cured. But, when the nurse wheeled in the cart with the IV setup and started the preparations to insert same, a voice as clear and powerful as anything I can ever remember spoke in my head telling me that if I let them put that needle in my arm, it would be used to kill me.

My rational conscious mind immediately countered with, “That is utter nonsense! You are paranoid! You’ve been reading too much weird stuff for too long and it has affected your judgment.”

Then a wave of heat washed over me and the “knowing” that I would die if I stayed in the hospital surged forward again drowning out the conscious argument. I felt totally schizoid for a moment. And, not only that, there was the problem of how to get out of the situation I was now in. How do you say, “Thanks for trying to save my life, but no thanks!”? I was between a rock and a hard place of overwhelming proportion, and there seemed to be no way out.

I tried to convince the nurse that an IV wasn’t necessary. She simply brushed my objections away and said it was “standard procedure” and had to be done. There was no option.

I then told her quite simply, “No, I don’t want the IV.” It was clear she was going to ignore me.

I quickly calculated in my mind the possibilities. Yes, I could have been having a heart attack, and it could have been a precursor to the “big one”; but, on the other hand, it could also have been something that had to do with that man at the Reiki meeting. I was acutely aware of the information extracted from both Tim and Candy in their spirit release sessions. But how reliable was that sort of thing? It was one thing to work with it in others, when no definite act of a physical nature had to be made, and another to have to consider it as real, and base a crucial decision on such knowledge. If it was knowledge, and not just another layer of the onion, so to speak; if it was accurate information of how things could work at psychic or unseen levels, then maybe what was happening to me was designed to get me in the hospital. And maybe it was done so that somebody at the hospital could then be activated to “get to me” and “accidentally” do something stupid that would result in my death.

At the same time I was thinking all this, I remembered Frank’s recitation of the events of my life, pointing out that some of it was, indeed, a bit unusual and his idea that there was a reason for it. If that was so (and remember, there was no proof of this except for the uncertain proof that, as soon as I asked for help with my health, I was led to Reiki) then there also might be a reason for some people or groups of people to want me “out of the picture”.

But, no matter what, it was still a choice I had to make without visible proof! I could either go with the surface or standard interpretation of the events — which was that I needed to be in the hospital because I might be having a heart attack, which entailed taking the risk of dying either naturally or unnaturally; or on the other hand being “saved” by the medical profession.

The other choice was that I could go with the subtle, spiritual interpretation, take the responsibility for my life into my own hands, do something significant based on knowledge without proof, and, if I was wrong, I would die. But if I was right, I would not. And if that were the right interpretation, then I would certainly die if I stayed.

Talk about the horns of a dilemma! And every single thing in my enculturation and social programming tended toward the normal interpretation — I had a health issue and needed to be hospitalized to be saved.

My learning to this point, my experimentation, and my expanding awareness could all be brushed under the rug as subjective or even crazy. Heck, I thought it was crazy too, at that moment! What was I thinking?

But some sort of crazy courage swept over me. Right or wrong, for once in my life, I had to listen to my inner impressions. If I was wrong and I died, so be it. It would not be for lack of courage!

I decided.

A great calmness descended over me and I told the nurse firmly that she could put the kit away; I was not going to be admitted. At first, I don’t think she believed me, but when I got off the gurney and began to put my clothes on, she said, “Let me get the doctor.”

The doctor came in and gave me the “you are making a big mistake here!” talk and said I would have to sign release of liability forms and all that. “I’ll sign,” I said. “I have nothing against the hospital or you or anything, but I am not going to stay here and I am not going to have needles and drugs pumped into my system.” And, just for good measure, I said, “It’s against my religion.”

Well, that must have been the right thing to say, because they had the forms ready by the time I got to the desk. I signed, went out to the waiting room and told my ex-husband to take me home.

He thought I had completely lost my mind. So did I! But I just simply could not argue with the force that was compelling me to leave that place.

I went home, went to bed and began to shake like a leaf with the implications of what I had done. I had opposed and defied all normal convention. I had gone against all the programming of my life to be under one kind of control or another — to be a “good girl” and let “the doctor”, or whoever make the decisions about what happened to me. After the fact, I was assailed by so many doubts that it is a wonder I didn’t have the “Big One” there and then!

The next day I was feeling very bad. I was weak and felt on the edge of something deep and dark. The “fence post” effect was mild, but constant, the pressure was present, but less severe, and the elephant on my chest had lost weight. When I went to the kitchen to get a drink of water, I looked out and saw that the pool was green. It had turned into “pea soup” overnight.

This distressed me even more and I asked my husband to have the water tested and fix it. He did. About a hundred dollars worth of chemicals and procedures later, it was still pea soup.

Somehow I knew that this condition of the water in the pool represented my space and my self. There was an invasion of psychic “slime”. And clearly, judging by the fact that it was not responding to ordinary treatment, it was going to take some additional work to handle.

At that point, Candy called and I told her briefly what had happened. She seemed to be distressed and sympathetic and said she was going to try to find out something about the man who had been at the Reiki session. She would call me back later to report.

Meanwhile, Tim called me and wanted to talk about the incident at the Reiki session. He was as distressed about it as I was.

Nevertheless, Tim had many suggestions for cleaning my psychic environment and offered to come over and do so. He also wanted to see the pool situation for himself. I was open to having a little help here, so said “sure, come on over.” Tim came and had a look at the pool and then did some ritual type activities that were supposed to clear things up.

Nothing happened. I continued to have the iron maiden sensation of being compressed. It was much like the way you would feel in a pressure chamber, I guess.

Candy called again. She said she had been very clever in getting information out of Reverend Ruth’s assistant, and it seems that our gentleman of the Reiki open house was a man who was reputed to be an adept in ritual magick, and was, supposedly, the “Big Banana” of metaphysical Mumbo Jumbo in the whole state.

Swell. That didn’t make me feel any better. In fact, I was downright depressed thinking about people who would do something so nasty and hurtful when I hadn’t ever done anything to them. What, precisely, had I done to these people to make them hate me so much? Not only that, there was a lot of confusion in my mind about how such a thing could even happen when I was “surrounded with love and light” and always thinking loving thoughts and sending love, etc.

Candy said that she had the perfect answers to how to clear things up and offered to come over and do her thing. Again, I was open to about anything that might work, so I agreed.

She came over armed with sage and candles and salt and crystals and a whole raft of metaphysical accoutrements.⁵ Just like Tim had done, she set to work. She cleared a place in the study and set up an altar with candles, bowls of herbs, stones that had been “charged” and all sorts of things. She went around the house with burning sage, opened all the doors and windows to air the place out, and so on and so forth. She had me stand in a loose gown while she “saged” my entire body, and then waved incense all around (incense guaranteed to get rid of any negative energies or your money back!). Nothing happened. As much as I was relying on these rituals to be able to “fight fire with fire”, I still felt the elephant on my chest, and the sensation of depression and constant pressure was still there.

The next day, the pool was still pea soup. I sent my ex-husband down to get more chemicals. We dosed the 15,000-gallon pool with enough chlorine and algae killer to clean an Olympic sized pool, or four or five times as big. We ran the pump constantly, cleaned the filter over and over again, ran it again, and cleaned it, and so on for another 24 hours.

Pea soup. The pool guy said it looked like we were going to have to drain the pool and start over with fresh water.

Day after day I struggled to function against the horrible oppression in my mind. It was like I was wounded and there was a pack of wolves slowly circling, getting closer and closer, sniffing and testing, waiting for the weakness to take away all powers of resistance, at which point they would spring forward and destroy me.

Day after day there was pea soup in the pool. We put chemicals in the pool, performed rituals, prayed, and “cleansed” the house. Hours were spent erecting psychic barriers of love and light around the house, around me, etc. We tried psychic mirrors. Cutting psychic connections. You name it, we tried it. Nothing was working.

We discussed it up one side and down the other. I had some clues from the spirit release work that the problem might be an etheric cord of some sort that was kept in place by association with certain people. I knew from discussing with various entities where and how they had attached, that very often it is from simply being around certain people and that these people usually didn’t even realize that they were “carriers” or “instruments” of connection. It was rather like the idea of a psychic Typhoid Mary. So, I decided that if this might be the case, and since I couldn’t exactly see who the carrier was, I would simply have to break with all the crowd at the Reiki sessions until I was strong enough to individually experiment to see who was the conduit of attack.

This was a hard decision to make because I really liked these people and we had a very good time together. Of course, the incident with Trudy made me inclined to think that she was the one who was the conduit of attack, but that meant that anyone who associated with her and then with me could “carry” the “infection” by proxy.

Candy and Tim agreed with this assessment and we all decided to stop association with the group until we could make some tests. We had all three experienced problems of one sort or another by associating with people who were not as they seem, but there was still the problem in my mind as to whether it was deliberate or not. Apparently, as the evidence seemed to show, it didn’t even have to be conscious!

But that was another decision that went against the “love and light” philosophy of acceptance and “unconditional love”. It also went against all the social and enculturated teaching about compromise and working to get along, and so on. But, I had to do something, to have time to sort and figure things out, and this seemed to be the safest course at the moment. So, the decision was made. I mentally closed off all those people, determined to not even talk to them until I could find out more about what was going on.

That night I had a dream.

In the dream there was the pool. Somebody had driven a car into the pool and I was distraught trying to figure out how I was going to get it out. A woman came who seemed to be a relative, though the exact relationship was not clear. She called a wrecker truck to come and pull the car out, and then she helped me drain the pool, scrub the mud and oil and gas out of it, and a wave came from the nearby ocean and refilled the pool with sparkling water.

I woke up and wondered what the dream might mean. It had given me a positive feeling and I got out of bed feeling much better. The pressure was gone, and my breathing was much easier. I went to the kitchen, looked out the window, and the pool was clear. I stood there staring at it in disbelief. We had put such a fortune in chemicals into it, and in the past few days, had given up, thinking that we were going to have drain it, and there it was just as clear and sparkling as the pool in my dream.

At that moment, Tim knocked at the door and I let him in telling him that the pool was now clear. He became very excited and went to look. He stood there staring at it, shaking his head and saying over and over again, “I can’t believe it!” He had been helping with the chemical applications, the filter cleaning, and so on at the same time he had been making himself available for his little spiritual cleansing activities, so he knew everything that had been done with no effect and that we had given up on it. He was as amazed as I was at the sudden turnaround. So, I told him about the dream, but I was uncertain as to the exact meaning of it or even who the woman relative was that had come to help me.

At this point Candy called with news. It seems that she had just received a call from one of the members of the Metaphysical church who had informed her that Reverend Ruth’s assistant and the Big Banana guy had been in an automobile accident during the night. They were both in the hospital and Reverend Ruth was requesting prayers for them. I told Candy how bizarre this accident news was because of my dream about a car being driven into my pool, and that now the pool was clear. What was more, the elephant had finally gotten off my chest. Was there a connection between the dream, the clearing of the pool, and the relief from the attack, and my decision to terminate contact with the group or any particular member?

It was possible. But it forced me to consider ideas that were just totally bizarre. It seemed that surrounding oneself with love and light was just not as effective as was touted, especially in certain circumstances. Could it be that the “bubble of love and light” was some sort of inhibitor of knowledge, of growth, of progression?

It was pretty clear to me now that people who were living in such cocoons of belief were as likely attached to, and used by, dark forces or dead dudes as anyone else. Maybe even more likely. The reason being that they did not believe it was possible, and therefore had no impetus to learn that it not only was possible, but that it was happening to them! It was like the famous saying: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Here we had a perfect example of this statement. When a person is locked in a belief system, they cannot see what is really happening in an objective way. They do not question their observations or experiences in an open way, but rather interpret them according to their belief system with no options for other explanations. Square pegs that don’t fit in the round holes are ignored or swept under the rug.

It also seemed that a lot of people were presenting themselves as “light workers” who were not, in fact, of such a nature. Maybe they were in their conscious minds, but at some deep level, something was going on that really required some astute observation to discern and I was as baffled as I could be as to what to make of the whole thing. Not only that, but it seemed that at every step I was being required to make choices as to what I would or would not do based on a very subtle level of understanding. But this seemed to relate to the fact that I was constantly questioning everything. I was not stuck in belief.

There was still a worrisome matter: the issue of Candy. How could it be that she could sit on the fence? How was it that she had such easy access to and contact with these people? I tried to brush those questions aside, but they demanded answers eventually. In a certain sense, at that point, I erected a mental shield against her and no longer confided in her so freely.

I continued my interaction with Candy for some more months, through the early period of the Cassiopaean contact, constantly assured by her that she had everything under control. The Cassiopaeans were saying otherwise, but at that point, I didn’t know what to believe.

She was spending a lot of time interacting with a purported UFO investigator who was going to write a book about her case and, (it was implied) make her famous. I checked up on this guy through my P.I. friend and found his credentials to not only be lacking, but that legitimate researchers would have nothing to do with him. When I told Candy this, she apparently went and told him what I had said, and he was able to persuade her that I was the one she should be avoiding because obviously, I wanted to use her case to make myself famous as a “UFO investigator”. He, on the other hand, just “wanted to help”. Of course, he also wanted to have an intimate relationship with Candy.

Led by this man, Candy withdrew into a circle of people whose belief in the Billy Meier “Pleiadians” was so fanatical that it had become almost like a cult. And, at this point, her actions became so bizarre that I was felt obliged to warn her about this group. She became angry that I even questioned their intentions. It was clear that there was a constant effort on their part to convince her that I was her enemy. Nothing could have been further from the truth.

At one point, Candy had discovered that the dress she was wearing at the time of her major abduction had been thrown into a corner of her closet and left untouched for many months. She said that she had just been unable to deal with it because of the emotional turmoil that the event had produced. I told her to put it in a plastic bag and set it aside until I could find out how to get it properly examined for any kind of traces.

I called my P.I. friend and told him about the whole affair. He was very interested in this piece of physical evidence since it could be scientifically tested. He decided to use his connections in law enforcement to get it to a proper lab, but he was going to do it without telling them that it was possibly UFO connected. We thought that this would be the best way to prevent the disappearance of the evidence, if any.

I called Candy and told her that I had managed to arrange this, and she was pretty excited and agreed to bring the dress over so I could take it to the P.I. A few hours after she had dropped the dress off, she called and asked me if I had taken it down to the guy yet, and I said, “No, not yet.” I was just getting ready to, though. She insisted that I not do this, because her UFO investigator/paramour had told her that he had the “right resources” to examine and test the dress, a chemist friend of his with his own lab. I already knew that this guy was a complete fraud, and I warned her that she was making a terrible mistake, that her evidence would be completely compromised if she allowed him to take it.

But, she was convinced. It was rather like the choices I had been making; only she was doing it with her eyes closed to the objective facts. She came and took the dress back.

My cousin was in touch with a lot of people in MUFON and he called me one day to tell me that there was a lot of scuttlebutt about this incident. It seems that after Candy had turned the dress over to her new “guru” of UFOlogy, he had then turned it over to a the fellow who claimed to be a scientist whom my cousin happened to know quite well. My cousin said he thought that this guy might have taken some chemistry courses in college, but that he was definitely not a scientist — in fact, he was only a technician at the sewage treatment plant. That was his laboratory!

Effectively, Candy had chosen a tech at a county water treatment facility to perform the very scientific analysis of whatever got shaken out over a shower curtain (!), over a legitimate scientific evaluation in a high tech forensics lab. Go figure. It was her choice.

I was completely disgusted with the whole lot of them and their UFO games and one-upmanship.

Right around this time, I was supposed to give a well advertised talk about the Cassiopaeans at a book store down in Indian Rocks Beach and a couple of days before this event was to take place, I received a phone call from the woman who owned the shop. She was very upset and said that she had received an anonymous phone call from a person who was obviously using some sort of electronic device to disguise his voice saying that if she did not cancel my talk, that she had better be prepared for “bad publicity” because I was on a list to be “eliminated”, and did she want that to happen in her store.

Fortunately, she was outraged at being threatened and was willing to take the chance, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I called my private investigator friend and told him the situation. His partner volunteered to act as my bodyguard, and drove me to the place, inspected every person who entered the room, and was armed and prepared for action.

I realized that things had gotten completely out of hand when I had to have an armed bodyguard in order to talk about the Cassiopaean material!

Not only that, but exactly what was going on here? Why was it that the whole process of experimentation with the channeling, once it had passed a certain point, had been fraught with attack after attack? One could say that such actions probably did not come from the “good guys”. So, they must come from the “bad guys”. And if so, why? The only logical answer was that there must be some reason they did not want us to proceed with the experiment. And once the contact had been made, they definitely did not want the information we were receiving to be shared with anyone. Again, I had to ask why? The only logical answer for why it would be desirable to shut me up was because what we were receiving was the truth — or very uncomfortably close to it!

It also brought up the question of why so many other channeled sources are not attacked in such a way? Logic tells us that they are not attacked because nothing they are saying is significant enough or correct enough to warrant suppression.

At this point, one day when Candy visited, I brought up the issue and she admitted that she had continued to interact with the metaphysical church group and the Reiki group. I told her that my opinion was that it wasn’t such a good idea. Hadn’t we learned something from all these experiences? She then went in a direction that surprised me. She began to talk about how silly it was to cut people off just because of such trifles as the games that were being played obviously were. I pointed out that she had not been the one whose life was threatened in this last series of incidents. She agreed, and then said that she just felt that she was “protected” and that she was able to navigate the treacherous waters of hanging out with the “other side”. I tried to persuade her that she might be falling into the trap, but she insisted that this was not the case, so I let it go for the moment.

The next day one of my daughters was sick with a fever and rash that was terrifying to look at. I took her to the doctor immediately. The diagnosis was severe systemic Candidiasis.

I didn’t need any more clues. When Candy called later that day to talk, I regretfully told her that as long as she continued to interact with the group, we would have to terminate contact. I couldn’t take any more risks — especially when my children were now involved.

Needless to say, she thought I was crazy and judgmental and all that, but it was a decision I had to make and it later proved to be right. Now, remember what I said at the beginning:

I had seemingly achieved a state of love and acceptance for all people, for all paths, for all who struggled in ignorance… 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… What I didn’t know was just how subtle and torturous deception could be and how it manifested on an individual, personal basis.

Now, what conclusions can we draw from all of this?

I have recently asked several friends to have a look at this particular narrative in order to discover if their analyses of the events is anywhere similar to my own. I was very grateful at the clarity of their responses, which are so astute I would like to quote them in part. “C” writes:

What comes up for me is:

1. The hierarchy of the attack system may or may not be known consciously to the conduits, especially those at the lower rungs of the hierarchy.

2. Compromise can be fractional or great; attacks come through integrity breaches of the chosen relay, and spread by contagion or artifice through to any weak spot of the end person.

3. One can observe strings, little nagging ideas or “small faults” which can be explained away or overridden by other more positive or engaging attributes of the person in question.

4. On the other hand, “weirdness” or “personality quirks” are not necessarily indicators of contamination at all.

5. The obvious “love and light” fallacy brings up a point of interest for me personally, and this relates to 3 above. [ i.e., Forgiveness.]

On the topic of forgiveness: this is something that can easily go on automatic, and appears to be a point where one can easily go blind to these little strings./span>

When one is faced with attack, one needs to be very clear on the dynamics of a situation, and where one has consciously or unconsciously overlooked/forgiven someone for some wrong or fault, it creates weakness in one’s own integrity. And by integrity I am not limiting my definition to moral integrity. I mean this as more of a generic “wholeness”.

When you go down the path of forgiveness, you also open up the realm of not-forgiveness. I think that the subject does warrant some new inspection/reworking of thoughts. I think that forgiveness as [an] automatic mental process is a Christian program. There is also the question of how can students truly forgive each other when every action/counteraction is part of a lesson?

I’m not advocating the holding of a grudge either by this.

True forgiveness implies a canceling out of the other person’s weak spot, an acknowledgment that the damage has been ended in the Forgiver.

Forgiveness can be viewed in a mundane way as a judgment (just as a refusal to forgive can be judgment). It does not guarantee that the underlying weakness in the forgiven person has now been addressed and resolved. It also implies to the forgiven one that the forgiver has resolved his own lesson. Are we as humans really qualified to do this?

Seemingly to me, in a similar way, when we make allowances for others’ weak spots by reason of judging that their other good qualities “cancel out these weak spots”, we agree to overlook, we can also close the door to receiving information about our own more unconscious aspects from our true friends. Integral to this type of scene of course would be the ability and means with which to make effective corrections and improvements. And of course each member would have the right and responsibility to maintain his/her own integrity. Any organization would be subject to contamination, and would be as strong as its weakest link.

Therefore, the individuals in the group would really have to be completely responsible as individuals for their participation in the group. Each of us has weak spots and points where we can be “used”, just as others’ weak spots can be used to wreak havoc on us. The question is to what length am I going to shore up my own weak spots and to assist others who are willing to do the same?

What are our strengths and our weaknesses? What do we nurture? What do we watch for in our own ranks? Are we willing to kindly give and receive help in this direction? What can we do to mutually assist in strengthening our union and each other? Seems there should be an astral immune system, parallel to a physical immune system. If there were such a system, I would expect that integrity would be a measure of the health of that system. Knowledge protects, not forgiveness.

[There are] no guarantees that one won’t get attacked, but one can minimize the duration or severity of the attack and adverse effects as one goes through life. “Forgiveness” can be a blinder to knowledge… I know also that I have swept correct original impressions under the rug of “forgiveness” and have regretted this later.

[In terms of Forgiveness and Love and Light] the forgiven party now “knows” he is not responsible, and if it ends there without further inspection, the source can use the same or similar modes for future feeding.

To the degree that the target of attack employs a simple “turning of the other cheek,” he is marked for further attack, for as long as his energy can be siphoned off.

On the other hand, if both the attacker and the attacked can honestly and openly inspect the mechanics of the attack, and be willing to take steps to repair the holes in the integrity of the relationship, there is a formidable strength, i.e., turning the petty tyrant around.

[In any relationship where such attack transpires] if a person can observe and realize on his own steam and without judgment or blame that he is being used in this way, there is hope. But no guarantee… One has to be able to also commit to knowing one’s own limitations, be ready for other varied and sundry modes of attack and betrayal coming through the weaker party, and also take responsibility for his part in the other’s evolution and growth — even if the correct next action is to withdraw for one’s own sanity and so as to not disrupt the lesson of the other.

Another friend then gave a very good analogy of what is described above:

We all have on our “spiritual” armor, our shield and sword. I picture us standing in a line. The warrior standing next to you has to be outfitted in the same gear; you can’t take off your breast plate and give it to the warrior next to you because he woke up late and forgot to bring his; your chance of getting pierced through the heart would be ten fold; nor could you be fighting with a warrior standing next to you that didn’t do any training — he just decided to wake up and put on some armor that day.

In other words you have to be on equal footing [with those with whom you associate closely.]

But also like a warrior, you don’t leave your injured behind and if you see them being attacked from all sides you charge in swinging your sword. These people are your comrades, they are closer than family at times of battle.

This reminds me of something I read in Carlos Castaneda’s books: Don Juan said, “A warrior loses compassion because he no longer feels self pity.” In many ways this is true. I think of forgiveness as just a “letting go”, knowing that some things have to happen in order to fulfill a lesson; that everyone has their role to play.

And that is the point: everyone has their “role” to play in the lessons we are all learning. And we can use these lessons to get better at who we are and what we do, or we can retreat into the cocoons of our belief systems, closing our eyes to the marvelous wonder of the universe and the great Cosmic Drama.

Yes, in a real sense we are all one, but we seem to be under a mandate to discover our true options, choose our role, and act it to the hilt, bringing down the house with applause and cascades of flowers when the final curtain comes down.

When the play is over and we all meet “backstage”, we may clap each other on the back, shake each other’s hands, and congratulate each other for a fine performance! But that is a different level. There seem to be many more acts in the play before we reach 7th density. And if we are not playing our part well, we can very likely be “pulled from the play” and “recycled” as an extra! We are in the middle of the play. And we cannot become playwrights or directors until we prove that we can act. And this “acting” seems to involve very specific choices and behaviors so that the play will be successful.

So, back to practical terms in the cosmic drama: a very difficult situation had been survived, and a very interesting lesson had been learned. But, that was not the end of it. Not by a long shot! Whoever or whatever it was that wanted to kill me had not given up. I was about to learn that when you block it from one direction, it sneaks around and tries to find another way to get in. And sometimes, the way in is through your own mind!