Healers Under Cover
When I was a child, I was immersed in a psychic world with no external point of reference for my experience. Until I entered elementary school, I had no idea that my way of relating was different than everyone elses. After bumping into more than my share of evidence supporting the need to go ‘under cover’ with what was so different about me; my focus was set on fitting in.
My inability to tolerate what others seemed to accept as just ‘the way the world works’ left me open and vulnerable. Violence in its many guises woke me screaming in the night. I seemed to have no filter for what others found ‘entertaining’; scarey movies, even so called ‘children’s movies’ like Bambi sent me fleeing at the first hint of danger. My extreme reactions to even the anticipation of witnessing harm to anyone, especially children and animals, sent me screaming from the room to the surprise and lack of understanding of the more ‘normal’ witnesses to my ‘hyper-sensitivity’. “It’s going to end well!” they would reassure me, but never could I stick around and ‘enjoy’ the things that left me a passive observer of injustice in any form; even if, in the end, ‘good’ triumphed over ‘evil’. The so called ‘happy ending’ couldn’t erase the knowledge of the senseless murder of Bambi’s mother and the subsequent impact on Bambi and me.
My free time was spent in the woods near my home. I felt a kind of peace and kinship there that didn’t exist in the world I worked so hard to fit in to. The margins of ‘right/wrong’, ‘good/evil’ didn’t exist there. Neither did the difference between me and the world around me. In nature, all by myself, I never felt the kind of lonliness I felt in the sea of faces and opinions that only served to illustrate my difference. I was a captive audience to the patience and perseverance of the tiny black ants who, one grain of sand at a time and in completely synchronized action, dug their homes into the solid earth. Spiders held a particular facination as they wove their beautifully patterned webs between blades of grass. I was endlessly amazed by the natural world and the imperceptible magic that changed summer to autumn; fall to winter and then to spring once again.
As I matured, I became more disassociated and less obviously horrified by the disrespect inherent in seemingly every aspect of my experience. I learned to remove myself and cry in private when the carefully crafted work of those little black ants was destroyed by a careless footstep. I began to understand that my upset at what cut me to the quick turned a careless step into the purposeful action of those who reveled in torturing others for fun. My protests became grounds for the conscious destruction of many more ant hills and spider webs than would have been destroyed by careless action alone.
None of it made much sense to me, but I blamed myself mostly. Everybody else out there seemed to think I was ‘too sensitive’. I never did really ‘toughen up’ as was suggested to me when someone noticed my head involuntarily snapping away in horror at the abrasive images on the movie screen. The idea of suffering innocents kept me awake at night. I wanted to become a veterinarian, but then I found out that as a vet I’d have to ‘put animals to sleep’, in other words, kill them. So, what was left for me? Nursing, of course. As a nurse I could take action in the face of dire circumstances rather than be a victim of them. If I had to accept the kind of horror the world seemed entertained by, I might as well be proactive about it!
I think alot about purpose…what delineates purpose? Did I come here to be a nurse? I certainly had all of the foundational elements that would make me successful…caring, intelligence and a deep desire to advocate for those who were, at least momentarily, helpless. The big contributing charecteristic wasn’t even a part of my self evaluation until much later in my nursing career… It turns out I am highly intuitive. This single key charecteristic is central to everything I am and everything I do. As the safe haven of my nursing career came to a close, I had to put myself out there in alignment with what I had been hiding for years…my psychic self.
Many years ago, before healing became ‘medicine’ and organized around identifying illness and intervening with drugs and surgery, natural interaction with the bodies energy systems was practiced by the local healer. These healers were called by many names; shaman, wise woman, midwife, medicine man/woman, depending on their cultural alignment, but they all did the same thing. The village healer was the keeper of the healing wisdom of the ages. In those cultures, children were observed to see what their natural propensites were, and the child who exhibited natural healing tendencies was directed at a young age by the local healer, who passed on the ancient wisdom to the apprentice. This young apprentice became steeped in what was identified as their purpose, and they grew up to take their valued place in the community.
These healers had intimate knowledge of the energies of plants, and these plants were prepared in specific ways to address whatever form of ‘dis-ease’ occurred. The herbal interventions were an adjunct to assisting the body’s natural ability to heal itself, and the focus was on clearing the energy field of blocks that manifested as illness. The healer worked in the person’s energy field, and all of the tools used were aids in clearing and supporting the body’s natural propensity for health. Central to the use of these tools was the healer’s own intuition, which was the basis for intervention. Intuition was a natural communication tool, accepted and used by the entire culture. The healer’s intuition was simply directed towards a specific purpose, and that purpose was encoded into the child’s potential. Observing the child to see what potential would unfold was a natural part of the child’s upbringing. Some children were natural leaders, and these children might grow up to be be chief some day. Other children were natural born healers.
As civilization ‘advanced’, man learned that tiny microbes could be viewed and associated with certain illnessess. The healer’s herbs were studied, and ‘active ingredients’ could be identified and used to treat and ‘cure’ certain ailments. These advances became modern medicine, and keepers of the ancient healing knowledge became viewed as charletans; their techniques were seen at best as ‘hogwash’, at worst, healers were considered dangerous and evil. Natural healing techniques were outlawed over time, and ‘western medicine’ became the standard. Healing was left behind and ‘cure’ became the goal. Herbs were synthesized to extract their ‘active ingredients’, and drugs became regulated and available by the prescription of a ‘trained physician’. Herbal remedies died out in many cultures, the ancient knowledge replaced with scientific theory. Intuition was ejected from our skill set, discarded as a part of the ‘superstitious’ rituals of healing.
But what ever happened to the inborn purpose that ancient people watched for in their children? What about the natural propensity to heal that was encoded into the energy of those who would grow up to be the village healers? When I recognize the degree of sensitivity I experienced as a child, the confusion and ‘difference’ I experienced, it seems to me that I was born to that purpose;the propensity to facilitate healing. When I was ready to pursue a career, nursing seemed the only option available, the closest ‘fit’ to my unidentified and underdeveloped healing ability.
During my career as a professional nurse, I too thought that the information I was able to discern was purely coming from the machines that gathered data and my book knowledge of illness and symptomatology. It never occurred to me that the gut feeling of danger I experienced when walking into the room of a pregnant patient in labor was the reason why I felt compelled to look at the fetal monitor strip before even greeting my patient. It seemed reasonable to expect that my knowing that the fetus was in trouble came from the finely tuned electronic instrument designed to detect such hazard. It wasn’t until I began to work in adolescent psychiatric units that I became acutely aware that information I was receiving came ‘out of the blue’, and that my disconnected knowing, that is, disconnected from data collecting machines, was a force to be reckoned with. I learned that blurting out what I ‘knew’ was actually adding to the anxiety and instability of the kids I was there to help. I HAD to pay attention, and what I was forced to observe was probably that healing potential that would already have been working at a high level if I was raised in an indigenous culture who would have long ago identified my potential as a healer and developed it as a matter of course!
I believe that many of the ‘natural born healers’ of today are working in the medical field. Doctors, nurses, psychologists, therapists, physical therapists, music therapists…many of whom sublimated their unacknowledged urge to be a healer into the limited structures available to people like us in this day and age. Given the lack of value or even attention to the natural intuition inherent in all of us, we enter careers that are acceptable and are the closest fit to what we came here to do.
5/7/11
It’s interesting to note that I received alot of replies to this topic on my personal email and not publically. It seems to me that the struggle to integrate “valid professional” and “self professed healer” is not a thing of the past for those who have this awareness and are currently working in professional settings. It reminds me of Lisby Mayer’s account in her book called Extraordinary Knowing. She first talks about having tried every acceptable method of finding her daughter’s lost harp, including National Television, but to no avail. When a friend suggests she try a dowser, she said she followed the advice out of desperation but never told her academic friends! Later, after the evidence for the existence of ‘extraordinary knowing’ became intolerably obvious to her and she, given her professional integrity, could no longer ignore or deny it, she began to write the book and speak on the topic. (you can find her early presentation on youtube) Her presentation received attention and interest based on her own professional status, but it wasn’t until after she was done that people lined up around the block to share their own stories with her in private. She had worked through her own doubt and skepticism far enough to present the material, but the professionals to whom she spoke were just finding validation for their own experience through her words. She was shocked at the number of people who sought her out and amazed by the stories they shared with her . So many of her newly acquired confessors were relieved to be validated but refused to share their experiences publically or risk their solid, professional reputations. As a result of her book, I am still receiving contact from professionals around the world who initially contact me because Dr. Mayer found me valid, then learn from experience to value my own ‘extraordinary knowing’, but hold professional, valid jobs in the world of mind/body medicine.
It’s sad that something so natural and valuable can be grounds for ridicule and humiliation at the hands of those who are more interested in being ‘right’ than being open… I imagine there are few people who can deny ever having an experience of ‘extraordinary knowing’.
5/9/11
My last institutional job as a professional nurse was at McLean Hospital. I was admitting a lovely, well dressed, seventeen year old boy I’ll call Joe. ‘Joe’ and his parents looked like they had just stepped off of a yacht, and they were nothing but friendly and cooperative. Despite this, the longer I spoke with ‘Joe’, the larger the feeling of anger I was experiencing. It didn’t make any sense to me, but it became so overwhelming that I turned to Phil, a Psychiatric Aide, to show the family around the unit and settle ‘Joe’ into his room. Phil agreed, with a questioning look at me. The unit policy was ironclad…if you start an admission, you see it all the way through. Phil must have thought I was ill, and he was happy to be of service.
I walked back into the staff room behind the nurses station and sat at the conference table, unable to complete the admission paperwork. In walked my head nurse, Peggy, who was immediately concerned.
“Deb, are you alright?” she asked, “you’re the color of milk!”
“Peggy, I don’t know what’s come over me, maybe I have to quit this job!”
“What?!!” was Peggy’s startled reply.
“Well, I was admitting this kid and as I spoke to him, all I could feel was rage! It was crazy! I had to ask Phil to finish the admission for me!”
Peggy’s face changed from deep concern to near amused relief. “Deb,” she began, “do you think ‘Joe’ is here on a vacation?”
I laughed a bit. “He was certainly dressed that way, but no, I understand he isn’t here for fun.”
“What you experienced”, Peggy explained, “is a phenomena that happens in our line of work. “Joe” is filled with unprocessed rage that he’s split off from, and what you experienced was ‘Joe’ shoving that split off rage right into you!”
Had I been a bit more aware of my own intuitive exploration, I might have pointed out the blurred line between the science of the psyche and receiving intuitive information, but I could only listen with rapt attention. Retrospectively, it was really a statement about psychic understanding hidden in the vernacular of advanced Psychology.
Peggy continued, “Do you know there is a test to measure disassociation that is actually given to the therapist?”
I was relieved and speechless. Peggy tapped my head affectionately. “Now, no more talk of quitting! We need you here, remember!”
The next day I came onto the unit and I was asked to relieve the person sitting one on one for the patient in the quiet room for a few minutes. “He’s in restraints, but contracting his way out of them. He flipped out on the evening shift last night and threw one of those standing closets right across the room!” my fellow staff member reported.
Looking into the quiet room, a handsome, disheveled, familiar head popped up. “Hi Deb!” came the pleasant, smiling voice of ‘Joe’. “I kinda lost a grip last night! Jeez! I didn’t know I was THAT mad!!!”
His energy was completely different. I felt nothing but kindness and compassion in my gut for this kid. “Well, Joey, it seems you’ve gotten yourself into quite a pickle here! How do you like your new digs now?”
Joe giggled at the reference to our conversation of the day before. “This is like the Hotel California!” Joe joked, “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave!”
We laughed, and I assured him that leaving was contingent on his effort at transforming this stuff. “Hey,” I asked, “do you know the words to that song, The Hotel California?”
“Let’s see if we can figure them out!” Joe stated, enthusiastic, “I was starting to get really bored in here!”
So, for the next 15 minutes, we developed a real connection around music, enjoying the few minutes of distraction. “You can go take report now, Deb.” came the voice of Cathy, my relief.
“See you soon, Joe.”
“Yeah, Deb, thanks for helping me out. Hopefully we meet under more civilized circumstances next time!”
“That’s completely up to you.” I pointed out, smiling, then split without waiting for a reply.
5/10/11
The charecteristics that make a ‘healer’ effective, when left undefined and undervalued, still remain foundational to the medical/service professions that absorb them. Being unconscious to the motivating factor; a natural propensity towards healing work, doesn’t keep the components from expressing themselves. If we go back to the child in the indigenous culture who shows capacity to be a healer, we find a well balanced adult product, a result of the guidance and consciousness raising accomplished by the mentor and the very culture in which the child grew up. The child’s value was inherent to the process, and they learned the value and management of energy, beginning with their own.
Those of us who did not grow up in an environment that identified our natural propensity have a very different path. We aren’t taught to value ourselves, and we learn to find our value in what we do. When I was in nursing school, my classmates put a sign up on my door that said “Lucy, the doctor is in”, a play off of the Peanuts charecter, Lucy, who charged 5 cents a pop for her ‘medical services’. I was always open and available to anyone who needed help, no matter what time, day or night. I seemed to have a compulsion to take note of and address the emotional upsets of my peers, and word had it that Deb was always the one to turn to if they needed a sympathetic ear or advice. I would often get awakened in the middle of the night by my classmates who took me at my word when I told them it didn’t matter if they woke me, I was there if they needed me. Often it wasn’t just one person, but two or three a day who I was providing counsel for. I was often sleep deprived and exhausted in the mornings while my friends, unburdened and cared for, seemed to be walking on air. I don’t recall anyone ever asking me how I was, but I believe that was what I got for my services…the ability to hide in plain sight. What I did for others was far more important to me than what I needed, as a matter of fact, I gave little consideration to what I needed. My being was hidden away, even from myself. My value was reflected in the service I provided; in what I did for others.
I began working as an RN in hospitals in the late seventies, right on the cusp of nurses striking for better conditions and better pay. I remember the uprising over nurses going ‘on strike’…”How can they leave the patients unattended? What kind of nurses are they? Whatever happened to Florence Nightengale?” It seems that nurses were expected to work around the clock, work weekends and holidays, all for the fulfilment of serving a commitment to service and very little pay given the amount of responsibility they were expected to handle. Funny thing is, most of us would do this for free if our financial circumstances allowed. The nurses on the pickett lines were harrassed and even spat upon. The expectation that nurses shouldn’t expect the same respect as other professionals was acceptably reinforced in cultural belief and not just held by nurses themselves. Nurses had done such a good job convincing everyone that they do what they do for the love of doing it and should be happy with just that, without expectation of fair compensation, but as they started to come to their senses, the community wouldn’t let them out of the unwritten contract…not without a fight, anyway.
Strike they did, and hospitals quickly saw the value in meeting the demands for better working conditions as they scrambled to cover what nurses handled on a daily basis. Their value became evident by their absence, and nurses began to demand professional treatment for professional service. Here is the first glimmer of self care as foundational to being able to effectively take care of others. Nurses were on the road back to the kind of self respect inherent in the healers of old, who understood balance. Ancient healers set the tone for health and wellbeing in the community, and now nurses were educating the community about respect. It was a hard won victory, and maybe the breakthrough in nurses being empowered as a force in their own right rather than the doctor’s handmaiden. I remember being pretty conflicted myself about the clash of identities produced by the nurse’s strike, but the victory benefitted all of us.
May 13, 2011
I am thinking about my nursing career, and how much of my power was sublimated into the ‘role’ of nurse. I was clear, outspoken, and a fierce advocate for my patients and for right action in general. It seems my personal life wasn’t quite in alignment with that, and the only place I had ‘permission’ to excercise my power was on the hospital unit. I was under the delusion that I did what I did because I could do nothing else, and my paycheck, which often was picked up from another building, magically appeared every week or two, completely disconnected from the work that I did. Taking money for that work somehow ‘tainted’ it…nurses are unselfish…nurses give generously…nurses are selfless…all of these defining factors seemed in direct opposition to money…which had some sort of ‘spiritual people aren’t interested in money’ stigma. Spiritual people are supposed to take a ‘vow of poverty’, whether actually or unconsciously, and I believe that’s what I did…
Working as a nurse allowed me to support myself and kept me from having to assess support from doing psychic readings for people. When the Labor and Delivery Unit was slow, I would set up shop in the locker room and my collegues would come in one at a time for Rune Readings. I read for my team, but as word travelled, I would have nurses I didn’t know personally who came from other units in the Hospital… It never occurred to me to ask for reimbursement for something that came so easily and was so much fun for me. A close friend finally convinced me to take money for a reading, that it was real work and I should be paid. This concept, although it made perfect sense to me, made me very uncomfortable. My friend sent along my first paying client, and for twenty five dollars she received a five hour session along with dinner. I had no sense of value regarding my time or my skill…ya think?
5/17/11
I was just speaking to a friend of mine last night about her mad skills at numerology. She is amazingly knowledgeable and popped out all kinds of information without hesitation. I told her, “This is amazing, why don’t you do this professionally? You certainly have a professional level of expertise!”
“I never thought of it,” she said, “this is so easy for me and so much fun, it would feel odd for me to take money for it!”
It must be a Universal theme that is showing itself right now. I told her I had just written about this in relation to my own transition from professional nurse to professional psychic, and pretty much used the same words to describe the idea of fee for service. I was raised with a ‘hard work ethic’… no matter what, we drag ourselves to work in the morning and pray for our days off. Getting paid for what brings joy was nowhere in the message I received in regard to money. It seems to me this way of thinking is rampant among people in service professions, and the direct opposite is expressed in the business world. Of course we each have our own experience of making and spending money, so we can’t make a blanket assessment on this, but my friend the numerologist is struggling to make ends meet while she has this gold mine of what I might call her purpose, lying dormant and getting attention in an incidental way.
My dear departed Reiki Master, KC Smith, facilitated my process to see a way clear to uprooting my aversion to ‘taking money’ for my work. She told me the story of Mikao Usui, the first Reiki Master. She said that after he received the secrets of Reiki, he came down from the mountain and began healing people that he met. The healings were miraculous, but he noticed that over time, the ailments came back…the healing didn’t stick. KC explained “The conclusion Usui came to was that unless the recipient of healing exchanged energy somehow with the healer; in other words, participated in the healing through energetic exchange, the healing would not last.”
This gave me alot to ponder. I was suddenly open to the idea that I had a responsibility to hold this position for those who needed my help, that it wasn’t about me ‘taking’ money from my clients, but about my clients participating in an ‘energetic exchange’ that showed up in a culturally appropriate way. In some Native American traditions, the recipient of healing work presented the village healer with a blanket or tobacco in exchange for healing work. Given our current mode of exchange, that would be money, it hit me that I had a responsibility to request participation by my clients in the only way they could give back to me…by paying for the work as a demonstration of their investment and alignment with the value of what they were receiving. This was an ‘aha’ moment for me, and led to further research into the topic.
I explored my own limiting concepts of ‘giving’, ‘taking’, and pure ‘energetic exchange’. As a nurse I was far removed from the ‘business’ end of taking care of my patients. I could completely ignore the connection between the money I received and the work that I did. Some sort of martyr mentality led me to judge the quest for income as selfish. This ‘vow of poverty’ was a thread that became increasingly evident once I no longer received a proper paycheck from an acceptable source. I had the same survival needs that I did as a professional nurse, but now the direct confrontation of my own hidden judgement was raking me over the coals.
What was the value of the work I did that brought me great joy and left me tired and fulfilled at the conclusion? What was the dollar value of my time? To a pure business person, these assessments are a matter of course, but for a nurse who wasn’t supposed to care about the money, it was an excruciating transition. The ingrained ‘spiritual poverty’ mentality was suddenly glaringly apparent, and I had to take a hard look at the clearly ego based bias I had that seemed to align with the people who were up in arms over nurses striking for better pay and better conditions…we were all somehow coming from the same core belief structure, but until I had to ask for what I was worth, I didn’t have to notice. The lack of tools to assess the value of my work echoed back to my undefined healing purpose…my value as a healer was never addressed, so this lack of self awareness left me completely unable to place value on my gift.
Around the same time, a friend gave me an educational series on cassette that was a spiritual approach to the concept of money. My belief that there are no accidents in the Universe led me to make listening to this teaching a priority. The teacher talked about the history of money in the US. He said that the founding fathers were mostly Free Masons, and money was very consciously created in alignment with spiritual principles. For example, he said money was made green in order to mirror the abundance of the Earth, that the pyramid and the eye on the back of the dollar bill was a mystical symbol connected to the teachings of ancient Egypt. “Money,” he stated, “was created as a talisman of abundance that people could carry and be reminded of daily.”
The phrase ‘in God we trust’ had nothing to do with religion, given that our forefathers fled the political/religious oppression of the Church of England. The Free Masons believe that God is the Architect of the Universe, and abundance is our birthright as evidenced by the limitless abundance of ‘God’s green Earth’. Money was created as a symbol of a deep understanding of the Grand Architect’s intention for us, and meant to keep us aware of exactly where our ‘bread is buttered’, so to speak. Staying in alignment with right action and spiritual values would assure our success and abundance; we were created to prosper.
So what happened? How did we end up at the mercy of the ‘almighty dollar’? Why is money worshipped and despised; the single most controversial (in my opinion) concept in the world today? My educational cassette series said that we lost touch with the intention behind the construct of money; that the reality of money as a system of energetic exchange became lost over time. The powerful intention behind the creation of money in this country was not lost, just the knowledge of it, so the symbolic message got lost over over time. Money itself became the ‘worshipped’ and chaos ensued. I wonder if spiritually minded people’s seeming aversion to money has something to do with a deep intuitive understanding of the descrepancy between the spiritual intention of the creators and the current concept…and those who have lost their memory of spiritual connection and right action addictively collect money in an unconscious urge to reconnect with the power behind the paper…
Not all people who have money are devoid of a spiritual basis and not all those who are impoverished have the hotline to ‘God’. In my observation, greed is an insatiable desire to hoard what is believed to provide security. Without the basic spiritual understanding of the meaning of this powerful talisman, the longed for security is never really felt. Money is an object that can be lost, and if it’s value exists without deeper meaning, then there is never enough. Just watch the news…I just saw a story about a man who scammed his co-workers by announcing that his wife had died. The caring collegues made a collection of about five thousand dollars and presented it to the man. The scam seemed to work until one of those caring co-workers sent a condolance card to the man’s home. His very much alive wife intercepted the card, and when she realized what was happening, she turned her husband in.
In light of these teachings, I wonder what impact the color changes on American money has on the original intention. If money is green for a deep symbolic reason, and now it’s also purple and blue…well, that is more than I can consider from this perspective. My conclusion is that until we get back to the energetic reality of who we are and what we are here for, money will remain an enigma, and most of us will be conflicted about it. Our unconsciousness has led us to forget the powerful truth sung to us years ago by Sting and the Police…”We are Spirits in a material world…” Those of us who are awakening have a responsibility to shift the cash flow towards those who will channel it back towards integrity and direct it toward right action. Planetary healing and our very existence depends on it.
May 23, 2011
Every Sunday morning since he’s come, my dog Noble and I walk our ritual five miles. Despite the wet weather, today was no exception. The morning mist accumulated imperceptibly till my hair was dripping wet, and just as we reached the beach, great drops finally fell from my curls. It was low tide, and clouds of mist drifted across the tidal pools and shimmering sand. The beach was empty except for two men taking advantage of the tide being way out to set moorings for their boats.
I love all the weather on Cape Cod; gray weather seemed the perfect backdrop to the multicolored flowers that grew everywhere, both cultivated and wild. It was silent, and I let Noble off the leash so he could get all that puppy energy out of his system. He leapt with joy, chasing seagulls and apparently thinking he should be able to fly up after them! He quickly realized the game was over when his playmates left, never to return. I swear, his feelings got hurt, like when the cats hiss at his abrupt approach. He came to me with sad eyes, and this time, the stick I threw was the perfect antidote to his recent rejection. What if we were all that uncomplicated! I felt lighthearted, grateful that I get to walk alone with my dog to a nearly deserted beach and feel safe; how cool is that!?! I didn’t see anyone along the way, my thoughts were completely my own. Walking became a meditation for me.
As I stood in the parking lot about to step onto the moist sand, a car with Florida license plates pulled up. A man got out of his car and zipped up his sweatshirt, adjusting the hood to protect himself from the mist. “Good morning!” I smiled
“What’s so good about it?” the man asked, a friendly tone failing to cover his dissatisfaction with the not so Spring weather.
I turned and made a grand gesture, sweeping the vista with my arm, “Look where we are!” I said, a bit of incredulousness in my voice. “Don’t you feel lucky to get to wake up to this?”
He looked out at the sand and the water, a slow grin lit up his face. “Well, miss,” he said, “I have to give you that. I guess we’re so busy being disappointed when we expect it to show up our own way, we miss what is right here in front of our noses!”
“You have a good day, sir.” I waved, following my jubilant dog down the sand bank
“I think I will now!” the man replied, smiling.
The interaction with the man sent me on a mental roll about perception. I suddenly flashed on my sister’s face in the last weeks of her life. I brought her to this very beach to watch the last sunset she would ever see on this Earth. She had been lying down for months, in such incredible pain. I asked her if she wanted to go for a ride, and she said yes! We went to the beach, and it was the first ‘normal’ thing we’d done together since she’d been so sick. We watched the sunset from the car, and then she asked me to take her to Ben and Jerry’s. She ate ice cream and enjoyed it, a miracle given her most recent state. She was so grateful for the little simple ‘normalcy’s’ that we often take for granted. She couldn’t thank me enough, and I didn’t have words for how grateful I was to give my sister a moment of relief from the horror; a shred of her life back.
Being with that scene brought me deep sadness, a sadness I refused to let myself feel in the midst of her suffering. If I had, it might have informed me of what I was overlooking in my frenzy to ‘nurse’ my sister back to health. I notice that people come in with certain skill sets, giving them the tools they need to fulfill their purpose. Since these gifts, (the characteristics of a healer) go mostly unreflected; they remain unconscious and out of our awareness. Being unaware of them doesn’t inhibit their function any and we apply them in whatever situation shows up. It’s all about intention, and if you’re unconscious to something, it entertains an intention you are unaware of.
We were in a crazy circumstance; more and more of her actual nursing care fell to me. I was seen, or at least treated like I was a member of the team rather than my sister’s sister! I, of course, gladly did whatever she needed me to do. People would tell me, “You’re such a saint, your sister is so lucky to have you.” Not wanting to be impolite, I would internally wonder, “What exactly is the alternative?”
There was never a moment of resentment on my part. My sister wanted to live, and I wanted to do whatever was necessary to second that emotion. It never occurred to me that my sister would die. I pushed her to eat, even right after she would throw up…she never really gained weight; I helped her walk outside on the sidewalk when she couldn’t get up off the couch by herself…she never regained her strength. If I was really her nurse, I probably would have started to talk to her about hospice at least a month before she finally got that opportunity, three days before her death. I hid my denial of my sister’s failing condition in my nursing expertise. I was the textbook example of why the brilliant brain surgeon cannot operate on his own mother. My perceptions were colored by my own agenda. Saving Ms. Vicki was my non negotiable mission, being her nurse was a perfect way to defend myself against processing my feelings or even noticing reality.
My sister and I were a balanced whole because we functioned at opposite ends of the spectrum. She was always the organized, grounded one; I always relied on her for that. Of course, until she was so incapacitated, I never realized the ways in which I depended on her presence in my life. In this role reversal, I had to default to the place where organization and effectiveness flourished in my life, my ‘nurse self’. Now she was dependant on me for pretty much everything, a situation that evolved over the year she suffered with that destructive disease. Little by little she lost energy and function, and little by little I stepped in and took over whatever was necessary to maintain balance.
Balance, of course, was never reality based. My efforts were funded by an intention that didn’t allow for what was really going on. I framed the nightmare we were facing through the lens of recovery. The tremendous pressure to take over my sister’s care systematically eradicated any self I had. In the last months, I stationed myself on the loveseat in the living room at night so I could catch her getting up to the bathroom on her own…she never wanted to bother me…she worried that I wasn’t sleeping. More than once I awoke to the sound of thudding flesh hitting the floor in the hallway, coming to as I was standing over my emaciated sister lying on the floor. “Fuzzy! (the nickname she acquired when her lost hair began to reappear on her bald head) Are you alright???”
She smiled up at me through the dim, “Fuzzy is alright!” she smiled. The absurdity of the question and answer made us both laugh for a second. If I had really been a ‘nurse’ in that circumstance, I might have taken her straight to the ER…she was on anticoagulant therapy, a shot I had to give her twice a day. Falling and banging her head could have had some dire consequences. But my big sister told me she was ok, and I so wanted her to be ok that we agreed on that reality. It really wasn’t ‘safe’ in any medical sense of the word, but we were inside this ‘folie a deaux’, and we could make it up however it worked for what we could tolerate individually and together.
I dragged her back and forth to Rhode Island to get her chemo. Her weight kept dropping and her CA 125 didn’t drop, so they kept changing the chemo. It seemed in the face of our unified delusion that she would live; no one on the medical team had the heart to smack either of us up the side of the head and tell us the truth. I had no concept of the truth because it wasn’t acceptable to me to lose my sister. She reframed her experience because she wanted to live and because I wanted her to live…I’m not sure now if she was tolerating the intolerable because I couldn’t tolerate the deepening awareness of the futility that neither of us could embrace.
Looking back now, I wish someone had just said to me, “Look, you aren’t a nurse here, you are a sister, and you cannot be clear about this, let us manage her care.” As a professional nurse, I was a clear pit bull about advocating for my patients’ best interest. As a sister nurse, I was unconsciously advocating for my agenda. I imagine that same ‘pit bull’ energy kept a lot of people at bay who wanted to say but couldn’t believe that this woman who had so much nursing knowledge could really be unaware of what was going on here. Near the end, I went on a tear to get Vicki’s original surgeon, whom she trusted, to get in there and talk to her about it. Why did I have to do that? Who was her nursing coordinator? It took some time, but slowly I began to realize that the expectations I had of the nursing staff and the system in general were based on my expectations of myself in a professional nurse setting.
I noticed that things were horribly fragmented; that somehow nursing had lost ground in regard to independent thinking. Having nowhere to acknowledge and vent my anger on a personal level, I began to express a great deal of anger about the quality of nursing care in general. When a young nurse came in and removed a fresh post op port dressing that was not to be changed for another five days, I could hold my temper no longer. My sister had told the young nurse that the doctor who inserted the port said not to touch it for ANY REASON until the full amount of time was up, then the VNA nurse would take the dressing down and call him. My sister was coming home that day, and when this young nurse walked into the room to remove it and Vicki told her not to, her response was, “Sorry, I have to, it’s a doctor’s order.”
I found out about this by phone when I called my friend who was waiting with Vicki, and all hell broke loose in me. I called the nurse at the nurse’s station and after her initial annoyance; she began to sound really worried. “Don’t you question a doctor’s order if it seems like there’s a good reason to do it?” I asked.
“We always de-access ports before the patient is discharged.” was her defensive reply.
“Even if the patient who is lucid and sane tells you that she was directed not to let anyone touch it?”
“I had to follow the doctor’s order…” she said, a little more weakly. She wasn’t incompetent; she was limited in her thinking.
“And if the port ends up failing because of your action, who do you think will have to take responsibility for it?” I asked, attempting to bring her to a logical chain of accountability.
The silence on the other end of the line turned to a waterfall of concern and apologies. I couldn’t believe that this nurse would take inappropriate action rather than question the ‘mighty doctor’s’ order.
“Your job is to advocate for your patient, not blindly do as the doctor tells you.” I told her.
When I arrived at the hospital two hours later, I was met by the head nurse and the Risk Manager. They got the magnitude of this, and figured I was going to start a war. I could have, but I was really interested in finding out why something that was so obvious to me was not obvious to the new crop of nurses. And mostly I was concerned for my sister’s welfare. The risk manager was a smart woman who was right with me regarding my questions. “Who holds all the pieces of my sister’s care?” I asked.
“You do…” replied the risk manager.
“Great.” I said, “then do I get to go over the orders to make sure they are accurate?”
“No.” she said, “I know, it makes no sense.”
“What makes no sense is that my sister is here because she needs care, and the people who are supposed to provide it are compounding her distress with unnecessary confusion.”
When finally her surgeon did go in a speak to her on her next and final hospital admission, I was unaware that it had happened until I received a phone call from a woman identifying herself as a case manager. “The doctor has just had a one hour conference with your sister.” She told me. “He asked me to call you so you could come and be with her, she has just opted for hospice.”
As the words began to actually take on meaning in my shocked mind, I exploded; a distorted version of killing the messenger. I was crying and yelling and apologizing all between sobbing breaths. She was so kind to me, realizing after a minute or two that despite everyone else’s certainty that my sister was dying, I was clueless. “Stop apologizing to me,” she kindly scolded, “you have every right to be upset. I’m so terribly sorry. I thought you knew.”
Maybe I did know, but the reality hit me like a ton of bricks. After about a half hour, I ran out of steam. “Can I do anything for you?” the case manager asked.
“Yes,” I whispered, drained of all energy. I am two hours away and my sister’s all alone, can you go and sit with her?”
“I’ll do that right now.” She replied. “Are you going to be alright to drive?”
I called my sister, worried at what I’d find on the other end. “Vicki, did you talk to the doctor?”
“Oh,“ she answered, “did he call you?” Her voice had a strength I’d forgotten she was capable of.
“No, the case manager did. She said you are opting for hospice.”
“Deb,” she began, “I’m not stupid! This stuff is killing me, not the cancer! They put me on Morphine, I really like that!” she said. “If I can have just a few mornings to wake up without pain or nausea, that’s plenty for me. Are you mad at me?”
“Mad at you! “ I was incredulous. “I’ve been ‘Nurse Ratchett’ making you eat when you were too sick to, doing painful things to you…I haven’t heard your voice like this in ages, and if I get a few days of my sister back, that’s good enough for me.”
“Ok,” she said, back in the saddle again, “I’d like to be cremated, no ‘hoopla’. I’d like to come home to die if that’s not going to creep you out too much.”
“Vick,” I said, “didja forget what I do for a living? Of course I won’t be creeped out! I can’t wait for you to come home.”
“Good.” She said. “I’ll be home on Monday. We have to tell Mommy.”
“Ok, Sissy.”I said, “oh, by the way, the case worker is going to come in to see you. I was a little rough on her, so be nice to her…”
“Deb,” Vicki said, a hint of playfulness in her voice, “what did you do to that poor woman…”
Telling my eighty six year old mother that her daughter was going to die has to be one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. Later in the evening, I had an hour on the phone with my sister that would be the last real conversation we would have together. I was in daze, really, a bit euphoric almost at the reappearance of the sister that I had always known, and the removal of the pressure I had been under for such a long time.
On Monday, my sister came home via ambulance with our good friend Kelly right beside her. She got home at 12noon, and the Visiting Nurse who had promised to be there right at noon was detained. They didn’t have us set up with oxygen at home, and I spent the next hour and a half begging local firehouses to lend us a tank of oxygen to no avail. Some of Vicki’s good friends were here, and she was alert and playful with them. She waved to me periodically as I made phone calls, and when the VNA nurse finally arrived at 1:30pm, the oxygen arrived with her. The EMT’s finally left, and I could finally be with my sister.
“Hey, Sissy, we’re gonna roll you over and get you off of these wrinkled sheets.” I told my sister.
“Ok, Deb.” She said. As we rolled her toward us, she suddenly looked me straight in the eye as a little vomit came up. Then she seemed to look through me, her eyes opening wide in an expression of surprise. Then her head slumped into my hands. Just at that moment, my mother who was busying herself at the sink doing dishes let out a shriek.
“Do you have suction?” I asked the Visiting Nurse beside me as I tried to wick the liquid out of her mouth with the edge of the blanket.
“Deb,” she said, “she’s on Hospice…we don’t use suction.”
She placed the stethoscope on my sister’s chest and made a little groaning noise as she grabbed my hand. “She’s gone…” she said.
“Gone?” I asked, unable to integrate what she was saying, she just got here!
“Deb,” she said, “she’s dead.”
Dead? She couldn’t be dead, I just finally got to be with her. We bathed her and dressed her in her soft pajamas that she loved. We put her shawl blanket around her head. I noticed how much stress had been in her face when it was suddenly peaceful and relaxed. I crawled up onto the bed next to her, holding her near me for the last time. “I love you, Sissy.” I whispered in her ear. I knew she could hear me, that she was happy to be free of what my friend Jacqui would call her ‘failed space suit.’
I was always a big advocate of the difference between ‘healing’ and ‘cure’. The western medical model focuses on curing the ailment. I was more in alignment with the idea of ‘healing’, at least when it wasn’t about my own sister. I flashed on the title of a book by Steven Levine called, “Healing into Life and Death.” This was truly a ‘healing’ for my sister. I had to face my own hypocracy…I was focused on the cure… Now I had lost her, and a whole new Pandora’s Box opened up in me. The real work was only just beginning.
June 20th, 2011
So writing about my sister and the conundrum of working as a professional nurse and the types of permissions that go with that role has illustrated something for me. It’s a subtle distinction, but a distinction none the less. I wasn’t aware of any of it for a very long time, and it took being out of institutional settings and working as a psychic for me to see the evidence of it. As an individual, I was deeply wounded, bound by rules I had no idea I had established for myself. It’s like my fierce protection and advocacy of my patients was somehow projective caretaking of myself in a way that was undetectable. I took care of them according to my ideal of caretaking; I had permission to be strong and assertive because that was what the profession demanded.
In reality, it was my own fierce integrity I was demanding from others in a setting that allowed for and is founded on personal integrity as a basis for serving others. As a nurse I had permission to hold my colleagues accountable for their actions; a system inside of which integrity was expected. As a ‘professional psychic’, that internal accountability structure serves me and my clients well, but I quickly learned that there is no real structure for accountability inside what many only loosely call a profession.
I have had clients contact me, terrified because they saw a “psychic” who told them that they were surrounded by ‘dark forces’ and for a mere five thousand dollars, the “psychic” would do the necessary work to liberate them from the ‘darkness’. What infuriated me was multilayered…first of all, the client was terrified as a result of the “psychic’s” certainty that they were in danger…in other words, the client went to the “psychic” for clarity and support, and came out a fearful mess, far beyond the fear they may have had walking in there. Secondly, it seems obvious to me that the practitioner’s intention was to force dependency and hold the client hostage with a five thousand dollar ransom, seeing as how he was the only one who could ‘see’ the ‘dark forces’ and the ‘only one’ who could make them go away.
Now, I’m sure that there are ‘dark forces’ out there in the ethers that have the capability of attaching themselves to the energy of certain individuals who have an opening for that…I also know that energy can be cleared and the ‘darkness’ released through a number of different methods. What I take exception to is the live human being who, under the guise of being a “psychic”, has access to the vulnerabilities of others and themselves become the ‘dark force’ attached to a person’s energy. It’s “psychics” like that that support the negative view of our innate psychic abilities in the world, and give a negative impression of all psychics. Here is where the lack of personal integrity takes the gift of psychic ability and uses it for the purposes of greed and exploitation of the vulnerabilities of others.
I was on the street in a vacation town where every other corner housed a sign advertising a psychic on premises. I was with my friend Nancy, and on a whim I said, “Let’s go get a reading!”
“You’re kidding, right Deb?” Nancy replied, “These psychics aren’t psychics like YOU are a psychic!”
“Now, Nan, don’t judge a psychic by the venue they work out of! I used to do readings in a bookstore right in this town!”
“Ok, Deb, you get the reading…I’ll get mine from you!”
We crossed the street and stopped at the first reader we passed. As I sat with the reader, I realized right away that I was reading HIS energy, and I didn’t at all like what I felt. But practicing what I had preached to Nancy, I suspended judgment. The reading was vague, and when he landed on a fairly recent breakup I had been through which I validated for him, he began to really paint a negative picture of my ex. He told me that my ex was ‘Out to get’ me, that there was a lot of negative energy being tossed at me that he could see in my energy. “You don’t have to worry about it, though; I will do some candle work at home for the next five nights and make sure we clean that negativity out of your aura.”
“That’s very generous of you.” I answered, cringing inside and wanting this nonsense to be over with already. Disempowering people isn’t how I work, and this felt very disempowering.
“These types of things can be very tricky,” he continued, “you’re lucky you stopped in here. This kind of hateful energy can really destroy your life…I can already feel the darkness gripping your energy…”
“Well, I appreciate your concern and desire to help.” I answered, halfheartedly. With friends like this…who needs enemies?
“So you’re in agreement?” the man asked, an odd look on his face.
“I’m not sure what you mean.” I said, knowing that this wasn’t about generosity or concern.
“It’s only five hundred dollars, one hundred dollars for each night. You can just make that check out for five hundred fifty dollars- that will cover the reading and the rescue work I’m willing to do for you. You made it here just in time…” he concluded, an ominous tone in his voice.
“I’m not going to give you five hundred dollars.” I said, struggling to contain my outrage.
“I strongly encourage you to reconsider,” he said, shaking his head sadly, “this type of thing needs to be taken care of by a professional. Your life is literally at stake.”
I could stand it no longer…”Do you know what I do for work?” I asked.
Being tossed off course, he began to stutter, “Uh, I don’t think we covered that…uh, well, whatever it is, you won’t have the job for long if you continue to carry the darkness with you…”
“Listen, I am a professional psychic, and I have helped clients who have put their trust in scam artists like you. Where’s your integrity? How can you use this venue to scare people into giving you money that you don’t deserve?” I was louder than he would have liked, and there was a person sitting in the waiting area that he didn’t want to hear me.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” he said with a condescending tone, standing to signify it was time for me to leave.
I stood up and faced him, not so willing to make it comfortable for him. “What you are doing is so out of balance, I can’t imagine it’s not going to come back to ‘bite you’. There’s such a thing as karmic payback, you know.”
He began to ‘herd’ me out through the waiting room, wanting to hurry me past his now very attentive next client. “I can’t help it if you didn’t like what I had to tell you.” He said, making it seem as if my upset was about my own ‘issues’ and he was the innocent messenger, about to be killed.
“What I don’t like is being manipulated by someone who is willing to keep me in a state of fear to get money out of me.”
“How dare you!” he said, putting on a show for the client who was now gathering her things and getting ready to leave the shop. “Easy.” I said, “I have a particularly bad taste in my mouth about people like you who give people like me a bad name by association. If there was an organization I could report you to, I would. Meanwhile, I can at least save this lady from spending money on a charlatan!”
The woman got up and looked at me, “Thank you!” she said, and as we walked out of the shop together, she asked, “can I have your card?”
July 21, 2011
Wow, I am really noticing how time is literally flying by. The last time I posted was June 20th, and it doesn’t seem like any time has gone by at all.
Yet, thinking back over the past month, it’s hard to believe exactly how much has happened and how much effort I have expended to get to this moment. It seems the Universe gives us exactly what we need.
Today I want to write about Katie, a very dear client of mine who became a friend and helped me in a way I could not have imagined. In my first experiences of Katie, she presented as an enigma…deeply spiritual, scientifically skeptical, wide open and forthright. She was seeking answers to some very mystical questions that I of course will not go into here, but suffice it to say that not one detail or discrepancy escaped her notice. Sometimes the discrepancies she noted weren’t discrepancies but perceptual distortions that, fortunately, were cleared up when she listened back to her recording.
She fought me with a warrior’s vigor on the phone, often surprising me with statements like, “Why am I paying you when you aren’t telling me the answers I am looking for?” After my startle response was safely back in its ego box, I would tell her she was paying me for my time and to hear things she DIDN”T already know, right? “
After our first session, she basically told me this was all a waste of her time and that she wouldn’t be contacting me again. I was, perhaps, a bit stung by her vehemence, but years of learning to rely on the valid nature of this gift had hardened my need to be ‘right’ into my allegiance to the Truth as it flowed through me. I told her I was sorry she was feeling this way, and we could agree to disagree.
Expecting never to hear from Katie again, I was often graced with the thought of her…experiencing an energetic connection that I often experience with clients, but seemingly more often with this particular person. I chalked it up to a wounded ego and my sadness at not being able to help her, as that is why I do what I do.
Imagine my surprise when about a month later, I received a rather lengthy email from Katie, telling me she had listened to the tape and that I had been ‘right’ about many things…”I was just too stubborn to really hear what you said to me.” Katie admitted, “I’d like to book another session with you if you can stand me!”
Of course I booked the session with her, and it was during this session that she disclosed what I had sensed in the first session…Katie had been battling breast cancer for almost a year. We worked very hard on the energetics of this illness, along with what she described as blocks to embracing her passion for music…I spoke to her almost weekly, and as the cancer progressed, her giant will to live became an intense need to die consciously, with all her ‘ducks in a row’.
It was at this juncture I told her that I would support her in her process of her conscious death gratis, if she would have me. She told me that she would allow me to support her if ‘gratis’ meant I was now her friend and not only her counselor. I agreed to this. I have genuine connection and love for my clients, but I only disclose my own experience if it is necessary to the process of healing in the client. Given my recent loss and my regret at not having the time to help my sister toward a conscious death, I knew that this collaboration was as much for me as it was for Katie.
Katie wasted no time in demanding that in order to seal our friendship, I should disclose something that was representative of my ‘human frailty’. I bit the bullet and told her about the recent loss of my sister. She couldn’t have been more compassionate, and since she had just entered hospice, we agreed that I would call her as close to daily as possible just to connect.
She suffered tremendously with tumors that grew out of control across her chest and required twice daily dressing changes to prevent infection. Katie, knowing I had no idea what she looked like, sent me a fairly shocking photo entitled, “What I look like”. She said it was so I could see her with my physical eyes as well as my psychic ones. She sent me photos of her two young children and copies of the letters she had written to therapists and guardians in regard to her children. She spoke about how she was helping them cope and her concerns for their future.
She told me she always wished she had gotten to visit Cape Cod, so I sent her photos and a ‘virtual vacation’. I would call her from the beach and let her listen to the waves lap on the shore and the wind through the beach grass. She would cry out in delight like a child, and then lose her breath to the wracking cough that spoke of the spread of this horrible disease.
She spoke to me about what death would be like, what did I think? She made sure that all of the important people in her life had closure with her. Despite her suffering, she was determined to be alive for her child’s eighth grade graduation, a goal she succeeded in meeting. She told me about the modes of ‘afterlife’ communication requested by friends and family. Her faith in life allowed her loved ones to find strength in her strength, to believe in the immortality of the human spirit.
She told me that she had made a conscious decision to opt for a medically induced coma. The pain medication wasn’t working…she was, as she put it, being ‘eaten alive’ by this horrific disease. She had successfully completed the transition from fighting for life to surrendering to death. The last night we were able to have a long and uninterrupted conversation, she was at peace. She had done all that she could to care for those who would survive her. As I sat on the front steps of my home, she mentioned she could hear the ‘peepers’ that come out at dusk. I told her that I was also watching fireflies dancing through the night air. This image moved her to tender tears.
“I wish I could see the Cape,” Katie told me, “and see you!”
“You will,” I told her, “you’ll come to visit me on the way to wherever it is we go after this. What will be your signal to me?”
“YOU of all people will know.” She told me. “But just so you know, I plan to escape from this wretched body, go and kiss my kids, and then I’ll come and visit you and the beautiful Cape. THEN I’ll take off.”
“Deal.” I said
“Hey Deb…what is your sister’s name again?”
“Vicki.” I told my friend.
“I am going to find her. Do you have any messages for her?”
“Well, I have been telling her in my mind that she should come and find you and get you out of there ASAP so you don’t have to linger in a coma for long. Tell her how much I love her and miss her…and tell her how much you helped me to transform my regret into action.” I said. “You have helped me so much, Katie. I have really grown to love and respect you. I’m going to miss you.”
“I love you too, Deb, my friend.” Said the strong, tough lady who had never before been so gentle about me. “ Thank you for your love and support. And thank you for loving me, even when I was a pain in the butt!”
“You’re still a pain in the butt!” I joked and we both laughed. “That’s why I love you…your honesty, integrity and strength in the face of these unbearable circumstances will inspire me forever.”
“Well,” Katie said, back to being in charge, “If you want to speak to me again, you’ll have to call tomorrow before 4pm. I have it all planned, my family comes, my kids come, then my two closest friends come for when they put me out. “
“I’ll call you at 3:45pm.”
“OK. Well, they have to change my dressing again…only one more time after this and then I won’t have to know they are doing it at least!”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“Don’t make me wait!” commanded Katie, and then she hung up.
I found myself anxious all the next day and as I noticed the clock saying 3:50pm, I called Katie.
“Deb,” she said, “this is like Grand Central Station! They’re all still here, but I’m leaving at 4 no matter what. I can’t really talk, though.”
“I’m really happy for you,” I told Katie, “but I’m selfishly sad for me.”
“Get over it!” Katie joked…”now I have to hang up…I love you, Deb. Look for me.”
“I love you too, Katie. I’ll be expecting you!”
“Bye for now, love you!”
“So long, Katie, I love you too.”
There was a long moment of hesitation before we hung up, and as we did, an odd emptiness covered my core. This was the last time I would talk to this person in the physical and I knew it. It was the first time that I had ever had that experience…consciously certain that this was the end…
The next few mornings I woke up thinking of Katie, wondering with my overactive intellect whether or not she was still in her body…she had left my email address with her sister with the promise that I would be notified. Friday morning, I just got up and went about my day. Early afternoon, I became unreasonably tired and had to lie down on the couch. Napping is a wonderful concept but not one I have much experience with.
I kept falling in and out of a fitful sleep, and I was dreaming that a woman was coming and sitting next to me and I was unable to move; like someone sitting on the bedcovers and trapping you there. Over and over it was happening and I wasn’t able to pull myself awake. When I finally rolled myself off the couch during a moment of waking up, I looked at the clock and realized that although it felt endless, I had only been asleep for ten minutes.
“Katie!” I thought, and it suddenly all made sense. She came as promised, and although I had no way of knowing for certain until the email would come, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind.
Saturday morning I woke up to an email from Katie’s sister. Katie had died peacefully in her sleep early Friday morning…it had all happened as she wished…
Katie’s sister thanked one and all for their contribution to Katie’s life.
Silently and with deep reverence, I thanked Katie for her contribution to mine…
Intuitive Development
There has been a great deal of interest in the Intuitive Development course I am offering, and along with the interest there have been a great many questions. I will give an explanation here, and please feel free to post any questions or comments you may have…if you have something to contribute, I’m sure it will be important to others who may have the same questions or concerns.
I am frequently asked if I can “teach someone to be psychic”. My answer is always that I can teach a person to identify and clear the obstacles to their natural psychic abilities. I believe that we are all born with psychic potential, and the ‘black sheep’ of the senses, the ‘sixth sense’, is as powerful and important as the other five. If this is true, then why is the sixth sense so elusive and ‘doubt-able’? The answer to this is related more to what we are taught to believe than as a measure of our actual potential.
Belief is a powerful thing, and the ambivalent nature of our relationship to and acceptance of our own psychic potential has to do with the conundrum of ‘knowing’, or the innate understanding of the truth of human potential; versus ‘belief’, or what we learn about who we are and what we are capable of. We come in with that knowing, cut from the bolt of Universal Consciousness, before the development of human consciousness. This innate ‘knowing’ is directly connected to the truth of our existence as holographic replicas of the Source, but learning to master the vast power available to us through this connection requires framing by conscious beings who have been through their own process of recognition and mastery. Here is where the system fails us.
In antiquity, psychic communication and mastery of energetic potential was the norm. Earth based religions, healing and magical practices were the belief structures upon which society was built. People were well aware of energy and how to work with it; totally in tune with the cycles of the seasons and the Earth as ‘Mother’, the provider. Many indigenous cultures still in existance today continue to interact with the natural world in an energetically attuned way, and we consider this type of behaviour as evidence of their ‘primitive’ (translate to silly) beliefs.
Since monotheistic religion gained power and DesCartes came up with the mechanistic theory, you can pretty much imagine how the practice of beliefs outside of the emerging, limiting social paradigm became life threatening. Many of us are aware of the Inquisition, the Witch burnings in Salem, the burning of libraries of arcane knowledge; a literal and systemic annihalation of once prevalent beliefs that were now threatening to the new order. Mystical systems went underground and were hidden and preserved. Arcane thought systems were passed on in secret and protected by sacred oaths. The public at large retreated in fear from the powerful heritage that was their birthright. Psychic abilities became less and less acceptable, and soon dissappeared from daily life except for the occasional ‘coincidence’ that evidenced psychic awareness; the exception rather than the rule.
As you understand if you are reading this text, there is a resurgence of interest in psychic potential. Dr. Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, in her book Extraordinary Knowing, went out on a limb in bringing to light what she called ‘anomalous knowing’. Being a scientist herself, once she had the personal experience of encountering a kind of knowing that was not of the five senses or conventional communication techniques, she could not ignore it. Her book addresses not only the evidence of psychic ability that is beyond the parameters of modern Psychoanalysis, but also what happens when someone within a closed thought system breaks out of the box and has the courage to share with the world the discrepancies she found . As soon as she spoke publically on what she’d discovered about psychic potential, she was innundated by a number of professionals who couldn’t wait to share their experiences with someone who wouldn’t think they were ‘delusional’.
So, the sixth sense, our natural psychic ability, remains something many of us experience regularly but keep to ourselves; talking ourselves into some rational explanation about how this is a ‘coincidence’, or laughing it off as ‘unbelievable’. My experience is that people tend to experience the appearance of psychic information at the far extremes of the spectrum, either when the information is so meaningless it seems laughable that we ‘knew’ it, or when the information is catastrophic.
In the first case, the filter of the conscious mind and what it will allow is not engaged enough to block the information. I experienced an example of this a few weeks ago when I walked into my sister’s house while she was watching the Miss America Pageant, and immeditely predicted the order of the contestants and the winner. My sister was impressed and wanted lottery numbers…if I could predict that, why not lottery numbers?
What became clear to me is my absolute non-attachment to being ‘right’. The accuracy of the information was directly related to my conscious mind’s lack of interest in the subject; therefore the information could come up from my psychic knowing unimpeded. Getting lottery numbers may be possible, but my desire to be ‘right’ for my sister would not fall into the realm of non-attachment.
At the other end of the spectrum, we have the mother who wakes in the night with a clear knowledge that her child has been killed in the war, or the twin who suddenly feels a pain in his chest as his brother, hundreds of miles away, is experiencing a heart attack. It is at such times that the conscious mind gets over-ruled, and the important information blasts into awareness.
The pupose of this work, development of the Intuition, is to allow for acceptance and application of psychic ability on the mid-points of the spectrum; to train the conscious mind to recognize and distinguish psychic information from all the other kinds of thought that habitually dominate our thinking. Identifying the things that are obstacles to our psychic awareness is the first step towards recognizing pure psychic awareness as it arises.
Education in the development of energetic consciousness as we grow into the belief structures that convince us we are limited, allows the intellect to question the existing structures that we take on blind faith. Just like Dr. Mayer, once we become aware that what we have believed in as ‘the truth’ of existence is challenged in a factual and plausible way, the opening leads us to a dimension of limitlessness that reflects the ‘knowing’ that we came in with. The old beliefs fade away in the liberation of this untapped potential, and the world and our relationship to it will never be the same!
FYI
In the evolution of this work, I have noticed that most people will book a one hour session the first time they schedule. I imagine this is because they don’t know what to expect, and are going for the least expensive of the options. My experience with most of my “first timers” is, at the end of the first hour, they are sorry that they didn’t schedule a two hour session! This leads, many times, to an immediate rebooking or an extension of the session if I have the availability to accommodate that. Often, I am booked solid and cannot accommodate the extension, leaving the client (and me!) with a sense of unfinished business.
Working with energy, I am clear that everything happens for a reason, and certain people, despite wanting “more”, have gotten exactly what they need. Yet more times than not, the client opens up and it seems that a two hour session would have been the more optimum choice, at least for the first session.
Many times, clients have to book far in advance due to my availability, so, in an attempt to provide my clients with the information that they need to make the best choice possible for themselves, I thought it would be helpful to post this info on the website for your consideration…
looking forward to hearing from you…deb
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I have recently received quite a few inquiries as to whether or not I work with adolescents. The answer is a resounding YES! I love working with young people, and am happy to do so. As a nurse I have worked inpatient adolescent psych in a number of different settings; a challenge most of my peers found insurmountable. I have tremendous respect for young people and find their open, honest questioning of reality refreshing and inspiring. So bring on the kids! Please feel free to post questions or comments here. Deb
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