“If you believe in love and acceptance, you cannot judge another for choosing fear and rejection. If you do, it means you are guilty of precisely what you are accusing others of.” — Alexander Loyd, Beyond Willpower
There were deeper emotional connections with those recent respiratory illnesses, too, no surprise. The thing that turned out to be the main issue was a major surprise, though. James Rolwing did a distance treatment for me, and he found something that confused both of us: that I was reacting to someone making a “bigoted statement,” and I’d had trouble dealing with the darkness in her and in myself. I don’t usually hang with bigoted people, so I couldn’t figure out who that might have been, but it made sense after a little consideration. I’d been reprocessing something that had happened over 30 years earlier, the incredibly nasty end of a relationship with someone who had been hugely important to me. Just a few days before I’d been reminded of that in a big way. The “bigoted statement” had to do with my sexuality and her rejection of that and pretty much everything else about me. She never spoke to me again and I never had any opportunity to resolve anything. Faced with love, she chose fear.
This seemed to get intertwined with the general climate of hatefulness and intolerance in this year of Him Who Must Not Be Named. I could not digest the poisons in the atmosphere. (Wait— the way that sentence came out mirrors my statement in Part I that “air felt irritating and threatening to my damaged tissues.” No wonder.) Until then I had thought I’d left the pain of that rejection behind, but it had more lessons in store for me.
It gets weirder. About six weeks later, the husband of the woman who had rejected me died after a shockingly quick illness, and I heard about it through mutual acquaintances. I can’t tell you much about either of them because I want to respect their family’s privacy, so I’ll have to describe the ensuing events in a very general way, but I think it’s an important story to pass on to you.
As I said, the extremely unpleasant event had happened over 30 years ago, and I hadn’t seen either the wife or the husband in the past few decades. I read the man’s obituary and the glowing tributes left by his friends and students, talked with my own husband about him, wrote some memories down myself, and found that I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I supposed that it was because I was worrying that something like that could happen to my husband, at any moment. But as this continued over a few days and nights, I began to wonder what was going on. The night of April 12, I was particularly agitated and barely slept, and he was constantly on my mind. The next morning, I had a polarity therapy appointment scheduled, and I snagged a photo of the deceased from Facebook and brought it along.
“This man I barely knew died and I can’t stop thinking about him and it’s got me really messed up,” I told the therapist, the very intuitive person I’ve mentioned to you in the past. She did her stuff, and at the end of the treatment, she took a deep breath and told me, “The reason you can’t stop thinking about him is that he’s present, and he’s trying to get through to you and you’re blocking him.” She continued with a question I’d never have expected. “Is it possible that he had feelings for you?”
Oh, my. Suddenly everything fell into place. “I wouldn’t have thought so,” I replied— and I still don’t— “but it’s what his wife believed.” I told the therapist a bit about what had happened between us. She gave the opinion that the rift was more about the wife’s attitudes than anything I had said or done. As we talked, I became inescapably aware of the presence of the gentleman in question. I couldn’t block him out anymore.
I still wanted to, though. The whole thing had come out of far left field and I didn’t know what to do with it. The rest of the day was busy wall to wall and I didn’t have a chance deal with him anyway. I felt pressured by his need to communicate with me and the mass of strong energy that was right up against me, and I figuratively clapped my hands over my ears and repeated, “La la la, I can’t hear anything!” As soon as I had a chance, I called Mendy Lou Blackburn, my psychic mentor, and asked for help.
During the day, I considered this earth-shattering development whenever I had a moment, and got more comfortable with it. This was not an evil entity, after all; it was just a guy, someone I had known to be a very decent and highly intelligent person. I could easily handle visiting with him. And of course he’d only been deceased for about a week and a half, so I couldn’t expect him to have much control over his “volume level” or understanding of the etiquette of spirit contacts.
When I went to bed and had time and quiet, I opened a conversation. I was feeling hostile, surprisingly so, and since one cannot lie or hide emotions in this situation, I acknowledged that and went from there. I told him that I was perfectly willing to talk with him, but that my mental and physical integrity had to be respected. I heard, “I’m sorry.” I tried to communicate further but fell asleep.
The next morning, the sense of pressure and invasion was gone, and I felt normal all day, no longer agitated and obsessive. Mendy Lou had time available in the evening, and as soon as I arrived, the gentleman made himself apparent. I want to make it clear that I don’t mean just that Mendy Lou reported messages from him, but that he was decidedly right there in the space with us, as impossible to ignore as if he’d still been physical. He was powerfully, intensely present as a mass of warm, vibrant energy, mostly at my right side. I was feeling him inside my hands as well, but I wasn’t discomfited by it, as by that time he seemed familiar and friendly and he wasn’t trying to force the interaction on me.
Mendy and I spent about three hours with him, during which he stayed steadily focused in the room. I was amazed at how long he was able to keep up the clear contact, as well as how intensely he came through, since he was so new at this business of being a disembodied spirit. (Did he have help? We didn’t perceive anyone else in the background.) We were able to talk through a lot of history, and he confirmed that the breakup hadn’t been my fault. It was a relief to know that and to be able to explain my actions to him. It turned out that the reason he had contacted me was that he’d always felt bad about the way things had ended between him and his wife and my husband and me. He’d liked both Bob and me, and would have preferred to stay friends with us, but his wife wouldn’t allow it. He transmitted a lot of heavy and troubling emotional content, which, again, I can’t share because of privacy concerns. I will say, though, that he expressed a great deal of frustration, and we wondered if that might have contributed to his illness.
I can tell you that beyond all else he was worried about his distraught wife and was hoping that I might be able to help him get through to her, or to comfort her in some way. That must have been why he’d clamored for my attention so. He had tried to communicate with her but hadn’t been successful, something we hear often from those who have recently passed. I was very concerned for her welfare too, and could hardly begin to imagine how much pain she must be in. But even assuming that I could contact her at all, I could only have been a further disturbing influence. As tempting as it was to try, I had to decline.
It was beyond astonishing that, first, we had been important enough to this man that he made an intensive effort to contact me, and second, that he was able to find me. Why did he even consider looking for me? I didn’t do any kind of psychic work back when he knew me. Perhaps we have deeper connections that consciously I know nothing about. Mendy Lou kept telling me that none of this was my responsibility, that I had no obligation to help. I agreed, but the fact that it happened at all must mean that I am involved, and I have been wondering if I acquitted myself properly and adequately.
It was heartening a few days ago when one of my elderly patients told me about a similar situation, but one involving someone much more central to her, her brother. The brother had married a woman who was very concerned to keep him all to herself and away from family members who for some reason she thought were unacceptable. He went along with this and didn’t speak to his sister for decades. “It was all jealousy,” said my patient. The brother passed on, and at that point he did come to talk with her. They had a good conversation, “talking without words,” she told me, and they worked out their differences. What a wonderful relief that was for her, and probably for him too.
My own experience is still working its way through my psyche, and I don’t think I’ll be done with it for a while. Some things are clear to me, though. As I’ve written before*, it’s best to get right while you can with everyone, if at all possible, while you are alive. But there is always hope, always another chance. And if we can put aside fear, there is always love.
*https://elenedom.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/get-right-while-you-can/
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