Birthday Joy

   Enclosed here is a poem and a link (hopefully) in celebration of my 70th birthday.  The address will take you to YouTube video of 80 happy people singing their hearts out in fun, plus the marvelous cake with cannoli rum filling and buttercream frosting with the little gypsy dancers on top.  You can also see pics of the beautiful worship space of Unity Temple, the Frank Lloyd Wright church in which the party was held.
   The  poem is from Carolyn Aguila, a neighbor from many, many years ago in Chicago when we took in Kevin Price Sanchez and Kelly Price Jorgensen as foster children one winter.  Carolyn has a wonderful published book of her own Chicago/family/literature based poems:  “Flirting with Rhyme and Reason,  EM Press, Channahon, IL 2006.
     YouTube:   Marti’s 70th Birthday          

      by Kevin Sanchez

Marti’s Matthew’s 70th Birthday – Dec 27, 2014

   

 
GRATITUDE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENT
By Carolyn S. Aguila ~ December 27, 2014
 On the occasion of Marti Matthews’ 70th Birthday—
 City moms have different worries,

but all moms worry,
about all children,
all the time.
It’s always been so.

In ancient ages,

young boys and girls were sent
to uncles and aunts for fostering,
particularly when mothers grew tired
from the fretting.
Sometimes a family needs a rest from itself—
–or an urgent matter must be tended to
far from a child’s daily life.

I would not learn

until many years latter
that my own bricked city street
harbored such a mother
who mothered without question
the child of another,
a woman who understood
the sacred mission of tending to children
who were not her own,
but who were in need.

This is ancient,

this type of generosity,
and it is passed on and between and among
the bones and blood of motherhood.
We are finer, brighter, and sturdier because of these mothers—
   –and one is named, Marti.

                         Happy Birthday.
 
 
 
 

November Beach

Snow flung haphazardly across the sandy beach,

bare trees wave slightly, unable to

 really catch the winter wind.

Giant white lifeguard chairs

watch long winding stripes of orange fencing

valiantly try to stop the march of sand.

Wind pushes aggressively inward.

Sleeping grasses and skeletons of small plants,

nod stiffly against the cold.

Rows of lonely boat racks,

beach buildings boarded up against the storms,

feel round for walking life.

And the soothing sounds of waves still rolling in,

  tumbling smoothly each on each,

    white foam rising, disappears,

as if

     nothing

         is changing.

The Hug I Didn’t Give

The hug I didn’t give
still waits here in my arms
  longingly.
An old acquaintance,
we’d found a sudden deep connect.
Then time to leave,
I kissed her dear old mother on the cheek
and smiled goodbye across the food.
Off I hurried,
arms bound fast
by some strange hesitation.
Now my arms reach out to her,
O heart-sister,
but miles prevent their satisfaction.
Time stands still
where my body holds the hug in endless wait.

There were hugs I had to give:
my body flinched.
We pulled apart with clay
smiles, I backed
away and turned
to anything else.
Truth betrayed.

.
Passing in a crowd
a month ago
I saw a treasured face-
I owe this friend so much!
She changed my life.
I threw my arms around her,
kissed her face,
reminding her just who I was.
My joy and gratefulness
still radiate through all my body
  pulsing in and outward.
The hug that I received just yesterday
and gave in equal turn
lifts my cheeks and eyes and heart
today.
My chest feels warm with
instant recognition of
a soul-sister.
That hug never loses power.

Tom’s Inspirations

    Today, Sept. 17, 2014, is the fifth anniversary of the return to spirit of my son, Tom Dix.
    In memory of him, I’ve posted this list of 65 inspirational quotes that Tom had put into an oatmeal box, apparently to pull out now and then to inspire himself. There are a great variety; some are like fortunes..You could print the page out, cut them separate for yourself, even add your own and get yourself an oatmeal box . Do this fun discipline to keep your spirit going.
       You might also like to read the previous posting here:”After-Death Communication with my Son” and the posting for Sept.17, 2013:”Death is not the End”, a long and excellent reading of Tom’s presence through a medium.
  • . You ask me how I can remain calm and not become agitated when those around me are bustling about. What can I say to you? I didn’t come into the world to upset it. Isn’t it disturbed enough already?
  •  
  • Limits and markers make travel possible for people: circumscribe our lines of sight and we can really get somewhere.
  •  
  • First and foremost, remember that you are unique. Your life is a once-told tale, an unrepeatable drama. No one has your mixture of passion and inhibitions, sensuality and fears, generosity and greed. No-body has identical erogenous zones or ways of expressing love.
  •  
  • Solitude is the nurse of enthusiasm, and enthusiasm is the true part of genius.
  •  
  • The best remedy for dispute is to discuss it.
  •  
  • No one can solve problems for someone whose problem is that they don’t want their problems solved.
  •  
  • God, grant me patience for the changes that take time; an appreciation for all that I have; tolerance for those with different struggles; and the strength to get up and try again, one day at a time.
  •  
  • There/here is the ‘Same-old-you’ and here is the ‘Same-old-me’: What we do together is new-born, in between. It has never happened before. Will never again.
  •  
  • Better to pray for yourself than to curse another.
  •  
  • It is only in solitude that men and women can come to know the happiness that is like the delight of children in nothing at all.
  •  
  • Forcing someone to do something religious is useless.
  •  
  • Those who want to know everything become old while they are young.
  •  
  • It is far better to withhold our judgment on something we do not understand than to condemn it. We can leave understanding until later.
  •  
  • He who has placed himself in God’s hand stands free vis-a-vis man: he is entirely at his ease with them, because he has granted them the right to judge.
  •  
  • Speak from your heart and you will speak to God.
  •  
  • Fear is tangled with humility and humility is tangled with grace.
  •  
  • The only independent element in ourselves is the attention of our mind.
  •  
  • The capacity to be alone is a valuable resource when changes of mental attitude are required.
  •  
  • The “great” commitment is so much easier than the ordinary one – and can all too easily shut our hearts to the letter. A willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice can be associated with, and even produce, a great hardness of heart.
  •  
  • Tears smash through the gates and doors of heaven.
  •  
  • You are much loved.
  •  
  • You will not obtain what you love if you do not bear a great deal that you hate, and you will not be released from what you hate if you do not bear a great deal from what you love.
  •  
  • The courage to not betray what is noblest in oneself is considered, at best, to be pride. And the critic finds his judgment confirmed when he sees consequences which, to him, must look very like the punishment for a mortal sin.
  •  
  • In our era, the road to holiness necessarily passes through the world of action.
  •  
  • Forgiveness is unconditional, or it is not forgiveness at all…Only because (of) this, does forgiveness make love possible. We cannot love unless we have accepted forgiveness, and the deeper our experience of forgiveness, the greater our love.  We cannot love where we feel rejected, even if the rejection is done in righteousness.”                -Paul Tillich
  • An American disease…is forgetfulness. A person or people who cannot recollect their past have little point beyond mere animal existence: it is memory that makes things matter.
  •  
  • It is better for the health of the soul to make one person good than “to sacrifice oneself for all humanity.”
  •  
  • The purer the eye of her attention, the more power the soul finds within herself. Strive, then, constantly to purify the eye of your attention until it becomes utterly simple and direct.
  •  
  • Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old by giving up their ideals.
  •  
  • If we are dependent on each other for the order that makes life possible, we are even more dependent on each other for the kind of disorder that makes life human.
  •  
  • “Whether somebody is praising you or blaming you, renounce your feelings for either. Only then will you find the highest. To go higher, have equal vision.”
  •  
  • It was when Lucifer first congratulated himself upon his angelic behavior that he became the tool of evil.
  •  
  • Those who do not grow, grow smaller.
  •  
  • In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes, for they in thee a thousand errors note. But ’tis my heart that loves what they despise.
  • “Forgiveness, human and divine, looks forward. It is the means whereby the future can be different from the past. It is not the same as resignation or acceptance, because of this hope; it believes things can change.” -John Lampen
  •  
  • Namaste – the God in me salutes the God in you.
  •  
  • If you insist you’re right long enough, you’ll be wrong.
  •  
  • Sincerity is, in its origin, a power of the mind that can exist under any conditions of life. All that is needed is a basic discrimination between what is actually within one’s power and what is not.
  •  
  • I believe we should die with decency so that at least decency will survive.
  •  
  • Make your ideas, ideals. Live into your thoughts. Manifest them. Pay attention to your inner world.
  •  
  • Always be on sentry-duty for the chance to do a good deed.
  •  
  • Beware of mirages. Do not run or fly away in order to get free; rather dig in the narrow place which has been given you; you will find God there and everything, God does not float on your horizon, he sleeps in your substance. Vanity runs, Love digs. If you fly away from yourself, your prison will run with you and will close in because of the wind of your flight; if you go deep down into yourself, it will disappear in paradise.” -Gustave Thibon
  •  
  • “Time is the beauty of the road being long.” -J. Popper, Blues Traveler, song: “Just Wait”
  •  
  • Those who are compassionate when they should be stern end up being stern when they should be compassionate.
  •  
  • The fulfillment of every individual vocation demands not only renouncement of what is bad in itself, but also of all the precise goods that are not willed for us by God in our particular calling.
  •  
  • If I am not for myself, who will be? But if I am only for myself, what am I?
  • To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance. -Oscar Wilde
  •  
  • Truth cannot be found in appearances.
  •  
  • When a baby is born a mother is born, too. At birth, and for months thereafter, her needs for contact exceed those of the infant.
  •  
  • When the focus is shifted from the outer to the inner, true contentment arises. True Love is found.
  •  
  • The price you must pay for your own liberation through another’s sacrifice is that you in turn must be willing to liberate in the same way, irrespective of the consequences to yourself.
  •  
  • Our life is like a tapestry. And by the tapestry’s nature, it demands that we work on it from the back. In a blind. The Sabbath is a reminder that one day in seven, or one hour in seven, we should step back and turn our tapestry over so we can see the larger pattern of who we are, the implications of our efforts, and the world wherein we work.
  •  
  • Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.
  •  
  • Romantic love is often a case of mistaken identity.
  •  
  • What I’ve come to cherish I’ve come to slowly, usually blindly, not seeing it for some time…
  • There is nobody from whom you cannot learn. Before God, who speaks through all people, you are always in the bottom class of nursery school.
  •  
  • Love is an irresistible desire to be irresitably desired. -attributed to Robert Frost
  •  
  • We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will.
  •  
  • Most of humanity’s grievous suffering is brought about by our desire for what is unnecessary.
  •  
  • Love your enemies in case your friends turn out to be a bunch of bastards. -R.A.Dickson
  •  
  • Seeing is believing but feeling is the truth.
  • Once you tell somebody the way that you feel, you can feel it beginning to heal.
  •  
  • In an encounter with Divine Reality we do not hear a voice but acquire one – and the voice we acquire is our own.
  •  
  • The heart has its reasons, which reason cannot understand.
  •  
  • Leave a good name behind, in case you return.

After-Death Communication with my Son

Jan. 18-19 2014, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing)

Marti with Dr. Allan Botkin, The Center for Grief and Traumatic Loss, Lincolnshire IL:

Dr. Botkin developed this method working with veterans for 25 years. EMDR leads the brain to activity like what we do in REM sleep at night, processing experiences. It worked very fast with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but incidentely he discovered the vets were also seeming to be in actual contact with the people they had trauma with. He went on to work with this phenomena as well as PTSD. For more details see his book: Induced After Death Communication,2005, Hampton Roads Publishing Co., Inc., Charlottsville VA.

Jan. 19th. After paperwork and a description of the process, we began. Dr. B had said that usually people don’t have an experience of the presence of their non-physical loved one until the second session. We would start with healing some strong emotion we have about them. The usual emotions are anger, guilt, or sadness. He could see sadness in my eyes from the moment I walked in, and I knew this was true.

He told me we would do the eye movement while I feel my great sadness.

We did this. I was immediately sobbing while I followed his quick moving lead with my eyes, without moving my head. When he was done, he told me to close my eyes and experience whatever comes.

I felt myself holding my firstborn newborn little son in my arms. I felt such immense love and awe for him! But I was also aware in the present moment of my ambivalence about motherhood. I was still crying (here in the office). He then asked me to go back into that image and stay with it as we did the eye exercise again. I did this. The past and future around the scene dissolved so that there was nothing but that moment, and then it was perfect joy! Taking away the judgments about where this event was going, or whether it was the right or wrong path for my life, the moment of holding my newborn was pure joy.

Then he asked me to feel myself holding the baby in my arms now while we did the eye movement again. Afterwards, closing my eyes,

I saw my son Tom’s (adult) head He said to me, ”Mom, relax!” Then something like “Just be here, now. Just be present. You’ll never make any progress healing your back until you can learn to do nothing!” I felt him present with me, smiling. His voice sounded just like him, very deep.

Then I saw him pulling himself swiftly upward, rising up by some intention and volition inside himself. He went into an area of great light, seemed to fill himself up with energy and light and love and enthusiasm from this source, and then descended back with me. He said he can do this any time he wants to, any time he needs to. It’s like filling his gas tank. And he can give this energy away to others, too. He does it for me and for others at times.

Then suddenly he said, “Mom, I gotta go. So long! “ And he jumped on a broomstick and flew off waving to me and laughing. Then I saw he had on a witch’s hat. He waved and called back, “Tell Anne Marie!”

This was just so funny! I couldn’t stop laughing. It was so like him to be playful and silly. Plus Anne has a special interest and soft spot in her heart for witches, so his choice of this costume was particularly meaningful, and added evidence that it was really Tom.

After Saturday’s session, back home, I continued to ask Tom a few questions out loud and received answers:
  • I asked him how Aaron, his stepson was doing. He described Aaron’s situation. I knew he’d joined the army for 8 years, after having been a complete wimp, weakling, spoiled teenager who failed to finish high school for lack of effort. Tom said the army, of course, had made him physically strong but Aaron had not expected it to be as emotionally hard as it is. It’s many times felt too much for him Tom helps him, (without A’s awareness), and A is making it. Sometimes A thinks about Tom with embarrassment because Tom was a Quaker and pacifist, but often with gratitude for Tom’s love and example
  • I asked him if he wants me to continue being in touch with the high school students he taught or those who were in his robotics club. He said, “If they respond to you, continue to stay in touch with them (if you want; if you enjoy it.)
  • I asked him about his cat, Julius, who’s getting really old and ailing. He said Julius and my other cat, Deuce, will both stay with me as long as I want them. (within some normal limits of cat life.) i.e.there’s no reason now to worry about them or to consider “putting them down.”
  • I asked him if he knows what his dad is doing now. (my first husband, who passed away in 1987.) He said he honestly doesn’t know. When son Tom first passed over, his dad was there to help him; his dad showed up in dreams at the beginning of his diagnosis and a few nights before he died. But since Tom has adjusted, he hasn’t seen his dad at all. This is interesting to me because a psychic/medium had told me various things about people with whom I was close who passed on, but she could not find anything about what Tom Sr. is doing. Perhaps he’s taken on a new form?

2nd session, Sunday morning, 1/19,2014

During the night I had thought about what I might want to do Sunday morning with Dr. Botkin. Now I’d already seen Tom and felt at great peace about him. Was there more inside me with strong emotion that I’d like to heal? What more? I thought perhaps I’d work on my relation with my Dad as I still have lots of anger toward him.

But when I said this to Dr. B, he said it would not be good to start a whole new large topic because we might not get it finished. He only works here on weekends and so we’d have to wait to finish the work until he could schedule me in.

He asked if there are any memories around son Tom’s death that are still painful. I said yes, – the last couple weeks while we waited for surgery, when he was so terribly thin and weak, and we were both so scared, he was receiving 3 pints of blood every third day just to stay alive. So Dr. B asked me to stay with that memory while he led me in the eye movement.

I felt like the wand he uses for the eye movements was like a saltshaker, somehow breaking up the image, shaking it away, shaking the image into pieces and tossing it aside. It erased the image and put the past into the past, allowing me to be present with Tom now. The memory lost its power and freed me to be present.

I was experiencing how images in our memories build up over time, as we put more and more emotion on the images, and value judgments, it’s like building a snowman bigger and bigger. The eye movements seem to loosen the buildup and allow the memory to be just one moment in the flow of time.

Dr. B and I talked. Then he asked if there was any other memory around Tom that made me sad. I shared a feeling of guilt I had. This was at the time when his four friends from the Blackfoot Lodge came to do a prayer ceremony around him. I was in the room for it. As they entered one said “What a beautiful person Tom is. You’ve done a good job as a mother.” My response was one I often gave in that situation: “Yes. And yet I never wanted to be a mother!” I had often said this. My kids knew I loved them but also knew that I hadn’t wanted to be a mother and the loss of my career hurt me deeply. But his friends were a bit shocked and later talked with him about it and then he talked with me. I had never thought about the impact these words might have on him. I apologized then but have continued to feel really guilty and yet confused about this. When people would tell me what a good mother I’ve been, a part of me wanted to protect that other part of me that had had to be left behind, to still honor it. I could not think of what I could have said that would have felt right, but I do feel bad about it.

So Dr. B had me hold that memory while we did the eye exercise.

I saw Tom standing in front of me pouring drops of warm oil on my head and down over my whole body, drop quickly following drop. It felt wonderful! But all was silent; he didn’t speak. I understood the silence. He was saying through silence that in that situation when his friends were in the room, I could have said nothing in response to their words. He was also telling me that he did not know what words would have worked to appropriately honor the two contrary feelings I had: loving my children and not wanting to spend my life mothering. In general, Tom did not know the adequate words any better than me. “But all that is past tense,” he did say. Now I don’t have to do much mothering (I still have Anne and her children, who are a joy to me, plus stepdaughters). I have greater freedom now to do with my time what I want.” He did not know the solution to the dilemma but was pouring loving and healing balm over me.

I shared this with Dr. B.and we talked a bit. I told him that the wand felt like a brush, brushing away the image from my brain and leaving this beautiful image and physical sensation of Tom pouring warm drops of oil all over my body.

Dr. B commented that many people assume that after death the departed are suddenly completely enlightened and know everything. The experiences of his clients seem to say otherwise: that they have a perspective larger than ours, may know or understand more, but they’re still learning, too. Some say they’re “in classes”.

Dr. B asked again if there were any more memories around Tom I’d like to let go of. I quickly felt aware of my body speaking; my body remembers the exhaustion of his care. Fifteen years earlier I had cared for Tom Forsythe, my second husband, when he was completely paralyzed from a stroke. That had almost killed me! But now I was age 65 and I felt my age; it took all the energy I could muster to stand on my feet and walk back and forth kitchen to bedroom preparing his meds and food and sanitizing everything and staying up when tired. Then shopping, taking him to doctors and hospitals, etc I could barely do it, and I had very little energy left to offer Tom emotionally. I tried to get others to come and counsel him or be with him; some came but many didn’t realize how fast he was deteriorating. Of course, I didn’t know either how close we were to the end.

I also mentioned I feel the loss of time. Each time a loved one has died in my life it has taken years of my time to get rid of all their possessions! I haven’t finished with my son’s yet after four years. I do feel sadness over this loss of energy and time.

Dr. B had me hold my awareness with this feeling of loss while he led me in the eye exercise. After, as always, he told me to close my eyes and be aware of whatever happens.

Here I had a strong experience that was a surprise. I felt Tom filling my body up with light and energy, with life and warmth. It just kept coming in, like filling a gas tank, like he had shown yesterday that he could do for himself. Now he’s filling me up from The Source and I’m quickly feeling stronger and younger and healthier!

I didn’t want to come out of this at all. I was aware that at some point I’d have to leave the real experience and talk aboutit, make myself and my experience into an object to look at, leaving the real experience itself. I really did not want to do this! (To leave the experience). I also realized how much I do this – make myself and my life into an object to look at, rather than just BE. I felt so solid. I wondered if I could float off, but I immediately knew I couldn’t because I didn’t feel full of air but rather I felt really solid.

Dr. B asked me to bring my awareness back and with effort I pulled myself back to the room enough to speak but I still couldn’t get myself to open my eyes for a bit. This was an incredible experience and gift to me from Tom.

Then we talked, as we had to do. Finally Dr. B. asked if , without charging me, I’d be willing to do this one more time and ask Tom a question for him(for Dr.B). I said, “Sure”, and he gave me the question: To ask Tom what he’s exploring now.

So I asked the question and we began the eye movement. I began to get delightful images. First Tom said he’s trying to learn how to walk on clouds. I think he was being silly. I saw his foot go through one and he laughed and said it’s harder than it looks. Then I saw him playing with his friend Robert. Robert had been introduced to me through two completely separate mediums: an old friend of Tom’s, they say, and now the two do a lot together. Robert has a jazzy feel to him. Tom said he and Robert play around trying to exchange identities, and sometimes try being together at the same time in one identity.

Then they often travel around our world, seeing things they never saw. They have a particular interest in Thailand and southest Asia, but go other places, too. They esp. like to learn about the music and dance of other countries.(Tom loved both music and dancing in this life, played piano and trumpet, did contra dancing regularly) They like to hop when they travel just for the fun of it. They don’t hop on anything, just the action of hopping.

Then Tom appeared in a white gown looking like an angel, halo and all. He laughed and said, “It’s just for fun!” Then I saw a group of people nearby, also all dressed like angels “just for fun.” I realized they are, in fact, a choir! They enjoy music (Tom had a marvelous bass voice and loved to sing) and they’re experimenting. There are 18 of them and instead of our usual bass, tenor, alto, and soprano categories, they each have their own unique comfortable voice level and are attempting to sing together, each of the 18 staying true to their own true pitch. Sometimes they try slow flowing songs and sometimes faster, fun songs or sounds.

Lastly, Tom said that “people” both here in this/my world and in his are working together on a Quantum Physics kind of effort. They’re trying to understand how consciousness develops into “matter”, as we call it, and then trying to figure out how to describe this in words. “The smallest level of existence is also a consciousness! It’s awesome,” he said. “I feel such respect for these tiniest levels of consciousness, and how they form into larger cooperations and ever more complex entities.” (Tom was a high school physics teacher, so this would interest him.)

Tom indicated that this was enough to share for now. We both seemed to sense that this had been a good and adequate sharing and I thanked him. I brought my awareness back to the room and began to share with Dr. B., who found all this fascinating.

There were interesting things that Dr. B shared with me. He and his colleagues watch for information that is shared more than once by non-bodied presences. For instance, people sometimes ask, Do the dead “eat”? People frequently see picnics; one response was “We have a banquet every night.” But none of his clients has actually seen a dead person eating. Tom had shown us that he can “fill himself up like filling a gas tank when he needs to,” by returning into this light area. Perhaps eating for them has more to do with socializing.
He said non-bodied people often are seen golfing or fishing. Though he never heard of seeing a fish be caught, killed, cleaned, and eaten. He told his sister about the golfing and she said “But in heaven everything’s perfect. You’d get a hole-in-one all the time and what fun would that be?” We observed that these experiences don’t show people as being suddenly perfect and completely enlightened. People in this world of spirit seem to be learning, growing, being creative. So perhaps they don’t get a hole-in-one all the time!
Dr. B. said one client was communicating with someone who had killed herself. The deceased said she’s been in classes learning about suicide; she’d finished now and she teaches these kinds of classes.
Dr. B shared that some clients wonder if the dead can “watch” us anytime. He said that it’s clear from examples like Tom that they have their own activities going on and are not constantly pining to be with us. It seems that when we turn our attention to them or when we are in distress, they feel called to pay attention to us and they are immediately available with great compassion. But they are not hovering around with nothing to do, even if they loved us immensely. They’re enjoying their freedom and they have tasks, e.g. classes.
It seems to Dr. B and myself that there is no absolute knowledge. Even in the afterlife, people are learning and changing. When they’re in a classroom, it’s just like here – the teacher shares what’s known so far. At some time, teachers used to teach that the world was flat and the earth was the center of the universe and they saw this as “science.”. Now teachers teach other ideas as science, though these may change again, too. Probably the deceased know more than we know from their point of view, but it seems they’re still learning, trying to figure things out, growing in abilities and understanding, and being creative. They have the freedom of consciousness not burdened by the slow energies of “matter” or bodies, which even our science says is mostly empty space!
I felt greatly healed in my spirit, and I have a sense now of how I can communicate with Tom any time I want.

The Corral: Past Lives

An Unusual Cranial Sacral Treatment
With Nancy Paul, March 21, 2014
     Cranial Sacral Therapy is a gentle way of helping the body release whatever tensions or blockages it itself is trying to release. By feeling the various pulses in the body, the therapist senses where the body is trying to let go of restrictions and puts light pressure there to help the body’s own effort. Ultimately, the membranes and fluid surrounding the central nervous system from the head/cranium down to the bottom of the spine is the area most affected by this healing. A wide range of physical and emotional problems can be released through CST, allowing health to flow. I’ve been receiving this therapy from Nancy Paul for two years. She adds her own excellent intuitive skills plus training in the healing methods of Zero Balancing, a gentle touch therapy to clear energy blocks, and Reiki, a type of spiritual energy healing. Nany is also able to facilitate whatever is happening with the spirit as the body releases. I often talk as she quietly works.
The thoughts going on in my mind this March day were a hodgepodge. I had just read a short review of a new book by Eugene Gendlin on using the body to interpret dreams. A recent discussion with a friend had also revealed that we both still felt unfinished with some old conflicts in our lives and unclear about how to resolve these in our hearts. Upon arrival at the CST office, Nancy shared briefly that she’s finishing a book by Brian Weiss, well-known past life regressionist. All of these coincidences seemed to set the stage for the unusual experience of this day.
     One factor you must know to understand my experience here is that much of my world-view is based on the writings of a personality who calls himself Seth, channeled through the psychic Jane Roberts. Seth’s unusual ideas on the nature of reality have made sense to me and matched my experience, resonating more than any other worldview. His concepts of what we call past lives, plus probable selves and aspects of our larger eternal identities, emerged here on this warm table in this dark quiet room with Nancy’s fine facilitation.
                                ****
      As I lay down comfortably on the warm table in the dark room, Nancy asked if there was anything particular on my mind that I wanted to explore while she did the bodywork. I shared about my conversation regarding unfinished conflicts, noting that some people seem to haunt my mind when business is incomplete.
At first I shared what I was experiencing, then I fell into silence. Appropriately, Nancy didn’t ask me to continue talking. She was very active with my body treatment, moving herself around as she sensed changes happening.
     Some of these people from the past who haunt my brain began to show up again. I saw myself with a giant eraser and tried to erase one of them to see what was behind. What would it feel like if this person were truly absent from my mind? Then I did the same with the others. This put me in a beautiful scene, but alone. These people were like markers that keep me in my life, in my identity, for better or for worse. Also my house, my possessions, and my many “projects” that feel so important, all the people positive or negative and the memories of all the experiences I’ve had positive or negative, were all like a fence, a corral, that enabled me to stay familiar to myself. Now, out here in this very large landscape all by myself, I still looked like myself though my back felt straight, my body slender. So even my physical handicap and characteristics are part of the corral! Are these optional? Here I experienced myself as it’s said the dead experience themselves once free of their bodies – at their best physically.
      The landscape was a wide-spread valley in front of me with a broad mountain range beyond. The sun was shining, the grass was green everywhere, it was all lovely, though unfamiliar to me having grown up in the Midwest, a familiar part of my personal corral.
      I notice being alone, but presently sense that someone is beside me. This seems to be an angel, wings and all. She lovingly takes my hand and we slowly begin to float upward. Still holding her hand all the time, I begin to sense how to move myself around a bit by my own intention. She leads me downward into the valley. It’s an interesting sensation but now I can’t see the sun. “It seems darker,” I say and so she brings me back to where we were. Then she leads me higher up and over the mountain ridge.
On the other side is an even larger view. Gorgeous, expansive. There are several little villages below, none that are familiar. In front of me the sun looks enormous, brighter than I’ve ever seen it though I can look straight at it. The Sun is beautiful, the scene is beautiful. My guide is still beside me.
      Eventually we rise up and move backwards over the mountain ridge again. I see my corral and slowly, softly, float down and lie flat on the ground in the middle of it. The posts of the corral are the people who hold my old identity fast. I realize a hammer can pound them flat into the ground. They may pop up part way and I can leave them there or pound them into the earth again to reduce their effect. Now knowing what it feels like without others defining me, my identity feels somewhat freer.
      Still lying flat, I’m aware of Nancy working gently on my body, helping it release tensions in different areas. Awareness begins to come of some of my past lives. These I’ve learned over time, some in dreams, a couple were dreams that led into waking awareness, one was encountered under hypnosis. I feel that I’m in the bodies of these other lives, one by one. They are experiencing lying on the table here being worked on. The men, in particular, find it odd and wonder “What’s going on?” But each one of them seems flexible and willing to have a positive experience of this.
      The wrestler, a short stocky, quiet, black-haired man whose life is particularly connected with mine, is particularly present. He’s surprised to find himself on this table with someone moving his body here and there, this way and that. I allow myself to feel his strong back, his largeness, though I can’t quite feel my arms as muscular and large as his. He doesn’t move as freely as I, but he allows himself to be moved some. I realize that because of me several of my other lives have body problems related to mine that are mysteries to them. He also has psychic experiences and vivid dreams and doesn’t tell anyone about this. He’s looking, waiting, for the right person (probably a woman) with whom he can share about these strange experiences that come to him. He’s a semi-professional wrestler, in addition to some other kind of work. He could be professional but chooses not to walk that path.
      Nancy does some energy work over my throat chakra (chakras are energy centers in the body). Immediately I’m aware of my life as a very large, quiet shy man in Iceland. I know the ending of his life after an accident, and because of Nancy’s work here his experience changes. He’d had to pay more attention to people after his accident, because he needed help. During this chakra energy work, he finds himself talking more. First he listens to what others say more attentively (he’s fixing fishing nets), then after listening awhile he begins to talk more and more, to his own surprise, and others find his thoughts helpful.
      I’m aware of a life as an actress in England or perhaps France, blond, in some rowdy time period, with four children. She finds this experience of lying on a table with someone working on her body unusual but not difficult. By practicing the profession of acting, she gained a lot of flexibility in personality and is not as defined by others as I seem to be.
      Then I feel myself as one of my Probable Selves. Seth says that no energy dies. When we make a difficult choice in this life, the energy that wanted to go the other way, does! This is an aspect of what we simply call “past lives” but a larger world view in which time doesn’t really exist, all things are actually happening at once and affect each other. Probable Selves are aspects similar to past lives, closely related to our own conscious experience, but moving along the path we think we didn’t take. One of my Probable Selves who is a university professor of literature here in the Midwest, same birth name, and we share the same history up to a point. It feels to me that she is here now and finds this cranial sacral experience especially helpful, having the exact same back problems in both lives.
      It has seemed clear to me that I have a future life as a dancer. Somehow her life follows mine, even though time is said to be an illusion. Wondering about her seems to open a door and suddenly she’s here on the table. Her back feels much more flexible than mine; bending forward and back over and over, slowly she moves her spine, vertebrae by vertebrae. I feel her flexibility in my own body. She loves to spread her legs and leap, jump, run. This feels so healing to me. She’s very aware and careful of her physical self because of all I’ve learned living in my difficult body.
      All this large experience with other lives gives greater flexibility to my own identity. It seems like I’ve experienced what the dead must experience – a larger sense of themselves. I realize what an enormous and varied amount of memories I have here within all these many lives. The memories of this particular life as Marti now feel more temporary, with less power.
      As this session ends, my back feels very different, more flexible than my body has been in ages. And my spirit feels more powerful, my voice even sounds different! The corral seems more illusory and less infuential. I can allow it to hold my current identity if I want, or if I’d like more freedom I can ignore or pound the corral posts out of sight. One really cannot function without some identity, to recognize ourselves to ourselves and for the sake of the plot we’re living forward with other characters. The corral posts offer me stability, a point of view, a location in this world, but they needn’t be a prison.