Prologue
Book IV Beyond details the unusual experiences I’ve had in life. It is the fourth book in a series that follows Books 1-3 found below after the short stories on this website. The first three books were called Wanted: Someone To Understand, As Long As I Understand, and Beyond Understanding. I knew I wanted to call this fourth book Beyond. I want to share these unusual experiences with anyone who is interested in them.
I am not needing anyone to understand; I’m happy I am at a place I can talk about them
It’s great knowing it’s okay to be different and to be who I am; be how I am and be all I am. I wrote a song like that and I shall put it on my Ellen Sagh YouTube channel one of these days. Enjoy!
April 10, 2005 my grandson stayed overnight and I saw his aura for the first time; pure white and about one-half inch all around his face and head area. Beautiful.
It was another two years before I saw my partner’s aura for the first time. It was June and we were up north at Canada’s National Park and this song came out:
“Smell of pine trees consume me
Waskesiu water lapping our toes
Deer grazing beside me
Black poplar fluff snows.
Sounds of squirrels chattering;
Quietly scampering from tree to tree
Crows cawing, magpies squawking
Woodpeckers tapping the trees.
Beer and cheezies do tempt me
Sitting on the deck in the sun
Eight pelicans soaring
Seeing his aura first time
Elk grazing on grass greens
A fawn with spots jumps out of its bed
Billowing clouds blow over
Rustling leaves in the wind.
Speaking of auras, in 2005 I was invited to a couple’s place for supper. They support new refugees to our country who were there as well. The man from the other side of the world shared how he and his wife had been separated by war; how he was reunited with his wife and son after years of hiding, torture, wandering, being held captive and shared what his wife went through; experiences like being interrogated. They had both been refugees of different countries of five million and were being moved. They found each other on a street in a different country. As he is sharing, I am seeing this golden white shining aura, the most intense I have seen around anyone, around him. I’d look away and it followed about two feet on each side of him. He kept giving credit to God, calling it a miracle. I give credit to that energetic connection; the essence of each person that is connected to the essence of all that is; the sacredness or the divinity I guess although that word is so hard to use as it links it to religion and so much not okay is happening because of religion.
As I share about light experiences; in 1999 I went to a friend’s Friday night potluck. After we ate, and discussion turned to macrobiotic cooking; I stepped out her back door to have a smoke. As I stood on the steps sucking it in; all of a sudden, I could see lines of energy from this huge poplar tree in the yard next door; coming from the tree to me – connected to my stomach area. It was like a dinner plate sized circle on my mid-section with lines going out about every two inches and connecting to a huge circle around the tree. I could feel the lines going out from me to the tree and I said “oh my god” and closed my jacket and they were gone. Lines of yellow white light. I did not go back in the room and talk about it as I was meeting most of the people for the first time. I did tell my friend the next morning. I wanted to tell the guy I’d been seeing as we previously spoke about energies people said they could feel or see. Those were people from books; not in my or his own experience. During the next few days I kept thinking about those energy lines. They had been lines of light; like filaments of light from me to the tree. Is it release or connection? Does stored emotion block connection? The experience felt monumental.
In 1999 as well, I volunteered at the theatre and the first play had a holy roller Christian type preacher coming to this small town on the prairies. I saw the actor who was playing the pool hall owner surrounded in white light and as he spoke, blue light emanated out from him across the stage. I found it interesting that I was not seeing any of my family of origin in light and I was spending lots of time with them.
Another experience that year took place as I was facilitating a retreat where the theme was ‘Coming Home.’ My next morning’s dream was building the roof of my house. To me it meant my spirituality.
The night before when the participants and I were gathered in a room celebrating steps we had made in our lives, I shared: “I have arrived, I am alive, I can feel joy, I can be sexually aroused and feel good about it.”
It was the first time I knew what the word serenity meant. It is how I would describe that weekend. When one of the women was sharing that evening, I saw an orange glow all around her top half and brilliant blue from her stomach, chest and up to her throat. When I shared my experiences with the co-facilitator and the safe worker later; deep, deep crying came from somewhere inside me.
That same year, the women from the disbanded New Hope group and I were together on a Sunday afternoon. I saw two of them and the whole couch they were sitting on in white light. One of them had a brilliant green light around her heart. It was right when she was really listening and being there for the other one. Is that the colour of love?
The year following, I was at my sisters for the weekend. She was so upset as her daughter had not come home by curfew time and there had been quite the scene when they went looking, found and brought her home. I saw my sister’s bodily figure in white light but it was four feet away from her. She had a housecoat on and there on the wall four feet away was her figure in white light. I could see the ties of the housecoat in the outline of light. I am wondering if that is where the expression, “She was beside herself” came from. The same things happened a little while later in her bedroom; me seeing the white light outline four feet away from her body. It wasn’t just seen once. I never did see it any time or day following those two occurrences.
Mom was dying around that same time frame. I took time off work to sit in the hospital with her. My Aunt Laura was sitting on the edge of her bed, telling a funny story about her Aunt Marg coming from Regina and visiting the homestead. She wanted to manage the oxen and the stone boat and Aunt Laura’s dad had given her the reins. As she spoke of Aunt Marg standing on the flat to the ground stone boat and the oxen walking straight into a slough with her long dress and shoes wet to the knees, I saw raspberry pink light all around my aunt’s chest area and radiating out from her as she spoke.
Those days when I talked to certain people on the phone; as if I was seeing their aura as I listened to them. I did some meditations I’d call going deep. One day as if deep blue and yet bright blue like water took over my whole head and yet I was so conscious, sometimes it was yellow and there was an instance where I had knowing; knew the deep blue meant deep healing was taking place; the green was love and yellow was being in my own power.
I went to a movie. I saw an aura around the guy on the movie screen who was talking about how crime goes down when love meditation is happening. I wonder if the message is what I do affects others and what I do for myself affects me.
One day later that month, a close friend was over and we had a fire in the fireplace. We listened to each other; sat and talked and talked. I saw her aura – green and wondered aloud if the colour maybe meant growing. The green colour; which was the shape of her figure; wasn’t around her; but closer to me, in front of her by the door. She said knew it was about her being ahead of herself. That night I slept through the night; a rare occurrence.
In 2006, there was something processing or healing at a deep level; about being okay; worthy; as good as, or whether I’m worth anything. Wondering if I will have the tears, the crying episodes all my life? I’m so sick of it; the pain; the heartache. I have a beautiful house, money, job, friends and yet there is incredible sadness, pain and grief. I think of the pain my daughter is in because of me and I cry. How can I ever recapture the joy? I think there was some joy. I’ve been seeing auras around people and things for weeks. What is that about?
In July of that year, I’m sitting in my backyard seeing a blue light aura around the trees; while I wait for my sister to arrive for the day.
Then I might go a long time without seeing any light or aura. One time in March of 2007 I went to a Stephen Lewis talk on what is happening in a Grandmothers for Grandmothers movement. I saw a green light aura all around Stephen Lewis’s head. I called it a green heart light aura.
A long time previous I attended a new type of meditation. It was November 1999 and I wrote in my journal: “Am I setting too high a standard for myself and just never measuring up? I went to a vipassana meditation for two hours on Friday evening and nine hours Saturday. Nothing big happened except the colours I saw in my mind’s eye and yet I think something wonderful is: like body, mind and heart coming together. When I think of meditating for eleven hours; sounds bizarre; was called Open the Heart but what really happened was we sat for three quarters of an hour and then we walked for three quarters of an hour and continued to do that for the eleven hours and a few short talks about three times by the leader. A little bell sound indicated walk. I was restless between one and three pm on the Saturday but other than that, was okay for me. Unsure if I’d do it again. The first five hours I had grief on my mind but after that; saw some colours but mostly blank spaces in my mind. Sometimes, as if stories that weren’t my stories were there. Was different for me to be in a hall of about twenty people and not to connect or even make eye contact with anyone for all that time; to be with my heart. Felt calm and peaceful when I left. It was a different but really quite wonderful experience.”
I started the 2016 year with several light experiences. From my journal of January 7, 2016: “last night I had a white light experience. I could not sleep. Insomnia for hours had me up reading and then went back to bed; started thinking I will say, “I love you Ellen when you were one, I love you Ellen when you were two, and think of myself as a baby, etc; and all up through the years. By the time I was to five or six saying I love you Ellen, white light was streaming into the top of my head.”
I travelled back to Saskatchewan from my winter home in the south and another journal entry of January 12, 2016 read, “in like an aspect of myself that is new; whole body trembling inside; not sleeping more than three hours a night for the three weeks following Christmas. I took a week trip back to Saskatoon; seeing my brother in hospital; yet functioning in the days in the south; like scores of eighty-seven twice in golf with friends; winning tennis tournaments; crying in writing class when I read my poem about terror. When I would meditate, I’d see raspberry, then blue, then green with little blue lines; or all white; then back to colour for the twenty minutes. Not easy living like this.”
Entry of February 17, 2016 reads: “I saw auras when I was home at Christmas two months ago; then hadn’t since except for the twenty-minute meditation colour experiences. Then yesterday I saw my daughter’s aura through the computer skype. My hubby did not and we were sitting there together. The aura was blue all around her body. I hadn’t seen one that blue since I saw a co-worker who had a similar one around her body. That woman, back in the early 2000’s; looked in that moment similar to the Virgin Mary pictures I’d seen throughout my life. Back then, I walked over to her and let her know what I was seeing; blue light around her and I was thinking how she looked like the Virgin Mary. She later told me of being pregnant at the time and hadn’t shared with anyone.”
In February of 2016 I also wrote in my journal: “Last night I saw a man’s aura around him as he explained a system similar to a handicap in golf; we are going to use in tennis called tencap. Thoughts that came to me at the time the aura was happening was, ‘he’s in his own power’; and the realization I have not seen that colour or that strong around anyone previous to this. His aura was a dark yellow colour I would describe as a mustard field yellow but darker. Life is interesting!”
Around 1996 I had a little blue rock in my house and picked it up to move it to a new location. While it was sitting in my left hand, the rock changed from blue to black and it was like it sizzled. An Aboriginal woman who I met who was known as an elder in the community and I were going to go for an early morning walk by the river so I took it with me and showed it to her. She picked it up and within a few minutes it changed from black to green in her hand. I don’t understand and she didn’t have an explanation.
I was part of a workshop put on by several elders on a reserve in Saskatchewan. I listened as they asked us to go out and pick up a rock that we would use in the workshop and remember where we had picked it up; saying every rock has a home and we went back to replace the rock in its home before we left. I had never thought of a rock having a home.
Prior to that, out at a dry lake one day in 1998, I was walking with two friends. One handed me a three-inch diameter stone, pink and shiny, which was so light and I said, “I’ll use it for a door stop in my new home”. As we walked, and maybe fifteen minutes later, I noticed two things. The rock was so heavy and I had a huge callous on my left hand that hadn’t been there before. It reminded me of when I’d worked too hard in the potato patch growing up. I don’t think I had calluses back then. That day my hands were like I had been hoeing the fields all day. I handed the rock to the two guys. They couldn’t believe the weight of the rock. I or they could not explain it.
Sometimes I don’t know how I know what I know. In 2005, I bought the most beautiful yellow cloth at a secondhand store. A beautiful weaving. An inside knowing I had to give to my closest friend; a friend who has been so nurturing, caring and for the specialness of how she has been there for me.
I woke up the next morning at five am and knew had to take the yellow weaving to my friend that day. What would usually take an hour walk; seemed to take about half that; as if I floated there and back. I placed the bag of the weaving inside her door. Later she told me; her sister had died unexpectedly the day before; and that cloth meant the world to her; calling me a goddess for being there for her at such a critical time.
Years before, I saw some things I could not explain. It was 1997 and I drove south of Saskatoon into the country and found a trail where I could walk down to the river. I looked down the length of the river within my sight and it is as if I saw something or someone on the bank about a half mile away. It was like a being or a ten-foot pillar; mostly black; but as if black wings; or like a Haida totem pole or something. It stood out from the bank and I had no way to get closer to it as there was solid bush along the river where I was standing. It had me crying and each time I think about it or read about it; I cry.
Another time I walked down to the river in the exact same spot. As I left the river climbing the path; a total white animal similar to a coyote or wolf, walked along side me. It was quite close; then moved about thirty feet away for a long time and as I was coming to the clearing where I’d be going back to my car; it veered off and was gone. At the time of writing about it in my October 2000 journal, I didn’t see it as strange. Maybe it isn’t. I saw a white albino deer when I was hunting with my family in the late seventies. It didn’t seem the same.
Another unexplainable experience of 1998 happened when I went to a workshop. It was called psycho dramatic bodywork with counsellors and people from the healing professions, meaning mostly white, middle class but with a few indigenous women there as well. Back then we called indigenous women aboriginal women. We did different relaxation, meditative type exercises. Deep breathing. We spent about twenty minutes completing those and then were to share in one word with the large group our experience. I was sitting against a wall throughout the twenty minutes with my eyes closed; feet stretched out in front of me. I felt relaxed and totally comfortable and as the minutes went by experienced a yogi type figure in the lotus position that was upside down inside my head. It started out being like a black figure and then turned into light; with the light getting brighter and brighter inside my head and before we ended and I opened my eyes I had an upside-down yogi or buddha inside my head with as bright yellow light as bright as the flowering canola fields we have in Saskatchewan. When it was my turn to share a word, “Enlightenment” was mine.
At this same workshop we moved into an exercise on what our experience had been of clan oppression regarding aboriginal peoples. When the facilitator explained the concept of internalized oppression, I wondered if one of the Aboriginal women there got it, and a realization hit; I was feeling superior, education wise to that person. Thought about saying it out loud. Grief came; well fear first over whether I could say it out loud and then the grief really intense. We moved into small group sharing. That same Aboriginal woman who I was thinking about ended up being in my group. I said it out loud about my thoughts of superiority feeling. She looked me in the eye and said, “I could kill you for saying that.” Her rage was right there. It was so there it scared me.
I went off by myself at the break, drove my car to a quiet side street along the river bank. I sat there and wondered what had just happened there. I sat there lost in thought when there was all of a sudden darkness and the fluttering noise of wings had me staring at a bald eagle with a huge wing span hovering in front of my car and with eye contact, it went over the hood and back to the trees where it disappeared on the river bank. I sat there in wonderment and knew immediately, I would not be going back into that room and sharing that in my group.
In 1999, I was questioning whether we choose our lives or do we create them every moment. Questioning whether we are searching for connection as I wrote the following in my journal: “I am a writer whether or not I have something to say or anyone reads me. It is an avenue for me to express, slough off the layers, keep some layers that are needed; connection to inside of me that needs to feel connected to something other than me. Deep in my heart is a song waiting to be sung. As if I’m going through another transformation. As if moved beyond despair. Bereft. Unsure what that means besides being beyond deep, deep grief over what is gone or was I robbed of it? What is choice? Did I choose coming into the world when or how I did? Who I came to? Circumstances? To catholicy? To rural? To nature? To the abuse? To each event and circumstance after? Did anyone choose me? No. It happened. I am here. What for? Mystery? Our actions have consequences and birth comes from action. Birth is new and pure and light and connected and spirit filled? Pure energy and then comes the layers; am I sloughing off more layers that have built up as protective coverage to protect my light; my energy. If I allow the layers to flow away; is my energy dissipated? Not there as a living entity but more able to blend with like minded energy; is that how we move beyond those who keep their walls up; the ones who keep the old? Love isn’t the be all and end all; the nirvana; it is the being in everyday; being in reality; coming into awareness; together; it’s the NOW – the moment of connection; the sharing and okay if you don’t and the acceptance that this is all there is and that this changes.”
In my journal #79 of November/December 2002 wrote: “WOW! 15 women showed up this week for a Full Moon Ceremony at my house. I invited my landlady from next door and the rest were all First Nations women although some could have been Metis as looked like one white woman besides me. Many I didn’t know as they came with some that I did. The elder I knew asked if I would host. I’d provide the space and decide if there was something in my life useful to me at one time that I was prepared to give away. I could also put out something for potluck.
She had a helper and we all sat in the upper room of my house which had no furniture. We sat on the rug in a circle. The helper untied the cloth holding ceremonial items; and then proceeded with the lighting and smudging each of us following the prayers of the elder. I cringed wondering how the smudging was going over with the landlady as she was white and when I moved in, I had agreed no smoking in the house. After the main part of the ceremony, we shared the food everyone had brought. Soup, berries, bannock and some coffee shop doughnuts. There was more than we could eat. A woman gathered a teeny bit of each variety of food the women had brought taking it outside to bury by the river thanking mother earth or something like that.
Another cringing moment for me was when I saw soup spilled on the carpet. The ceremony ended with a give away in which the item each woman brought was put into a basket. One woman drummed, lots sang, the basket went around the circle and when you felt called, you put your hand in the basket and picked an item. The receiver shared with the larger group what was received; and the giver spoke of what had been given up and both could choose if wanted to share the significance. All did.
My turn. I had given up a book, a story about someone dealing with the law. I talked about how much changed; the civil suit ending; and I saw the significance of receiving a tea towel relating to living in a new house, that I just completed the marathon in Ireland; maybe time to do nothing; just have tea.
Landlady came over the next night and I realized I could be a psychic. Everything I assumed she’d be angry about; she was. She was full of wrath to do with it all; having women I didn’t know at my house; the smoke in the house; the rug. I was calm as I heard her out and attempted to talk about a difference in cultures. What helped my case was there was not one lingering smell from the smudge and not one iota of a spot on the rug. I knew it was unexplainable and told her I saw it on a spiritual level that something happened there and now there is no evidence of it. Both of us saw the soup spilling and we experienced lots of smudging happening. I appreciated her concern and I and she were there until the end and we didn’t see anyone cleaning it up. We both got down on our hands and knees and looked at the rug. Nothing. In my journal I wrote, “Some things I can’t explain. Hopefully we have worked through a lot of it.”
On a Sunday of that year, I was giving my ninety-year-old aunt a ride to Saskatoon. As we drove through a new area I’d never been in before, I started telling her that our old neighbour and close friend she knew who had gone with me to confront the priest who had sexually abused me when I was young, had been placed in a care home somewhere in this area. With saying that, I turned right at the next corner; made a few more turns, stopped in front of a house and said, “I think she lives here and I’ll be right back.”
I checked at the door. She did. When we were in visiting her, and the woman asked how did I know where she lived; I had to tell her I didn’t know. This was in a big city of over two hundred thousand people; a new area I’d never been in and we were there. When we were back in my vehicle, my aunt said, “I think you’re a spirit.”
About the same time, I was wanting a change in my life circumstances. I was living in a rented apartment and had the chance to house sit for a couple for a month as they travelled Europe. While there I made a list of everything I wanted in a house. All of a sudden, a few months later, I am in amazement when I realize that I had on paper picked out where I want to live and I am living there. I am only living a block and a half from the spot in the city I had chosen. In the house there are all the things in it that were on my list except a fireplace. I found out a few days later, there was a fireplace in it as well which had been removed when the decision was made to rent the home.
Around the same time, one of the women at work who I thought was treaty Indian, told me she knew little about her culture and asked if I knew anything about a sweat. As she asked me, I had this experience of being totally able to picture it as if I’d been on one. I could hear the sizzling of the hot rocks; the preparing; the darkness; the sitting in a circle; the smells; and I say out loud to her; “I don’t think I’ve been on one.” I did know an elder; offered to asked her about it. I did and the elder arranged that we all went together. It was as I had pictured.
This same woman could not believe I had no Christmas decorations and asked if she could come to my new two-story home I was renting and decorate. I said if she wanted to, go for it. She came and wrapped the banisters with spruce boughs and angels and had my house all festive. Seemed bizarre as it was a time, I could no longer live Christianity and she, who was Indigenous was placing Christian type symbols all throughout my house.
That same year I wore my two-dollar black boots to the Christmas party. Interesting that those two-dollar boots I bought in the oil town second hand store ten years ago had wore out and I found the same boots in the same second-hand store and they were two dollars again. Seems bizarre.
It was the second time something like that happened in my life. I wore a pair of moccasins for years and years with no idea where they came from. When they were worn beyond repair; my sister asked me if I left a pair at her place on her farm. I said, “I don’t think so;” as she hands me the exact same pair that had same beading telling me she found them in a box. I then wore them for years. Never figured it out. She never figured it out.
Something unexplainable happened within my family of origin a few years later when my sister baptized her baby in the United Church. When the young woman priest poured water over the baby’s head, a niece took a picture. My niece’s mom brought the developed picture showing the cross behind the baby’s head with fire on it. It hadn’t had fire on it when the priest was baptizing the baby.
That same year, I was driving in northern Saskatchewan in September. Seeing the hills, the valleys, the colours, the grandeur of it all; a powerful headache type thing was going on in the top of my head; as if the top energy centre or chakra or whatever was wide open or something. That morning, I had been at a friend’s place and went for a walk. It was unfamiliar territory as it was the first time I was ever in that town. I saw a tree in the distance and said to myself, ‘I will walk as far as that cemetery. When I got close and saw the cemetery, I started crying. How could I know there was a cemetery there?
Later that day; seeing the spectacular fall colours inspired this song:
BEING
Being in touch with spirit
Is a wonderful, wonderful thing
It brightens up your days
And gives you everything
Living in the darkness
Allows the songs to sing
Capturing the beauty
That’s in the world we bring
We bring to each other
All the songs we sing
When we make the time to listen
To what each of us brings
Love one another
What does it mean
Bringing hope to another
Hope that’s not in vain
Hope that our children
Will have sunshine and rain
The wisdom of the moment
Comes from inside
When it’s connected
Across the great divide
Dreams of the future
Loss of the past
Are not what matters
As nothing lasts.
September of 2000
I have now shared how a song comes into my head and I write it down as fast as I can. Sometimes lists of what I feel I am being called to do happen that way as well. I go back to my journal notes of April of 2005. “Felt for so long like I didn’t have a friend and then on the Sunday, fifteen people phoned me. Dad phoned; he found a new song called ‘This is my Homeland’ and played it twice for me on the phone.”
The next day I woke up and wrote in my journal:
“I am alive, I am free. I care. I love. Love is being free. Fifteen people phoning me on Sunday. Takes a while to comprehend. Had a few days of feeling I am at One. There is no Self I need to protect, defend or feed anymore. I am One, enlightened.
Remembrances of experiences I’ve had where I felt there was a bigger picture:
-
- hearing the messages of birds
- Mother Teresa experience; her appearing in my bedroom; her reaching out her hand
- energy lines of the trees/ connection I have
- flying over the jungle experience
- seeing people’s and thing’s aura’s
- voice inside “I am that you may be”
- Knowing where a woman’s house is in the city when I never had the address and was able to go right to it.
- Felt sense of the Holy Spirit at confirmation
- The light inside I experience when I meditate
- Stone burning in my hand
- Rock changing colour
- Rock getting from light to heavy
- Shape shifting including physical weight loss where clothes slide down
- Sat beside a snake as I wrote the “My heart is breaking” song (page 365 in ENDING ABUSE book by Sharon Speaks)
- Taking on other people’s pain and to let them know something – Dad not being able to breathe (my sharing around Dad’s dying and death in book BEYOND UNDERSTANDING by Ellen Sagh)
- Took on someone’s fear – trapped in hallway; and at noon – let it out (tell this experience if not already told in a previous book)
- Hotel keeper in a Persephone play in total light
- Guys’ head – Box of light
- Anger energy – feel it hit my gut
- Man on the other side of the street from me says “Where were you”
- Lay presiders body in white light during the prayers for my mom after her death
- Woman’s body in blue light surrounding her at Warren’s financial adviser class presentation I went to
- Laura Miller – raspberry light around her as she sits and tells a story around Mom’s bed as Mom is dying.
- Rarely but have seen people at work in white light
- A necklace that bent out of shape.
And last line in that journal writing of 2005 “All relationships are Oneness; Are Love.”
From the above experience list I shall tell the stories. Some I have already and some I will tell now.
MESSAGES FROM BIRDS AND IDEA FOR A BOOK SERIES.
The first one spoke of is hearing messages from birds. Maybe some time later in this book I will be able to tell you more about that. The only one that comes to mind is my over and over experience of having a magpie gently float by me or over the road in front of me as I drive. I always have the sense it’s a message from my sister who died a questionable death after years of abuse. This continues to happen and I know the idea for a book series was also tied to my sister.
I wrote about her life in my first journals that turned into a book. I always felt the book was bigger than my own experience and I think I dedicated the book to her. The idea came for me that I would be writing the following five books: Wanted: Someone to Understand, As Long as I Understand, Beyond Understanding, then this book Beyond. The last book would be called BE. It would be an empty journal with BE on the front of it and a message to myself and the world that I could live in the moment and enjoy being rather than doing. I knew by about 2016 I was beginning to live BE. One day a friend came to visit saying she had something she felt called to bring to me.
It was an empty journal book with BE written on the front. I noticed on face book my niece had begun writing blogs and talking about the importance of journalling. I passed the journal on to her knowing I could now live the BE even if I was finishing this BEYOND book.
MOTHER TERESA EXPERIENCE
My second on the list above is my experience about Mother Teresa. In 2000 I wrote, “taking care of me. After anger for weeks, the grief comes again. I guess saying good-bye to Mom’s physical body as don’t feel like her spirit is around.” My mother had just died and a friend was visiting me from B.C. I was in such a down space, I left the apartment; went walking by myself and spent some time writing in my journal in a doughnut shop.
The next morning the down space was still there. When my friend said she was going to have a shower, I said I was going to lay down. As I was laying there, as if the woman figure of Mother Teresa was in the room with me; at the end of the bed; just her top half and as if her right hand was reaching out to me. I was laying there conscious of putting my right hand up towards hers. Her hand reached out and down to my hand. At that moment, it was as if I became conscious of this time and this place as being in my bedroom, and knowing she was dead, and had the thought, “what the hell is going on?” Like that she was gone. For the rest of that day, I kept asking myself, “was that really Mother Teresa in my bedroom?” and “what is happening to me?”
Over the next while, kept thinking about it as I tried to figure out the Mother Teresa experience. Now when I write this, mostly I know it was her; as she was totally recognizable, and in my belief system now; all that was; is. At that time, not so long after mom’s death, I felt close to between the worlds; the spirit world and this world. During those days shortly after it happened, the thought came to me, and I wrote, “I needed support and with that thought; the deep, deep sobbing with wailing happens.”
I drove out to a cemetery reflecting on why she had come to me, and as I thought of her being there for the dying, the words came to me, “and you are here to write.” I started another book.
LINES FROM A TREE TO ME I’ve already written about so will move on to the next of my itemized list above.
FLYING OVER THE JUNGLE EXPERIENCE
The year before mom died, I return from visiting her in the care home. I was laying on the couch in my home; and as if I was journeying. That is the only word I have for it; as if my body only is flying through a valley; I can see jungle treed mountains on both sides of me. I have a clear view of this valley with trees on the side of the mountain. They are thick trees that remind me of the Congo pictures I’ve seen.
SEEING PEOPLE’S AND THING’S AURAS
When I made the above list in 2005, I already had the Mother Teresa experience I shared earlier but not what I would call my white light experience. It happened in the summer of 2013. I found it hard to talk about or tell people about it. I was part of a group of writers in my southern Arizona winter home and we were asked to write a story about the colour white. I wrote the following:
I woke up last Friday morning debating about writing my story white. The night before, a woman from Viewpoint phoned me in Saskatoon asking if would golf this Monday afternoon. I nearly said Yes. It would be an escape. I wouldn’t have to write this story. I’m here. I chose not to golf. I know there are lots of things can be written about white. For me there was only one.
It is the white light Jesus experience I had this summer. I don’t know why I had it. I do know now that it rocked my world.
At the time it happened, it didn’t. My hubby and I were standing in our bedroom; he at the end of the bed getting ready for golf. I at the side. We were talking. All of a sudden, I was seeing this being in light. It was a He. I knew it was Jesus. Immediately, I told my hubby I was seeing a Being in white light. I did not tell him it was Jesus. It took me a week to do that.
I knew it was Jesus as it was a replica of the Jesus icons I see in the world.
It looked like the statues I grew up with. It looked like the Jesus statue with his arms extended that I see in a church yard when I go for a walk.
The being of light that morning was bigger than my hubby or I. It was close to the eight-foot-tall bedroom ceiling height. It was about the same distance away from my hubby as from me; about five or six feet away.
It felt more important to come here and talk about this than to golf today.
When I say seeing Jesus in white light rocked my world, I know it’s been part of the last few months tumultuous experiences. I have been in a life review. I left the church and the religion of my childhood and my adulthood quite a few years ago. I know every moment is sacred and every moment is my church. The Jesus in white light experience is part of that.
Written on February 24, 2014
Following my and everyone else’s sharing that day in the writing group, we were given a ten-minute writing exercise where sentence endings of ite or ight were to be used. This was my poem of the day I shared the above Jesus experience.
I had to get over my fright
So I could speak about the light
No problem ‘cause it was white
And it was day; not the night.
Today I don’t have a deep insight
It’s okay I’m feeling all right
I love that I could be forthright
As my experience I recite
It feels like it is my birthright
And lots of love I can invite
When I share what has me uptight
Gives me pause so I can unite.
February 24, 2014
Another writing in that class was this based on the word age; which will give you an idea of my background and some different experiences that other people didn’t seem to have.
AGE
Three themes that jumped into my head when I heard this word were act your age, coming of age and aging gracefully.
Act your age was my father’s expression. I heard it often. It didn’t only refer to me. He said it to my older brothers as well. It was usually a reprimand. It might mean to settle down or stop doing what your doing. It could mean to grow up; that he expected better from us.
Coming of age might mean many different stages of my life. Probably between ten and thirteen years old when I was told about the facts of life; which was referred to as the birds and the bees. So, prior to menstruation beginning would be my first coming of age. I am glad my mother explained sexuality as well as she did and gave me and my two sisters a little booklet. Many friends were told nothing. I felt a little cheated that my two sisters younger than me were finding out this important information stuff at an earlier age than myself.
My next coming of age would be my first dance. It was before what is a big coming of age event; passing my driver’s license.
I am thinking now that I missed some coming of ages when I missed telling you about the sacraments I participated in as part of organized Catholic religion. The first three I can see forgetting as there were so many kids in my family with so many celebrations; it kind of slips my mind. I can’t forget my confirmation as I had a physical feeling of the Holy Spirit entering my body during the service which has never left me and still has an emotional impact.
That could be called a spiritual coming of age.
My high school graduation, travelling overseas the first time, motherhood, completing my university, standing up to my boss, burying my parents and retiring I see now as all coming of age parts of life.
Aging gracefully was and is where it’s at right now. I would think that is about continuing to learn to love ourselves, each other and the world. I wrote the following song in 2011 that speaks to that and I shall share part of it now:
Living life easy
Living life free
Living life
As it was meant to be
Loving You
Loving Me
Living with All
In Harmony
And from a song in 1996
I trust in the Universal Light
It connects me with my body, mind and soul
It brings me energy and peace
It allows me to reach my goal
That who I am is more than enough
That I am okay just because
I am me and I am okay
I deserve the best, the best today
Here comes the universal light
I feel it in my heart and in my soul
I’ll have all the energy I need
And that’s why I am feeling so whole.
The above is One of Forty-Two songs I wrote in May and June 1996. I’ve had many coming of ages. I guess I put that in capital as it still amazes me.
November 2014
I AM THAT YOU MAY BE
One time I was reading a book that sees the outside world as a reflection of our inner world. That seemed to be mirrored in my life. The monk in the book suggests “praying unceasingly and get a mantra for saying over and over. I think to myself, “what would I say?”
A voice in my head states, “I am that you may be.” What does that mean? The words are from where?
I AM …. A CONTINUATION
This from my 2005 journals: “feeling vulnerable; quite shocked at how weak, rotten I feel and unsure what’s going on. I went to aboriginal diversity training at work. The facilitator had everyone putting out the words; the stereotypes of Indians in the room for all to hear. What it did was show us the co-workers who did not see it as stereotypes but said those things believing they were real. And they were to them. Was so bad. Uneducated, disgusting, rude, shocking; hard to put into words; ignorant. Got the stereotypes into the open but was so disturbing to me. I wasn’t able to explain what was happening for me. Another woman who put some of what I was feeling into words had me seeing her and those around her she was addressing in white light. Felt I needed to tell her what I saw and as if so important to do that.
My lips broke out in fever blisters before I could do that as I was sitting there.”
“I am All that Is,” I wrote in my journal.
More writing in journal: “Know myself as called or chosen. A week or so ago, when my head felt like it was spinning and I heard a voice distinctly say, “I am that you may Be”
I wrote in my journal, “I am now responding with I am here. I am ready to be; to do what needs to happen; keep thinking about my second book. My crying that is happening a lot is like in a singing voice…. And….Now that I am hearing and acknowledging moving into a time of searching; like I am coming to an understanding of what is needed for me to continue leading an authentic life. My heart is breaking open again. As if in a spiritual crisis and not alone in it. Many are there for me. Mostly I’m connected to the I AMNESS in ALL.”
As I write this today, it’s questionable whether AMNESS is a word.
ENERGY OR EMOTIONS?
A woman I knew had memories return of her father abusing her. She phoned me from the psych ward. Then I had to relook at father issues again; how society pushes a male God in the sky; fathers are there for you and care for you. I realized at the time which was the early two thousand’s; many men I had relationships with; had no father. Another realization; I was still unsure about Jesus; questioning all I had been taught; journaling about Jesus being a man; burned from within and had power; stood up for what is right; wanted change, showed his emotions; was a teacher.
All of a sudden, as if anger energy in me, and as I wrote the above in my journal, energy was coming out my body; could feel it coming out my back, under my ribs; heat coming off of me. I wondered if depression is blocked energy? I thought about no wonder people work out; they don’t have firewood to chop or physical work to survive so makes sense we need gyms. Let the energy move through. I read a romance book about a woman who wanted someone to love her who needed her. For me, is that similar to religion? Do we have to accept what is offered? Is giving and receiving the same thing? In receiving, we give. For me, this review was the end of organized religion. As if everything had changed and nothing had changed. At that, I decided every moment would be my church.
In the early two thousand’s, nearly every day had me driving in the country to see the sunrise. I had a house overlooking the river where I could see the sunrise but I still didn’t have a place I could scream, yell, or wail. I was giving a speech in 2003 about what survivors of abuse go through. I could tell life was getting better for me and the need for a place for me to release was less.
At the time of the speech writing, I was still trying to figure out what I had seen on the Sunday morning; like a Jesus on the cross or during a resurrection; in light, but it was out in the country; on the side of a hill. I did not put that in the speech as my thought then; “try to explain that to someone.”
It had me crying when I wrote it in my journal then and crying again in 2018 writing about it for this book. Now I have no emotion about it and although it still was like a light experience on the side of a hill; looked like Jesus on the cross during a resurrection scene; I still can’t explain it; don’t have to and am okay with that.
I shut the computer off after writing that last sentence this 2020 morning and my son sent a messenger post of an article with a picture in it; and the article described a hiker scaling Wales’ highest peak at Snowden for sunrise and when clouds rolled in; was able to capture a rare phenomenon called the Brocken spectre or what is sometimes known as Brocken bow. What I found interesting is when I showed the article’s photograph to my hubby, he said, “who is that, Jesus?”
In September of 2005 I was looking at my life again; wondering who I could count on; or what. I’d question if I could count on synchronicity or the universe. More so the universe. I wrote in my journal, “Sometimes; think there is something happening that is archetypal”, and next time I read that sentence, realized I don’t even know what that word means.
A journal writing of the same year: “What is hope? Possibility. Universe is unending. As we learn, it opens up new things. We can see new possibilities. Faith is believing in oneself and the existence of connection, energy flowing from one to another and the magnitude of it – All that is – Creation springs from this energy. This energy is love; the food I need and the more natural way I fill myself up; the better.”
OUR BODY SHARING
In 2005 I found it interesting that the exact outer spot I wounded myself falling on the stairs in Mexico was an outward expression of exact inner area of my body where I hold grief.
That year a woman and her daughter stayed in my house so they could see a dermatologist for the child’s symptoms of blisters that broke out on her body. This happened following her being very close to being hit by a car and at same time witnessing a car hitting another child. The child had swelling of feet, bruising rash and breakouts all over kind; head to toe; like fever blisters all over her body shortly after the accident. She was hospitalized for eight or nine days at a local hospital; then sent to a city hospital for a few; where they were trying drug after drug; and now the thoughts were about trying a steroid injection.
They tried reiki. I don’t think the steroid injection was attempted and she recovered. I was wondering if the car hit her aura or was it the trauma of what she saw and heard and picked up from everyone else that she was trying to get out of her?
An older male family member of the child told me ever since he heard of the happening, his eyes have been raining; as if tears run out of them all the time. I can’t help but think this is all connected.
In January of 2006 I was in what I called a spiritual crisis for about a month with shooting pains in my head and a lump in my neck and jaw until one night at two in the morning a five-page song came out as fast as I could write it down. The left hip pain continued day after day. I had dreams of a little girl all alone in a basement and other dreams of an electrical outlet not working.
My song of the time has this at the top of the page: “Jan 28/06 – Lightning bolts of pain in my left side of my brain – pain in my throat & jaw.
I will be gentle with myself
I am a child of the universe
I am gentle when I’m angry
I am gentle when I’m kind
I am gentle with the thoughts
Running through my mind
As I sort out all the chapters
Of what has come before
Of all the communions
That don’t fit anymore
I have no end of assistance
Life blood in all these things
I can call on Jesus
Mohammad or all beings
We are connected
To what has come before
How do we separate
The Sacred from Folklore
Listen in the moment
Shed the pain of the past
Describe what is happening
Deepen the experience
Detail life
Delve for the answers
Held within the pain
When I take the time to listen
To the child within again
Whose been so lonely and so angry
Hanging out alone
Crying for communion
Of what to her was gold
Where can I find it
Visioning again
Can’t seem to remember
What that even means
Blessing of our food
Sitting in a Pew
How much can I listen
When it doesn’t fit for _________ me?
There is something held in
The left side of my brain
Connected to what has gone before
The shit/the hurt, the horror
Of abuse at the door
The door of understanding
Is connected to my brain
Down through my heart
And out my voice as rain
Tears of communion
Slide down my face again
Washing away the pain
And agony within
Desperate lives
Of so many do abound
Searching for Spirit
In all things around
Wanting to matter
Knowing there is more
Wanting to reconnect
To what has come before
Unity with Spirit
Of the Life-Giving Force
Permeates Us All
And Wants to be Endorsed
Something is stuck in me
In my throat and in my jaw
Most is so much better
Most of the pain is gone
I can feel it in my heart
My needing to be heard
The sorrow and the pain
Of all those years has blurred
When I didn’t seem to matter
To anyone or anything
I couldn’t find God or Spirit
In anyone or anything
When actions show NOW caring
Then I feel it is not lost
That people will be there
To help me bear the cost
Now I trust that others
Who walked the path before
Are with me today
And when I breathe no more
The tears are coming now
From so far, so deep within
Washing away the pain
From the welling from within
It all stuck to the old crap
That was still in store
And couldn’t move through
And felt like forever more
Explore the old beliefs
That make my head spin
Lightning bolts of action
Leaving with this pen
This is sweet communion
As I connect with the child
Who has always been, is,
And wants to run wild
She is full of spirit
In love with everything
Was with me much of life
Especially when I sing
This miracle of birth
And when I was a bride
She was right there with me
Always at my side
I am so happy that
I’m finally breaking through
Connecting with
I hate to say YOU
Then it means I’m not connected
And have to feel the pain
As the girl was hurt
Over and over and over again
I have to give voice
As its stuck in my jaw
The hell of disconnection
The despair and the loss
The descent without answers
Disgust anger and pain
Depressed Emotion
Rising Again
Disturbed, distorted
Degraded Ugliness
Deep deep pain
Who wants to hear again and again
It’s what I need to do
Give it a second look
Why I want the help
Of putting out a second book
Spread the pain around
Not bear it alone
Others will help us
On our Journey home
Up to now I have been trying
To build me a home
Find me a job
And not be alone
But the pain has been building
Stuck on what has gone before
This is my understanding
And my throat is much less sore
Oh, this is sweet communion
My tears softly sing
As I listen to my voices
A musical ring.
January 28, 2006
I noticed at the time I had very rosy cheeks for those last few weeks; like a baby or a child or when you are out in the cold for a long time. I had not experienced that for years and thought maybe there a deep blockage no more or was hoping.
THOUGHTS NON-STOP
I was sorting my grandson’s toys with him, over at my daughter’s house and the song in my head was, “I have decided to follow Jesus,” so I changed the words to, “I am exploring my spirit fully.” That line I’d sing three times and end with “no turning back, no turning back.”
A friend came to live with me in February of 2006. She was just going to stay till she found a job but did not find one and kept staying. I noticed that when she was with me, I was having less thoughts in my head all the time for which I was grateful. I was ecstatic that my daughter had a university degree and soon after a permanent job. I decided to join a bus tour called Victoria in Spring.
I went to a single’s dance with a co-worker. Didn’t dance much. Hardly any men there. All my thoughts. The old adage about finding a man. There is longing for connection, love and touch. Having thoughts of whether there is anyone at work who would job share.
Feb 26, 2006 Another song comes:
A girl who deserves to run wild
Be free to sing in three-part harmony
To have caring and support
Loving as ne’re before
Hugs and kisses and wants met
Standing at the door
Living life so well
Her cup runneth over
And still have time to tell
The truth of her existence
And what has come to pass
Resting so easy
At home at last
A lesson in remembrance
Patient as I lay
Down my inattention
And take the time to play
Plastic has to end
Plasma is the key
Connecting with the past
For the future us to see
Give me a moment
An hour or two
Give me the chance
To have fun with you
Thinking of my friends
How they’ve been there
So much love and caring
In this world is rare
I want for all the others
As they climb out of their well
The listening and the kindness
That got me through this hell
Let’s make the world of difference
We can create a song
Make the road less travelled
With weariness and wrong
Help is at hand
Even when we do not know
It’s inside ourselves
At the deepest level oh
Listening in the darkness
Allow the suffering
Hear the pain
And the songs will rise again
Pray for a miracle
Doesn’t happen anymore
Open up my heart
Unlock that door
My heart has the answers
Pathway to my brain
Deep within
It’s rising again
Then, memory of my maker
Now, connection with One
Does it really matter
Will it be who won
Ending Separateness
Gentleness and light
Living differently
In the darkness and the night
Living differently
In the sadness of the day
Finding the sunshine
And an energizing way
Live with less
And have a life that’s full
Of laughter and love
And living new
Listen to myself
Let the tears fall
Holding them in
Creates the wall
Doing less at work
Create what I need
Care of what I have
More than I need
Let others feel their pain
Don’t take it on
Listen with compassion
And when they’re gone, it’s gone.
The pain in my shoulder
Of what has gone before
Is a reminder
To shed what is no more
Don’t take care of others
They all have a home
A place of sweet communion
And lots of room to roam
They create as I do
They will softly say
I can listen
I can be the way.
After that song, my mind was going again. The way, the truth, the life. Decisions – make them with your heart; your mind or your gut? Part of the song was regarding my job? My heart said stay. My mind said go. My gut said maybe half and half. I talked to human resources about job sharing.
I looked again at the last four lines of the last poem or song that says: “Don’t take care of others, they all have a home; a place of sweet communion and lots of room to roam. They create as I do, they will softly say, I can listen. I can be the way.”
People in my past always referred to Jesus, the Bible or Christianity as THE WAY. This new way of saying it goes with my contention that we are all Jesus; Jesus still part of us as is Muhammed; all living things; past; present; future as NO TIME.
CONNECTIONS OR KNOWINGS
Then I wrote the following in my journal:
“I am writing all this (the song) in a homemade journal, given to me by my cousin and created by Jan Wood; and the next page of the journal is a quote of Jan’s saying “….. not by water, not by wind, notes escaped, became airborne without wings …..not floating, not flying but soaring aloft freed by the singer”
I write “and this is the connection I speak of; this journal; the writer above; I do not know but on some level our souls know. I need sleep now and tomorrow I will sort some more.”
The next day I wonder what the hell is going on. I write: “Forty days and forty nights comes into my head. I hope not. The pain is here again; hoping to transcend; lift me up; the moment I cry and use this pen; pain in my throat has eased. The last poem eased the lightning bolts of pain in my head and the lump in my neck and jaw.”
I debated at the time about burning my eighty journals; decided not to but did put them away. By then, I was using a gratitude journal my son gave and wrote grateful I’m content in most of my life but still have this deep, primordial longing. At that time, I imagined it was for connection.
Years before a counselor suggested I think of myself as an apple and figure out what pieces were missing. When I thought of myself as an apple, I did not think of pieces missing. This was 1999 and at that time I felt some pieces were rotten and falling off, but the core was so beautiful. I told her I had lots to release. I thought it significant that the apples in my fridge at that time were rotting on the outside. That had never happened before. Was it a coincidence or wondered if all is connected and the world around reflects what is going on in our inner one.
Is this what I’m always doing; trying to find connections; how everything is connected; trying to make sense of my world?
The time when Mom was dying in 2000, it was so hard to be at work knowing she was near the end but that it had been off and on near her end for six to nine months. I was expecting a call anytime and had fear about taking time off. I was at my desk at eleven am. I picked up the phone and dialed my brother’s cell number. He was in the room with Mom and I called as she died. He said, “She just died. I think she did. Just a minute,” And I said, “I know and it’s okay.” I had felt it. I knew it as it happened and it was okay.
Rarely did I see people I worked with on a daily basis with their auras around them but about that time, I did see a woman’s body who had come in from outside the corporation be surrounded in blue light as she facilitated the class I was taking.
When I went to mom’s prayers the night before the funeral, the lay presider (in the Catholic church when no priest is available, a lay presider from the congregation leads the service; keeping in mind it would be a service of prayer but not an actual Mass) was surrounded by white light as he talked.
A knowing came to me the light meant the person was living their gift. I decided to share my experience when I saw auras or strange to me experiences. I usually shared with the person the light was around; telling them what colour it was and any words that came for me as to what it might be about; saying just like when people shared their dreams with me, what it meant for me. People were always very accepting it was happening for me and appreciated that I told them.
It was similar to my sharing my ideas, thoughts or knowing as people shared their dreams with me as there were times others said I had helped them understand their life through their nightly dreaming.
I was in despair where I wrote a poem I won’t repeat as it is in the last chapters of the book I wrote before this one called Beyond Understanding. It had the words gangrenous oil as a way to describe the darkness inside; hellishness so deep it went on to say. I was in fear that I wouldn’t get through and the line, “Will I ever know how close to madness someone can go?” At the same time, I was over six months into the relationship with my hubby to be and in retrospect, was in love and loving the more intimate the relationship was becoming. I wrote the following:
Yes I can reach out
And touch someone
And not be hurt
Sleeping sound
I give to you
Someone who has seen lots of life
Taste and see
The goodness of life
Love
Lived well.
SORTING
As I sit here in 2020 writing this, I wonder if the deep dark hellishness despair that came out in that poem was all my own despair; or was it the woman’s despair who was living with me at the time. I didn’t know it then how much despair she was experiencing but within six months of coming to live at my home, she attempted suicide one day in the house. I always saw what I was experiencing in my own body as all my own stuff. Then I wasn’t so sure. Today I still wonder if I’m attempting to deny my darknesses or is it others pain? Sometimes I know my body mirrors what others are going through to do with illnesses or emotional angst.
THOUGHTS
In April of 2006, I meet the brothers of the man in my life for the first time. I am walking by myself down a rural gravel road thinking it’s a year and a half after their mom died and have the thought “There’s a soul still attached to earth,” and I want to say, “Your boys are doing fine and all is well.” It was the first time I had thoughts about someone who had died and their soul or energy still attached to earth but it is something to consider.
At that time, I was coming together inside and wrote a song “I’m One of Many” with last lines being:
The love I have to give is enough
I don’t have to do anything heroic
I will always do the next best thing
And that will care for the one and the many.
The next song coming out of me I called Reaching Out. It had the word tentatively quite prominent. The last line I like as it says “Loving, let it begin.” It is worth repeating. I think I’m repeating from Book III; the book I called Beyond Understanding. This whole writing experience must be me still seeking understanding. Wanting someone to be there for me.
The song Reaching Out’s first verse was me reaching out to myself; wanting to be heard; then it was reaching out to this new man in my life; wanting a sweetheart; and the third verse was me wanting to share with the world who I am in this moment. My heart was opening.
REACHING OUT
And you know how much I really love you
Even though I see the pain in your eyes
I’ll give what life offers to you
I need acceptance and no more lies
Reaching out, reaching out tentatively
Reaching out, reaching out tentatively
Sweetheart is what I’m really asking
Gently moving to another plane
Hearing from each other much more often
Loving let it begin
Reaching out, reaching out tentatively
Reaching out, reaching out tentatively
Have to live my life sharing what I’m thinking
There can’t be no more holding it in
I’ve practically grown as a woman
My heart opened; my eyes no longer dim.
Reaching out, reaching out tentatively
Reaching out, reaching out tentatively.
We are so much as a person and I don’t think we can ever describe all the wonder of who we are. I was obviously trying as I wrote using words that may not even be words: Thinker, Feeler, Goddess, Spiritess in human form, think, act, feel, Peace, Spiritess, Opening My Heart, Loving, Living, Compassion, Developing, Creating, Nurturing, Lighting, Bridging, Connecting, Essencing, Spiralling, Beloveing, Being
ENERGY
In 2020, I had a phone call in which a forty-year old male described the soul retrieval appointment he had with a practitioner who used a drum and rattles, chanting and speaking. He was happy that he no longer has the headaches he had for weeks before he went. I also had a face to face phone face book messenger conversation with a forty-year- old woman who I know well who has green eyes and as she spoke, I asked why her eyes were blue. She said they have been for about two months; she is not sure why and continued talking about ending a relationship; setting boundaries; having more respect for self; connecting with her deceased father through the beginnings of a new relationship amid psychic or medium readings speaking about life partner. This is the same day a seventy year old man I know as acquaintance explains his energy rising experience where energy rose from his lower limbs during a tai chi exercise session. He explained it as similar to when you are in a sports facility and you can feel the energy like electricity. His belief is the soul is free to expand outside the body.
It’s also the same day a woman I meet on the street where I am living shares that she is no longer golfing as one day in August and said can name the day; woke up and could not use her hands; they were painful, swollen at the joints and was after many tests, diagnosed and medically treated with so many drugs for rheumatoid arthritis that she developed type 2 diabetes. She can swim but can not hold a golf club. She went on to say no doctor had explanation how or why that could happen in one night. She needed her husband to dress her. She was wondering if it was to happen to her to teach her compassion for other’s struggles.
I do know about fifteen years previous, I asked my daughter to take a picture as my eyes were changing colour in a way people could see it and they would comment on it. In December of 2019 I stood at a friend’s place when she said my eyes changed colour as we stood there by her outside door saying good-bye with our husbands right beside us. She was in amazement. I attempted to sort what I had been thinking or talking about and could not.
In the early nineties, I went as witness for a woman to an energy practitioner who used a drum and rattles to complete a soul retrieval. I felt honored when asked and shared what I witnessed as she had requested. I didn’t seem to see anything or hear anything happen but the woman maintained it made a difference in her everyday life following the experience.
The day in 2020 following all these people sharing experiences; I am wondering if these are experiences being shared everywhere or do very few in our world have these or talk openly about them,
These song lines come for me in January that year:
Provide for all to see
As I live my life
Inside and outside of me.”
I write that here but feel like if I talk to others about it, they will say; “I don’t have experiences like that and they can not relate.” I went to an ecumenical service about that time and when a woman asked why I am not in the choir sitting on the stage this year; I let her know I am having trouble just being in church. She shared she loves being at church with all the people that believe as she does. I question whether everyone sitting there believes as she does. We are in an ecumenical service and the pastor is calling for amens from the crowd; and letting us know which side of the aisle had the most amens as he shared his beliefs. I was not saying amen. I was not sharing his beliefs. I am there for the connection with other people.
IN THE FLOW
In October 2007 my hubby to be who I met in 2005 decided to travel from Saskatchewan to the Maritimes together. We wanted travelling together before making a commitment to make sure we were compatible. My father had died in September and while I was gone, was at peace about it but when back home; on one hand as if Dad’s dying was back front and centre. But really not; as we decided to live together.
I walk around during the day feeling such incredible love; wondering if my kids had ever felt such incredible love. So even though was conscious of Dad’s death, love was there.
On our trip, the day after we stopped at a meditation retreat centre where my friend lived; I had what I call an in the flow experience or sometimes call it a green light experience. It was a feeling; not seeing green light; but a feeling like I’m on the right track. I’d say it was the heart chakra open. Now returned home, as if seeing love energy around things in my house. That was seeing green light around those things. I was having thoughts like: “our deep selves are timeless; so are all those who went before, including family, Jesus or Buddha. As if all that is going on now is happening at the right time.”
SCARRING
In 2008, I stayed home from work a half day following a plethora of poems, songs and prose detailing inner emotional pain. Poems like this:
Listening as love speaks
Exorcizing fear
Trembling inside
What if
Nothing bad will happen
Why am I scared
Repeats over and over in my head
Wanting more
Peace eludes
Heartaches
Head full of tears
During this half day went to the Sexual Assault Center. There I had an experience of scarring or wounding; three circles of red scarring on my left arm; came and went. The woman I was talking to saw it as I talked to her about it and my poems. She saw them as “profound, channelling the divine; asking if I have claimed the authority of the divine within.” At that time, I didn’t even understand what she was talking about. I wrote in my journal: “Hate when I don’t understand something; feel inept.” I hoped I was healing.
Later that year I was singing the song, “We must find love, we must find love, we must find love, Love be the Way….”
I previously shared my excitement of being in northern Saskatchewan’s national park; seeing my hubby’s aura for the first time while I was having beer and cheezies on a deck. It speaks to me of my love of nature but more than the 2008 song I wrote; tells me I was more accepting of myself seeing things others don’t.
Poems came:
Attempting oneness
Healing the hurt
Allowing the pain
Living side by side
Together again
Masculine and feminine
Tried so hard
To do what’s right
Always on guard
Can relax now
Let go of the hold
Step out silently
Be ever so bold
Listening in the shadows
At the break of day
Softly silently
Prayers we say
Put out the fires
Fasting long gone
Listening inside
Is how we’ve won
The battle is over
Now just tossed
In a sea of emotion
Triumph lost
Love is the way
Living listening
Allowing my say
June 23, 2008
And the same day:
Living on love
Biding my time
Getting to know
What’s me and mine
Giving my love
Gaining my trust
Trying to find
A deeper connection
To the divine
In me it’s said
If truth be told
Is love so deep
We can be bold
Allow the love
To come pouring thru
It’s one up against
Me and you
Division awaits
Finding the key
The distress inside
Is all about me
Healing the past
The pain within
Saying good-bye
Again and again
Disturbed, distorted
Challenging the deep
Fighting the demons
Instead of sleep
There are no demons
Only beliefs
Struggling to surface
And get relief
Letting them go
They’ve served their purpose
Feels like something dreadful inside
Learning to Trust Again.
June 23, 2008
And nearly a year later this with music playing inside my head:
I want to live
In love with you again
A love that is so real
Open up my heart again
That is how I feel
Deep in my heart
Deep down inside
As if I have not tried
I have given lots to you
To keep you satisfied
Keep the thinking real
That is how I feel
No more hurt it’s done
I have found my son.
May 30, 2009
The, “We must find love”, song I wrote, had a new verse added, “I have found love, I have found love, I have found love, Love Be the Way.”
A few years later, I was writing short songs that do speak to what was going on for me. One is the following:
“I will never be the same
I’m always in constant change”,
Giving and receiving love again
I will never be the same.”
Another song was written when the writing club wanted a story using the word sow and I did not want to write the bible mustard seed story and the following appeared in the middle of the night:
“May I so love
In my everyday
In all that I do
in all that I say.”
I started sharing those songs in song circles with women gathered on my patio. Another song I wrote:
“I am that I am that I am that I am. I am that I am that I am.”
I found it funny that it had seven I am’s in the song as someone said there are seven I am’s in the bible. It was to the tune of the first two lines from the “My Grandfather’s Clock”; an old song from my grandparent’s era. The first line, “My grandfather’s clock was too large for the shelf so it stood ninety years on the floor” fit for my seven “I am that I am” song.
I had left the Catholic church in the nineties; tried a few Christian churches like the Anglican, the United and nothing fit. Then when we began having full winters down south in about 2014, I tried going to the ecumenical service held where we lived. I usually had to walk out during or after the sermon as I could not stand the words in the Christian hymns or I took exception with the male pastor’s sermon and the pastors were always male.
It was rare that I could be in a church and not be offended by the male language of God and/ or hearing the word Lord and not thinking about Lord and Manor; someone lording over someone else and guess still struggling with the male domination that had been in my life and reflected in life on tv, the new, society. Soon after the song happened, I remember a pastor based his sermon on the seven “I Am’s” in the bible. Universe reflects what’s going on for me or what?
In 2017, in the writing club; the word SOW was to be used in a story to share. I share a reflection of my spirituality of the time:
‘What you sow, you shall reap.’ I think that’s a bible saying. I don’t like it. I don’t like much that’s the bible. I do think it’s an inspired book; but It’s like I have boycotted the bible. I got rid of every one I had in my house.
Same with the crucifixes. I even put them in a garage sale. It was facing the facts of what happened to me in a church where Jesus was hanging on a crucifix all covered in purple cloth cause it was Lent when a priest abused me in the church.
My mom always had sayings like ‘don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater’ which I think I did here; giving up the bible the same as I did a crucifix. Or giving up on Jesus the same as I did a crucifix.
My dad said to me, “Don’t let one bad apple spoil the rest.”
I’d say there were too many bad apples. Before I remembered being abused, I grew up and got married, was half way through raising my kids and had worked out in the world for at least fifteen years. I worked with disadvantaged, the margins of society and started educating myself about societal issues. I took justice classes, classes on poverty, gender studies and aboriginal issues around the world such as colonialism. I believe it was the women’s studies that rocked my world.
I had spent much of my teen years, early marriage and up till I took university classes in my thirties studying religion and spirituality on a personal basis. The patriarchy I saw in my world, my church, my jobs, my life and my wanting change for people less fortunate than myself prompted education.
I still have trouble with the he, he, he, male language that I hear in church since I’ve been back in that environment for six to eight weeks. Reflecting on what I am singing and what I am hearing has been challenging.
Back to what we sow, we will reap. I am in constant review of what I am putting out into the world as I believe we create our world. We are doing it in a co-creating way with everyone around us as well as the ALL THAT IS which includes all that ever was, is and will be.
Why am I bringing this up; the bible, the church, my mom and dad; my past? Because it is back in my present and allowing me the opportunity to heal and leave behind what I no longer need. I live every moment is my church. May I so love.
MAY I SOW LOVE
IN MY EVERYDAY
IN ALL THAT I DO
IN ALL THAT I SAY.
Repeat”
That same year, I wrote a piece about yoga which speaks to the then and now of my spirituality. I copy it here:
Meditating on My Half Moon Yoga Pose
I was introduced to yoga when I left home. I was in a mountain chalet in Collingwood, Ontario, taking part in a culture exchange program. Another participant was practising twenty minutes of yoga followed by twenty minutes of meditation first thing in the morning and offered to show me the yoga poses. Within a few weeks I was comfortable with the yoga; loved how it stretched out the long muscles of my body and found it relaxing and restorative. I’d finish and felt prepared for the day. I was totally comfortable with twenty minutes of prayer while she was doing her meditation but wanted to learn more. I did, taking training in transcendental meditation and continued that and the yoga as a practice for the next four years.
When I was in a marriage preparation session to have my future husband’s first marriage annulled in order to marry in the Catholic church, I answered the priest’s query about my prayer life explaining my meditation and yoga practice as part of it. When I heard his exhortation on how that was the work of the devil, I let it go like a hot potato. It was several years later at a church rummage sale, I picked up a used copy of HATHA YOGA, and out on the farm, that book felt like a life saver. I was back into practice and learned at least three versions so I could have different poses for the different days I practiced. It not only toned my body but was calming for my mind. It spoke about meditation as a natural ending to any practice and I combined it with my prayer life.
I would often fall off the wagon so to speak, as in quit doing yoga when motherhood and work life was a bit much. Something would remind me to do it again and I found it always took me back to the centre of me and allowed me to be in touch with the emotional and spiritual inside of me.
When a life crisis hit and I was in a women’s program, the leader, who became a life long friend gave me cassette tapes of a woman leading a yoga program to background music of the Beatles. I can still hear, “Some women put on a five-minute facial while they are upside down in the shoulder stand to the background music of “Hey Jude, don’t be so sad, you were made to go out and get her,” ringing in my ears.
When I was in the divorced, children leaving home, phase of my life, I was walking downtown Saskatoon and saw a picture of a woman in the half moon pose. Now I have a picture of me in action in the half moon pose that I am choosing to share with you. That Saskatchewan yoga instructor was offering Wednesday noon hour yoga classes. Those cemented my knowing that yoga brings down the stress levels as the rest of the work week would be better than the beginning.
Yoga, then and now, grounds me; brings me back to myself; as well as toning the physical part of me; giving me flexibility. The meditation at the end of the session on the yoga mat on my living room floor, is like having a couple of hours sleep. Still, In the morning when I begin my practice and it begins with the deep, deep breathing, it’s like I have found home as near every yoga practice will talk about breathing. I love the names of the poses. Who wouldn’t like to be referred to as a standing mountain or a hero?
Two friends of mine asked me to join a different yoga class. What I remember about that one, is the weekly time where the tears would flow freely as I learned where in my body; I stored old memories that needed healing and release. I’m glad the teacher and the people in that class gave me that safe experience.
My son gave me the bestest gift ever about seven or eight years ago; three dvds from a company called the white lotus foundation. It’s three different yoga programs; each about an hour long; forty-five minutes of yoga poses with a fifteen-minute meditation ending. It tones my body, is rejuvenating and allows me the energy to do every other thing in my life, and these days, mostly with joy!
Yoga helps me connect with what some people might call God or what I’d call All That Is. It reminds me of a song I wrote, with words: “I trust in the universal light; it connects me with my body, mind and soul …” That is what my yoga, meditation and the half moon pose do; sometimes connects me with that universal oneness.”
The next year I still saw Church as a challenge of whether to be part of it or not and wrote this for my writing group:
My Predicament
Church was my rock. Being caught between a rock and a hard place was when it no longer matched my belief system. My creed includes Christ and the Bible as part of an ever-expanding consciousness; not exactly as it says in the Viewpoint Fellowship Church Literature. When the songs I sing in choir, the beliefs expressed in the preaching, the music or the literature differ or are limiting; I am in a predicament of whether to be attending.
A song I wrote September 11, 2000 still speaks to me. I’d like to share it with you.
I know a love larger than a father
I know a love larger than a mother
I know a love larger than a mountain
I know a love larger than a God
Love that is boundless
Love that is free
Love with no expectations
Love that’s inside of me
Love flowing out to another
Love listening as we
Sort out our futures
And live the life we see
Love that’s full of anger
Anger allowed to speak
Lifts us in its power
Allows others to see
I know a love broader than a sister
I know a love larger than the sea
This love that spans the horizons
And keeps filling me.
In a meditation in early December of the year 2000; as if a voice said, “Live deeply from my heart, remembering who I am”. Felt big.
I question if there are guides. In 1999, a meeting was set with my lawyer and the night before the meeting, I saw a vision before I went to sleep. I saw a face; very little of it; but could see the eye of an old man; as if the eye was twinkling but not. It felt important; felt like awake dreaming. I asked myself what it meant and at that moment; was like a knowing I had a guide and it was not of this world or reality; and it was not like a God or Jesus; and that I don’t need to call it a spirit guide or an energy guide; knew it as a guide. I was surprised that it was a he but that felt okay. Felt neat knowing something was out there. When I told someone about it; it didn’t seem as big as when it had happened. After seeing it; the eye was so big; the twinkling expression; I then knew where the expressions come from; “drown in his eyes,” “twinkling Santa Claus eyes” or “eyes are the window of the soul.”
Near twenty years later; late fall of 2018; in the writing club I was to write the following about the word twinkling and my thoughts didn’t change much. “Twinkling: I wrote a story about a man coming to me in a meditation. He had the most intense twinkling blue eyes. It made me think of Santa Claus. Just the eyes. He didn’t look like Santa Claus but his face I can not forget. He looked old and wise.
I thought of him as a guide. I wasn’t looking for one and he never said a word. I felt like he came just for me or because of me. I was okay with that.
I often have things happen that I see that other people don’t. Sometimes I call them spiritual experiences. Other times paranormal.
I began writing them down a few years ago. This summer I began putting them into book format. I think I have thirty-seven pages and was excited I had a project for the winter.
The first week in Mesa the start button went on my computer. The second week my husband had a heart attack. We’re on the fourth week. We picked out a computer. The tech support was able to transfer my files from the hard drive to my new computer. Now my eyes are twinkling.”
I’ve been adding all these stories I wrote later in my life; but haven’t told you the one when I was thirteen and getting the sacrament of confirmation in the Catholic church. I was dressed in white dress, white hat, gloves and knee-high white socks with white shoes. I was at the front communion rail awaiting the bishop as he came down the line of those waiting to be confirmed. I’d been told he would touch my head as he made the sign of the cross on my forehead. My sixteen-year-old cousin who I had chosen to be my sponsor was standing directly behind me with her hand on my shoulder as I knelt at that rail. When his hand touched my head; I felt a WHOOSH of something; now maybe I’d call it energy; but then had no idea what it was; but felt something enter my body and left me with a sense of wonderment as if something big had happened to me. I’ve never forgotten the experience or feeling of that WHOOSH coming in to me. For much of my life, I had the belief that the Holy Spirit had entered my body and would always be with me.
I lost that feeling somewhere along the way.
I learned to listen to my body. Sometimes I would have physical changes to my body that I could not explain. I called it shape shifting before I ever read that term in a book. Sometimes weight would drop off and I would be little; in that clothes would not fit me; maybe go down two sizes.
On the Fall 2014 road trip, I was wearing a pants I hadn’t worn for two weeks. When I wore them previous, they were a little on the tight side; rolls around my waist area. This day after being at my brother’s home the night before, the brother who just received a terminal cancer diagnosis; I am totally skinny and like the pants want to fall off. I ask my hubby, “what is this about?”
I know held in grief equals sickness. The more I learned to cry; to let out my tears the less times I was sick. I used to regularly have bronchitis, colds; hospitalized for pneumonia. Experience showed me when I was able to cry, wail or keen, the lung conditions would be gone. Accepting and surrendering to what was held inside and allowing it out worked. Sometimes I could get to emotion when watching a tv show, or reading a book. One time I heard anew a line of Carolyn McDade’s music: “Know this time and this place, Know this place as home. Hear one’s name spoken lightly in the call of things.” It brought on the wailing. I was experiencing a head and chest cold for weeks. After the wailing, the chest cold was gone.
What works one time does not another. One Father’s Day I was so angry; was living it as body pain in left shoulder. I drove to a woman’s acreage in the country. She told me to stop in anytime. She wasn’t home. I parked the car in the yard and walked over to her horses. The one horse reached its head over the fence and kept sniffing at my left hand and as it did, pain left my left shoulder. The horse left me; moved away and rubbed and rubbed what would be like its left shoulder on a fence post. Felt like a wonderful connection and I no longer had any pain.
It is amazing what our body goes through. I think back to the examination of discovery and what that day was like. The whole process was sickening. My lawyer described the church’s lawyer as a hired gun to get ammunition. I was told I shouldn’t try to explain anything as he wouldn’t understand and would use what he could against me. For weeks after; I’d try to sleep and my guts would just be rolling. Sickening shit. My sheets would smell and my nightgown would smell like churchy incense. Where the hell was it coming from?
In 2002, I hosted a five-sister weekend. They left on the Sunday, I was immediately in my car and out in the country in minutes. High pitched crying poured out of me. As if I was releasing lots of stuff and didn’t feel like it was all mine. Heat kept pouring out of my left hand.
In the winter of 2006, I went for a massage. The woman said heat was pouring off my upper left quadrant. When finished, I had two lines on my face that did not come from the sheet. She or I could not explain them. They would be there and then gone. It reminded me of a tiger face. Four days later, my youngest sister is at my house and the two lines are back on my face. Reminded me of a tiger. Maybe spirit of a tiger. Thought at the time. I have to protect myself.
At a song writing retreat in the spring of 2019; I was part of a yoga class, when at the end; the young facilitator comes up saying I must be in touch with my inner jaguar, as she heard a guttural growl erupting as I completed my poses. I was unaware of it but smiled when later that week second hand shopping, found a two-dollar dress with two jaguars on the front. I was at a tennis match later that week when a person not knowing any of this makes the comment that my inner jaguar is on fire.
I had several experiences in the early two thousand’s when I’d see bruises on people’s bodies; including my grandson; and then look again and they were not there. If I spoke of them to other people who were in the room, they did not see them. Jan 20, 2017 I wrote in my journal: “For weeks as if living the terror experience and then was out of the terror feeling experience while had music here on southern winter home’s patio. I felt like myself; and in the evening as we watch the Australian Tennis Open, I am looking at the TV and seeing a Canadian tennis star with bruises all over her chest as she is playing. As soon as I say to my hubby what I’m seeing; then realize I can not see them. ????????????????? They were like deep bruises; sores around the top of the woman’s chest area; about dime to quarter size diameter; deep reddish blue; and looked very sore.” My hubby did not see them.
I often experienced in my body what others were experiencing in theirs. It was not a smart career choice for me to work with people who had bodily injuries from car accidents. I read and asked professionals for help in protecting my body from other’s energies. I did not learn how. I could not find satisfactory answers in my searching.
Even after retirement in 2014; living south in our winter home, I spent an hour with my sister’s friends that were to be living there for a month. She had an extreme cold sore. By next morning I had a cold sore. I hadn’t had one in years; and no idea why as it related to myself. It was as if I knew it was to do with her and then she came down with a bad cold; and each time I’d be around her; I’d have her type of symptoms. I would have them when I was with her. I would not have them when I was not with her.
Within a week of those things happening, I was with my hubby’s friend who although he found out he did not have colon cancer; he explained he did have a tumour at base of colon which needed removal. He gave me a hug as I left and within thirty minutes, I had issues at my butt end. Uncomfortable; then itchy; and shortly after, had a lump there. I had it overnight and then gone after I went for a long walk. It was so similar to past experiences when for no reason I seem to have picked up someone elses stuff and find ways to release it in any way I can.
I wrote in my journal the following: “that I am not impressed; like I am angry and don’t know if it’s at myself for not having learned to protect myself; or is it someone else’s anger?”
In the early two thousand’s, I was new at my workplace. Right from the very beginning, I always went for walks at every break and every lunch hour and attempted to get close to nature as possible. I strode out of work one morning; was less than a block away and as I was striding down the sidewalk heading for the river, out of a building walked a man straight out to the sidewalk and turned towards me; his arms swinging, and muttering coming out of his mouth. As he was striding towards me; I felt energy come in to me; felt it come into my stomach area as we passed each other; like a sock it to me feeling just above my abdomen; in my solar plexus area. I later called it anger energy as that’s what it felt like. It was a weird experience.
At the same time, being quite new at my work place, I learned of a program where you could have sessions with a counsellor if debriefing was required. I made arrangements to see a PhD psychologist. When I shared the above experience, he said I needed immediate psychiatric help. Besides this sharing; during the session I also spoke of sometime seeing auras. When that was his immediate response; I was angry; telling him just because he did not believe in auras or energy transference, didn’t mean it didn’t happen. I did not go back to see him again. I did not go to a psychiatrist. I was glad I had not shared I saw Mother Teresa.
Instead, I rented a piano and found new ways to release energy that was healing for me. Then; I actually bought a piano; and when it was to be delivered; they phoned me at work to say the piano was too big; so I had to trade it in at a lower price than I bought it and rent the piano I had been using.
This reminds me of another experience I had in an apartment I lived.
About ten years previous I lived in a rented apartment with my two teenagers; one Sunday morning lying on my couch; I am meditating and all of a sudden it is as if I am this woman standing in this doorway. As I glance around behind me, I see the floorboards are covering the dirt floor of a log cabin. I have a tea towel in my hand and I am looking east over gently rolling prairie land; filled with despair. I know I have lots of kids and as I lay there; the scene changes; I am still the same woman; but I am lying in bed and people are around me are praying the rosary. Someone is sitting on a chair. Someone is leaning against the wall. I know I am dying. At that, I am into wailing as I lay on my couch in my apartment. I sit up and know it’s like I have re-enacted or seen or lived a time frame out of my mom or my grandmother’s life or both.
It was like I knew what prairie land I was seeing. It was prairie about two miles from where I grew up so that minute; I grabbed my purse, was in the car and drove one hundred miles east to the place and walked through the fields to where that would have been. I walked out into these hills where my grandparents had homesteaded and when I looked east, I was seeing the same prairie landscape I had just seen in the vision. I believe the vision I lived through that morning was a scene that actually happened in the 1930’s; my grandmother in a log cabin with lots of children. She did die at home with people in the room with her from pneumonia I believe and I had heard that story from my mother and my aunt. I did not ever hear about anyone leaning against a wall or someone sitting in a chair. My mom was five when her mother died and my aunt was nineteen. For some reason I was accessing the experience and feeling the feelings of the day. Was it feelings in my body or wondered if this a past generational experience still in my body?
Another memory I have of that time; in the same apartment; is my daughter sharing she was having some thoughts in her head with visions that did not make sense to her. She vividly described them; drew the room with a bed and dresser. Hearing what she said and seeing the drawing, I recognized the dresser and knew it was a room I lived in five years prior to her even being born. How was she having my memories? Did they pass to her as I carried her in my womb or could it be thought transference?
This was the same apartment where I had the “seeing the twinkling eye guide that reminded me of Santa Claus” experience. I also went through a morning there when I had to take a day off work as was going to be in court. I was up early, preparing in my head and decided to go for a six am walk to a Robin’s Donut’s to get a coffee. I was walking down one side of the street having thoughts about being back in the church where I was abused and knowing it was Easter time as Jesus was covered up in a purple cloth. In my mind, as I often did, I would question ‘where were you Jesus when the abuse was happening?’ That morning, as I was walking north down the street, a man on the opposite side of the street was coming south towards me and says the following words loudly in an impassioned plea, “WHERE WERE YOU?” It was kind of unbelievable or maybe it was just a weird coincidence.
I was employed fifteen years at the government insurance agency. I did not often see auras at work. I saw the first one when I was in the cafeteria downstairs; seeing white light around a young woman with no children; the aura was a bluish light and reminded me of the Virgin Mary. Probably in the last five years I was there I would see the aura of facilitators who came to lead workshops from outside the corporation. As I’d be sitting there relaxing in class, I’d usually see a glowing white light around them.
It was a similar white light I’d see outside at my breaks or lunch hour; usually when I was alone and not walking with a group of co-workers, I’d see that light outlining trees; usually evergreens.
On a different note; not so much to do with light; but seeing something and not knowing what; in 1999, I was getting ready to go on a holiday. My friend was moving to Prince George, B.C. I was going with her in the car and flying back. The night before I left for B.C., I had what I now call a vision. From my journal: “It is of a room with a high open window; a green curtain blowing; woman with petticoat and long dress, standing by a wooden chair; as if has a maid type of hat on and as if that woman was in the same room with ____.” It was the guy I had stopped seeing and was back to phoning at that time. It was like a past life experience; a vision. It was from a different era and had me wondering if there is reincarnation or past lives.
On the trip, my friend stopped by a lake; I stepped out of the car and as I stood there; it was as if I was a part of it; one with the lake; the blue green waters and everything around it; I was part of all that was. It was if I had stepped into a scenery book. Become one with it. Over twenty years later, has me crying now thinking of it. The trip was so beautiful, but where ever we stopped; every time I looked in a mirror; could see the long-ago Ellen still haunting me; as if not of this lifetime; left sided body pain; with a deep grief I had not connected with to that point.
When I returned home, I was back standing in my kitchen thinking of that woman I had seen in that vision; with the maid type hat on; remembered more and noted in my journal: “Green curtain blowing. Open high window; about ten-foot room; she’s standing by a wooden chair facing a bed; has on button up high heel boot style shoes; has just taken off petticoat; standing tall and dignified; being asked to do something by man in bed. Woman has blondish brown long hair; would be put up soon in a maid’s cap or a bed cap; brown paisley dress long is what she has just taken off.” Unsure what it was all about or how it connected to the guy I had been seeing but looked just like him.
I started occasionally seeing him again. He was someone I occasionally spent time with years before when I saw the energy lines of light that went from the tree to me. I appreciated that I could talk to him about those types of experiences. Soon after the vision type of experiences, with the woman by a bed with button type boots on; one evening he was leaving my place and at the same time was suggesting I needed to change my thinking on some thing and as he was talking; I could see his whole head in white light but it was like a square box of light.
I stared at him as he said good-bye with a knowing he had an essence I admired but his thinking was inside the box and not outside it; and did not fit for me. I ended the relationship soon after.
Around 2005, I noted in my journals I was connecting to something bigger than me. I was having a day at home right after a tough day at work where I knew I needed help with my work experiences. I had gone downstairs and come back and I wrote in my journal at that time, “I am in touch with something bigger than myself though; went downstairs and the first journal I touch from Aug 99 I open and I’m in awe of what I find in there.”
I found the Debriefing document I had made up years before. It was exactly what was needed and would be beneficial in solving the work issue:
-
- What was gained? Achieved?
- What is unfinished?
- What regrets do I have?
- What surprised me?
- How is this similar to other times? Previous times?
- What is next? Plan?
- Is further closure required? How?”
That document was something I had made up years before and being able to find it just at the right moment that it was needed at that time gave me assurance of something bigger than myself.
Maybe now I would call it an in the flow experience similar to this one. I was changing things around in my house one day in 2006. I only had one box. It felt so in the flow when thirty- two of my journals; labelled Journals forty-four to seventy-six fit perfectly in the one box I had available. Those journals were the exact number that made up my second book, “As Long As I Understand,” That they would fit in the only box I had in my house on my rearranging my house day; had me feeling in the flow.
Speaking of journals reminds me of another story. Nearer to the time frame I am writing this book; about two or three years previous I went to a reiki practitioner as I was struggling. I hate to spend money and was retired already so did not have benefits to get a treatment and reiki probably wasn’t covered anyway. I had never been to this person for a treatment before. I had phoned my niece three hours away who recommended her. I had benefited from a reiki experience of healing from my niece a few years previous to that, as she offered her learning without taking payment as I was struggling emotionally; and having body pain to do with whatever was going on. As she moved her hands above my body, I felt the energy stuck to me leaving. Her only comments were that it was like waves of yuck coming off me and returning to an ocean. Because of that experience I phoned her asking if she could refer someone and she did.
I went and when I left this practitioner’s place which was a half hour from Saskatoon, I parked in a field and wrote out every word I remember the woman telling me and even drew an outline of my body and words were associated with parts of body pain that had left during the experience of reiki or whatever the woman did but it was energy healing. About two or three years later, when I was in that same type of body experience, I walked up to my upper room where my journals were stored and picked a journal about four or five journals back and opened it to the exact page. I shock myself with the in the flow type experiences that happen.
Another unrelated experience comes to mind I will explain now. I had a passport when I was eighteen; it lapsed and I did not get another one until I was about forty-five. My first trip was to visit my writing friend in England. She took me to a concert where I heard a mezzo soprano for the first time. The second week following my return in that same year of 2000, I went to my regular singing group. One song I was singing came out with my voice being just like the mezzo soprano’s voice I’d heard at the concert there. The shocked women with me questioned, “where did that come from?” No idea.
Now I believe when I have woundings inside of me that aren’t healed; there may be a hole in my own aura and others like energy is attracted to that and gets stuck on mine as I haven’t learned to protect myself and some of the yuck energy is not mine.
Being able to share my experiences was key for me in subsequent relationships. The night in 2007 before I went on the first overnight with my hubby to be, I have a dream. Ten minutes before he brings me home, I am chattering away, sharing my dream. I tell him; how in my dream, he comes to see me in a hummer. He says, “I could.” He had one and I didn’t know it. It made me wonder what else I didn’t know about, but gave me more validation about listening to my dream experiences. For me it was another weird experience. We have had more than a few as we moved forward sharing our life together.
I loved that I could share what I’ve shared here with him as we deepened our relationship. He read my books and encouraged me to put them out in the world. We were living together for awhile when we were on a road trip and I realized I had dreamed the experience we were having before I met him.
A dream I always remembered was of great music by B.B. Cole. It’s noted in my November 2002 journal: “as if driving in States hearing B.B. Cole”. I wrote that in my journal in 2002; and later in life sometime between 2010 and 2016, my dream mimicked a time when my hubby and I were driving in the States. We stopped in a town; went for a meal at a jazz restaurant and heard the same B.B. Cole music from my dream. This time it was even better as the restaurant had all the pictures all over the walls of his time. For me it was so beautiful to have someone to share and validation that our dreams are sharing information. There is no such thing as time.
In 2009, we’d been living together two years when I dreamed a woman was trying to get into bed with my hubby and I. It was so vivid when I woke, I had to leave the bed. I heard him waking up and he asked if his kicking woke me up. I said, “No, my dreams woke me.” He said same for him; he felt like yelling but couldn’t get it out. In his dream a woman was trying to get into bed with us! SORT THAT I wrote in my journal.
Around that time, I wrote this poem:
Keep the spirit that runs on empty
As it fills from the well within
That’s connected to life forever
That’s outlasted all that is
Keep the truth bearing forever
Silently spoken from there within
In 2010, I wrote “Give Up and Receive” in an empty journal, as I gave up half time at my work to a job share so I could live down south during the winter. It seemed time to smell the flowers, appreciate and at that time, the empty journal in front of me reminded me that life is a blank slate I can create any way I want.
I wrote about a newness every day and hoped it would be a time of slowing down, appreciating who I had become, accepting the good and knowing the great does not have to cost a lot. I believed it was a way of finding love, harmony and wholeness on our journey home.
Joining a writing club in 2011 I now see as pivotal in moving me BEYOND. The woman who facilitated the group set the time from one to three on Mondays for ten dollars a year in an upstairs room. This was in the desert RV, tennis and golf resort I was living in for those two weeks away from work during November to March. Group members were given a word the week prior and were to write a five-hundred-word story and if they could; be prepared to stand and share. When the sharing and a short break was complete, a ten-minute writing ensued based on a word or picture. A story about my grad dress was my first sharing, based on the prompt, “a memorable high school event.”
The word celebration prompted a poem in February of 2011.
Celebration
Signs of life
Amidst death
Rituals
Of our lives
Sharing
What we have
With others
Touchstones of remembrances
For when we feel alone
And unloved.
In May, we went to Ireland and there, I had song words come to me to the tune of the children’s song, “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands”, but my words were:
“My love for you will last forever more
And I will save the best time for you again
In caring for you first before my other things
So, you don’t end up in deep despair again
How many times must I wait for you
How many times I’ve cried out for you
I’m leaning on your wisdom again
Give me time so I can shine again.”
We came home from a ten-country European tour where we met relatives that were connected by seven brothers five generations back; five had stayed in Ireland; two came to Canada. It was kind of mind boggling as I saw their gravestones and houses that had stood a long, long time. I was home and in June of that year this song composed in my journal writing.
I want for you the best of life
This living it goes on forever
Enjoy the best of everything
You have what it takes two hearts forever
Leading forward, looking back
Creating fire for all its members
Living lightly on this earth
Moving gently to its rhythm
Looking forward enjoy the day
And all the good things I’ve been given
Sharing love and laughter soon
Life will take on a new vision.
I remember thinking, “I don’t want a new vision. Life was pretty spectacular. I liked the song. It had come into my mind to the tune of a song my friend shared with me called, “How Can I Keep From Singing,” and that was my mood.
I wrote another soon after; in July of that year.
Living life easy
Living life free
Living life
As it was meant to be
Loving you
Loving me
Living with all
In harmony
Halleluiah
It’s come to be
Heaven awaits
And I can’t see
The future
That’s in front of me
Live this moment
Live and be
Free to be me.
Why doesn’t it last? In October; same year, I wrote a piece I call:
FOR ALL THAT I AM
What do you want from me universe
That I feel so lost and alone
It’s time to care for others
Who don’t have a home
They create as I do
They will softly say
Give an opportunity
To find their voice again
Come Sing with Me My Friend
Come Sing with me my friend
Singing and singing and singing again
We’re singing our way home.
Then out came a song that incorporated some of the above words and I called it:
CARRY ON
Carry on Carry on Carry on
Carry on
Carry on Carry on
In Time Your Sunset Will Come
Come Sing With Me My Friend
Come Sing With Me My Friend
Singing and Singing and Singing Again
We’re Singing Our Way Home
Carry On Even Further This Time
Be Ready to Accept That You Are Mine
Living and Loving and Singing Again
We’re Singing Our Way Home
I’m Calling I’m Calling
I’m Calling On You To Believe
I’m Calling I’m Calling
Calling On You To Believe
Believe In Me My Friend
Believe In Me My Friend
Calling and Calling I’m Calling Again
And now it’s time to believe
Know That We Are One and The Same
Since The Beginning of Time
I Want For You For You My Friend
The Peace and Joy of Belief
The following story titled, was shared January 2, 2012 in Mesa at the writing club.
An Unwrapped Gift
There were several in my luggage this time. I was satisfied with what I was bringing. I usually have a hard time buying presents at Christmas or for birthdays. I think it’s the deadline. If I can buy something for someone when I see it and am thinking of them; it works fine but Christmas was coming and I did not know what I wanted to give my hubby.
He has all he needs. He has money. He would go buy something if he needed it. He has what he wants too. He’s a satisfied kind of guy.
So, I know it comes down to my figuring out what I want to give him.
He does so well in the present department. We have lived together for four years. The first Christmas he bought me a divine duvet the Hutterites made. Not only that; but he bought a cover for it that matches the pillow shams and bed skirt I brought into the relationship.
The next year I received a brand-new set of golf clubs. They are so nice. Next year; a golf jacket. I still love it.
Last year he knew what he wanted to give me. He enlisted my daughter`s help. She made up a flyer and he presented me with the paper saying I could choose a leather jacket of my choice.
The pressure is really high for me. No. We have discussed it; he knows I needed those things and he knows he doesn’t need anything.
I was excited about what I was bringing in my suitcase. I found a lovely bow tie for him as we were going to the New Year’s Eve black and white affair.
I found him incense as he likes that. I gave each of the women who attend singing at my house a bar of chocolate that said Divine Chocolate from the Heart so there was one for him too as he too listens to me sing.
The Saturday before, when I was in Saskatchewan and he was in Arizona, I sat down and wrote him a fourteen-page booklet telling him all the reasons I still love him. I had done enough.
Later that day I stopped in at his golf and country club pro shop. They had the nicest jacket for sale at seventy per cent off. Bonus. It was his!
The ten-minute writing on January 2, 2012 I titled “A New Year’s.”
A New Year’s
I loved it. The eve and the day. My hubby wore his black bow tie. It was part of his Christmas present I found for fifty cents. His white shirt was a dollar garage sale find one day when I was going for a walk in Saskatoon right after we got the October resort newsletter saying New Year’s Eve was going to be a gala with live music. They were calling it a Black and White Affair and in brackets “From Black Denim to White Diamonds.” I knew my honey didn’t own any white shirt.
I knew I was wearing a long black gown. It had teeny straps but goes straight across like a strapless. It’s really comfortable. We went to the orphanage boutique here in the desert which is a second-hand fancier place that supports an orphanage. It is a major receiver of donations from the people living at this resort and has about seventy children living right there. We went and believe it or not; the day we were there; my sweetheart found a pair of Arnold Palmer, (famous golfer) black shorts and a good, good pair of black pants; both with tags still on. His bill was $6.00. I with four things; a white necklace, white earrings which were little white bows with matching white bracelet and a white flower for my hair had a bill of $1.30 as the woman said it was ten items for $2.00 or something which was so ridiculous and I was trying to offer more. Donations work.
Anyway, it was a roast beef supper. They gave us each a wine glass to take home. There was as much as you could eat shrimp cocktail. We went for cocktails at one couple’s house before it started. The dancing began at 8pm and we didn’t eat till nearly 9:30; but we kept dancing right till then. My hubby dances all night which is really nice.
We danced till 1 am; and the couples we were with; most did too. They change around like they did years ago when I played for dances; meaning other people’s husbands will ask other men’s partners to dance.
I woke up yesterday morning feeling really good about life; no body pain. I don’t know if you know this but nearly every day, I have body pain. I wonder if it is to do with working in the injury dept; or all to do with my past.
I’ve been down at Viewpoint since December twenty-first and every day had body pain. It was all gone yesterday. The dancing must have got rid of it all.
The music in my head when I woke up New Year’s Day, was the song “I’m the Happiest Girl in the Whole USA; written and composed by Donna Fargo.” We had a golf date to look forward to. We golfed with a couple from northern USA; who now live in Alberta in summer; and here in winter. I had better golfing than usual. We barbequed. I made a potato salad. I was early to sleep that night.
The writing club’s January 12, 2012 assignment was to look in a mirror and write what we saw or who we resembled. I shared the following:
Being Me
I look in the mirror and what do I see
A woman who’s cared for and it’s all about me
The steps I’ve taken reclaiming my life
Listening inside; becoming my own best wife.
I like how I look happy and brown
Can go anywhere, strut around town
Enjoy every moment and all that I do
Enjoy who I’m with; can be all about you.
I see my long hair; someday will be gone
It’s been many a year since I had it this long.
When I look in the mirror, I see only myself
I used to see pain above all else
Sometimes I have a far away look
A deep inner darkness that’s been overlooked
They’re fewer now and mostly I see
My smile saying I’m happy I’m free.
The next week’s word was “Grandparenting” and I love the following short story as I reread it in 2020.
Grandparenting
From the soft and cozy feel of the blanket surrounding my grandson as he was handed to me in the Prince Edward Island hospital room to the now smirky smile of his thirteen-year old face on Skype, I call it the feeling of love.
I still get emotional thinking of the call. Me in Saskatchewan; my daughter thousands of miles away in the Canadian Maritimes and she in labour.
It helped that two hours from that moment I owned an airline ticket and was able to be with him the day he was born. A marvel to behold; as he stretched and gurgled, burped and spit up. The first ten days of his life I could hold him as much as I wanted. His teeny fingers wrapped around mine. My fingers shook as I put the pin through his diaper the first time.
I’m glad six months later he was living in Saskatchewan. I put the rocking chair to good use. I sang “Lullaby and Goodnight” to my heart’s content.
From crawling to stumbling to waddling through the park; I’d lay on grass for hours watching him try to catch seagulls. He’d fall asleep to the wind in the poplars.
We went from marbles to jacks; old maid to rummy; duck, duck goose to angels in the snow. From balloons in the basement; volleyball in the living room; to backyard ball. The best; the sevens game on any wall we could find.
Till he got too good.
I loved hosting his fifth birthday party. It probably wasn’t the smartest idea to use the stick on the pinata. The candy spilled, the race was on and lucky no one was hurt.
The school concert where he and another boy performed a shoving match on the risers is a memory stored for a lifetime.
Him teaching me to skateboard. Disaster! How he laughed!
“I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”
I loved the overnighters; me at his place or he at mine. The unmasked innocence upon awakening takes me back to his first day on earth. Essence revealed.
January 2012 was the beginning of more stories:
My Clock Is Ticking
My clock is ticking. So is everyone else’s. We only have so much time. Let’s use it wisely. I want to continue to have the wonderful experiences I’m having. I still want to travel and see far away places.
I need money to do that so I still work. I know there are ways to travel without using a lot of money. I haven’t figured out how to do that yet
I try to live lightly on this earth not being a big consumer. I don’t spend much money. I have had a full life, and if it was time to go, I’d be ready.
I can’t see that happening for a long time as my genetics are good. I probably have at least forty years left.
Back to money. On the news this week, Canada’s prime minister is talking about changing the old age security. Another reason I may need more money.
Death and taxes; the only sure thing I’ve heard.
For me, time is the only sure thing. We have only this moment.
Lessons Learned from My Dad
Be on Time
Make Music
It’s okay to be alone
Rest and Relax
Read
Work hard
Care for others
Be gentle
Appreciate the elderly
Listen
Help out if you can
Think
Be Informed
Love of The Land
Appreciate Nature
February 6, 2012
The ten-minute writings during the group meets has me relooking at life then and now.
Little White Lie
I’m quite happy to have nothing to write about. I am not in the habit of lying. I do consider myself to be a truthful person.
As I write the first line, a thought comes to mind of when I told an untruth. I was in a new relationship; the one I am in now; and it was very important to me. I met the woman who is now my sister in law once before and she loaned me a book. A month later we were on our way back to their place and I shared with my sweetheart that I didn’t like the book. I said it was fiction. It was not reality; did not interest me; was not my kind of book.
Twenty minutes later we were sitting in her kitchen. She asked me, “How did you like the book?”
“It was great!” came out of my mouth.
I looked at my honey. My honey looked at me. I didn’t say another word for a long time.
On the way home, we had a long discussion. I told him how the words had surprised me. I do not usually lie.
It was me wanting to be liked by her; to be accepted; to be okay. It hasn’t happened since. That I am aware of. I am now more conscious of what comes out of my mouth in new situations. I am more comfortable with and more accepting of who I am.
I don’t think I need little white lies in my life for any reason. I prefer honesty in all situations and that all can be really who they are.
Ten Minute Writing 2012
Open One’s Heart
Open One’s Heart
To love at last
Listening on the inside
Forgetting the past.
Not Forgetting
But forgiving for sure
Saying Good-bye
Has been the cure.
Accepting the loss
And moving on
Finding a mate
For my life song.
Living as One
Creating our Dreams
Has been Easy as We
Talk about Things.
What We Want
And What We Need
Care for Each Other
Has been the Key.
Feb 13, 2012
Rainbow
I spent many years healing. Emotional wounds translated into body pain. I began a study of body, mind and spirit and how it all fits together. I have not scratched the surface of the subject.
One thing I learned is we are made of energy and have seven main energy centres in our body. One is at the top of our head and another at the base of our spine. There are five energy centres in between.
A main energy centre is the one close to the middle of our forehead at the top of the bridge of the nose. Some people call it the inner eye.
Another is at my throat and allows me to give voice whether in writing or speaking. My heart energy centre or heart chakra as some people call them, connects to all the meridian lines of energy coming out to my hands sending love to all I do in the world.
My power chakra or energy centre situated where my belly button is, helps me make clear and wise decisions when my energy is clear and balanced.
There is one more chakra. It is the one in my hip area; dead centre for the sexuality area of a man or woman’s body. It adds passion, sensuality and vitality to all we do as we are all sexual beings.
What do these energy centres have to do with the rainbow? The seven chakras or energy centres are the colours of the rainbow.
Just as some people can feel energy, as when someone is under the power line with a golf club and can feel and hear the energy, or someone doing massage, reiki or reflexology can feel the energy; there are others that can see energy.
The base chakra or energy centre at the base of the spine is red. The sexuality chakra is orange, the power chakra yellow. Our heart chakra is green, throat chakra blue, our inner eye chakra is indigo and the opening at the top of our head is violet.
We are so connected to all that is. When I am meditating, I bring in white light from the universe or God as we know it and bring that light down through the rainbow of each of my energy centres.
Just as a rainbow is there after a storm, we can enjoy our rainbow within and reflect our light to others.
February 27, 2012
ITCH
We totally enjoyed our trip to Europe last spring. We were on a bus tour and the best part was meeting people from all over the world and getting their perspective on what we were seeing and learning.
We finished the tour in London, England; made our way to a train station and took off to see our friend in Manchester. We were staying at her place for three nights and then off to Ireland.
We had deluxe accommodation at her home as she gave up her huge bedroom with a king size bed and she had laid out these big fluffy towels.
She had a lovely fluffy housecoat hanging on the wall and said feel free to use that if I wanted. The first day there I had a shower and used the scrumptious housecoat.
The next day as I was ‘up and at em’; as my mother would say; dressing for the day, I noticed a couple of bites. Later that day a few more appeared.
Each day more. We left there; went to Ireland by train and by then the itch had started. By then, it wasn’t a few; more and more bites were appearing.
The only thing I could think of was maybe spider mites were in the housecoat that had been hanging on the wall of the house that was more than two hundred years old.
We did not stay long in Ireland. I was home within a week; I had one hundred bites by then. My doctor swears it was bedbugs.
I cleaned everything in my house. More than one time. Cleaned it again and again just to be sure. They all went away.
It may or may not have been bed bugs but I do not want to ever experience the itch again.
The hardest part for me was letting my friend from England and my relatives from Ireland know that I had the bedbug experience so they could do what they needed to do.
February 27, 2012 – Ten Minute Writing
My Ten-Year-Old Picture
I am looking at it. I guess I need to call it my picture when I am about ten years old. The photo is nearly fifty years old as I am nearing sixty.
At ten, I am a farm girl. The barn is in the background along with my dad’s dreams of being a farmer. My three older brothers and five younger sisters are constant around me. My mom is pregnant again and this time will miscarry.
I am the oldest girl. I feel like the housewife and mother. Sometimes my back hurts from carrying water; carrying the slop pail and carrying kids. I know how to peel potatoes; make porridge and pull weeds.
I love it outside. I love it when the neighbors come to play. We play anti-i -over; pump, pump pull away and kick the can. Sometimes I take long walks or hide in the bush so I can be by myself.
I belong to 4-H this year. I am going to learn to sew. My cousin took this photo for her 4-H project. My cousins come near every Sunday. If we know they are coming, we have chicken for supper. Then we have creamed corn for dinner.
Yesterday we all had baths and last night we polished all the shoes for church. This morning the eleven of us headed to church in the station wagon. We have to go early and line up against the wall for confession. Dad takes up the collection basket.
The green pump in the porch is working as we all get ready for church. I was able to ride with Dad the last time we filled the cistern.
Monday Mom will wash clothes. It takes her all day with the wringer washer; the bluing in the rinse tubs; and the piles and piles of clothes. When I get off the bus, I’ll be hauling in clothes from the line; and bagging bread as she makes twenty-seven loaves at a time.
I’m in grade four this year. One of the first days of school, the teacher strapped a boy really hard. I listen really well. I am learning to play the piano. I hope I can chord like Mom and play with Dad when he takes out the fiddle.
Did I say how much I love to be outside? In winter we skate on the dugout. In summer, I love to hide in the bale pile or go get the cows. I lay in the pasture for hours; smell the sweet grass and watch the clouds in the sky.
I think about God a lot.
March 5, 2012
The writing club had me realizing I endeavored to leave my writings for my grandson.
A Dollar Bill in One Day’s Time
I am a dollar bill that was made in the U S of A and is now; at this moment in time; in the possession of a Canadian woman.
I am owned by her and she left me at home in her park model at Viewpoint.
I am safe and secure in the inner reaches of a genuine cowhide gold-coloured leather wallet made and bought in Columbia.
I am sitting with one other dollar bill and a five-dollar US bill along with a few colourful Canadian friends.
I, the others and the wallet are sitting snugly inside the cream-coloured crocheted shoulder bag that all hang together in my owner’s mirrored closet. We always hope our owner hangs us on the same hanger in the same place as we don’t want to be lost.
I am important as I need to be used tomorrow towards golf prize money in the hopes that one-dollar bill comes back to my owner in a bigger amount if she golfs really well.
For today I am content to be the dollar in waiting knowing my time will come. I lead a sheltered life, am enjoying a restful day as who knows who will own me tomorrow or what adventures I may have to partake.
I will enjoy this day being cozy, safe and warm hanging out with my friends.
The end.
Ding, ding, ding went the timer at the end of this ten-minute writing on March 12, 2012
When we read our writings aloud, sometimes others commented although members were encouraged to listen and applaud if they chose when someone shared but not to comment. That day following my sharing regarding if I were a one-dollar bill; four people made comments. One said I was an inspiration; another saw me philosophizing; next suggested I start a blog and the last one to speak said all my writing is written with such depth. I wish I saw it that way.
In August of 2012 I wrote
One Love
Enough For All
With Gratitude
I Eat.
It became my Grace I shared with others.
GRACE
One Love
Connects Us All
With Gratitude
Let Us Eat
That same month my grandson and I wrote a song together:
BETWEEN YOU AND I
Random words don’t make a line
Don’t make a lullaby
But when I go to say good-bye
I’m willing to cry
Between you and I
OOOH Between you and I, between you and I, between you and I.
You are fine from behind
You are always on my mind
As we are we will find
I’m willing to try
Between you and I
OOOH Between you and I, between you and I, between you and I
Thoughts non-stop all the time
Will I ever clear my mind
Will I have to think it through
What I want to do with you
Between you and I
OOOH Between you and I, between you and I, between you and I.
Then came my November 2012 Poem of the Morning and a story:
Finding my centre
Inside and Out
Living in love
Around and about.
MY GOD TREE
About ten years ago, a woman I know went to a Spirituality class and when it was over, told me, as part of the class, she had to draw a God tree. That intrigued me.
I went home and pulled out my journal. I drew my God tree. It looked like a clump of prairie grasses with the roots spread out underground almost as big as the clump of grass on top of the sod.
I wrote in my journal, “As if I came from the sod and built a steady, stable life and now there are endless possibilities of shoots; new growth going in every direction. I’m not sure what has died away; what needs to be saved; needs to be tended to; taken back, reclaimed or to what I need to say good-bye.”
Back then, I wrote about what the parts represented:
The Sod was my Irish and Canadian roots and me trying to build a sturdy, stable life for myself through my relationships with my kids, my family of origin, and my friends.
The new shoots were the new growth in my life. I had just completed a marathon in Ireland, had started dating, and had moved up in my career. I was taking classes to be a personal injury representative and preparing to facilitate a retreat for women.
Some of the grasses in my God tree had died and for me that was about the marathon being over; the months of training ended. I had also let people know I was not going to give the one-day workshops that used to be a part of my life. Just like the dead grasses.
When I thought about what was needing to be saved, I knew it was the walking, singing, and dancing that had been a big part of that year. It helped me realize I needed to be taking care of myself; feeding myself good food, taking care of my house and of friendships that were important to me.
I asked myself what the taking back was about. It was my spirituality that had always been a big part of my life. I was reclaiming love for myself.
Now ten years later, I know my god tree would not be prairie grasses. Although I love prairie grasses, my god tree expanded. I don’t spend as much time in introspection. I am still into self-awareness. I still write, but not as much and have a few different writing projects on the go. I am happy to be coming back to this writing group. Thank you to each of you for having me.
November 12, 2012
A Recipe for Thanksgiving
Take time for myself
Sit in the sun
My pen and paper
Think about my life
Write what I’m thankful for
My daughter’s long email
Sitting in the sun
Making love in the middle of the day
How much I love my desert home
Playing piano anytime day or night
My son’s phone visit
I still get to work and see my co-workers, my other home, my other life
Friends
Thankful I have the money to live as I do
I have things in my life to look forward to
I’ve dealt with much of the hurts of the past that most days are a joy
I am thankful for all my senses, the health of my body and gifts and talents I have
That I am free to write and express my opinion on all things
That I continue to learn and learn to love
For all I am thankful.
November 18, 2012
SEVENTEEN DAYS IN MESA NOV 2012
Loved the trip down and sharing the trip down with my closest!
How quick we got into our Mesa life; the golfing, walking, tennis
How nice it is to see old friends; to be known and remembered
To be here; no have tos.
Wondering who will be the president as US has so much power in the world,
I never get tired of the sunrise.
Shared my story about a god tree; one in the writing class sees me as a philosopher; a writer of depth.
So lucky to be able to play golf, lunch and tennis today.
Itchy arms; little bumps; too much sun; too hot; hot tub or sauna?
Rethinking my life
Sights and sounds amaze: poplar tree growing inside a cactus tree; 2 huge coyotes loping across the fairway; the woman tells me my ball landed in the sexy grass and when I say pardon? She says, “You’re going to be screwed.”
A 93 in golf; next time a 106; what is that about?
Ducks sleeping beside me; standing up with their head tucked under a wing.
Seeing a fuzzy tarantula; the size of my palm right beside hiking walking path.
Don’t think hiking is for me; or maybe doing three things in one day is too much.
Trying new and different recipes – pork chops with marmalade.
Like a teenager, can lay in bed; watch the stars at night; and our mirrored closet doors have palm trees reflection.
Good phone visit with my son.
Wrote out a Recipe for Thanksgiving.
Time in Saskatchewan with Snow Dec. 2012
Flip flops to heels, desert to snow, fresh to froze, fruit as I go
Off to work at 7 am, eight days to go till I’m done again.
Good-bye to new friends, get on a plane, nice to see family, together again.
Listen to the forecast: ice, snow and blowing snow. Slippery sections. Minus 31 with the wind chill. Plug in the car. Heavy winter mitts; bundle up for the wind; snow scraper in sight, ensure the windshields clear. Amazing the extra time it takes to go somewhere; layers and layers; unfamiliarity for hubby; the ski boot laces, finding hood for a winter coat; extra scarf and mitts just in case. Gas up and stick a bottle of gas line anti-freeze in the cubby hole. Saskatchewan winter driving of the day: reduced visibility, drifting snow; blowing snow; whiteouts when passing; amber red and orange snow plow lights and it is shooting snow on the wrong side of the road. Snow piled high at the intersections. Enjoy a hockey game at a small-town rink. Family fun times. Crokinole. Christmas Eve & then Christmas day: Sundogs like rainbows round the sun; white cloud cover blending with white landscape; tufts of prairie stubble sticking up in snow covered fields; black highway and telephone poles; tunnel effect. Crunch of feet on snow. Heavy hoar frost gives way to sunny day; clear and cold; wonderful Christmas meals; times with family; coming home under a full moon; lights of the farmhouses beam up into the sky.
HOW I WANT TO BE REMEMBERED
As a kind and generous person; who stood up for what I believed in. Who cared for others; who took care of self. Was fun, could take a joke or make one without hurting others.
Who lived to my true potential; giving back to society or assisting someone less fortunate as others did for me.
Used my gifts and talents and continued to learn.
That I was there for my children and others with unconditional love; to the best of my ability. I have a little doubt as to how well I accomplished that.
That my grandson enjoyed some of the things we did together.
That my honey bunch knew he was the joy at my side.
Knew that people meant more than things.
Or that money means little if you have not taken care of yourself.
And that love is not love until you give it away.
I want for others the freedom I have found
To be who I am is enough.
Dec 3, 2012 (day before my grandson coming to Mesa)
In February 2013, I wrote out a bedtime story I said over and over to my children when they were little. Now in 2020, I am placing that story on my website as a short story. I have the vision of my children, grandchildren or someone illustrating or animating a children’s book based on the following:
FRANK
A BEDTIME STORY
Once upon a time, there was a boy named Frank. He didn’t live in the city. He lived in the country. Frank lived on a farm. He didn’t just have a house. He had a house and a barn and a chicken coop and granaries and a shed to play in.
Frank had to get lots of sleep. He had things to do in the morning. Every morning, his mom came into his room and said, “Wake up, Frank, wake up. It’s time to do the chores.”
Frank stepped out of bed, pulled on his shorts, pulled on his pants, pulled on his socks; slid his arms into his shirt; and was fiddling with his buttons as he walked out to the porch. He pushed his shirt into his pants and slid his feet into his rubber boots. He took his coat off the hook and his hat off the chair.
“I’ll have breakfast ready when you get back,” said his Mom as Frank opened the screen door. It was dark outside.
“Sssiiit,” he whistled for his dog, Scotty. “Come on Scotty, let’s go find Rusty.”
Together they walked to the side of the yard where the fence met the barn.
“Wwwheet. Wwwheet,” he whistled for Rusty and his horse neighed softly from the shadows where the sky was lightening up the early morning skies. Frank crawled up the fence slats and Scotty crawled under. Frank put his arms around Rusty’s neck and slid on to his back.
“ Come on, Rusty. Come on Scotty. Let’s go get the cows.”
Off they went, past the barn, past the chicken coop and past the bale pile. Rusty headed for the cow path and then through the bush. As they moved along, Frank was saying, “Come boss, come boss.” It was his way of calling the cows.
As the sky continued to lighten, they moved out into the pasture, Frank could hear the cowbells before he could see the cows and then there they were. Scotty had them all in a row heading toward the barn.
Frank and Rusty had to move a little faster. First a trot and then a gallop. They had to beat the cows; open the gates and open the barn door. Frank grabbed a fork; put hay in the manger and spread straw on the floor.
Frank patted Bessie’s back as he tied her in the stall. He grabbed the pail from the wall and the three-legged stool from the corner. He shooed away the cats.
“Split, splat, split, splat”, sounded the milk as it hit the sides of the pail. Frank’s fingers squeezed the cow’s tits up and down, up and down and the pail filled with milk. The cats meowed.
He poured a bit of the frothy milk into the tin plate on the barn floor. He gave a bit of milk to the little weanling; who had been the runt of the litter.
The pigs were squealing so he set the milk pail high as he laid out the chop for them. He brought in Bessie’s calf who nuzzled right up to the udder and latched on to the teats. He picked up the pail of milk and headed for the house. He dropped the pail of milk off in the porch.
The rooster was crowing and Frank knew his Mom would have the separating done by the time he finished the chores.
Back behind the barn, he fed the rest of the cows, scraped up some oats for Rusty and gave him a good-bye hug. Scotty followed Frank to the chicken coop. He put out chop, watered the chickens and took the egg basket down off the wall. He picked up the eggs he gathered and headed for the house. He had lots to do before the school bus appeared.
And just like Frank, you have to get lots of sleep as you have lots to do in the morning.
February 2013
SUMMERS OF MY YOUTH
I think of warmth. Carefree. Long, hot days. Canning. Garden. Picking peas, eating more that we shelled. Poplar trees and Dad putting a swing down by the teeter totter.
One year when he was grading roads, Dad came upon the road kill of the mama fox. He knew where the den was and knew the little ones would not make it. He came home that night and took poplar poles and chicken wire; he and my brothers made a fox cage. The boys took care of the baby foxes until they were let go in the wild and we had to keep our fingers out of the cage.
We were busy making houses in the bush. We had rooms in the willows and played for hours out there. Sometimes we went for long walks and picked flowers in the wild. Bluebells, brown-eyed susans, white daisies, sweet peas and cowslips made up a bouquet but nothing topped a dandelion bouquet to give to Mom.
Granny liked the crocuses. We would go to Granny’s house. She had a playground in the bush as well. They had fashioned an old bedspring with plywood on top; equivalent to a modern-day trampoline.
Many of my cousins would be there on a summer day. We’d play pump-pump-pull a way and end the day with hide and seek or kick the can.
If it was a summer Sunday, we might go with my Dad to a trap shoot. The kids had to stay way behind the cars, and the yell of “PULL” just before the shot rang out was the backdrop to our three-legged races, sack race and games of tag.
Sometimes we went to the church picnic and took our turns up on the log that was about three feet off the ground. We’d cross our ankles and balance ourselves best we could as with pillow in hand we tried to knock our opponent off their perch.
I did lots of walking out to the road to get the mail or down the ditches to hide from my brothers and sisters.
I’d go wandering in the pasture staying away from the electric fence. Iloved laying in the tall grass and listening to the grass sounds. I’d hear the busyness of ants, the whispering of the leaves or a car in the distance.
I’d see the fluffy white clouds gently moving along. If I stood tall, at the highest point in the pasture, I’d glimpse the town where I went to school. It was nine miles away but I never walked there. I’d walk to neighbours who were a mile or two away to play for an afternoon. I’d rather play than work.
Maybe it is why I am recreating summer in my winter.
March 4, 2013
The following sharing is one of the most pivotal moments of the decade of this experience; if not my life.
A COLOURFUL SUMMER EXPERIENCE
On a weekday morning as I watched my hubby standing at the end of the bed getting ready for golf, I saw a BEING IN WHITE LIGHT in the far, right corner of the bedroom.
I told him I was seeing white light and pointed where I was seeing it; saying it was not his I was seeing; as sometimes I see people`s auras. I knew what I was seeing.
I was seeing the figure of Jesus. The white light BEING was near eight feet tall; as it was near touching (I cry as I write this) the roof of the bedroom. I knew it was Jesus as when I was little Mom and Dad had a statue of Jesus with a red outfit and a red heart on his chest and his hair was long and brown. That same long hair and body shape was the BEING IN LIGHT although it had it`s hands stretched out.
I did not tell him I was seeing Jesus. I told a friend several days later; then another friend and then my hubby. Now I tell people if it seems relevant and today, I debated about writing about it as I would be telling you.
I am okay with that.
Nov 4, 2013; first day back at writing club in Arizona.
That day, back in 2013, I went on to write a bunch of acrostic poems. It was a ten-minute writing exercise using the different colours listed. As I place it here in 2020, I am going to put in brackets what it might have meant to me at that time.
RED
Royal Red
End of Life
Dead In the Coffin (my 99-year old aunt chose royal red for her coffin)
GREEN
Gradually Greening
Ready for Rain
Every moment
Entering spring
Nature grows (thinking of spring in Arizona when I wrote the poem?)
YELLOW
Yellow Bursts
Eye catching
Light from the window
Looks down upon us
Over the moon
With sunshine (how I love the sun)
ORANGE
Only me
Raves about orange
And sees it in light
Naturally around
Glowing with passion
Every person in love (orange; sexuality passion chakra)
PURPLE
Purest purple
Unplugs the universe
Racing against time
Picking and choosing
Last but not least
Each day unfolds (spirituality of every day)
BLACK
Better be good
Last commandment I learned
As I give it back
Called anew
Knocking within (Black became my strength instead of a colour I feared)
GRAY
Give away
Round about
Attention for me
Yesterday’s gifts (hosted a give away roundabout as is practice of some First Nations)
WHITE
Why wait
Heaven is here
I reach within
Time stands still
Ethereal (when I’m living in the moment)
PINK
Please put away
Ink and paper
Now is the time
Knocking again (live the moment)
BROWN
Beliefs so strong
Radiate
Out
Worn away
Not! (beliefs hang on; hard to let go)
BLUE
BLUE NO MORE
LESS IS MORE
UNDERSTOOD
ENOUGH (my beliefs stand up) 2013
TILL THEY DON’T 2022
I am going to end it here with one last sharing. BEYOND, Book IV is finished. I thought about epilogue and acknowledgements; want to say THANK YOU; much gratitude to all who have been there for me; interbeings as well; past, present, future and YOU who are reading this. I truly appreciate your love.
I knew BEYOND was 4th in a five-book series; with “Wanted: Someone to Understand” being first book. Then I wrote a second book. I called it “As Long as I Understand.” I’m not sure I had total understanding and wrote a third one called “Beyond Understanding.” I had an inner knowing around that time that a fourth I’d call “Beyond” and the fifth; an empty journal, “Be”.
That year, a friend I worked & golfed with gave me an empty journal with BE written all over the cover. She said she received and felt called to give to me.
I wrote the following: “I think for years I’ve had this illusion the BE was the idyllic, that state of being of enlightenment, bliss, contentment and timelessness that I experience sometimes. After a sleepless, grief-stricken night following a week of too much of many things and mostly recognition that my brother’s cancer is palliative, I realize BEING is in the sleepless, all-knowing moments as well.” 2013
It wasn’t long I passed that empty journal to my niece who exemplifies being, learning, creating, and following her inner knowing.
Today, March 24, 2022 (anniversary of that brother’s birthday who was born a year and some before me; who died in 2014) I am putting this BEYOND book on my website with the help of a trusted friend and many of you; living the not knowing and at peace with that.
ellensagh 