It’s been a rough couple of weeks. Could August just be over now?! My son has been going through a health crisis. Apparently he is either super-human or near death and nothing in between. He seems to be getting well, although I don’t think he’s out of the woods yet. Meanwhile, I am reminded that I do not do well with sicknes, mine or others’. I am not a good nurse. Patience is a virtue; it is not one of mine.
I’m quite put out by all this detailed minutia with the blood pressure monitoring and the medications and ongoing tests and doctor visits and updates. Being ill is a lot of work. God Bless the caretakers. I’m a big picture kinda gal…give me the spiritual meaning of all this and I’m good. Gggghhhhhhaaaaaaa. Also meanwhile, I am reminded that this crisis all could have gone south and I might have lost him. Like I could have lost him in his early 20’s to Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. This could be a very different week; one where I am not writing. I am unequivocally uninterested in living without my son in the world. Parents survive losing a child; I can’t imagine how. I don’t care what age they are.
As I spent a week bedside in the hospital I happened across a subject of interest to distract me: the study of telepathy. I’ve been telepathic all my life, with no studies – or even understanding of what was going on. I was well into my 30’s before I realized that everyone wasn’t like this. That everyone did not necessarily know the future or travel out of body or struggle with the concept of time as a fixed point. I lived in a different reality. A more fluid reality – when I was relaxed; healthy; present. When I’m not in crisis.
Interestingly, much of my childhood was spent dealing with crisis’. I think that is probably why I’m so impatient now. I had to be an adult from a very young age, and quite frankly, I’m burnt out. Consequently, I watch a lot of television – something I wasn’t interested in until my 60’s. Although I’m terribly picky about what I watch, and believe me, it isn’t on cable. And I watch a lot of YouTube – the new television. And I’m just as picky there. I’m quite the critic. I find myself envying Siskel and Ebert who invented a lucrative genre to match their particular interest. Wish I’d thought of that. But I digress…
One recent morning I found The Telepathy Tapes. That’s been eye-opening. All my life I have struggled with the concept of being “psychic.” I’ve only this week realized that much of what I have loosely categorized as “psychic ability” is actually telepathy. They are not the same thing. And again, the dominoes of understanding all fell over, including having been autistic decades before anyone heard of it. Everything suddenly makes complete sense about my wildly dysfunctional life.
It has only been in the past few years that I have understood my psychic awareness at all. And how I might “tune in” to knowing something about a complete stranger, or be able to converse with deceased loved ones. I can do both, but they are entirely different functions. So is an out of body experience. But they all come under the umbrella of telepathy.
And this past year, filled with grief, has taught me something I am likewise just beginning to understand and wish to share. I’ve always struggled to understand what most people know as time and space. As I said, those are fluid for me. I’ve had to learn how to stay here now. I’ve had to learn to set boundaries with other beings in other places in order to remain in this lifetime; to say “No. I’m going back” and to name the year. In my “dream.”
I remember decades ago having a heated discussion with someone about the concept of reincarnation. I simply don’t get it. I was going through a series of deep-tissue release treatments with a Buddhist monk who flew into the Detroit suburbs from Washington state. He was probably the most “psychic” person I’d ever met. I had unbelievable experiences during these sessions. I would suddenly be standing on a wooden platform with a noose around my neck, or some such extreme circumstance that came out of nowhere. Mr. Collins knew exactly what I was experiencing and guided me through it and back to my painful body. He told me these were “past life memories,” and I think I laughed out loud at him. Pphhhttttt….past life. I told him he lived in California too long. He asked me why I didn’t believe these experiences were real. Oh, I knew they were real – I just couldn’t wrap my mind around reincarnation because I can’t wrap my mind around the idea that there is a past. Or a future. It’s all now. So was that me standing there? Of course it was. But no more me than the cedar tree out back. Or your dog.
My problem isn’t tuning in to other people, places, times. My problem is tuning out. My problem is staying here. Or it used to be when I was young; I learned those boundaries much sooner than I did the boundaries needed in my family relationships. Somehow I knew I had to, or I wasn’t going to be here long.
Now where does this get us? What the heck is all this for anyway? Well…I just got something valuable about this. Grappling with grief and fear this week has given me a tremendous gift. You know how mediums talk about connecting with our loved ones or ancestors “on the other side”? THERE IS NO OTHER SIDE!
I miss my cat. Terribly. Some nights I swear I feel him jump up on the bed and curl up against me. I smell my father’s cigar. I hear my mother laugh at me. They are not in some other reality – call it heaven or the bardo – or however you want to explain it. No. They are actually in reality. Period. They are living in the reality of fluid space and time. We call it eternity in our naive attempts to rationale their absence and our grief. No, friends. Where they exist IS reality. You and I are playing on the Holodeck. They’re waiting patiently.