Non-resistance is the ability to stay in connected
observation while remembering you are made of matter that is non-solid. Acquiring
the ability to allow non-resistance to prevail mentally and energetically, even
under stress, for prolonged periods of time, is an essential element for
transformation. It takes a lot of
thoughtfulness, power and time to heal and it cannot be done without the accompaniment
of non-resistance.
Its opposite, resistance, is solid. In the physical world you might need a solid
object to protect you from outside danger. But in the energy world the best
protection is to remember that your molecules are constantly in motion. As a matter of protection, non-resistance
enables you to stay in your own space and let things that you cannot outright
deflect, pass through you instead.
Situations in childhood often lead children to self-teach
some form of non-resistance. When a child
needs power or information beyond her years, she often comes
up with the technique of non-solidity and knows this helps provide a solution.
I learned the concept of non-resistance in my childhood from
Floyd. Floyd was a beekeeper. Non-resistance is the most important virtue a
beekeeper can have. I watched Floyd
model non-resistance, so when I was ten years old and the
opportunity to be a junior beekeeper was offered, I was confident and poised. I
knew I would not fail. Failing, in beekeeping
means: to become resistant. It means to
lose your centering, forget that you are in communion with nature and
panic. A common reaction for people who
resist bees is to run. If you run, you
endanger yourself and the other members of your team.
Back in the day Floyd had up to 5 hives at a time in his
backyard. He loved the bees and the bees
loved him and I believed him when he said that honey bees were our friends. And so I did not panic when I helped take the
frames of over flowing honey from the hives and replace them with fresh ones. Hundreds
of honey bees landed on me and swarmed all around me (in my protective clothing)
but I was not afraid. I did not run. I
did my part in the project and stayed in non-resistance.
Not surprisingly, Floyd had few fans of his beekeeping
hobby. People just couldn’t get the
non-resistance part down-even when it involved harmless honey bees, albeit a lot of them. But I did. I slid right into an understanding of the
basics of beekeeping that was beyond my years thanks to my grasp of
non-resistance.
Recently, I went and looked at the old site where Floyd's honey
bees thrived. The empty lot adjacent to
his backyard is for sale, so I was free to peruse. The region of the yard where
the hives sat is still a throw away part of what is now someone else's yard. It wasn’t hard to tune in and see the hub of
bee activity that filled the yard decades ago because no one has brought the
energy of the site into present time.
Floyd would appreciate that.
We Choose Love?
Metaphysical theory helps people break through convention
and explore progressive possibilities. But metaphysics isn’t studied by
masters, it is studied by people and after the initial excitement of new
knowledge wears off, the process can be bogged down with impatience. This restlessness has a tendency to create
revelations where none actually exist, resulting in the creation of popular but
false, metaphysical dogma.
Deep understanding takes time and if you don’t give it time
and unless you give it time, metaphysical awareness spins from wisdom, to catch
phrases, often without notice. For
example, in the 80s there was a phrase that spread quickly through out
metaphysical circles. People declared it
with sacred enthusiasm and even wrote it on posters and cards as a knowing
–inner-circle-type-thing.
We have a choice between love and fear.
We choose love!
I have no idea who invented this saying, whether some self
help person wrote it, or it was adopted from a different genre and then
metaphysics copied it. Either way,
people loved it.
In the 80s people would say it like they had unlocked the universe
of human behavior. It was understood
that repeating it signified membership to an exclusive club. It was the holy grail of secret codes in the esoteric
boom of the 80s.
To me, the saying was reminiscent of the phenomenally
popular but completely untrue line in the 1970s movie, Love Story, written by Erich Segal, starring Ali McGraw and Ryan
O’Neil.
Love means never having to say you are sorry.
This Love Story
line was popular in correspondence and posters alike. The saying itself doesn’t mean anything and
is terrible relationship advice, but people adapted it with vigor. (A person has
to be willing to feel and express remorse and regret for their soul to
progress. And, victims left without an apology have a more difficult road ahead
than those who were wronged by someone who feels conciliatory.)
Both expressions were such blockbusters you would think they
just had to be true. But they aren’t
even short cuts to a deeper truth. They were just empty contemporary dazzle.
Much literature is written by deeply observant people who
seem so profound that I think they do have a corner on the secret knowledge of
the soul . But the saying: We
have a choice between love and fear. We
choose love! is not among the truthful literary masterpieces. To confirm this just makes people look ignorant. It isn’t even a good line.
What human beings really choose between is ethical and
non-ethical behavior. If you reach deep
into a person’s psyche and see how they make their choices, you won’t find fear
or love, you will find dignity or deterioration. You will find the timeless choice between
right and wrong.
Keeping Perspective
I’m a little afraid
of ghosts too, but when the subject of ghosts comes up in class, I emphasize
who and what we really need to be afraid of.
Ghosts have no ability to carry out real harm. They have no weapons, aren’t contagious, nor
do they possess the ability to rig an election.
They can’t incite violence with a really bad idea and spread it
throughout a whole country. In the ghost
community there are no conspirators, no insider trading, no kidnappings and no
Supreme Court appointees.
Ghosts scare us because their texture is unfamiliar. A little bit of left over consciousness in a
dense semi-tangible form is weird. In
other words, ghosts give us the “willies” but are of no real consequence. They still retain some part of life, but they
have no substantial ability to function.
Running from a ghost makes just about as much sense as running from a
slug, but we do it anyway……..not our best moment.
I recommend an article published recently in the October 20,
2011 edition of the Portland Tribune.
In this article Peter Korn interviews Matt Gatlin the direct
of the Portland office of the International Paranormal Reporting Group. I recommend this article because Mr. Gatlin
has a great perspective on the existence of ghosts. I refreshingly get the idea
that if he was looking for Sasquatch, a snapping of a twig or a distant howl in
the woods wouldn’t be enough proof. He describes himself as somewhat of a skeptic,
open to the possibility that perhaps a person may have ulterior motives when
asking him to prove a house is haunted, but also admits he sometimes runs into
apparitions that cannot be explained.
When asked “What’s the most scared you’ve ever been?” I expected Mr. Gatlin to tell a ghost
story. Instead he wisely describes a
physical life story that relays just how much perspective he carries into his
paranormal studies.
Tribune: What’s the most scared you’ve ever been?
Gatlin: I was in Desert Storm and I was on board the
U.S.S. Nimitz in the Red Sea and there was an enemy boat that attacked one of
the boats. We were assigned to general
quarters. I was unfortunately stationed
on guard outside. Every single door on
the ship was closed. With the burning
oil wells off in the distance you could look over the side and see hundreds of
glowing white sea snakes in the dark. My
job was to report if somebody was coming aboard to attack. I stood there for four hours in pitch
darkness armed with my radio.
Tribune: So sitting around in a haunted house doesn’t
throw you, does it?
Gatlin: Not so much.
Cyber Bullying
Cyber bullying is a real and dangerous event. As a clairvoyant healer I have a unique
understanding and ability to validate the harm it causes because it is an
attack based on negative energy and both negative and positive energy is
visible using clairvoyance.
The fact that human beings terrorizing other human beings
isn’t new but delving into the depth of non- responsible ruining has never been
so easy, so accessible, anonymous and
encouraged. It is an age old problem now
playing out in social networking.
In the subculture of metaphysics there has always been a
strain of people who turn the journey towards self empowerment into power over
others. This degenerate branch of
metaphysics use to have to stay up until the early morning hours, concentrate
in a dimly lit room and follow the instructions that a magic manual gave them
in order to hope for the most negative outcome for their target. Now, they just
have to log on to a social media site.
A person engaging in cyber bullying purposely taps into negative
energy that is larger than themselves. Just
like a sorcerer, the desire to control overrides a weak heart and missing
ethics and they never consider the long term spiritual consequences of
willingly turning their individual space into a conduit for cruelty.
Before social networking we labeled the attempt to connect
with out of control energy violence as things like: a rush to judgment, racism,
sexism, mobs, corruption, persecution and the loss of liberty. Historically we point to things like
McCarthyism and the Salem “witch hunts” to identify the hold negative energy
can have. We even attribute the
initiation of genocide to the rapid spreading of extreme irrational mass
negative energy.
On the surface, the average modern American pledges advanced
morality. Yet, many of these people are hypocritically
sitting at home on a social networking site seeking with abandon to produce
irrational negative energy. It is as disturbing
as it is heartbreaking.
Young adolescents are no match for the abyss of negative
energy that sticks to the vitality of their mental chakras when they are victimized by
cyber bullying. The attack crushes hope
and erodes even a basic sense of well being. Their age and consequently lack of
life experience isn’t developed enough to hold on to the concept of future. To have their darkest moments be induced by
such overwhelming negative energy at such an early age, when they struggle to
hold on through emerging identities anyway, is tragic.
Moving this heartless negative energy away from the
recipient is possible with energy healing. When I hear horrific stories of
abuse on the news I wish more people could validate energy healing so they could
know there is specific help directed at the root of the problem. There would be more accountability and hope
in the unregulated domain of the cyber bully.
The
Challenge
There is a
common situation in clairvoyant reading that a practitioner learns to navigate
early on, or her/his reading career doesn’t last very long. A beginning reader can unexpectedly be
immersed in viewing an event that closely or even perfectly, reflects her/his
own life experience. For a novice, this “matching”
experience is messy and potentially debilitating because “matching” means you
lose your perspective -- the essence of clairvoyance. Since “matching” happens a lot in the first
year of learning to see, pulling yourself out of the muck is essential. But once neutrality under stress is mastered,
having life experience in common with the person you are reading actually makes
interpretation easier.
“Matching”
for me gradually morphed into sharing an understanding with the people I see
and I enjoy the camaraderie. But, what I also enjoy is the professional
challenge of reading information that I have absolutely no predetermined context
with which to interpret. Reading is
always like putting a puzzle together, but when I can’t relate at all, it is
like putting a puzzle together when I have no pre-disposition as to what actual
shape the puzzle will eventually take in the end.
I found
myself in this situation recently while I was helping a client with a feeling
of depression.* This depression was like nothing I had seen before. It was more like extreme futility. It was hopelessness to the nth degree and I
had nothing in my own personal experience that matched it, at all. I had never seen energy so bleak. What could be so desperate as to warrant such
a picture that looked like an untouchable void?
As I examined
this image, I knew it was one of those rare times when I had no personal
experience to help me understand what could have created such a wound. It looked like layers and layers of
devastation. It is not that I have never
been depressed, but I am optimistic by nature (even when optimism wasn’t,
perhaps, the wisest feeling to surface) and in the Catholic ideology I was
exposed to, everything, for sure, was going to be okay in the end. We had all heard of hell but no one ever
planned to go there and there was no soul that couldn’t be saved. Even the worst sinner could be redeemed even
if it was moments before death. So not only did we not plan on the worst
possible scenario for ourselves, we didn’t plan on it for anyone else
either. Belief in happy endings was
abundant. :)
So when I
looked at this strange, cheerless abyss, where there was no hope to be found,
anywhere, only ruin, I said out loud (silently relishing the challenge), “I have
never seen anything like this” because, as it turns out, I hadn’t. I was looking at the despondency that came
from the 3rd largest nuclear disaster in history, Three Mile
Island. My client had grown up in the 70’s in close
proximity to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where the possibility of nuclear
disaster had been a reality and could not be compartmentalized into the part of
the brain that says, “Oh that will never happen.” Her childhood geographic
location had helped imprint a level of futility that couldn’t be duplicated
just anywhere. And while this extreme barren outlook caused by the aftermath of
an environmental disaster was new to me, pending doom was inevitable for her.
Not only do
these environmental catastrophes leave an indelible mark on the landscape, they
leave a hole in the psyche of the people and their descendants who live through them. And now, I can unhappily add to my list of
paradigms what it clairvoyantly looks like to have grown up with a nuclear
disaster in your own “backyard.” And for
the record, it doesn’t look anything like, “It’s all going to be okay in the
end.”
*Example
used with permission.
Rerun
In the
September 13, 2010 issue of The New Yorker, Kelefa Sanneh writes an article
about the phenomena of Rhonda Byrne, author of The Secret and The Power. Kelefa
Sanneh’s article is called "Power Lines: What’s behind Rhonda Byrne’s spiritual empire?"
Not only does
Sanneh give a logical review of the latest fad in the "New Age," she casts
an informative and objective eye on the history of the Self Help Movement in
America. Sanneh traces the birth of the Self Help Movement to the end of the nineteenth century and credits it to Ralph
Waldo Emerson.
“A
generation of thinkers and seekers took up Emerson’s challenge, and by the end
of the nineteenth century a loosely defined movement had emerged, taking its
name from Emerson: New Thought.”
It is in my
nature to be a liberal, a feminist and a clairvoyant and so it has been convenient
for me to have been a child of the 60’s, a teenager of the 70’s and a young,
professional clairvoyant in the 1980’s.
I came to adulthood with the Civil Right Movement, the Feminist Revolution and what people considered then to be the “dawn of The New Age in
American metaphysics” as my companions.
The 60’s and
the 70’s contained epic and unique movements in American history but it turns
out the 80’s were not legendary in the metaphysical/self help department as was
claimed. The metaphysical 80’s were a
conceptual rerun. (The “new” part turned out to be that ordinary citizens would
be physically safe to promote and study the occult and that they could make a
modern wage doing it.)
What a relief
the 80’s didn’t contain the undiscovered doctrine, because generally, the most
popular metaphysical ideas of the 80’s were about materialism- it was
just wrapped in a spiritual bow. Both the books and the popular ideology actually
reflected the promotion of one’s own happiness at the expense of others. It was
popular to readily equate the power of positive thinking with prosperity, a.k.a.
money, just like we do now, twenty-five years later.
To me, the
question of the occult is a given. I don’t wonder if people are psychic or if
ghosts exist. What I wonder about, is
how to use this information to navigate our lives and how to heal. I wonder about and hope for the convergence
of psychic information with making the world a better place. These are the real challenges. How do we use metaphysics to better humanity?
(A lofty goal, I know.)
Kelefa Sanneh, in her article in The New Yorker, does a very good job of
explaining to the reader that Rhonda Byrne is recycling metaphysical ambitious
philosophy, supposedly explaining it all, but really answering almost nothing.
Speaking of Rhonda Byrne, Kelefa Sanneh writes,
“Confronted
with the injustice of the world, she can only promise, like many religious figures
before her, that deliverance is almost at hand…”
Kelefa
Sanneh’s article about Rhonda Byrne is packed full of the intellectual critique
I think metaphysics lacks but desperately needs. I recommend reading it.
Universal
Translator
Telepathy:
when actual audible words, formed by thought, rather than vocal cords, are
exchanged.
My dominant
psychic skills: clairvoyance, intuition, knowingness, healing etc. are so well honed,
I don’t think of them as anything out of the ordinary. But an actual telepathic
conversation, an occurrence that you think of when you think of science fiction,
not to be confused with mental illness, is still just a rare occurrence for me.
When it happens, it is either accidental or pressed into action because someone
really wants to speak and can’t be
heard otherwise. Under these circumstances the initiator appears to tap into the
Universal Translator.
While I have
an idea of how two people that speak language, not even the same language, can
hook up to the Universal Translator and occasionally communicate
telepathically, it has been my experience that animals and birds can do it
too! Even without a word language base,
just the desire to communicate, animals and birds can occasionally make themselves
heard in telepathic words. In my experience
these words are also, conveniently in English!
My
hypothesis is that the more familiar animals and birds are with humans, the more
likely they can access the Universal Translator. Wild animals and birds may find it more difficult
if not prohibited. Linguistics will tell
you that early exposure to language is crucial and wild animals and birds lack
exposure to human language. This lack of
exposure is probably, most often, insurmountable. The few times I’ve heard words
from animals and birds, they were intimately acquainted with me and trusted me,
but it still took a great deal of desire for them to go to the trouble to be
heard in telepathic words.
I feed the hummingbirds
at home. Most of my sugar water
customers are in the winter when their natural food supply is scarce. They know me well and keep tabs on my comings
and goings, but feel obliged to act as if they don’t really know me and as if I
am way too frightening to acknowledge.
But one
morning, the code of humming bird aloofness was momentarily broken as I awoke
to telepathic commotion outdoors. Apparently
on this particular very cold morning it had been collectively decided by the
hummingbird community that I wasn’t too scary to speak to after all.
When
I looked out the window I saw two of my regulars flying past my front windows
and I heard actual telepathic words from them to accompany their sense of
urgency. ”There is something wrong with
this food! Come out here and fix it.” Their hummingbird food was frozen solid. I
had failed them and they were letting me know it. (I realized later that they
could not somehow communicate the word frozen, only “wrong”, but still their
access to the Universal Translator was impressive.) As soon as they knew I understood them, they
quit talking and waited impatiently as I remedied the situation.
Abby, my
dog, rarely spoke telepathically. Like
my hummingbirds she had access to the Universal Translator but expected me to
meet her needs without it. Most things
between us weren’t up for discussion as far as she was concerned. She was always right and didn’t really need
my input. The only stage of her life she
came to think she needed information about was becoming a senior citizen. Being
elderly was a bit of a mystery to her.
One snowy afternoon
as she hobbled up her ramp (installed to assist in her elderliness) she stopped
to look out at the snow. I saw her wonder why she didn’t want to play anymore.
Snow use to be so much fun. She looked up at me and spoke, telepathically, in
clear plain English, choosing to use the Universal Translator and asked, “Am I
old?” I answered back, “Yes, Abby, you are old.” That explained a lot for her. She had been
wondering why she couldn’t romp around anymore and she finally asked. Time had
passed and she was well into her hundreds.
Two weeks
later Abby passed away at the ripe old age of “very, very old”- even too old to
play in the snow. I miss her, everyday.
Too Much Attention
Even outside of a professional session, clairvoyance comes
easily to me. When I am out and about in everyday life I always see someone’s
energy (aura) before I observe their body language or their physical appearance. My brain is attuned this way. I think
interpreting physical signs is tedious and often inconclusive so I don’t rely
much on physical interpretation and I don’t need to.
Recently, while standing in line at my neighborhood grocery
store, my brain immediately took in the energy images of the person in line, in
front of me, as it always does. I saw
his energy and never looked at his face.
He had exaggerated poker-like objects protruding out of his aura,
warning me away from him. These images
indicated to me that he was intensely paranoid.
I complied with his nonverbal request to give him privacy and gave him
even more of a physical buffer than I already had. But, I was perplexed at how
big a boundary he was demanding since I don’t look anything like a threat. In life, I am the one people approach to ask
for money. I am always the person people
underestimate.
I got a little bored while I was waiting and absentmindedly gazed
at his groceries. He immediately responded
non-verbally by moving a paranoid protective energy coating over his
groceries. He didn’t want me to notice
that he had bought all Paul Newman products, which was hard not to notice because
he was purchasing 100% Paul Newman products, and because he was in such resistance
to my unconscious inspection.
I concluded correctly that he was buying groceries for his
elderly mother and that perhaps he and his mother had a fondness for Paul
Newman movies. But, he was putting so
much intention into protecting his personal space that I also started to wonder
if he was mentally ill or if mental illness ran in his family.
I’ve always thought it would be difficult to be publicly recognizable. I’ve always wondered how a famous person goes
about their everyday life. I’ve wondered
how he or she copes when people they don’t know, seem to know them. It must be similar to being stalked: stressful,
draining and wounding.
I never did look at the face of the odd man buying groceries,
but the blushing and elated clerk told me her nervous customer was Sam Elliott,
a movie star in his own right and a friend of Paul Newman. Apparently Mr. Elliott often comes to
Portland to visit and shop for his mother and hates to be recognized in
public. I could see the toll it took on
him. And although I probably would have
recognized his face had I looked, the shield he had created for himself, was more
obvious to me than his resume.
Should I Take Off My Shoes?
It use to be that new clients and students would ask me if
they needed to leave their jewelry and crystals at home. It was common for them to wonder if they
needed to take off their shoes for a session or a class. It was also common for someone to ask if
drinking coffee would disturb their energy field. They had heard that these physical things
might influence energy healing or cause clairvoyant distortion and wanted to be
helpful by complying with a special request I might have. I would always reply that those things didn’t
bother me. The changes caused by
jewelry, crystals, shoes and coffee are so trivial to me, that I have never seen
them as even the slightest hindrance to my concentration or to the effects of a
good healing. Sometimes I would notice a
slight cringe from someone when I waved off their concern, indicating they were
wondering if I really knew what I was doing.
But, since the normalization of cell phones, no one asks me
these questions anymore. No one even asks me if they should leave their cell phone at home or even if they should
turn it off during a class or a session.
Why is it the information that jewelry, crystals, shoes and
coffee can change a person’s energy got around as common knowledge in
metaphysical circles, but the much larger, real life, in your face interference,
that a cell phone causes, both by its connection to the grid and by the human
energy constantly directed at the cell phone, is ignored?
Of course the constant messaging of a cell phone or blackberry
carries an exponentially larger current than any physical object could ever
match. Ironically,in the middle of what was billed as the dawn of a new age for metaphysics in the 80's, constant communication was invented and has moved
people in a desensitized direction, away from the meaning of
meditation, self awareness and living in the present.
The subtleties of energy
healing can coexist with technology but communication through technology is a set
back to the already fragile development of intuition and energy awareness in
the American culture. Its immediacy style
is the antitheses of being in tune to the personal and natural rhythm of self
and life.
