A WAY: TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION
An informational meeting about Transcendental Meditation had attracted me when it was mentioned at the New Age Foundation meeting and so I attended the hour-long introduction. Mostly it gave me a list of the good things it could do for me in several areas: health related, mental, physical and spiritual. I was attracted to what I felt was related to “personal growth” and the fact that it did not require following a belief system appealed to me, but I was distracted by the number of resources they were pushing (teaching centers, schools, alternative health centers and supplements, solar panels, architecture, publishing, radio/television, and home financing companies)—too much and most of it outside my area of interest.

I was overwhelmed and when the meeting ended, I had decided it was not what I was looking for and stood to leave. About then, an ex-husband walked up to me (I hadn’t known he would be there) and after updating each other, he took me to meet a friend of his, Marion, a psychic medium and very friendly. Before I left, I had scheduled an appointment to meet with her about my personal situation (married to a sado-masochist) and to ask her advice on my journey ahead. It couldn’t hurt, I thought, and it was another way to seek my answers.

Here again this part of my life held more:
tidal waves, oceans, and moonlight
(traumatic events, deep waters, and small points of light in the darkness)

TIDAL WAVES—
—raped
(escaped through a second-story window landing on a bush that kept me from serious injury from the fall)
—public humiliation after I confessed to
an adulterous affair (I didn’t know my church-going seducer was married)
—”friends” were drug users and the crowd was
really rough puting me in harm’s way several times
(I never participated in the drugs as designated driver)
—raped by drugged “friend”
(he was extremely sorry when he came ouf of his drugged state and realized what he had done)
—best friend committed suicide

NEXT—PSYCHIC PHENOMENON: When I met with Marion, I was struck by her sincerity. I had always been taught that all psychics were frauds and scammers. She seemed genuinely concerned about my situation and urged me to come back and meet with her again to work through some of the darkness in my aura. I didn’t even know what an “aura” was, but I was willing to investigate this “way” a little further.

After several visits, I felt like we were friends and so, when she encouraged me to pursue my own psychic abilities, I thought it might be the ”way” I had been searching for all my life—within myself all the time. She was willing to help me explore my “gift,” so we started getting together and I started discovering I could “know” things about people I had never met just by meeting them. I was surprised by my accuracy and I knew I wasn’t scamming anyone, so it seemed I had found my “way” and I was willing to look a little deeper.

ANOTHER WAY: was brought to me and I pursued it with great excitement—horoscopes. My studies used my analytical skills, math, and some science, too! After all, the tides of the ocean are impacted by the pull of the moon, so why wouldn’t it be logical to believe that the placement of planets in the solar system could impact human beings by their gravitational pull? I bought a lot of books and tools to improve the accuracy of my horoscopes. Horoscopes and psychic readings were so exciting and the accuracy blew my mind almost as much as it did those who consulted with me.

In this phase, I observed what was called “psychic surgery” (only from a distance, so I am not knowledgeable in that area), “house cleansings,” “spirit communications” all seemed to confirm in my mind that there was definitely another plane of existence, an unseen power of life, forces of darkness and light, and much that could not be explained away very easily. I wanted to know more – I wanted to experience more – I wanted to explore more.

THEN, MAJOR TRAGEDY: my best friend who lived across the street on our little cul-de-sac committed suicide. She and her husband had been at our house for parties on occasion and she and I spoke often—in fact, she called me the day she died, but I was too busy to talk and told her I would call her later . . . but later didn’t come for us. She was troubled and took multiple doses of Valium (different doctors did not know she was using them, so she had multiple prescriptions). The horror of it and the depth of the impact on me and my neighbors was major. It struck us that it could have been any one of us – we all thought she was happy or at least okay in general, so could I be smiling one day and end my life the next day and no one would know I was going to do it—back to realizing that no one cared enough to really know me again or, for that matter, any of us!

Some time after her death, her husband and I got involved as we were comforting each other and trying to deal with it all. And that is one of the major pieces that led to where my “final” solution became my “only” answer to a life with too many “tidal waves.”

MOONLIGHT—
Love . . . or what I thought was love—
Success . . . or what others said was success—
Career achievements . . . or what others applauded—
Personal growth . . . or did helping others count—
Seeking the way . . . or did it matter any more—

From darkness to light . . . to darkness . . . to light . . . to more tidal waves and more oceans until . . .