Broken Wide Open
The 1990s was the era of my great awakening, when my narrow world
broke wide open, affording me a much bigger picture of reality.
I can’t say that I was a follower up until that point. I tended to walk to
my own drumbeat. Having been drawn to the practice of hatha yoga, I
became a daily practitioner. And I turned to organic food before it was
popular. In 1974, I became vegetarian, making me a pariah in the time
of barbecue entertaining amidst the conviction that a meal of meat and
potatoes was the only type of meal that was complete. I also avoided
the medical system as much as possible in spite of, or perhaps because
of, my training as a nurse.
In the seventies, I had discovered the spiritual community of Findhorn
in Scotland and was fascinated by their story. I looked for all the
books I could find. The founders, Eileen and Peter Caddy and Dorothy
Maclean, were deeply spiritual people. Eileen guided the community
with her direct messages from God; Peter carried out the directives
channelled through Eileen; and Dorothy had a profound connection
to the nature spirits and the devas.
Perhaps I was ready then, as a person out of step with the mainstream,
to accept the next level of my esoteric knowledge.
My opening was when I took first-level Reiki with Doreen Chandler.
My attunement to the Reiki energy was an opening in itself, but what
really blew my mind was the book Doreen lent me called Bringers of
the Dawn by Barbara Marciniak. Barbara said it was a book channelled
by the Pleiadians, a group of enlightened beings who live in a cluster
of stars called the Seven Sisters. They want to help us discover how to
reach a new stage of evolution.
I was not shocked by this revelation that such alien races were out there
and that they were willing to assist us. Perhaps I knew this already, but
not at the conscious level. I had a knowing that everything these beings
said was true, and I found this new understanding immensely exciting.
Next, I went to a spirit guide workshop with Brenda Parker, and to
my great surprise, I saw my daughter Corey and my first cousin Olive,
whom I had known all my life, there. I had no idea that they had any
interest in the spirit world. After that, Olive and I teamed up to explore
this esoteric field together.
We were insatiable. We went on to explore many natural healing
modalities, from the better-known ones such as Reiki to the very
obscure and little-known axiatonal alignment, which, by a series of
coincidences, we saw being demonstrated and decided to learn as well.
We learned tapping, otherwise known as “emotional freedom technique,”
and the second and third level of Reiki, which now qualified us to be
called Reiki masters and to teach Reiki.
Olive and I were in step and in synch. We found metaphysical bookstores,
and since they were rare compared to the situation now, we would drive
many miles for a well-stocked store full of strange but true tales of other
worlds and other ideas that we had not been exposed to.
Next, we joined a group of like-minded people at the local Healing
Network, where we listened to great speakers and were given access
to information on more healing modalities to learn. They also had a
metaphysical lending library. It was a very heady time for us both.