Just Because I Went Within…
A very personal story of ascending toward the higher self
Written by Lisa Gawlas
Chapter 1 When it all falls apart… again!
The Prelude
My life seemed at its peak performance in May of 2000. The socially accepted version
of abundance filled it up.
My employers appreciated me and elevated me through
management ranks rather quickly.
My income afforded everything I could buy my
children to maintain their joy and status level. The sun shone down on me and life was
great! June was about to change that.
My middle daughter, living in Houston Texas, was turning 16 years old on June 5 th, a
milestone I, in North Carolina, was not about to miss. I planned to spend a week with
her, celebrating her Sweet Sixteenth in style. I made all the travel arrangements and
booked the classiest car I could.
It was a brand new, gold, Chrysler Sebring
Convertible. I wanted her to feel like a princess whenever we went out and we went out
often, simply to show off in the car. We enjoyed a week of fun and flaunting together. It
truly is amazing the superficial joy money could buy.
While I was blissfully flaunting my good fortune to both my daughter in Texas as well as
anyone who wanted to notice us, and God knows we got noticed, someone was back in
North Carolina single handedly destroying my life.
Allow me to flash back to 1998 for a moment. In 1998, a man with whom I was living
ripped my life apart. In theory, he was my live-in boyfriend, but in my heart, he was a
pain in the ass I kept wishing would leave. This man paid my rent when I had no
money. When he suggested that he move in, of course I felt that I couldn’t say no. At
least I owed him a false relationship. I ignored the recurring dreams every night for a
1
week showing me this live-in arrangement was not a good choice and my life would fall
apart. Heeding those dreams would have stopped the hell that would soon unfold in my
life. But dreams are nothing more than picture shows relieving stress through the night,
right?
We lived in a two-bedroom apartment with each of my two children occupying their own
bedroom.
Being a single mom, I could sleep on the couch, which I had done for
decades anyway. Having been locked in one for two years when I was six through eight
years old, I was not a big fan of bedrooms. My new roommate was not happy with that
situation, so he got us a condo on the beach. Even though this was not what I wanted
and I knew that I couldn’t afford the condo on my own, “no” was not part of my
vocabulary. We moved into a four-bedroom, ocean front condo. Hurray?
Since we had all these bedrooms, I had lost my excuse for sleeping on the couch and
not with him. Even so, I slept on the couch as often as I could.. The couch felt safe.
Sleeping with someone else and having sex did not. Through a childhood of being
repeatedly molested by someone or another, I had learned how to get out of my body
during any sexual experience in which I didn’t want to participate. Because “no” was
not part of my vocabulary, especially when it came to sex, I simply left my body each
time we had sex. Since he really wasn’t a necrophiliac, sex with me was not very
exciting. The fantasy of living with me had become a real life nightmare for him and he
left the condo: But not without incident.
This man tried to pull the electric meter off the wall to assure that my children and I
would not have electricity. That left our electricity at about 25 percent. The electric
company informed me that, since I had damaged the meter, I would have to pay for it.
Huh? They turned my electricity off. This man already gave me the gift of not paying
the phone bill like he said he would and that had been shut off already. So what’s life
without any electricity? Did I mention I didn’t have a job? We received an eviction
notice as a Christmas present from the local police department.
2
I decided the very best thing for me to do, was to kill myself. This way, someone would
take care of my children. It is funny how the mind works when it is deeply depressed.
Suicide was a comforting friend to me. I had attempted it many times in my life; this
would have been the genuine fourth attempt. I say genuine because often a person
may try to commit suicide as a cry for help or attention, but she knows how to get just
sick enough without becoming dead. There are other times, in those deep black holes
of some peoples’ lives, where dead is better. This was one of those times in mine.
My method of suicide had always been pills. I am way too big of a coward to inflict any
sort of pain on my body. Going into an eternal sleep had always seemed the most
comforting escape route to me. But this time I was serious. I had tried and failed with
pills three times previously, the first time as a thirteen-year-old.
No pills this time!
Carbon monoxide poisoning was my new serious choice.
Lets talk about rational: I had $20.00 to my name, it was mid-December and I took both
children with me to shop for a hose, duck tape and a cloth that I could shove into the
tailpipe. I told the kids that we were getting material to make Christmas decorations.
I now possessed the necessary accessories; time to plan my escape from life. I surely
didn’t want my children to find me dead, so I drove about 30 minutes from the condo,
parked the car, and began writing love-letters to my children. They had to know I loved
them enough to die and that it had nothing to do with them. Funny, but the more I
wrote, the more I wanted to hug them one more time. I decided to do this dead thing on
another day. I decided to return home to hug my kids one more time before falling into
that eternal sleep and freeing them from this hopeless life with their mom.
For a couple more days, I clung to my kids. I told them how much I loved them,. I gave
them some of my prized possessions. But all the while I dreamed of going Home to
escape the pain that was my life. I felt that, if I didn’t make this move soon, I wouldn’t
do it at all. My second go at it involved driving further away from the condo. Maybe
then I wouldn’t turn around for another hug. I drove for an hour this time. More letter
3
writing as I shifted into more comfortable positions in my car, tears streaming down my
face at the thought of not being able to hug my children again. ‘One more time,’ I
thought, ‘I will go home, hug my kids, and drive even further away next time to get my
job done.’
One would think that this repetitive wanting-to-hug-the-kids-one-more-time distraction
would be the internal wake up call saying, “don’t do the eternal sleep, and find a way to
stay in life.”
Oh, not in my mind! I had convinced myself that, not only was I a lousy
mother and human, but also that even this loving act of killing myself so my children
could have a good life was becoming lousy!. I was being selfish wanting to hug my kid’s
one more time while an empty Christmas and an eviction loomed closer and closer.
What a waste of energy I thought I was!
I don’t remember where I got the money, but I filled my tank with gas, said my final
good-byes to my children and started driving. Seven hours later I landed in Kitty Hawk,
North Carolina just as dusk was settling on the horizon. I didn’t know Kitty Hawk’s
layout, so I hurried to find a place before dark that would privately accommodate my
final charitable act of kindness. I found a place off the road, stuck the hose and cloth
into the tail pipe, duct taped it into place and secured it into the window. All was well
and perfect. I was now writing a novel to each of my kids. The words and tears flowed
as I wrote my love letters until night fell and I was certain not to be seen in my womanmade gas chamber.
I was on a mission and there was nothing that would stop me from my task at hand;
death, or so I thought. I was writing my heart out to my son who was fifteen at the time.
I told him how proud I was of him, how much I loved him, and how to take care of his
eight-year-old sister. I was writing as if my life depended on it when something crept
into the flow of my words; a vision. Please know that psychic was not a part of my
world. I was a lost and non-practicing Catholic. But out of the clear blue sky, or in this
case, the dead-of-night sky, I saw my son on drugs. I saw him lost and tormented
because his mother had killed herself. I saw it as if I was in the midst of a wide-awake
4
dream. The funny thing is that I didn’t question that vision. I didn’t question where it
came from or why it was there. I simply undid my death chamber, started my car and
drove home.
So now what? There I was, I couldn’t leave because my son would become a drug
addict and live life in hell, but I didn’t know how to live. My version of living always
revolved around money.
Being able to pay the bills, buy food, and buy things of
comfort. That is what life is all about isn’t it?
I put my death items in a bag, then in a closet in case, of course, I might need them
again. I surely couldn’t just throw them away. The one thing I thought I knew for sure
about life was that it would take just a matter of time before it crashed down around my
feet. My mind always had an escape route ready.
Since death was no longer an option, I wondered how I would survive this torrid storm
that had seared my life into an unrecognizable mess.
Channeling my angry
hopelessness the only way I knew how, I wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper
stating how unjust my life had been. I described how I social services had turned me
away when I asked for help reconnecting my electricity. I explained that social services
told me that my unemployment made it not an emergency, but a problem, and I was
refused assistance. I wrote about my man and the electricity fiasco, that my children
wouldn’t have a Christmas and that, on New Years Day, we wouldn’t even have a
home. I poured my heart out in that letter and actually felt better. After sealing it in an
envelope, I drove straight to the newspaper office. It was Saturday and closed, but a
mailbox marked “article submissions” sat outside the office. I dropped my letter into that
black box and figured, ‘well, at least I vented.’ I was sure it would never see the light of
day, especially anytime soon.
I lived in a small town on the East Coast of NC. Our daily paper came out three times a
week; Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. I had worked in the newspaper industry for 10
years and understood about ‘putting a paper to bed’, press times, and space deadlines.
5
The submission statement in the letter to the editor stated that any article considered for
print had to be verified before published. Well, unless you came to my house, you
couldn’t contact me. My phones where shut off.
Imagine my surprise when a social worker knocked on my door Monday morning
wanting to help me. She explained that she had read about me in the Sunday paper.
Huh? There is no way that paper could have had the time to publish my article and they
sure didn’t verify it. Surely the paper had already ‘gone to bed.’ the time I put my letter
in the box.
Against everything that should have happened, they published my article the very next
day. The day that sells the most newspapers to boot, on Sunday!
Let me tell you, there are more angels on this earth than mean people. Donations
flooded into my mailbox. Complete strangers were showing up on my doorstep to take
me Christmas shopping for my kids. Food vouchers were sent to me. Someone turned
my electricity on. Even the mayor of the little city I lived in, Atlantic Beach, NC sent a
police officer to my house to ask what was the most important items on my children’s
Christmas list, and he made sure my children’s Christmas wishes came true.
I will tell you that being open to receive was the hardest thing I had to do. It is one thing
to know you need extraordinary help; it is a whole different ballgame to accept it.
I had lived my whole life as a giver without asking for anything in return. I shared food
stamps with a family that I knew didn’t have enough of their own. I gave “bums” my last
quarter.. That part was so easy! When I received the first offering, a check for $100.00,
I wanted to give it back. I sat at the kitchen table with my children and simply cried. “I
cannot accept this and I am going to mail it back to her,” I told them.
My son looked at me and said, “Mom, you can’t do that, we need it. If the story in the
paper was about someone else, you would have done the same thing, let them help us.”
6
He was right on all counts. How could I say no now? For now, I felt, I could catalogue
and shelve my pride.
Sinking despair turned into amazement and humbleness. My children were awestruck
over complete strangers’ generosity. I now cried tears of joy every day, which sure
beats the tears of despair I had been drowning in. Enough money came in to fill the
fridge, the area under the Christmas tree, pay the bills and go hunting for a home I
could afford.
The man who was to become my landlord didn’t even charge me a
security deposit. One month’s rent was enough to give us a new place to call home.
I even found a new job; a job that paid me more on a weekly basis than I had made in a
very long time. Of course, it was with a major pest control company, crawling under
houses to find problems. But I had a job! The “I-don’t-like-bugs-snakes-and-dampdark-wet-places” issues would have to be worked out later. God was finally in my
corner!
Who knew there was so much money in pest, termite and moisture control? My life and
attitude changed in an instant. It didn’t matter that I was working 12-hour days, because
the money was great, and we could live and even thrive now. That dark time in my life
was well behind me. I would work as hard and as long as it took to create that financial
abundance that creates so much joy and opportunity.
My life soared quickly to comfortable ranks in this pest control company. I was hired as
a sales person, within months promoted to sales manager and within a year I became
branch manager. My ego was stroked every step of the way since I was the only
female ever to make management within this company’s franchise. I was consistently
within the top 10 percent of overall individual sales of about 120 sales people, excuse
me, 120 MEN. I was confident, blissful, and spent money like I was sure there would be
more tomorrow.
7
Right before planning my week-long trip to Texas to celebrate my daughter’s sweet
sixteen rite of passage, the company had a massive management change. I now had a
area manager who seemed to really have issues with females. Not just me, but in
general. I never worried about the arrogance within his male-dominated mind. I was
great at my job and doing well, my numbers attested to that. My commission checks
every month assured me that this pest control company was making a fortune from me.
After all, my take was only 20% of what I sold. They kept the 80% of the contracts, and
I knew how much it took to run my branch. We were all prospering. Isn’t that job
security?
Imagine my shock when I returned from that lovely week with my daughter to find that I
had been demoted. Now keep in mind, I wasn’t simply demoted from branch manager
to a sales manager, nope—I was pushed all the way down the ladder to sales person.
What happened during the week I was gone? To say I was blind sided with this news
would be a tremendous understatement.
There was nothing that could have
forewarned me that my life was about to fall apart yet again.
The details of how it all happened don’t even matter. What really mattered was that
there went my mind; sinking into the black hole again. After receiving the news, I simply
went home. I took a few days off to try and figure out how, in the blink of an eye, it all
went so terribly wrong.
I loved my job, I loved my position at my job, more so, and I loved the money that came
from my job. ‘Nope,’ I thought. ‘I am not going down without a fight!’ I called the EEOC
and scrutinized many attorneys, making sure I hired the very best one. I found one four
hours away from me in Raleigh NC. Perhaps I liked him so much because, once again,
my ego was stroked. He said to me, “If you were born with a silver spoon in your mouth
like I was, your whole life would be different.” I was sure that was his way of saying I
was smart. I knew I was. If I had only known how arrogant I was as well, maybe I
wouldn’t have needed that silver spoon for my life to be different. I hired him!
8
We filed a sexual discrimination suit against my employer. My attorney strongly advised
me not to quit my job so that I could collect needed information for my law suit.
Reluctantly, I rolled up my sleeves and returned to work. I immediately got a call from
the CEO of the company; of course, he had received a letter from the EEOC stating I
was filing a suit against his company. Prior to that letter, he refused to talk with me and,
without my asking, he agreed to restore my position to sales manager. I had to accept.
Everyone in the company was instructed not to talk to me and not to spend time with me
other than in a must-do professional situation. Have I mentioned I am a Leo? Leo’s
thrive in the limelight. We Leo’s need social interaction, people stroking the ego side of
our nature. A Leo wants to be in the center of all the attention, but not because you
have now contracted the plague and people look at you funny and whisper about you as
if you cannot hear what they are saying.
Nope, not the road trip a Leo wants or,
perhaps better stated, needs to take, yet my attorney insisted we would win this way.
’Okay,’ I thought. ‘ I am in for as much pain and suffering as I can endure.’ The
depression deepened.
I was moved from the branch that I loved and thrived in, to the arm pit of the company—
as my CEO wonderfully put it; so I didn’t have to endure the people who created the hell
that was now my life. My income was dropping dramatically day by day. I had always
worked as a 100% commissioned employee, and now I was in the armpit of North
Carolina, drowning in my own despair. I showed up for work, then sat and moped. The
company, not wanting to stir the legal waters, let me.
My attorney insisted I go for therapeutic help. He insisted that it would be better for our
case. There was no doubt I was in a massive depression, so I didn’t have to fake
anything, and I still had insurance, so I thought, ‘why not?’ I found a local therapist,
made my appointment and started yet another journey of therapy.
9
I had done therapy since I was first placed in foster care when I was 8 years old. I knew
how it worked. I knew we would be blaming a lot of what I was feeling and going
through on my childhood years, the ins and outs of the foster system, the molestation by
just about everyone I knew, including each parent. This psychiatrist even gave my
“condition” a fancy title.
He called it “Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.”
I soon
discovered that was not a good title for a lawsuit, nor was the fact that I refused the
prescribed anti-depressant.
During the 30-minute session in which this psychiatrist labeled my depression as PTSS
, for which he prescribed an anti-depressant, he neglected to ask me if I had suicidal
tendencies and, if I did, what was my preferred method of suicide. I felt that tid-bit of
information should have been crucial to him, as my preferred method was pills. Yet,
without the thorough questioning an effective psychiatrist should ask, he handed me the
bullets that could lead to my next suicide attempt if the depression deepened.
I
respectfully declined the prescription.
In my 38 years, I learned much about my self and my depression. I had moved in and
out of deep depression since I could remember. They call this Bi-Polar Disease, but no
professional had diagnosed it as such.
I knew if I spiraled deep enough, that old
conviction that death was my only option would return. I had nothing stronger than
Tylenol in my house for that very reason. Having tried it, I knew Tylenol would not kill
me and it was the only drug I allowed in my home.
My attorney was not pleased at all. How dare I refuse drugs! A judge and jury would
take into consideration my compliance in taking drugs to restore my happiness level.
The lawyer’s wise advise, of course, was to reconsider filling the prescription. I again
declined.
My attorney was very unhappy with me by then. As he saw it, I was a Post Traumatic
Stress patient refusing to be medicated. The judge would blame me instead of my
unfair employer for the hell this employer created in my life.
10
This attorney did not even show up for the EEOC meeting.
I guess he couldn’t
understand or didn’t care why I refused those pills that would make my case look good.
It didn’t seem to matter to him that those very pills could be the proverbial bullets in a
future suicide attempt. He had insisted that I remain in that job and take those pills,
both of which I had not wanted, and then he had the cruel audacity to forego the EEOC
meeting! When he telephoned to say he would not be there, the EEOC closed my case.
Flaming mad, I still accepted the attorney’s apology and his explanation that we would
file the case in civil court. I assumed I had no alternative and I wanted to stomp on my
employer’s pocketbook for having the audacity to demote me! ‘I’m justified in this fight
that’s keeping me in hell,’ I raged to myself, ‘and it’s all my attorneys fault’!
Tighter and tighter depression bound me. I felt desperate to break the bonds of this
self-imposed hell. I had no church: Hell, I was furious with God by then and would have
spit on a church just to get back at Him for once again destroying my and my children’s
life. I was certain God hated me and that He believed I was the biggest louse known to
man. That was where my mind was leading me and of course, that is the energy that
reflected back onto my life.
Shortly after the lawsuit hell began, a friend handed me a book called Doors to Other
Worlds: A Practical Guide to Communicating with Spirits by Raymond Buckland. My
friend told me the book might help me find direction in my life. How? I don’t believe in
communicating with spirits, and why would I want to? ‘If that’s what it takes,’ I thought,
‘I could go to a priest with a direct line to God, offer a few Hail Marys and Our Fathers
and set my life straight. Into the junk pile went the book.
11
The Day that Changed the Rest of My life
It was November; five months into a job I hated, a life I hated, a law suit going nowhere
and deep desperation. I fought where my mind was going. ‘No way am I giving up this
time!’ Crying myself to sleep each night, I begged for direction, for understanding, for
anything providing hope and stopping the incessant desire to die. ‘Not this time,‘ I
thought, as I recalled that miracle two short years ago that kept me from ending my life.
Though, God knew, I sure could use another miracle. All my writings went to my now
deaf and distant attorney.
I woke up on the morning of November 11th 2000 to sit at my computer, check emails
and cry some more. There, lying by the computer was the long-forgotten book my
friend had given me; Doors to Other Worlds. ‘How did it get there?’ I wondered as I
picked it up. My children didn’t know a thing about the book when I asked them.
Although I didn’t believe in the paranormal, something strange had started happening in
our lives since that time we lived in the condo. Lights turned off and on by them selves,
my checkbook would somehow migrate into my bedroom; a place I never kept it. Even
the TV turned off and on by itself. I had the switch repaired, but it maintained a mind of
its own.
Funny how our life-long conditioning forces us to find excuses for events that
somewhere deep inside of us, we know are not normal. Yet, I was sure there was a
perfectly normal explanation for these strange happenings. I just didn’t know what that
was.
The magical appearance of this book had me stumped though.
Picking it up and
thumbing through it, I found very short chapters of instructions for contacting the dead. I
thought, ‘why would anyone want to contact the dead?’ To this day, I cannot tell you
what washed over me, but I suddenly had to read that book. It wasn’t a long book and I
consumed it within hours. One chapter that particularly interested me was the one
12
about Ouija Boards. It included instructions for using a Oija Board and how to construct
one. According to the author, the Oija Board would answer questions it was asked.
A hopeful curiosity began a slow boil within me. All of a sudden, it was all I could think
about. I had to have a Ouija Board right now and nothing was going to stop me. My
mind was consumed with this need. This need was bigger than any chocolate craving I
have ever had. It was even stronger than my nicotine craving! I gave in. I embarked on
a Ouija Board hunt.
Unfortunately, searching for a Oija Board in the North Carolina Baptist belt was a
fruitless adventure. No store within 20 miles had one. Then, I remembered the makeyour-own-Oija Board instructions. I bought a large sheet of foam board, a marker for
the letters and numbers on the foam board pieces I would eventually cut up, and a tiny
little pudding cup that would become the planchette.
My son’s girlfriend, Sandy, agreed to play this game with me and I noticed as we drove
home with these tools that would change the rest of my life, a full moon shining brightly
in the night sky. I even mentioned to her, as if I was an expert, “Oh there is a full moon,
this Ouija Board will work perfectly.”
Much to my surprise, it did.
13
The Ouija Board
My dining room table became the Ouija Board itself. I laid out the numbers and letters,
the yes, no and good-bye exactly like the photo in the book. I placed my 69-cent plastic
pudding cup planchette onto the center of the table and set up the tape recorder. I
didn’t want to forget a thing.
Following the book’s instruction, Sandy and I placed our fingers lightly on the pudding
cup and I asked the question “is there anyone here?” I asked this question at least
three times with no response. ‘At this rate,’ I thought, ‘it’s going to take a long time.’ The
instructions were to ask the spirit’s name after we got a response from the first question.
I decided to combine the questions to speed up this process; patience was not my
greatest virtue. I asked, “If there is anyone here please tell us your name.”
That little pudding cup slid three inches across the table to the letter C. Sandy and I
practically jumped out of our skins and our fingers flew from the pudding cup. We each
accused the other of moving it on purpose. When we firmly believed the other didn’t
move it, we were as frightened as we were excited.
The book had emphasized
complete concentration with both hands lightly on the planchette at all times, or it
wouldn’t work. I don’t think the dead people have read that book.
The planchette slid across the table from letter to letter, spelling out what seemed to be
someone’s life story. Sandy and I could not fathom that this was happening, yet it was.
The information flew across that table so effortlessly that Sandy and I were able to
smoke cigarettes and write down what was being spelled out with only one hand each
on the pudding cup. I was pretty sure the spirit talking to us, who spelled out the name
Jill Cadee, hadn’t read that book and certainly didn’t care what the rules were.
We learned of Jill Cadee’s life in Iceland in the 1600’s. She was a married mother of
four by the time she was 22-years-old and lost her husband and all four children to a
fire. She died shortly after that on a boat in a storm.
14
The information flowed non-stop for close to four hours. We stopped only to pick up my
17-year-old son, Chris, from work. The book had not explained closing out the board,
and, since we didn’t know better, we simply abandoned the board and left to fetch Chris.
We excitedly described our new friend named Jill who was dead to a disbelieving Chris
He didn’t share our enthusiasm and didn’t want to play the Ouija Board game with us. I
rewound the tape, which recorded the entire session with this Jill Cadee, and played it
back. Something strange took place on that tape recorder.
When Sandy and I were just casually talking, the recorder worked and recorded
clearly. When Jill was talking, and I was saying out loud what Jill was spelling out, the
recorder produced a twang; a consistent twang that distorted my voice and my words.
The tape even skipped or repeated a sentence in a spot where my voice was reading
Jill’s words.
Chris was moving toward belief, but not yet a willing participant. Why I would try to
convince my own child to play a game with which I wasn’t even familiar, I do not know.
However, that is exactly what I did. He reluctantly agreed to participate in our Ouija
Board experience.
To this day, I’m not sure what changed between the time we left the board to pick up
Chris and the time we sat back down to resume our exchange with a dead person, but
something grew dark and distorted in this new conversation.
The planchette was
spelling out terrible things such as “fero die,” “fire die,” “fero fire die.” I was confused. I
no longer felt that happiness when Jill was talking about her Icelandic lifetime. I was
now feeling frightened and worried. So were Sandy and Chris.
The Ouija Board suddenly spelled out the word E V I L. Just as suddenly, a red-orange
spark appeared on the wall behind Chris. It ran down the wall, across the dining room
floor, into the living room and blew out the light we were using.
15
Surprised and a bit frightened, we quickly removed our hands from the planchette, but
something deep inside of me arose. Raising my hands, taking complete authority, I
loudly stated, “no evil will ever cross my table.” Inside, I was shaking from fear of this
new and very unfriendly presence that I certainly didn’t understand. The startled look
on both Chris’s and Sandy’s faces scared me even more, yet I wanted to talk to Jill
again and, I didn’t know why, but I fervently wanted Chris to talk to Jill. After replacing
the lamp’s bulb, we returned our fingers onto the planchette. This time I demanded to
speak to Jill Cadee and only Jill Cadee. We felt her lightness fill the dining room once
more.
Instead of inquiring about her life in Iceland, Chris asked if she was the one turning the
lights and TV off and on. She confirmed she had been with us long before this Ouija
Board session. My mind swam with questions. How is that possible? Even more
significant to me was why would she do that?
Through a long series of questions, she affirmed that she had been with us for five
years; ever since the day of my divorce. She stated that she was there specifically for
me and I asked her why. She spelled out “protect you crash.” At that, my son began to
cry. He cried from a depth I never knew he had. I thought, ‘if the idea of my being in a
crash could evoke such emotion, I cannot imagine how my suicide would have affected
him. It’s good I am alive, despite the present situation.
I was born and raised a Catholic and understood that version of guardian angels.
Following the divorce, I drank and drove. I had no doubt that my guardian angel drove
me home. I remember having to hold one hand over my eye so the correct amount of
lanes appeared on the road. I never once thought to pull over. I just needed to find a
way to see straight. I believed in guardian angels!
As she continued answering questions I surely never would have asked, I was
becoming really puzzled. This contradicted what I thought I knew about spirits. Did
16
dead people really protect you for years on end? Did she move my guardian angel out?
Had there really been a dead person driving for me all those times that I shouldn’t have
been anywhere near a steering wheel?
The hours passed with effortless communication, yet I clung to skepticism. I was not
100% convinced that this truly was happening, or worse, maybe it was. I wanted to test
this Jill, myself, and the teenagers sitting around the table playing this game with me. I
asked her the only question to which I felt sure I knew the answer. My motivation was
to test whether or not Sandy, Chris or myself were influencing that pudding cup’s
movement unconsciously.
So I asked, “why are you hanging out with me?” She replied, “Because he loves you.”
In the most sarcastic tone I could muster, I said, “Oh, how nice, someone loves me.”
Expecting the word G O D to be spelled out, I asked, still sarcastically, “Who loves me?”
That pudding cup slid across the board to the letters J E S U S and this time it was my
turn to cry. What evoked such a deep and emotional response within me, to this day, I
don’t know. All I know is that something busted loose. Maybe I started to believe in this
communication.
Maybe, just maybe, there really was someone on the other side
watching over me. And maybe I should rethink my religious beliefs.
That was the end of our conversation. We had been talking for eight hours straight. It
was now 3:00 A.M. and Jill kept spelling out “rest now”. I thought, “Hell no!! How can I
rest when you just told me you are with me because Jesus loves me?” Where was
God? What did Jesus have to do with anything? I have questions, a lot of them. You
cannot end this game!” Of course she could; and did.
Questions burned like a wildfire out of control, but I tried for weeks to get that Ouija
Board to work again and it would not.
Even though I had been a catholic all my life, and the church talks about going to Jesus
for life’s problems, I always went directly to the head hauncho: God. I had never been
17
much for middle men. My allegiance had always been with God and God alone. Jesus
and his mom were really nice people, and I loved and appreciated them, but when life
infuriated me, as it did often, I went straight to the top to air my grievances and state my
demands.
I can remember being a little girl, locked in a bedroom, screaming and yelling at God.
Flipping him the bird and putting my five fingers to my nose as if telling God to kiss my
ass. Yes, from a small child, when life handed me lemons, I blamed God every time.
The Ouija Board never worked again.
18
Chapter 2 – Meeting the key players on your road to change
Learning to navigate the path
Although quitting my job allowed me time in my bathtub, it also stirred up the mind
chatter.
I have never been one to own a savings account and spent money as fast as I made it.
Now, I was knee deep in that rainy day everyone saves for; the one I had always
ignored. I quit my job, had no money, and bills rolled in. My mind confirmed that I was
a no-good, worthless person. ‘After all, ‘ my mind told me, ‘you voluntarily quit your job,
leaving your children high and dry once again. What kind of loving mother would not
endure hell so her children could eat and have warm place to sleep? Obviously the
“you” kind of mother! What a waste of energy you are.’
I was breathing light from sun up until sun down and was actually getting somewhere. I
could feel the light travel into me. I could feel it surround me from the inside out. I
became unanchored; and disconnected from my outer life. I finally thought, ‘this journey
within isn’t so bad.’
When the light consumed me, the pain that was my life dissipated. I spent as much
time as possible in my bathtub; sometimes up to ten hours a day broken up into twohour intervals. I described every single inhalation of light on that spiritual forum, as well
as every single thing I felt, thought, and experienced through it all.
The bright, white light started to turn violet. Swirly things appeared in my inner vision. I
watched with absolute amazement of visual and feeling. Then, this primitive pencil
drawing of an eye floated from the right side of my inner vision all the way to the left
side only to disappear and start all over again. I watched this eye for hours on end. I
was amazed that I was seeing something that I knew I was not creating. I had no clue
what it all meant, I was just happy something new was happening.
19
Of course I documented this very exciting eye experience on that Internet spiritual
forum. Someone replied to tell me about the Sun God Ra and, when I looked him up,
sure enough, that was the exact same eye I had been seeing. But what does that
mean? Years would roll by before I realized that it symbolized the opening of my inner
spiritual eye into my physical world’s reality. The sun—the light—was illuminating the
darkness within enough for me to be able to “see.”
The eye eventually turned into a pencil drawing of a female face on the right side of my
inner vision field and a male face on the left. They would float in together until they met
in the middle, kiss, and disappear. This image, just like the pencil drawing of the eye,
continuously appeared, drifted from my vision, and then reappeared. I thought it meant
that I would meet a man soon and fall in love. Yeah right! Again, it was not until years
down the road that I understood the masculine and feminine energy each of us possess
and that this journey of enlightenment would merge them into one, balanced energy. I
was not looking for answers or understanding yet. I was simply trying to get to Jill.
Eventually I became bored with that pencil-drawing stuff when someone told me about
visualization. Since I love the beach, I chose to visualize a beach. To visualize, I was
instructed to breathe in gallons of light for protection. Protection from what no one said.
I put myself on a cozy lounge chair next to the ocean and inhaled the sunlight that I had
created to shine down on me. But something strange happened. No matter how hard I
tried, I could not get that sunlight into my lungs. Instead it kept entering into my solar
plexus.
Keep in mind; I had no clue what a solar plexus was at that point. This “new age” world
in which I was now immersed was unchartered territory. What I understood about
spirituality derived from religion and church. Heck, I never once questioned where that
visual of my son going down a bad road of drugs came from or why I made a life and
20
death choice according to that visual. It did not occur to me ever again. Spirit reminded
me later, on down the road.
When this sunlight kept entering into my upper abdomen area, I had to find someone
who might understand why I was suddenly loosing control in my meditations. Hmmm,
now there is an issue to be dealt with by sunlight: Control! So, I learned about chakras
and especially the solar plexus. However, I can’t tell you that I understood it at all.
What the heck is an energy center? What does they do, why do we have them? Why
does the sun want to go into my solar plexus when I breathe with my lungs?
I spent days trying to control that sunlight. It was as frustrating as trying to control the
mind, only it didn’t feel as bad. It actually felt incredible. Surrendering, I let the sunlight
have its way with me. The feeling was much different, more intense, than the white light
breathing. Every cell in my body was vividly aware that something new was happening.
Every cell in my body was throwing its own little party. ‘This.’ I thought, ‘is surely
heaven.’
I would rush to my meditation beach, spending literally an hour or two just sucking
sunlight thru my abdomen. When I was in meditation, all was right with my world.
When I was not in meditation, the horror that was my life controlled me. My depression
was so strong that I couldn’t leave my house or speak with anyone. It was so deep that
I sent Chris for food and toilet paper. I became a bathroom recluse and Chris became
the parent.
If I couldn’t be found in my bathtub, then I could be found at the computer on that
spiritual forum, asking questions and documenting every single second of my meditative
life. Little did I realize that I was growing in wisdom and connectedness from that
sharing. Growing spiritually was not part of my comprehension yet. I figured I was
becoming
a
meditation
21
addict.
Meeting my Animal Totems
As I became one with the sun, something new joined my meditation. I saw something
move out of the corner of my eye. When I focused my inner vision on the movement, I
was shocked to find a Bengal tiger. Momentarily startled, I asked, ‘What in the world is
a tiger doing inside of my meditation and at the beach no less?’
Re-entering my meditative world, I thought, ‘should I be afraid of this big cat? Can it
bite me and do me harm in this place I believed was my own creation?’ As these fearcentered questions danced in my head, the big cat simply stood off to the side, watching
me: Not moving, not growling, just sort of… waiting.
Okay, call me a curious human being! Knowing full well that I could open my eyes at
any time, I dared approach this beautiful creature that seemed to be beckoning to me
anyway. As I walked closer to him, my beach meditation world seemed to transform
itself. All of a sudden there was a lush forest just behind me.
‘Where did that come from? Who put it there?” I wondered. ‘It’s bad enough I lost
control of the sunlight; now someone has put a forest near my beach?’ I decided to
worry about who or what later. This majestic creature walked, no, led me into this
tropical paradise. I willingly followed. Although he didn’t talk to me audibly, he had a
way of communicating I sure was not accustomed to: Telepathy.
He told me his name was Tony the Tiger. I laughed, remembering the tiger I had as a
little girl. It was my best friend when I was 7 years old and I named it Tony the Tiger
after the Kellogg’s mascot. My mother would “party,” leaving me to watch my threeyear-old brother and one-year-old sister. I was terrified, yet that stuffed tiger gave me
strength somehow. When I was taken from my mom, I was also taken from my tiger. I
cried for the longest time. Meeting the tiger in my meditation made me feel like a little
girl reunited with her long lost friend.
22
I decided in that moment that, if I never found Jill in this place called meditation, the
reunion with my tiger was well worth my efforts.
My friends on the spiritual forum told me about animal totems. I had to ask, ‘is that like
totem poles?’
I was familiar with animals on tree poles through stories of Native
Americans, but never knew they could be real.
‘After all,’ I thought, ‘the Native
Americans are weird.’ The fact that my father, who completely abandoned me in this
lifetime, was Native American made them mean too. I had spent no time in my life
getting to know any Native American anything!
There I was learning that we all have totem animals. Some are with us all our lives,
while some come only when we need to call on their attributes and learn from them.
What had I gotten myself into?
Day after day I went back to play with Tony the tiger. He took me to a river where we
swam and played. It became a ritual. The moment I left the beach chair and entered
the woods, we would play in the river. It is amazing how water can lighten up one’s
whole being.
My friend Tony introduced me to a donkey. At first, I was offended because I was sure
it was his way of referring to me as a “jackass” and deservedly so. In meditation, I
would frolic and play like I didn’t have a care in the world. Out of meditation, I would
feel like lead weight, living my bleak and failing life with no job, no desire to look for a
job and no money coming in. ‘Yeah,’ I thought, ‘I am the biggest jackass of all time. ‘
This donkey, who never gave me his name, showed me how to balance weight. He
always had saddlebags draped over his back and, even though I had no clue at the time
what he was doing, he was teaching me how to balance the weight of the world that I
chose to carry within me. My beautiful tiger taught me to find joy in simple play through
23
our water romps and how to start my day without stress. To this day, I bathe and
meditate first thing in the morning.
24
Meeting Jill and Ramus, my spirit guides
One day, after what seemed like an eternity from when I started meditating, it
happened. My beautiful Tony the tiger, my beloved donkey and I were playing in the
river stream, having fun and releasing the stress and worries I brought into meditation
with me. I don’t know what was so special about this day, but this time when we got out
of the river stream, we got out on the other side of the bank. Until then, we always got
out the very same way we went in. That day was different. Everything felt different over
there on the other side of the river. I saw a stone cabin there. How had I not seen that
before?
Tony brought me to the cabin’s stone steps and telepathically told me that, from there
on out, I must find my way without him. I was sad, but excited at the same time.
Something new was going to happen in meditation. I could barely breathe!
I climbed the cabin’s steps and knocked on the door. A man opened it and waved me
in.
A girl sat in a chair in what I guessed was the living room.
She arose and
introduced herself. I was flabbergasted when she said her name was Jill, and the man’s
name was Ramus. ‘Here it is!’ I thought. ‘Finally! After weeks of hell getting my mind
to shut up long enough to have an experience, fighting with sunlight to go into my lungs
instead of my belly, feeling like a child again frolicking with animals… and now my
heart’s desire; to finally have that burning question answered that started this meditation
trip in the first place!’
We got to know each other. It was very much like relatives you heard you had, but
never met before. Ramus, was the spirit guide who had been with me all of this life.
Actually, he had been with me much longer that, but my mind was not ready to
understand that. Jill came to my side the day I was divorced. She talked to me as a
girlfriend would. She actually became my best friend.
25
Ramus, was strange. He never spoke a word to me. He would always be present, but
never spoke. Eight years passed before I understood that his role in the unfolding
moments that turned into years of meditation was to teach me that actions speak louder
than words. And it only took me eight years to really apply that energy to my life! I can
be a bit slow on the uptake.
I tried to ask about the Jesus comment that came through the Ouija Board conversation
with Jill. However, I was quite politely brought to the next task at hand. Maybe I can
better state that in human terms: They ignored my inquiry. Instead, they wanted to talk
about my life.
I started to learn about healing from the inside out.
That sure wasn’t like any
psychotherapy I ever had. I was not even sure I wanted to do that. It sounded painful.
Jill told me that it was crucial for me to be honest with myself. I thought, ‘What was that
supposed to mean, of course I’m honest with myself, aren’t I?’
I did not realize the depth into the River of DeNile I was swimming until these beautiful
and loving people, who no one but I could see, showed me how much I lied to myself to
justify who I was and why I was that way.
creating a survival mode, to get through life.
26
We human beings deceive ourselves,
Meeting my physical life mentor(s)
To say that I was grateful to have had that spiritual forum online would be an
understatement. I could go the forum anytime, day or night, to vent or share, and know
I would receive a variety of feedback. I couldn’t have survived the journey without the
core people who aligned themselves with me, held my hand, comforted my heart and
became the best friends I ever met.
One person in particular would change so much about me, and all he had to do was be
there online. His name was Marc.
This spiritual forum had a built in chat room within its structure. Two of the ladies with
whom I had become good friends were with me in this chat room. We started to meet
there regularly so they could help me understand the crazy and wild road I now set my
feet upon. By this point, I was in meditation at least three to five times each day for
about two hours at a time. There was a lot I needed to understand and often!
I had no clue what I was doing or where I was going. Not only that, but “meditation”
rarely happened in the English language. It was filled with metaphors and symbols:
What I came to learn as spirit’s universal language of choice.
I needed many
interpreters. I started to understand that asking five people their opinions about my
experience produced five different interpretations. All of them could be relevant and all
can add value to the journey.
These two ladies and I were in the chat room and in came someone we had never seen
on the forum’s posts. He called himself Stashima. I could feel his presence within me.
It was the strangest thing I had ever experienced outside of meditation. It was as if his
very energy was not only sitting next to me, but also, somehow enveloping me. Equally
as strange was that my two online friends began typing out that they needed to protect
me from him. I was baffled!
27
There was a way to talk privately to each person in the chat room, so I did exactly that.
I asked each lady, ‘why do you have to protect me from him?’
They never really
answered my question, but asked me to trust them. I did, but not completely. This
man’s energy was inside of me, tickling parts of me I didn’t know someone could touch
from a computer chat room.
The ladies were putting Marc on the defense, or at least that was their attempt. He
simply smiled—I felt his smile—and typed back respectfully and with caution.
The
caution was not from being afraid of the ladies, but to insure that he didn’t instill any
more fear in them than they were already feeling.
I started to ask him privately if his intention was to hurt me in some way. He assured
me the answer was no. I believed him. My life and the way I understood life was about
to change drastically.
Marc decided to be a part of the sharing on the forum. He posted his insights and I
needed a dictionary to figure out what he was saying. He spoke in parables. Who was
this man that captured every molecule in my body as if it had already belonged to him?
I could feel his presence moments before he would land into the chat room to talk with
us again. I could feel his massive energy anytime I read his words on the forum. What
was happening to me and why?
Perhaps he felt the same connection with me. He went through my 5,001 postings on
this spiritual place of sharing and offered insight as if he knew what he was talking
about. My heart listened intently.
We met privately in chat rooms, building a relationship of spiritual insight and friendship.
He helped me understand some of the things I was going through within meditation; well
at least vaguely, but to me, it was as if a brilliant light just poked its way into my entire
life.
28
About a month into our new, but growing-ever-closer friendship, he asked me a
question that I never forgot because his reply confused me. I didn’t dare ask him what
he meant; my ego was still very much in charge in this consciousness. But I did ask the
ladies with whom I was now best friends. and they were baffled as well.
He had asked me if I knew what I was doing and where I was going in continuing to
tune into meditation and fill myself with light. I simply answered as honestly as I could
that I had no clue what so ever. His reply was that he was deeply humbled. ‘Why?’ I
wondered.
The way I saw myself, I was doing what ever other person on that forum was doing.
Granted, I had no real clue why I was doing it, except to get out of the hell I called my
life, but why would he be humbled?
Of course, he knew where I was heading and how hard the road is to get there, but he
never told me. I was simply trying to find meaning in my life and a better way to be in it.
Meditation was surely filling that bill.
His communication with me was as mysterious as the spirit guides Jill and Ramus had
become. A lot of non-answers existed in the world of spirit communication and now it
equally existed with my new heartthrob named Marc who lived in a place he referred to
as OZ. I later came to realize that meant Australia.
Little did I know just how much this man, without having to do a thing, would change my
world.
29
Insight from my current perspective
You and I live in a linear frame of mind and life, where one thing naturally follows into
the next thing and grows and builds from there. We know when we look at the clock
that two o’clock is sure to follow one o’clock. When building a house, the frame will be
constructed after the foundation is built. Perhaps best described, when putting a puzzle
together, you look for all the connecting pieces and put it together as one puzzle piece
snaps into the other, forming the larger picture as you go. The world of spirit does not
even come close to working like that.
When you go into what I call co-creative meditation, which is anything other than just
sitting there being still or breathing light, your spiritual team starts to give you pieces of
your own puzzle. Years can pass between connecting one piece with another. This
can seem to be a whole lot of random and useless information that you get during
meditation, simply because you cannot see how any of it fits together. Spirit really does
have a well laid out plan, even if, to the struggling human, it makes absolutely no sense.
This path frequently doesn’t make sense as you go. Don’t try to force understanding.
Your team will let you know when you are really ready to understand what you have just
achieved in your travels and not one moment beforehand!
Each puzzle piece connects to a very particular vibration level within you. For example,
when I started meditation, I was at a vibration level where I was able to see the pencil
drawing of the eye or of the male and female heads. However, it would be about two
years later that my consciousness was vibrating at a level to understand what it all
means. No matter how confusing a meditation might be, trust that on each step of the
way, you are heading for a greater understanding than your current mind can
comprehend. In a month or a year or perhaps even longer, it really will all fit together.
Get out of your mind’s “need to know and understand” desire and into the heart flow of
just going forward with trust.
30
Also, you have strategically set up all your key players in your life’s journey. Each one
holding a brass ring of understanding that will be passed off to you. Always remember,
when you receive that brass ring from any of your life’s players, they will soon journey
off to be an integral part of someone else’s world, and you will attract new key players
as they leave. When you start to cling to people, trying to keep the relationship, you are
placing yourself and that other person at a pointless standstill. Letting go is a significant
lesson on the path of enlightenment.
Last, but far from least, do not take this journey alone. Seek out others of like minds
and desires. The journey of spiritual awakening, forget the complexities of enlightment,
is hard enough. Surround yourself with cheerleaders who will encourage you and give
you hugs through the hard times, and avoid anyone who wants to taunt or tease what
you are doing. Never feel the need to justify what or why you are doing any of these
spiritual “things” like meditation and changing your approach to life and relationships.
Learn to be okay with responding, “Because I want to,” because chances are, rarely will
others understand or appreciate what you are doing.
You will find that even the things you are beginning to understand will change as your
mind catches up to what you are really doing. It is crucial for you to align yourself with
like vibrations. Then you will soar to the next level of your path.
31
A meditation to connect you with your spirit guides
City of Light Meditation
There is no right way or wrong way to “do meditation.” Your body fully knows what is
best for you: Trust that. Just because one way works best for someone, doesn’t mean
that it will work best for you. Trial and error will get you where you want to go—deep
into yourself. In spirit, there are no rules and limitations. This is a great time to stop
being so human!
Once you are deeply relaxed, build an inner garden retreat. Surround yourself with your
favorite flowers, trees and shrub. , Perhaps add a little pond or gentle flowing waterfall.
Create anything and everything that will allow yourself to feel relaxed, comforted and at
peace.
As you build this inner sanctuary, start to truly connect with all the elements you have
brought in. Breathe in the aromas of the flora, of the trees, of the water itself. Breathe
in the air and notice how incredibly these elements mix together. Feel what your body
is feeling with each breath of your inner garden you take in. Feel what is in your heart
as the senses become alive and knowing.
What you are really doing is raising your vibration to the purity of this inner sanctuary.
As you and this inner space become equal, a bird or animal or perhaps even an insect
will come to you, so you can follow it to the next level of meditation. You can talk to
your new critter friend as if you were talking to a human. Ask it why it is there with you
now and what you can learn from it. Should you ask, but feel like you are not getting a
response, don’t worry. That will come. You are raising your vibration each step of the
way, including your ability to hear the higher realms of existence. The communication
will eventually catch up with you.
Follow your new friend. He or she will be taking you to a footbridge. This footbridge is
really the crossing stage from the earth realm into the spirit realm. There is work to do
32
at this footbridge and you will not be able to cross over until you have completed
whatever is required of you.
Walk onto bridge until you reach the middle. Look over the side and notice what you
see beneath the bridge.
There should be some sort of water element here.
Somewhere within the water will be what looks like a reflection. This reflection may or
may not look like you.
The first things you are to do are jump into the water and feel it. What does the water
feel like? Is it deep or shallow? Is it clear or cloudy? Is it trickling or flowing like a
raging river?
The water element is actually your emotional world. The questions above will help you
to really understand this aspect of you. Do you need to increase your emotional field (if
the water is shallow) or is the water so deep you feel you could drown (are you owning
everyone else’s emotions too)?
I hope you can see where I am going with these
questions and understand the symbolisms of the water.
When you feel you have learned as much about yourself as you can from being in the
water, go to the reflection within the water and merge with it. If you do not see your
reflection, clear up your water. Within you are the answer to “how do I do that?” This is
a journey you had planned long before you entered the human body that is reading
these words. You already know within you how to raise your emotional vibrational level
by clearing your human emotional field. Just do what feels right, even if you don’t
understand it at first. Don’t get hung up on understand a darn thing on this path.
Understanding is what comes with time, perseverance and patience (another of those
key words).
When you are able to merge with the reflection, what are you feeling from it? What
communication are your receiving?
Now is a good time to put aside verbal
communication. Words and language are human necessities and not spiritual ones.
33
The reflection is an aspect of your higher self, soul essence, or whatever words you
may use for the part of you that has always been Home with all of creation. Your soul
will communicate in feelings, in various, and what may seem like random. Trust me that
these are never random. A song may start playing in your head, perhaps. The list is
too long to go through, but I think you get the gist. Spirit uses many things and finds
many avenues to “communicate” to you. Be sure to listen.
Once you have done whatever is needed at the footbridge, you will be able to cross
over to the other side; that is, the opposite side of where you entered. Once on the
other side of the bridge, you will find a path. Simply follow it to the City of Light. Even
this journey on the path will reveal considerable knowledge about yourself and the world
you are within. Pay attention to every detail. Understand within your heart as much as
you can.
The City of Light is unmistakable. You can feel the light emanating before you even get
there. As you approach this place, you may have to adjust your inner vision at first to
see the details clearly. You will find that among the buildings there will be a special one
that seems to call out to you. Move toward it. When you get to that one building that is
all yours, go to the door and knock on it, or ring the doorbell if there is one.
Whoever opens the door is your spirit guide or guides. Talk to your guide like you are
getting to know a long lost friend. Don’t go in there with big questions like “what is my
soul purpose?” or “what am I supposed to be doing in life?” I assure you; your guide
won’t tell you. Ask questions such as; ”what is your name?”— “How long have you
been with me?” —“what is your role in my life?” Simple things your mind can absorb at
this point in your venture.
When you don’t know what else to ask, simply tell your guide you are ready to be taken
on a tour of the house. This is, after all, your inner divinity. You can find all that you
seek by exploring the limitless doorways that are within this house. Make sure you
invite your guide every step of the way; your guide can help you understand what may
34
seem puzzling at the time. Keep in mind, sometimes, guides just let you be puzzled.
There are no rules here except to navigate you to the places within yourself you need to
explore.
Enjoy the journey!
35
Chapter 3 – Stepping straight into the gates of hell called “The Dark Night of the
Soul”
Exploring the vastness of “spiritual awakening”!
The one thing I quickly realized was that I had no clue what I was doing and that I was
now in a land I couldn’t have fathomed existed just two short months ago. All I had to
do was crawl into my bathtub, take in a breath or two (I was really getting good at this
meditation thing) and I suddenly enter a world filled with wonder and insight.
My
massive depression didn’t exist there in my very own wonderland. I loved this place
very much. But I sure didn’t get why this world existed and even more strongly burning
in my heart was why no one had bothered to tell about this place before.
Surely something this magical and relatively easy to access would be echoed through
all the churches in every land, but it wasn’t. At least not the churches I ever attended.
My family and peers never said this place existed. What’s the big secret?
Although I loved my family on the spiritual forum, I had an insatiable need for
understanding this new and strange inner world.
I went straight to the bookstore
despite my hatred of reading and the fact that I had not purchased a book in two
decades. I had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge.
The first book I picked up was “The Seat of The Soul” by Gary Zukav. I consumed that
book within a weekend and became more confused than enlightened. Don’t get me
wrong. I loved the book. I knew it was special and had purpose in my world. I just
didn’t understand a thing he talked about.
There was a chapter I actually re-read
because it sounded so important. That was the chapter about reverence. Re-reading it
didn’t help me “get it” any better. There was nothing in my life to which I could connect
its words and meaning.
36
I didn’t understand the terminology used in the book. Hey, I grew up Catholic and that
was the only terminology I understood. Even the concept of a soul was so loose in my
understanding that to try and hone it to an energy that communicates to me melted the
wiring of my now over worked mind. It felt like someone took me from kindergarten and
placed me into college without providing a list of the required vocabulary.
I knew this book was important, but, since I didn’t understand a thing in it, onto the shelf
it went. I would return to it when I understood this new language of spiritual awakening.
Someone suggested a book by Sylvia Brown. I never heard of her either. Heck, the
only two authors I ever read, before I could afford to purchase a TV at age 20, were
Steven King and John Saul. Once I had a TV I never read a book again.
I cannot remember the book’s title, but at least she used terminology I could
understand. I didn’t like the fact that she had seen a 30-foot angel in her son’s foyer.
What I was learning from my meditations did not help my comprehending why an angel
should appear so large. Seeing a 30-foot angel anywhere would have scared me! I
sent the book to my ex-attorney whose mother had recently passed. It seemed more
relevant to his world than mine.
I was losing hope that books would help me understand this new world. Still, there was
nothing on this green earth that would have kept me out of the bath: Not even my
children’s need to use the one and only bathroom we in the house.
My children knew that I was doing something weird in the bathroom, since I would be in
there for hours on end. They didn’t understand meditation; I didn’t talk to them about it
too much because I sure didn’t understand it either. I simply told my son that I was
trying to re-connect with Jill. He would simply roll his eyes and go about his life of
tending his little sister and the house since he had lost his mom to the bath and
computer.
37
I literally stopped living my life. I stopped being mom for the most part: No house
cleaning, no working, no anything, including not leaving my house for three solid
months. My days and nights were consumed with meditating, crying and writing on that
spiritual forum.
There was one time when I had been in the bathtub for well over an hour. I didn’t know
yet that you could regulate your depth of meditation. I only knew from what people had
said that I had to suck in gallons of light—again for protection—and then wait for
something to happen. There would be times when I would leave meditation, but not
remember a darn thing that transpired during the two hours that seemed like 10
minutes. Where did I go? I knew I wasn’t asleep. My 8-year-old daughter was about to
teach me a very valuable lesson.
I always asked my children if they needed to use the bathroom before I went in,
knowing I might be “gone” for up to two hours at a time. On one particular day, my
daughter’s bladder didn’t care that she had just gone. After I had settled in, she had to
go again.
As I lay in my bathtub somewhere between conscious and unconscious, a loud rapping
noise sent my soul slamming back into a body surrounded by rather cold water. I sat up
in my tub, trying to figure out where I was, who I was, and who was that girl yelling
“mom I have to go to the bathroom right now!” I had no connection to myself at all or to
that girl banging on the door. It took me a good two to three minutes to re-integrate my
own human awareness to my surroundings so that I could remember how to talk.
She never interrupted me while in the bathtub again. But then again, she didn’t have to;
she taught me a significant and valuable lesson in that exchange. I never wanted to
delve that deeply or travel that far away again. I taught myself how to breathe into the
depth of meditation that would maintain my consciousness through every meditation
thereafter.
38
Learning what healing really meant
As I communed daily with my two new best friends, Jill and Ramus, I became excited
about this whole new inner world and I told them so. I told them that it was amazing
and exciting and that people need to know about this stuff in here. No matter how
depressed one might be on the outside, on the inside wonderment existed, and
sometimes, that wonder could be carried into everyday life.
Although my depression continued, it started to seem like an unnatural weight I was
carrying around. My new friends loved me so much, though, that they let me carry it for
as long as I wanted to.
I would ask Jill how we could share this meditation information with everyone in the
world, but all she would ever say, over and over again was “healer, heal thyself.” I
asked myself, “What the heck does that mean? I am no healer, and heal what?” I
learned that one should be careful what one asks for because spirit will provide it in
ways you just don’t expect!
Heal what? My joyful little inner world of sight, sound and oh-so-much loving feelings
was about to take a turn into my own hellish nightmare.
There is a funny thing about our spiritual guides. They don’t let us get away with a
thing. For years, no decades, my well-intentioned therapist always blamed my raging
anger on my childhood. Sure I was an angry lunatic most of the time, but that was my
mother’s fault. I liked that. I didn’t have much self blame there. I hit my children
because of the beatings I got as a child. Okay, I understood that. I was always trying to
commit suicide because I had watched my mother do it so many times. Yeah; my life
was my mother’s fault. Someone else surely gave me the abandonment issues. Maybe
from that time when I was ripped away from my mother by a man I believed was my
father, but who actually was my step-father.
39
Of course, discovering that at the age of nine started all my distrusting issues. For as
long as I could remember, my mother and that man told me that he was my father.
When a family took me in, a family that hated me, I longed to return to the man who I
thought was my father. My sister and brother lived with him and all I wanted was the
only family I knew and loved. The family I lived with told me he was not my father at all.
How could I trust anyone after that? Crushing? Yes! The start of a life filled with
distrusting and distant relationships? Absolutely! My fault? Never!
Thirty years of therapy allowed me to play the victim over and over again.
I was
convinced that those in my life caused my dysfunction. I was sure that I was a victim of
my childhood, and so, then, were my children.
My dear friends Jill and Ramus weren’t so willing to let me play the victim any longer.
They showed me that I owned emotions in childhood that simply weren’t accurate.
They showed me that I chose to interpret things negatively. “Wait a minute,” I thought.
“What about only being a kid?”
There was nothing I could get away with in this
meditation world.
Through meditation’s wonders and the subconscious mind’s vastness, which truly
forgets nothing, they took me on a journey through my earliest childhood years,
allowing me to relive various traumatic events. But, unlike my frequently life-saving
therapists, they showed me a view that only they could. I was shown, in awesome
detail, the spiritual gifts each hardship bestowed upon my life and how inaccurately I
had interpreted them. Those experiences I absorbed personally and tragically were
actually tremendous acts of love from the higher planes of whom ever I was viewing in
my life’s relationships.
Those sessions would last sometimes for days. I would cry profusely over having to
revisit the traumas. Then, I would cry just as profusely over witnessing the reasons why
people in my life chose to do those things or be that way during my young moments of
time.
40
For example, when I was about five years old, my mother and step-father purchased a
house together and we started a new life. My brother was about four years younger
than me and my sister was about six years younger. Something must have shifted
when my little sister came along, because it was around that time when I was excluded
from the family. When the four of them went out for a family outing, I was locked in my
bedroom.
Being a clever child, I quickly learned that, if I got a wire hanger, shoved it between the
door and the door jam and slid it upwards, it would unlock the hook and eye lock that
kept me in. They were clever, too, however. They moved the lock so high I could no
longer reach it.
That continued for the next two years until our little family broke up. I recall being
locked in my room while my brother and sister got to go see Santa or the Easter Bunny.
I remember cussing and screaming at God because I couldn’t sit on Santa’s lap or get
candy from the generous Easter bunny.
Oddly enough, though, I didn’t have any
memory of what I did for hours on end in that room all by myself until Jill and Ramus
showed me how vitally important that time was for my life path.
As most parents know, little children often have playmates that only the child can see.
Usually the playmates are people no one knows or, maybe better stated, have names
no one recognizes. During those times of solitary confinement in that bedroom, some
very famous playmates entered my young awareness.
Through meditation, I was shown my love and friendship with Jesus, his mom, Mary,
and this guy named Franklyn. Those friends told me a lot of things while we played in
that bedroom. I was old enough to go to catechism classes by then from which I had
learned many stories. Yet my friends, who only appeared when I was locked in my
bedroom, where telling me very different stories from those I was being taught in
catechism.
41
I suppose I wasn’t very quiet about my new friends and their teachings. People began
to fear me. Just after receiving 1st Holy Communion when I was eight, the church
kicked me out warning me never to return. Those Holy folks instructed my mother to
take me for a psychological work-up, because surely I was crazy with my talk about
Jesus and Mary and Franklyn.
This life review Jill and Ramus revealed was starting to answer a lot of questions I had
all my life. I truly believed that I was a horrible child even though I couldn’t remember
being one. Why didn’t anyone like me?
Why did my second grade teacher lock me in a coat room for two weeks because of my
poor spelling and lack of artistic ability? I loved to draw as a child and was doodling in
class one day. I drew a picture of a person and under it I meant to put, “this is good,”
meaning my drawing was good. Instead, I dropped an ‘o’ in good, so it read ‘this is
god.’ I was given two weeks of solitary confinement in the coat room for that. I did all
classroom activities and ate lunch alone, surrounded by everyone’s coats.
The more unpleasant-but-revealing events I was being shown through meditation, the
more horrific feelings were rising to the surface.
I had much more with which to
contend.
The more issues I healed, the more issues rushed in to take their place. It was like a
dreadful case of the flu. The more I spewed out, the more that would come up to be
released.
I was writing as fast as my fingers could type on that spiritual forum. My beautiful and
often annoyingly elusive mentor, Marc, gave me the not-at all-comforting words,
“healing hurts.” “Hurts? It is flipping hell!” I inwardly cried. I didn’t know a body could
store so much garbage or that releasing it was akin to ripping off an arm. Yes, the
understandings were valuable, but the process was pure torture. But through it all, I
42
knew I had to keep going. There was no sense in stopping since I had gone that far.
Besides, I was already in a massive depression, so what was a little more crud up at the
surface!
I got to the point where I wasn’t sure if I was coming or going. I was as happy as I was
sad and confused as I was elated with the understandings that danced all around me.
As intense and illuminating as the road down memory lane was, I still couldn’t shake
that massive feeling of unworthiness.
It was as if the more I purged, the bigger this feeling of unworthiness grew. One of my
online spiritual friends said that the process in which I was now neck deep was like
peeling an onion. When you think you’ve removed that last layer, there is another one
just beneath. My onion must have been super sized!
43
My last attempt at suicide, facing the dark night of my soul
Even though I wish I could tell you that meditation, with all its spiritual understandings, is
the miracle cure for every negative feeling with which you’ve aligned yourself, it is not.
This path is not a replacement for Zoloft or Prozac. Spirit will not let you simply numb
over what you have already numbed over. instead, you must look yourself straight in
the face and take responsibility for every single aspect of your life. Yes, even your own
childhood.
For me, this was becoming more than my mind could bear. You mean every time I
slapped my 5-month-old baby, it was really my fault and not my mother’s?
I was
responsible, and always have been, for choosing to be angry or not? Or worse, I was
responsible for how I would channel or perhaps better said unleash that anger?
[A little side note here: Anger and violence was a normal part of my life. I contained so
much guilt, pain and resentment inside myself that when I blew, I blew violently.
Sometimes that trigger was just my precious child crying non-stop, grating against the
tears in my heart that I never allowed out. My hand would swing across that beautiful
little face and I would feel so angry at that baby. How dare it cry at the top of its lungs
when I couldn’t? Of course, now, from my current perspective, I understand what I was
feeling, but I sure didn’t then. I was out of control emotionally. Back then all I could do
was lash out. So when you see a parent in the news that has harmed a child, don’t
send hate; send love. That parent cannot feel any love at all and lashes out in the only
way he or she understands.]
My mind and my heart were now in the biggest battle of my life. My mind was trying to
crush what my heart was coming to understand. No one told me of the place called the
spiritual void, or even that a thing such as “the dark night of the soul” existed. Certainly
no one mentioned that this part, this gaining control of the mind, was the most important
journey of all time!
44
The fight between heart and mind was alive and well in my consciousness. I needed to
go into meditation to get that spiritual remedy of love and understanding from Jill. But I
thought I had broken something. No matter what I did, no matter how much light I
sucked in, there was no spiritual connection at all.
My depression was working over time.
I went to my only lifeline outside of meditation; the spiritual forum. No one could tell me
why I couldn’t connect like I had been doing so easily for months.
There was no
comfort in replies of, “sometimes you can connect and sometimes you cannot.”
Silently, my mind screamed, “I am in hell here and no one on the other side cares!” My
mind was discounting my heart. All those things that had been shown to me through
hours and hours and hours of meditation and life review were being challenged by the
darkest part my mind.
I wondered how I could believe that I had friends on the other side of the veil, helping
and guiding me through life when, at the time I needed them the most, they had left
without a trace.
My mind was trashing all those months of experiences like
meaningless shreds of paper.
I wondered, “did I just make it all up to fool myself into thinking I am a spiritual being
worthy of gods love?” My mind answered, “Oh, here in lies the truth. If it had been true,
then you wouldn’t be two months behind on all my bills or asking your son for food and
cigarette money.” I was starting to believe what my mind was telling me. I was starting
to believe that God didn’t love me anymore than he did all those months ago and my life
was still falling apart!
I not only felt beaten, but also I was delusional. Yet, I couldn’t push away the amazing
feelings I had within meditation. There was no way of faking those feelings of love and
45
joy or replicating them within my conscious day-to-day life. It had to be real, or did it? I
just didn’t know any more.
The bills were piling up, my refrigerator was empty, and my children had fled into their
own little worlds, rarely talking to me. I was ready to go Home. This way, I reasoned, I
wouldn’t have to simply visit that wonderful place of spiritual love and guidance, I would
be living there 24/7, and if it was all true, spirit would be there to help my children. Yes,
I decided, it was time for my grand exit…. again. This time, at least, I was sure there
was someplace I would go when I left my body. Every other time, I hadn’t been sure at
all.
I remember this date clearly. It was February 4th 2001. It was a beautiful, clear North
Carolina day. The sun had been shining for weeks, if only on the outside of my window.
It was a beautiful day to die and I was so ready to go.
I went to the drugstore to purchase the largest bottle of Tylenol PM’s I could find, which
was a 50-count bottle. From experience, I knew that my love for my children would urge
me back home for yet another hug, so I had to put myself to sleep in order to complete
the process this time around. I also knew my now tolerance of sleep medication. One
Tylenol PM would put me out for ten hours. I reasoned that a bottle should put me into
a terminal sleep. Just in case it didn’t, I was going to couple this mission with the
carbon monoxide poisoning. Yes! I now had a fail proof plan.
I found a beautiful spot by the incredibly polluted Neuss River and parked my car under
the trees, making sure the tailpipe was toward a large tree trunk to hide my homemade
gas chamber.
I wrote my children their love letters again, wishing I had saved the ones I wrote two
years ago. This time I instructed my 17-year-old son how to contact his sister’s father
who lived in Florida and had little contact with her. I told my son to let his little sister go
live with her father once I was gone.
46
I cried for the life I was leaving behind and begged my spiritual team to give me a sign
that this final exit from the story of my life was going to be okay. I wanted to know that
God would not be angry with me for killing myself.
I was slowly consuming the whole bottle of Tylenol PM’s. Past experience taught me
that taking a lot of pills at once simply made me heave and vomit, so I slowly digested
those little death nuggets and waited for that terminal sleep. Two hours had passed
popping pill after pill and crying out love letters to my children. I wondered how it was
possible that I was not sleepy. Did I buy a bottle of placebos? Normally, I one sleeping
pill put me out like a light in ten minutes. There I was with 25 pills dissolving in my
stomach and not the first stir of tired in my eyes.
I began taking two and three pills at a time until I devoured all 50 pills. Three, then four
hours went by; no sleepiness was creeping in. How could that possibly be? I checked
and rechecked the bottle to make sure I bought the right kind of sleep aids. Every time I
checked, it always assured me that I did. Yet my body not doing what it was supposed
to?
As my determination grew stronger and my demands for God to give me a sign that it
was okay to now start the car even without the sleepiness I expected, something
amazing happened. The largest and most brilliant circular rainbow appeared in the sky.
It was not your typical arched rainbow, but brilliant masses of neon color enmeshed in a
sphere-like cloud.
I cried like a little baby. I knew there was no moisture in the air and hadn’t been for
weeks. I was so sure that was my sign. That was the “go-ahead” I had begged for. I
was pummeled between feelings of comfort that God would love me no matter what I
chose to do and of anger that God would love me no matter what I chose to do.
47
When I started the car, it was as loud as a freight train. Frightened, I turned the car off.
Two years prior, when I plugged up my exhaust pipe with a cloth to insure that all the
carbon monoxide would flow into the driver-side window, I never got around to turning
on the car..
Being a big coward when it comes to pain, I suddenly wasn’t sure if I should let my car
run. I fearfully wondered whether the fumes would let me go to that beautiful rainbow in
the sky or that really loud noise was a precursor to my car exploding, only to send me to
the hospital with horrible injuries. I was not about to find out. Cowardliness won. I
removed the hose, duct tape and cloth from my car and drove home, all the while
wondering why I was not at all sleepy.
At 4:30 in the afternoon I arrived home, lay down on my couch and fell fast asleep until
8:30.the next morning!
Something shifted within me during that “big sleep” of 14 hours. I cannot tell you what
or how. The one thing I am presently sure of is that I really did die that night on some
level. I woke up still feeling my depression, but something was different somehow.
Something, or maybe even someone, was more alive than dead within me.
48
Insight from my current perspective
More than anything else, I want to you understand two very crucial aspects to your
journey of both awakening as well as enlightenment. You will come to the place known
as “The dark night of the soul.” This is where you truly do battle with yourself, the battle
between mind and heart, illusion and truth, and taking control of your ego-self. It is also
coupled by a lengthy and prolonged absence of meditation and hope. In the dark night
you can easily feel profoundly alone.
Remember, spiritual awakening is a journey; a series of processes that take you from
human conditioning into the vastness of spiritual truth. What has taken you a lifetime
(actually many lifetimes), to accumulate, you are not going to release over night. For
most people, the dark night of the soul lasts about 3 months: Some longer, some
shorter. The time frame doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that you allow
yourself to go fully through it. I have watched people reach this part of the journey and,
because it is so uncomfortable, stop, only to have it re-merge later on down their path.
You can meditate until the cows come home. You can read spiritual book after spiritual
book until others think you are a spiritual professor. Let me assure you, the ONLY thing
that matters is raising your vibration, clearing your inner self of all negative feelings and
perceptions and changing your interaction with life. Of course this is assuming you
really want to travel the road to enlightenment. If you don’t, then that is perfectly okay
too. You will never be forced to go any further than you are willing to let yourself go.
You know; free will and all.
I often refer to this time of deep, dark intensity as “the spiritual void” when the desire to
quit might feel overwhelming.
But I’ve also often said that anyone who has not
experienced the pathway through their own hell has not really been in the genuine
throes of raising their spiritual vibration in human form.
49
The void is a time when you have learned and understood as much as you can for now
and it seems you are unplugged from everything that is comforting and familiar. Namely
your spiritual team and it even feels like you lost that connection with your own soul.
This is a time for you to act on everything you have come to learn so far through
meditation. The only thing that matters in this whole entire unfolding spiritual journey is
the real and continued application of what you have come to understand spiritually and
applying it to your every day life. If you are not applying it, then you are not changing
your vibration.
If you do not consistently raise your vibration, increase your consciousness, and
become utterly self-aware, then you are not going to achieve your goal of enlightment in
this lifetime. That sounds dire, but don’t worry. There will be other lifetimes in which
you can start this process again, giving it a go in different body. Still, if you have come
this far, why not just complete it in this lifetime?
The spiritual void and the dark night of the soul will come all at the same time. I would
like to say you only have to do this battle once, but that would be dishonest. I will say
however, that each battle becomes easier and easier to engage.
The time span
shortens, the understandings and applications occur within days or weeks as opposed
to months. Anything new and unfamiliar is uncomfortable until you become an old pro
who knows to look for the next adventure that will raise the vibration. Please trust me
when I assure you that, as difficult as it seems today, you will start to seek out those
remaining dark spots within. You will illuminate and clear them. You will ascend to a
fully Enlightened Spiritual Being incased in a human body.
I also want to be clear on one more point. Not every void time is a dark night of the soul
time. Sometimes it is just a complete disconnect helping your whole body and mind
catch up with your evolving consciousness. Every time you hit the void, celebrate your
accomplishments, even if you don’t fully understand them yet. You are most certainly
progressing. The void is verifying that for you!
50
There is no meditation for this part of your journey. This part is all you!
51