In the Kitchen

The figure stood in my kitchen, which is about 5 steps up from street level. I didn't see it standing there, I sensed it, though, and it somehow fit its enormousness into the room. Greyish violet, face hidden, about 8 feet high, it stood near the stove emanating a sense of peace and steadiness I've since come to identify as profound, magnetic stillness, the product only of the largest, strongest, nameless anchor. In his presence, all doubt, all desperation, all striving, zipped up. There was a cloud, an ethereal fog like an anesthetic that puts insecurity to sleep, in which I woke up to a dream that I was really, truly enough and had absolutely everything I needed.

Earlier in the day I had called a woman named Susan Grey who is a distance healer because my sister, in nursing school far away in Iowa City, was in acute pain following surgery, pain that was lasting well after it should have resolved. I paid something like 60 dollars and this woman agreed to call my sister and work on her using something called EFT and her spirit entities. I had no idea if it would work or not but I had the money and was desperate to see my sister free from the terrible pain she was in.

I had a sense of what the figure in my kitchen was doing, just sort of checking me out. I suppose this was a bonus gift Susan doesn't advertise. I took the kids to what was then called J.J. Byrnes park, and as they played I felt I had become the anchor for them and for myself, I felt a sweetness that I fail to articulate but if I were Rumi or Hafiz I think I'd find the words for. The protective fog still hung around us as the children played, creating a peaceful oasis, a barrier from all the violence of doubt and despair I normally navigate with a lot of struggling oar strokes.

So I guess this is a testimonial, but even as I write I'm still of the split mind that is very typical of humanity in the modern world, worshipping rationality and that which can be validated by the physical senses. Some call this Westernization, and feel sadly that any other kind of seeing has lost credit. But skepticism has played an important role in protecting people from all the abuses of power and the self-betrayal those manipulative dictates based on belief have encouraged. It's a fine wire we have to walk on. We're all split minded about it these days, I can't tell you how many people will tell me of an unexplainable experience they had involving spirits, and then the next second, tell me they don't believe in ghosts. I've seen people experience compelling synchronicities and find a way to dismiss the notion that there is some amazing and challenging power in effect. I've heard the word random far too often. Even my sublime friend M remarks that I'm very suggestible, the same friend who has recurring "lightmares." We're just wired like that. No wonder the suburban split level makes such a good icon for modern society.

Anyway, it seems to me that what we know, what we love, how we love, and how much we trust something is much more important than what we believe. How much do we honor the subtle overlooked parts of our experience that we'd rather put out of our minds? Do we bear the brand of our mucho macho quasi-analytical society, with its prejudice against intuition and intuitives?

As for my sister, she felt better soon after Susan spoke with her, and was relieved to be able to stop begging doctors for more pills to end her pain.