In 1979, I was what I thought of as a middle class American housewife living in Lubbock, Texas. I was married and had two children; a boy, 6, and a girl, 11. I was a member of an Episcopal Church, president of the women of the church, secretary of the diocese and Camp Fire leader for my daughter’s troop. I appeared to be happily married. My husband was a firefighter and had an automotive garage where he worked on his days off from the fire department. He worked approximately 100 hours a week.
My parents lived near me. I checked on my mother daily and went by to do her hair twice a week. My father and I have never been close. On March 9, 1979, my mother died of a heart attack. Within eight weeks, my father brought home a woman from a bar and moved her into what I considered to be my mother’s house.
The same day of my mother’s death the priest of our parish and his wife moved to Oklahoma City, OK. I had been close friends of both. When they heard of my mother’s death they offered to return to Lubbock, but I could not accept their inconveniencing themselves for me in that way when they were in the middle of a move.
The day of my mother’s funeral, my father insisted that my sister-in-law and I clear out my mother’s personal belongings and give them to his sisters who were in town for the funeral. When we reached the bottom of her lingerie drawer, there was a long-stemmed red rose that I had sent her years before on my birthday. The rose, the vase and the card were wrapped in a great deal of aluminum foil to protect them and a card was attached to the outside that read, “Receiving this rose fulfilled a lifetime fantasy.”
The evening of the day of the funeral, my husband expected me to go out to eat with his family and to drive his sisters-in-law to our home and entertain them while he took his brothers to his shop to show them some new equipment. This act of betrayal of my feelings of grief and loss caused a severe break in my feelings toward him and my commitment to the marriage.
The next week I received a letter from Ed, the priest of our parish. He and I had worked closely together at the church for three years in a professional capacity. His letter was meant to support me spiritually to deal with my mother’s death. I was so deep in grief and so distraught by my husband’s insensitivity, it took me a while to respond. When I did respond, he began to write to me on a regular basis. We exchanged letters over a period of six months and realized gradually that we were in love with each other. He got a divorce shortly after arriving in Oklahoma City and went back into geology, which is what he did before becoming a priest. He continued to work as an unpaid priest to substitute when other priests were on vacation.
When my husband discovered that I was considering leaving him he was panicked and attempted to get three psychologists to agree I was mentally unstable so he could have me temporarily committed to a hospital while he tried to convince me to stay with him. I did not know the law in Texas allowed a husband this power over a wife. When we visited the psychologists, I thought we were interviewing them to find one we felt comfortable with as a marriage counselor. Only when the third one turned to my husband and said, “Mr. King, I think she is the sanest person to ever walk through my door” did I realize I was in a sanity hearing. This only reinforced my desire to flee my marriage.
In November of 1979, Ed invited me and my children to move to Oklahoma City to be with him. I divorced my husband, then the children and I moved to Oklahoma on November 9, 1979, exactly eight months after my Mother’s death. Ed and I were to be married in two weeks. On the fourth night of our being together he died of a heart attack in our bed after we had made love.
The next day I received a call from the Bishop of Oklahoma who notified me I would not be welcome at the funeral and that I was excommunicated from taking communion in the Episcopal Church. I received the same message from the Bishop of West Texas. I was devastated. (Only much later did I realize it was God’s way of getting me to go directly to God without an intermediary). The next day my ex-husband came to Oklahoma City to take the children back to Texas to live with him. He attempted to get me to agree to return to him and our life together. I had not taken much money from the marriage, knowing that Ed was going to take care of the children and me, so I was not in a financial or emotional position to keep the children with me. I felt they would be better off returning to the home, school and friends they knew while I figured out what to do next.
For days I sat and looked out the window of our condo and tried to figure out, “Who am I?” I tried to write, to clear my mind, to make my mind have sequential thoughts. I tried to examine “Who am I?” on paper and in my heart. If I was no longer my mother’s daughter because she was dead, who was I? If my father did not want or need to relate to me, because he had a new family, who was I? If my friends had abandoned me, I had no job, no position in the community or church, who was I? If I was not John’s wife, because I chose to leave, and I was not there to mother my children, then, who was I? If I was not Ed’s lover, because he was dead, who was I? Was I anyone other than the roles I played for other people? Was this black void the answer to not playing roles? I sat in a rocking chair with a pencil and paper on my lap and wrote: “I AM…? I AM….? I AM…? I AM…? I AM…? I AM . . .?” I was unable to come up with a description of what was left when all the roles were removed. I did not at all understand the message of what I was saying to myself on the paper, or the enormity of the message coming from my soul: “When all else is stripped away, the I AM, which equals God Presence, remains. Before and after all else, we are God playing roles as Humans.”
After a few weeks I had to go to work and all I knew how to do was to be a bank teller. I quickly realized I could not support myself on a bank teller’s salary. I had read one book on self-actualization which suggested, “Fake it ‘til you make it.” So I purchased three banker’s suits on credit and began to see myself as management. Within a very short time I was promoted to assistant head teller and soon after that was invited by the University of Oklahoma to teach bank teller security all over the state. This was God’s way of getting me used to talking in front of groups of people, by giving me a way to talk about something I already knew, so I lost my fear of talking in front of people since I would later be expected to talk about metaphysical subjects.
I was then offered an even higher position with a Savings and Loan Association as a bank consultant to create a teller training program for their tellers. This was during the time period when Savings and Loans were becoming banks. Our verbal agreement was that they would hire me as a consultant and then when I created the program they would hire me as an employee to train all the tellers in all 28 of their branches. The day I gave them the program they let me go, thanking me for my work and letting me know that one of their officers could now do the training.
Three years after my mom and Ed’s death, I was again devastated. As divine timing would have it, a man I had been seeing periodically when he traveled through Oklahoma called from California and invited me to fly to California to go on a ten day sailing trip with him on his 35 foot sail boat. I had never been sailing and, feeling lost and without direction, I agreed to go. When I arrived it was August 1982 and the air-conditioning in the plane had quit working. I arrived exhausted and soaking wet from perspiration. I was taken to a dive shop where I was to be fitted with a wet suit and diving equipment. The suit was still damp from the previous user and my body was damp and clammy from sweating in the airplane. The suit was built for a fourteen year old boy with no tush, which obviously was not my body dimension. I struggled into it partially and waddled out into the showroom with the suit hanging down below my crotch at least 12 inches. My intention was to show the owner that the suit didn’t fit. He was oriental and spoke maybe the only English word he knew, “Perfect.” There was no way in hell it was perfect, but I didn’t have the strength to argue.
I was not naïve enough to think there wasn’t going to be sex involved in my visit, but I did expect to get to take a shower and a nap first. That did not happen. My host had me across the bed as soon as we entered his home. Laying there watching the clock register his six minute recovery time, I was scared, angry and feeling helpless and hopeless. I didn’t know it was humanly possible for a man to recover an erection so quickly. I immediately regretted taking him up on his offer of a “free” vacation. He was Jewish and had survived a German prison camp and I wondered if that was what caused him to be so driven to have sex so repetitiously.
The next day aboard the boat I became seasick. My host had assured me he could sail the boat by himself. He yelled at me all day, “Move this, do this, duck!” I was so sick, angry and hurt I could not even speak. He then anchored and cooked Hungarian goulash. After ten days of being verbally and sexually attacked and sea sick I put on the wet suit, the skin diving gear, all except putting the air intake in my mouth, and jumped into the Pacific to kill myself. I figured I didn’t have to worry about going to hell, I was already there. I knew for sure I had truly pissed God off. A large boat had anchored beside us during the night and the men on deck noticed that the right kind of air bubbles were not coming up around where I had jumped in. One of the men jumped in and rescued me.
When I finally got back to Oklahoma City I noticed a book on my coffee table that I had bought in Texas to read aloud to Ed in the moving van on the way to Oklahoma. The name of the book is ILLUSIONS by Richard Bach. On the back cover of the book it says, “Here is a test to find whether your mission on Earth is finished. If you’re alive, it isn’t.”
I broke down and started to laugh and cry at the same time and said to God, “If you’ve got a mission for me in this life you need to tell me. I’ll go anywhere, do anything, say anything you want if you will just talk to me.” No big booming Charlston Heston- kind- of- voice, which I had been expecting, said anything. Even though I had been a Christian since the age of six and always involved in Church as an adult I had never completely turned my life over to God for fear of having to go to Africa to be a missionary.
I went to a Walden’s bookstore looking for a book on how to find your life purpose. Being a good Christian, albeit an excommunicated one, I knew better than to go close to the occult section of the bookstore; but that day I was so depressed I walked past the occult section. When I did, a book was thrown off the shelf in front of me. Astonished, I picked it up off the floor. The name of the book was PSYCHIC ENERGY by Joseph Weed. The book was printed on newsprint and was not attractive. Being a Libra, I don’t do ugly and being afraid of anything psychic I put the book back on the shelf and went back to psychology, self-help and religion where I thought my help should come from. There was no book at that time on how to find one’s life purpose. Even more depressed I started back out of the bookstore. As I passed the same shelf where I had returned the PSYCHIC ENERGY book I noticed that the book now had a glowing white light moving around it. It really freaked me out. Things did not light up in my reality at that time. I am a very pragmatic person and I couldn’t deny that something strange was happening so I bought the book.
On the way home I made a bargain with God that I would do what I used to do with the Bible: ask a question, close my eyes, open to a page, put my finger down, open my eyes and accept the message my finger landed on as a message from God in answer to my question. I did this as soon as I arrived home. The page I opened to, with my eyes closed, was a page describing a meditation to do to receive inspired writing from one’s soul.
I accepted that this had to be a response from God since what I was asking for was direct contact with God or my soul to try to find out why I’m here. I did everything as it was described in the book, afraid to get this wrong. I took a shower to symbolically cleanse my aura even though I didn’t know what an aura was. I took the phone off the hook so I wouldn’t be disturbed and lit a white candle. I sat on the couch with my spine straight, wearing a loose fitting robe with my feet on the floor and pen and paper on my lap.
I began to breathe and count as was described in the book.
I took a deep breath and counted internally, one, one, one, and exhaled. I took another deep breath and internally counted two, two, two , and exhaled. I took another deep breath and counted internally three, three, three, and exhaled. I began to internally count backward from ten to one. My left brain was going nuts saying, “This is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done. For God’s sake put the phone on the hook and get a job.” I refused and thought, “No, I’ve tried all that and it didn’t work. I’m going to sit here until God says something to me.” I just continued to breathe and count as was directed. After a short time, from the right side of my head there were words, not audible words, not a voice, just words like a separate thought form from the argument my left brain was still giving me. The words were, “Through this pen will come the words you need…” I waited thinking my hand was going to write by itself. The words repeated themselves several times before my impatience caused me to loudly say, “What?”
The reaction was like a record skipping a beat. There were five more words. I realized that I should write what was there. As I wrote there would be more words. Seven legal-sized pages later the words stopped. I reread what had been written. Basically it was God asking me what I wanted to do now and where I wanted to be and that I would find that God’s will for my life would very closely parallel my own heart’s desire. The message also suggested that I should try the meditation for 30 days before giving up as well as to write out my heart’s desires.
Since there were now two streams of thought in my head I wondered if I had become schizophrenic. I had no one I could talk to about what was happening. All my friends had turned against me when I ran away with the priest and I knew no one else who meditated or expected to hear directly from God. As directed in the writing I wrote a list of what I wanted to do:
I want to do something creative.
I want to work from home in case my children want to come to live with me.
I want to do something that helps people to communicate (this seemed to me to be the biggest problem in the World)
I want to do something I can’t be fired from.
I want to teach adults something they really want to learn.
I want to help people to self-actualize. (I had read the one book about self-actualization and thought it would be great if everyone became all they were capable of being. Actually, I was trying to impress God, if this was in fact God that I was communicating with, that I knew such a big word.)
I went to bed and slept soundly. The next morning I once again questioned my sanity. How could I be sane and have two separate thought forms happening in my mind? I thought maybe I had made up the whole thing, but I knew I would not set myself up to do anything for 30 days, so I decided to try the meditation again. I did the same ritual of taking a shower, taking the phone off the hook, lighting the white candle, sitting on the couch with pen and paper on my lap. I didn’t even get counted down the second day before the words began to appear. Basically the message was that I was now going to be an artist. I immediately began to argue and to explain to God that this could not be my mission because I didn’t have any education in art or any known talent. I kept explaining to God, “You’ve got the wrong person.” I explained that by “creative” I had meant “not boring” that I didn’t want to spend my days counting other people’s money or doing some repetitive action like working in a factory. The message continued as if I weren’t arguing for my limitations. I was to purchase watercolors, calligraphy pens and 8 ½ by 11 parchment paper in various colors then I was to paint greeting cards and market them. I had $105.00 period in the world and knew nothing about painting or marketing. I had taken six nights of calligraphy lessons while I was still living in Texas. The name of the greeting card company was to be “bj originals, inc.” I was instructed that it was to be all in lower case. The cards were to sell for $2.00 each. The paper was to be folded into thirds. I was appalled, disbelieving and frightened.
I went to an office supply store and purchased a children’s set of school watercolors and the parchment paper. The first time I sat down to attempt to paint, a flower with a butterfly suspended over it came out of the brush. I was fascinated watching myself do something I didn’t know how to do. The messages that were to be in the cards were given to me in the meditation. I made as many cards as I had paper for.
A few days later I had a call from a man who I had met at a Methodist singles Sunday school who invited me to go to a psychic fair with him the next day. I had received an invitation from an ex-lover I hadn’t seen in over a year who had invited me to fly to Houston to spend some time to figure out what I wanted to do now that I was unemployed. I had accepted and was flying out on Saturday afternoon. I explained to the man who had invited me to the psychic fair that I didn’t want to have anything to do with anything psychic, that psychics were strange little old gray-haired ladies who wore shawls and long dangly earrings and burned incense. He confronted me that I didn’t know what I was talking about, that there was a lot more to being psychic than fortune telling and he dared me to go.
I agreed to meet him at the university where the psychic fair was being held, but that I would take my own car in case I wanted to leave early and that I had a plane to catch Saturday afternoon. He agreed. I meditated before I went to bed and asked for a concrete sign that what I was contacting was really God. The words came, “When you encounter a huge triangle suspended by three spires of granite you will be sure of the source of these messages.”
I packed and drove to the university and met my friend and his young son. We first attended a video about curlean photography. I realized from the film that psychic energy can be photographed and that there was more to being psychic than fortune telling, but the incense smell was drifting down the hall and my sinuses were acting up because of it. I asked my friend if we could walk outside for a minute so I could clear my head and he agreed. As soon as we stepped out into the quadrangle of the university I spotted a huge bronze triangle supported by three spires of granite. I just about passed out and wet my pants. I had asked for a concrete sign that I was communicating with God and granite was about as concrete as it gets. I was shaken by the sign coming so quickly after I had asked for confirmation of the source of the messages.
We reentered the psychic fair. As we proceeded to move from table to table I picked up brochures from each table: one on the Silva Method of Mind Control, one on the Course In Miracles, and one about Touch For Health. I was beginning to feel overwhelmed and told my friend I had to leave for the airport.
I was early for my flight and still a bit shaken by the recent synchronicity so I went into the gift shop in the airport to see if I could find something to send to my children. Right in front of me was the paperback book rack and the first book my eyes fell upon was The Silva Method of Mind Control. Even more amazed and dazed I bought the book, went to my gate and began to read the book. The book described a method of getting in touch with one’s soul through meditation to receive helpful guidance from the soul. The meditation was almost exactly like the one in the book that had fallen off the shelf in the Walden’s bookstore. I did not explain to my friend in Houston what was happening with me. He was in law enforcement and I didn’t think he would believe me. He went to work every day and I continued to paint cards, meditate and read the Silva book. I had agreed to stay in Houston with my friend for ten days, but on the fifth day I was asked in meditation to return to Oklahoma City and to take the Silva Mind Control class. I told my friend I needed to get back to Oklahoma City to get a job, that I was uncomfortable being unemployed. He was understanding as he took me to the airport and paid to change my ticket.
When I returned home I called the people who taught Silva about taking the course. I asked how much the course cost and if they took credit cards. The teacher replied that they did take credit cards, but that it would be a month before I could take the class because they had already finished the first weekend of a two weekend class and that they only offered it once a month. I explained to her that I was unemployed and needed to take the course now and inquired if I could learn what the others had learned last weekend and join this class this weekend. She said, “No.” But I persisted and asked her to take my number and that if she changed her mind to please call me. After about twenty minutes my phone rang and she admitted that she had gone into meditation and that she had been asked to bring herself and the information to my apartment and to teach me what the others had learned so I could indeed join the class continuing that weekend. She had never been expected by her soul to offer individual instructions to anyone.
The reason my soul wanted me to take the course was so that I would meet certain others who were practicing meditation to receive information from their souls. I joined a meditation group of Silva graduates who met once a week where I was destined to later meet my next husband.
After about a week I woke up one morning to rain. I was completely out of cash and only had one credit card left that in an emergency I could charge $285.00. I meditated and the message was to go to go to the neighborhood Albertson’s store. I argued, “It’s raining outside, I’m not dressed, I haven’t showered, my hair’s not done and I have no makeup on.” The message was repeated over and over. I finally stopped arguing, but didn’t get dressed up, pulled on a sweat suit and went to the Albertsons as I was, disgusted at being expected to go out in the rain to a grocery store when I had no money.
I walked through the grocery store with an empty grocery cart wondering how weird things were going to get, wondering if the peas were going to light up and begin to talk to me. After a short time I heard a man’s voice say, “What are you doing, I haven’t seen you in the longest time?” I turned and looked toward the voice and saw the Rainbow Bread man putting bread on the rack. He had often come to my window at the bank to get his check cashed every Friday. How he recognized me out of the bank and in my sweats was a miracle. I replied, “I’m not at the bank anymore.”
“I know that when I go there you haven’t been there. What are you doing now?” I hesitated to tell the Rainbow Bread man that God had designed a line of greeting cards and was looking for a place to market them.
“I’m painting greeting cards,” I said.
“Where do you market them?” he asked.
“I don’t know anything about marketing,” I admitted.
“You should market them here. There are eight stores in the Oklahoma City metro area and they are open twenty-four hours a day. Al l the people in charge of marketing in that department are going to be here tomorrow from Tulsa and I can get you an appointment with them so you can show them what you have.”
I didn’t know what to say. I was flabbergasted. I finally said, “OK.”
“Give me your phone number and I’ll call you tomorrow with the time and location for you to meet the district manager.”
He didn’t even write the number down, but assured me he would remember it. He did call and I took a basket with some sample cards to the store he indicated. All the time I was thinking, “This is ridiculous – marketing a handmade product made by one woman in a national chain store is not good business. Surely this guy is going to laugh in my face.”
I was led to the back of the store and met the district manager. He very patiently looked at each card and read each one of them. When he looked up he said, “These are lovely and amazing, we definitely want to carry them, but you will need to furnish the racks as we can’t put them on the racks with the national brand cards. You’ll need to get eight racks and deliver them to the back door of each store, with enough cards to fill them. I’ll notify the stores that you are a new vendor. Can you begin bringing them in on Monday?”
I nodded and thanked him still not believing that he had accepted them. I had no idea where to get racks or how I would pay for them. I returned home and meditated again. I received an impression of the Yellow Pages. When I looked under greeting cards I found the name of a wholesale greeting card company. I called the number and a man answered. I asked if he had any racks that didn’t have a company name on them that would fit the dimension of my cards. He began to laugh. I asked why he was laughing. “Lady, I’ve got them hanging from the rafters. Someone ordered them in 1977 and went out of business before they ever picked them up so I got stuck with them. I can sell them to you for 1977 prices. How many do you need?”
“I will need eight,” I replied. “How much will they cost?”
“I can let you have them for $100 a piece.”
“When can I pick them up?” I asked.
“I’m going out of town in a little while, but I’ll be back and you can pick them up Sunday afternoon if you meet me at my warehouse at one o’clock.”
I agreed and hung up the phone and went back into meditation to ask God how I was going to pay for the racks. “Write a check. I’ll get you the money before the check gets to the bank on Monday.”
Once again I was flabbergasted and unbelieving that this was what God really expected of me. I knew if I wrote a hot check for $800 and God didn’t cover it that I could never be bonded to be a banker again (the only thing I was trained to do) and that anything over $700 was considered a felony and I could go to prison.
“And I would like you to attend a seminar this weekend called The Silva Method of Healing,” the words in the meditation continued. I called the people who taught Silva and asked if the seminar was full and how much it cost. Of course it cost $285, the amount that was left on my only remaining credit card. I registered and showed up on Saturday morning.
During the first lecture I was distracted by seeing a good looking, older white-haired gentleman standing in the doorway to the meeting room. He looked familiar to me. At the break I went over to him thinking that if I looked at his name tag that I would remember from where I knew him. Standing in front of him and reading his name tag I realized that I didn’t know him and was then embarrassed that he would think I was trying to pick him up with the oldest line in the world, “Don’t I know you from somewhere?” I excused myself mumbling, “Must have been in another lifetime.” I didn’t even believe in past lives at this point, but I just wanted to get away. I returned to my seat and bowed my head still embarrassed. He soon came over to where I was sitting and asked if he could take me to lunch and that, maybe in talking, we could figure out how we knew each other. I didn’t have enough money left to buy my lunch so it seemed like a good idea. I showed him the greeting card samples at lunch and told him about the message I received. He was impressed and admitted that he was now retired and attempting to do what was happening to me. He asked if he could take me to lunch again the next day, but I told him I needed to pick up racks for my greeting cards and would be late getting back to the seminar. He said he would save me a seat made me promise to come and sit with him when I returned and I agreed.
Writing the hot check was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever done. I was so tense when I returned to the seminar that I could not talk. The speaker had already begun so I quickly took my seat beside the man who was expecting me to sit with him. He smiled as I took my seat and soon placed his hand on my leg under the table and leaned over and in a very loud whisper asked, “Did you get your racks?” He was wearing hearing aids so I soon realized he had no idea how loud he was “whispering.” I was so scared, I was mute. He said it again even louder, “Did you get your racks?” I had not told him that I did not have the money and that I was going to pay for them with a hot check. I turned to him and nodded to indicate that I had purchased the racks. He then said in his loud whisper, “How much did they cost?” I thought “that is my business, that is God’s business, I don’t know you and get your hand off my leg,” but again I was too scared to even talk. Again he repeated his loudly whispered question, “How much did they cost?” I wrote $800.00 on a piece of paper and shoved it over to him to try to get him to shut up. In a few minutes he took my hand under the table and put paper in my hand. I felt relieved that we were going to write notes instead of loudly whispering and letting everyone in the room know that I had committed a felony.
When the speaker quit talking, I took my hand out from under the table and opened it. He had filled my hand with hundred dollar bills. I pointed at the money and stammered, “What is this?”
He replied, “It’s money.”
“Well I see that, but why are you putting it in my hand? I can’t borrow it from you. I have no collateral and I don’t know if I will ever make enough money to give it back to you.”
“Who asked you to give it back? You don’t understand; before I left Texas to come up here for this seminar my soul asked me to go to my safety deposit box and take out eight $100 bills and bring them with me. I never carry cash with me when I travel; I always use credit cards. I realized this morning when I woke up that Spirit has been showing me an image of you in my dreams for weeks and that is why I thought I recognized you. I never watch TV other than for the news, but a week before I came to Oklahoma City I sat in the middle of the floor for four nights and watched a movie called THE THORN BIRDS and cried with frustration for the priest in the movie who was in love with a woman he could not have. When you told me the story about your priest friend yesterday at lunch I realized that he was contacting me through the movie to lead me here to help you.”
I began to cry. He put his arms around me and assured me that he was gladly giving me the money to help me to get the business started that God wanted to create through me and that he couldn’t do what I was doing, but that he was sure he was to help. He took my phone number and left to return to Texas to his wife.
I covered the check, put the racks and cards in each store on Monday and was appalled to find out that I would not be given a check for six weeks because it would take that long for them to set me up as a new vendor through their home office in Salt Lake City. I had to borrow $10, $20 and $30 from people I hardly knew to buy the paper and envelopes to continue. I had to paint twenty hours a day to keep up with the sales. I was suffering from sleep deprivation and fear when one morning the phone rang and woke me.
Groggily I said, “Hello.”
“How are you doing?” my benefactor’s cheerful voice inquired.
“Not well. I’ve created a monster and I can’t paint fast enough to feed it,” I blurted.
I explained to him that they had not paid me for the cards and wouldn’t be paying me for at least six weeks when I would be set up on their computers as a new vendor and that I was of necessity borrowing money to buy the paper and envelopes from people I hardly knew.
“Haven’t you gotten your photocopy machine yet?” he asked.
I completely lost it and started yelling at him, “You stupid son of a bitch you’ve obviously never been broke in your life. I’m borrowing money for paper, I’m behind on all my bills and have no money for food or gas and you think I can buy a photocopy machine that costs several thousand dollars?” Sleep deprivation and fear had made me crazy.
“Calm down, calm down, I’m coming to Oklahoma City tomorrow to see a doctor there and I’m supposed to buy you a photocopy machine so you can do the calligraphy on a white sheet of paper and then photocopy the words onto the parchment paper and you can paint twice as many cards and they will still look hand printed.”
I was taken aback by his offer and thought, “Maybe I can get the price of my body up so I can comfortably negotiate it later, or this man really is being sent by God and I’m too tired and scared now to argue.”
“What time will you arrive?” I asked.
“I’ll leave early and get there in time to take you for lunch. Why don’t you go down today and find the right machine and then we can just go purchase it after lunch and get you started using it,” he suggested.
“OK. I’ll see you around noon.” I sat back against the head of the bed stunned and confused, wondering if it was Ed, or God, influencing this man. I was too tired to care.
That afternoon I dressed and went downtown to a business machine store and watched a demonstration of various copy machines and chose the one the salesman thought would work best for what I needed. Bill, the man from the seminar, arrived about noon and we went to lunch and then purchased the machine. We brought it to my apartment in the trunk of his car and we were standing before it reading the manual and figuring out how to use it when he asked me about my financial situation.
“My credit cards are all maxed out, my bills and rent are all past due and I have no money for food, gas or paper and envelopes,” I confessed.
“Give me your credit cards,” he more or less demanded. I knew I could
not legally continue to use them and figured he was going to take them to keep me from trying to and getting into trouble so I gave them to him. He left and I thought he went on to the doctor and left for his return to Texas, but about two hours later I heard a knock on the door and there he was. He handed me the cards and receipts where he had gone to the bank and paid off $4000.00 in credit cards so I could continue to fulfill my obligations to Albertson’s and pay my bills. Once again I began to cry from exhaustion and relief. He also handed me a miniature cassette tape recorder as he explained that Spirit had indicated he should stop at Radio Shack to buy the tape recorder for me because I was going to write books; that I would speak the information into the tape recorder and someone else would type them up for me. I had been given the request in meditation that I would be expected to write books in the future, but felt as limited about writing books as I had about painting and marketing. I had been assured by Spirit that, “Bach will help you.” I had no idea what that meant other than the book I had purchased when I left Texas was written by Richard Bach and I certainly had no idea how I would ever meet him.
I gratefully accepted the recorder and credit cards and his help. He then asked, “What are we supposed to do now?”
“While you were gone I meditated and Spirit suggested that I go to Hurst, Texas to do a healing on a woman’s heart there. I met a woman in the lobby at the Silva seminar who has a daughter in Hurst who is facing heart surgery. The woman asked me what I do so I showed her the greeting cards. She said her daughter has also started a greeting card company with cards and messages almost identical to the ones I’ve created, also using parchment paper and envelopes. Her daughter’s company is called “dr originals,” all lower case letters. (My company was “bj originals”, all lower case letters.) She is a pen and ink artist, which makes her cards easier to reproduce.”
He suggested I call the mother of the woman in Hurst to ask her if her daughter would be receptive to having me visit. I did and she indicated she had spoken with her daughter who would love to meet me. Bill said he was on his way to Dallas to visit his cousin so I could ride with him, then he would buy me a one way ticket to return to Oklahoma after I had met with her. On the way to Dallas I read him some of the cosmic information I had received in meditation. When we were approaching Dallas he asked if I would be willing to go to dinner with he and his cousin. He thought it would be a good idea for me to meet his cousin because he had been a member of the national board of the Church of Religious Science, had taken Silva, meditated and was a professional artist. I agreed. His cousin was an interesting man who asked me lots of questions about how I had begun to meditate and receive messages. He admitted he had not been meditating recently, but that after meeting me he would once again begin to meditate. At the end of the evening he said, “I have a cousin I think would really like to meet you.”
“Where does your cousin live,” I asked.
“He lives in California,” he replied.
“Well, I’m never going to California. My car wouldn’t even make it to Dallas so I had to ride with Bill. My car currently uses more oil than it does gas.”
“What is your cousin’s name?” I asked.
“His name is Marcus Bach,” he answered.
“Really, do you think he has any connection to Richard Bach?” I asked.
“Marcus is Richard’s uncle,” he said.
“What does Marcus do for a living?” I asked
“He writes metaphysical books for Unity Church,” he answered.
“In that case you had better give me the information. Maybe I can communicate with him by mail.”
He wrote out the information, then Bill took me to Diana Rogers’ apartment.
When he dropped me off , he told me it would be the last time we would see each other or be in communication, since he knew his personality well enough to know that if we continued to see each other he would begin to expect us to have a sexual relationship and he knew that was not what our relationship was to be about. He kissed me on the cheek and drove away and never contacted me again.
Diana and I fell into easy conversation and she suggested I go to bed early. The next day I did the energy transfer into her heart. Since I was panicked throughout the Silva healing seminar dealing with Bill, buying the racks and writing the hot check, I remembered very little of what the speaker had said about doing healing, but Diana reminded me that my job was to transfer the energy and that her job was to use it.
I flew back to Oklahoma City the next day. The next weekend I attended the local Science of Mind church that Bill’s cousin had recommended was a place I would meet other meditators. I was standing in the church gift shop looking at the book rack when a man I had met at the Silva class spoke to me. He asked, “Have you read this book?” He showed me a copy of a book he had just purchased called
THE WORLD OF SERENDIPITY written by Marcus Bach. I started to laugh as I explained that I had just met Marcus’ cousin in Dallas.
“I don’t have time to read the book right now, why don’t you take it, read it and return it to me when you come to meditation next week,” he suggested.
I gratefully took the book and read it that afternoon, then painted and wrote several cards and mailed them to Marcus. The cards were taken from a saying he had used in his book. “Thanks to chance you came my way. Three cheers for serendipity.” Years later, when I finally met Marcus and his lovely wife in California, he still had the cards in his filing system. He was not willing, however, to help me with writing or to introduce me to his nephew Richard. Maybe Spirit meant the music of Bach the composer, or maybe Marcus didn’t understand the significance of Spirit’s message, or maybe I will still meet Richard, or since Marcus is now in the world of Spirit maybe he will help me from there.
I married the man from the meditation group. The marriage lasted for nine months, as it was supposed to. My son attended school when he came to live with me for that nine months. Since my husband had a son approximately the same age and he daily made breakfast for the boys, took them to and from school, I was free to meditate and paint.
In 1994 the Master Jesus materialized in my bedroom one morning and asked me to start a non-profit organization called Namaste. I had no idea how to start a non-profit organization, but agreed to do it. He intimated that He and I would hold an umbrella of energy under which twelve Namaste retreat centers would be formed. I was stunned and again felt inadequate.
After nine months my husband asked me for a divorce. He found he could not comfortably live with someone who was psychic, even though he claimed to be psychic himself when I met him. The afternoon of the day I received the message in meditation from Spirit to sell the greeting card company I had run for three years, a woman called to ask if I had ever considered selling the card company, that she and her partner were interested in purchasing it. They came by that afternoon with the check to purchase it. I was then asked to give up the house I had been renting, put my belongings in storage and let my son return to his father for the summer. It was suggested that I keep only what would fit in the car, that I begin to travel and that every day in meditation I would be given the name of the city to drive to and the names of the people I was supposed to find to deliver messages to from the person’s soul.
I was intimidated and once again depressed, but followed the suggestions. I soon found that calling strangers to say that God had given me their name in meditation, could I come by to deliver a message from their soul, was the worst cold call anyone would ever be asked to make. The people would either hang up on me, or want to meet me at the Denny’s to see what kind of a kook I was, or some would gratefully say, “I asked for a channel two weeks ago, what took you so long to get here?” Those people would take me home with them to take care of me, feed me and let me sleep on their couch for a few days and sometimes even introduce me to other people I had on my list of people to find. I traveled for three months believing that I would return to Oklahoma City after the summer to rent another home so the children could come back to live with me. Instead, the soul asked me to allow the children to remain in Texas, for me to return to Oklahoma City, sell all my belongings from storage and to continue to travel.
I did what was suggested. It was difficult to watch people carry my belongings away from the garage sale, but I did it. Freed from the responsibility of a home and belongings, I continued to travel for several years as a homeless person driving from one state to another building my faith muscles and meeting interesting people. I met a woman in Denver named Judi who, years later, was asked to refinance her home in Denver to purchase a place in Oklahoma City for me to have a Namaste retreat center. She followed her guidance and I moved into the center in January, 2002.
Judi moved to Oklahoma City to join in working with me at the center a few years later.
