underdogishere

This was produced by a company in England, Alphabet Photography, as a Christmas gift for their customers, and was originally sent to about 5,000 people. Since it has now, already, had tens of millions of views, you've probably already seen it, but in case you haven't, grab a tissue, and Merry Christmas:



I think the expression on the face of the guy at 3:24, by itself, made the whole thing worthwhile.

Labels: Transcendental, Uplifted

I haven't posted to this blog in a long, long time. Bad blogger. I've been incredibly busy. Thanks to my brother for stepping in, as I'm sure he will again very soon, with news of their new arrival.

In the meantime, I do have something I've found fascinating, that I can blog about. First, you'll need some background: In 2001 I adopted a beagle named Andrea. We knew nothing about her except her name, that her previous owners had kept her tied by a rope in their yard, that she had frequently escaped, and that they dumped her at the Halifax Humane Society because the police were threatening to fine them if she escaped again. Oh, and we knew one more thing her previous owners didn't mention, but was very clear: At some point, probably during one of her escapes, she had been hit by a car and had her right front shoulder and elbow shattered. But this hadn't been treated, and so by the time I saw her, she held that leg tucked under and walked on just the remaining three.

The first thing I did was take her to a Veterinary Orthopedic Surgeon, who thought that it might not be too late to operate to reverse the injury. So Andrea went under the knife. But after she was opened up, the doctor saw that the injury was too old, and there was too much scar tissue to be able to do anything. So she sewed Andrea back up, and my poor girl spent the next forty-five days confined to her kennel -- hard on a free spirit like her -- even though she wasn't any better as a result.

The doctor went on to suggest amputation. I asked why. The doctor said, "Well, that has to hurt," but I disagreed. Andrea used her hurt leg to paw at me, to dig holes (she dug some seriously deep holes), and for other things besides walking. Also, there would be yet another forty-five days confined to the kennel, and I just couldn't bring myself to put her through that again so soon.

Fast forward eight years: We have no idea how old Andrea was when she came to live with me, but the doctors guessed between two and four, so now she's between ten and twelve. Getting on in years for a beagle. And while I didn't notice the day-by-day, gradual passage of change, even I have now noticed that Andrea's hurt leg bothers her more than it did in 201. She tucks it tighter against her chest and never uses it for anything. Once again I thought about amputation, but once again I find it hard to bring myself to that, now because of her age. So I was torn about what to do. Until one day I was at the vet's office and I noticed that one of the doctors there is also a certified veterinary acupuncturist.

Veterinary acupuncture? Really?

Really.

Being open-minded about Eastern modalities (I'm a Reiki practitioner myself), it occurred to me that Andrea might find some relief from acupuncture. We had a consultation with Dr. Craig, the acupuncturist. Dr. Craig said she was afraid she wouldn't be able to restore "full use of the leg" to Andrea. I was dumbfounded that she even considered it, and pointed out that if surgery eight years ago had been unable to restore the leg, acupuncture at this point was unlikely to do so. "All I want," I said, "is for her to find some relief."

"I can do that," said Dr. Craig.

I wasn't expecting miracles, but after just her second acupuncture treatment, Andrea was going out into the yard (there's a little step-down going out the door), and she actually set her right front foot on the ground to help steady herself!

That didn't really happen, I told myself.

But it did. Because she continued to put that foot down to steady herself every time she went out for the next several days.

Wowsers! She hasn't placed that foot on the ground in years!

She had her third treatment yesterday. We'll see how it goes. But so far, I've been amazed.

Labels: Dogs, Transcendental

While I'm on an "as heard on All Things Considered" kick (look back a few posts), several weeks ago they ran a series on the science of spirituality, and one of the segments was about an area in the brain that seems to be active when people experience visions or other spiritual revelations. It turns out that this area is stimulated by some mental illneases and produces symptoms such as seeing visions and hearing voices. One scientist has even invented a "God Helmet" that stimulates this area magnetically to create artificial visions. The speculation is that when ordinary people (meaning those without mental illness) have spiritual revelations, it's due to activity in this part of the brain, which has been nicknamed the Godspot.

One question that the ATC segment asked is whether this discovery calls into question the credibility of spiritual revelations -- whether or not revelations are merely expressions of mental disturbance in the Godspot. One scientist stated flatly that the Godspot "proves there is no God" (or words to that effect).

Really?

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know I'm an atheist, so I don't have an axe to grind here, but at the same time I have trouble abiding stupidity and illogic. If I were a theist (which I'm not), the discovery of the Godspot wouldn't shake my faith in God. Rather the opposite: If no Godspot had been discovered, I would have considered that a challenge to belief in God's existence. The Godspot strengthens the argument for God's existence.

Why?

Well, let's look at an example vision. It doesn't matter which one -- let's take the angel's appearance to Mary to announce she would become pregnant with Jesus. Any vision will do, but we'll use this one:

Looking at this revelation from a theistic point of view, the angel is a supernatural manifestation. The angel exists in the supernatural world. However, when it's all over, Mary's experience of the angel resides in her memory -- a biological and chemical state in her brain which is natural, not supernatural. So what's happened is that the experience of the angel has bridged over from the supernatural world -- a world that Mary can't access under normal, every-day circumstances -- to the natural world -- the chemistry in Mary's mind. Since Mary herself is not a supernatural being and does not have supernatural senses, there has to be some mechanism that allows the supernatural manifestation to translate into a natural manifestation. Call this the "Natural/Supernatural Interface," or, since I'm a geek, the NSI.

Now, if you aren't thinking this completely through, you might say that there's no need for an NSI -- that God just "communicates." But that's simplistic. The end result of the communication is a chemical state in Mary's brain, and somehow that had to be brought about. That "somehow" is the NSI.

So, what is the nature of the NSI? Well, the simplest NSI that I can imagine is that the supernatural angel emits natural light and sound which is perceived by Mary's eyes and ears. So Mary sees and hears the angel the way she would a natural person. But there's a couple of reasons why God would consider this NSI to be subpar. First, we are very limited in the depth of experience that we can perceive through only sight and sound, and I assume that the supernatural world is even richer and more intense than our natural one, so relying only on sight and sound would require a big dumbing down of the supernatural experience. Also, we know from studies where groups of people are exposed to the same event and then asked what they saw that the experience of sight and sound is pretty unreliable; different people perceive the same scene differently, which hardly makes it a great choice for receiving God's communications.

Another possible NSI is that the supernatural being simply made the chemical changes necessary in Mary's brain so that she "remembered" experiencing the angel. But this seems awkward to me, especially for real-time communication, as Mary would have to first recall each step of the experience in order to form a response.

No, it seems to me that the most effective way for God to ensure that He and His supernatural agents could communicate with natural beings would be to provide a Godspot -- an area of the brain where the supernatural could "draw" the experience directly into the brain of the natural being, as on a slate or blackboard, but affecting many senses and on many levels. That God would create in us a Godspot makes perfect sense.

Well, you might say, if the Godspot is a Divine creation, then how does it become diseased (in people with delusional mental disorders)? Wouldn't God make it immune from disease and reserve it solely for his use?

Um... no. The Godspot is, after all, on the "natural side" of the Natural/Supernatural Interface, and so, like all natural things, it must be subject to disease. If it weren't, it would be, well... unnatural. It also makes perfect sense that the Godspot, being part of the natural brain, would be subject to artificial stimulation that would create false revelations.

So I would find vindication of my faith in the discovery of the Godspot. If I were a theist.

But I'm not.

Labels: Musing, Overheard, Transcendental

BJ came to visit me in a dream last night. It was sweet. I stroked her fur and scratched her tummy. I could feel how much she loved me. Eventually, she went out in the back yard with Barkley and Andrea.

Strangely, Bailey visits me in dreams sometimes, too. Strange because Bailey was Judi's dog, not mine. But he, too, always leaves me with the gift of peace. I am left to wonder why I never have visits from Missy.

Labels: Transcendental

At 5:00 this morning I was laying in bed, on my back, with my head turned to the side, waiting for the alarm to go off, when BJ began giving me kisses. She had her muzzle pressed very hard against my lips, so her tongue could only go out a little way, and she was lapping my lips very quickly, very intently, laplaplaplaplaplaplaplaplap. She was so intent she wasn't even taking time to wag her tail. I draped an arm over her back, and she warm and soft. It wasn't until I opened my eyes that I remembered that BJ is gone.

Even then, I felt her curl up against my side, her warm fur on my chest. I was wide awake and I could feel it.

I hope your day-after-Valentine's-Day got off to as loving a start as mine.

Labels: Transcendental

Yesterday I posted about unexpected footsteps, and so today I thought I'd post about another incident of unexpected footsteps, from a long time ago. But I want to warn you that this is a very long post. A very, very long post. If you don't want to invest that much time (and I can't blame you) you might want to stop reading now. If you're going to read, you should probably top off your coffee and make a pee run first.

This is a true story. Everything that happened to me happened just as I describe it. The things that were told to me, that I am passing on to you second hand, were told to me just as I relate them. I have changed only two things: First, the name of the male principal, because I have a (possibly unreasoning) aversion to mentioning, on the public Internet, the real names of persons, especially when I've been out of touch with them for a long time. They may have other lives now. And second, for some reason I've forgotten the name of the female principal, so I've made one up for her.

This story happened in the late seventies. I was about 22 years old, and I had a house-mate named Denny (not his real name), who was 19 or 20. Let me tell you about Denny: Denny wasn't merely good-looking -- he was downright cute. And while lots of cute guys are self-centered, Denny wasn't -- he was just the opposite. When you first met him, he seemed shy, and then as you got to know him you found that he was funny, and interested in you, and he listened as much as he talked.

As you can imagine, with his combination of cuteness and personality, Denny was a babe magnet. He moved in a constant cloud of girls. We always had girls at the house, if he was home. But he never took advantage of them. While I knew him, he had only one girlfriend at a time, and was always loyal and attentive to her. The other girls were literally "just friends," who hung with Denny either because he was fun or maybe because they hoped to become the next girlfriend. But he never led them on or played them against one another.

When Denny had been young, before he could drive, he didn't have transportation during the summers to see his school-year girlfriends, and Denny always had a girlfriend, so he had tended to have summertime romances with girls who were visiting from the north -- spending the summer, say, with grandparents or a non-custodial parent. Anyway, he would meet a visiting girl, sparks would fly, and they would spend a mAgIcAl sUmMeR together. Then the girl would have to leave, to go home, and there would be heartbreaking separation, anguish, and promises to write. Denny would be torn up for a day or two. Then he would get up one morning, shake it off, put it behind him, and be over it.

It sounds as though I'm saying Denny was callous, but I don't think he was. I believe he was sincere. But Denny always lived "in the moment" -- the here-and-now. I never knew him to make a plan for the future. And things that happened in the past were water under the bridge. All he was interested in was what was happening right now. That was his personality. I believe that even if he had suffered some catastrophic accident -- lost a couple of limbs, say -- he would have been bummed for a few days, and then be over it and just be happy with what he was. That was Denny.

The house that Denny and I shared had been built back in the fifties by a professional builder. Well, okay, all houses are built by builders, but what I mean is this one was been built by a builder for personal use. He had built the one next to ours for himself and his wife, and then built ours for his wife's sister and her husband. When a builder builds a house for himself or a loved one, he goes all out, and our house was beautiful -- polished wood walls and ceilings, a huge kitchen with lots of counter space and lots of real wood cabinets -- stuff like that. Most rectangular houses are set with the long side facing the road, but this house had the short side facing the road, and the long side faced the neighbor's house. I think this was so the bedrooms could be as far from the road as possible -- they were at the back of the house. From the kitchen there was a long, tiled hallway. If you went straight down this hall and through the door at the end, you would be in the master bedroom -- mine. Just before the door to my room, the hallway took a dogleg to the left, and if you turned there you would be at the door to the guest bedroom -- Denny's.

Okay, I think the stage is set. So this is what happened that night, almost thirty years ago:

I had been sleeping, but I woke up. I think it was about 1:00 am. I don't know what woke me, but as I lay in bed I heard a tap. A tap that sounded like a footstep in the hall. I listened intently, and then there was another tap. It was definitely a footstep. And it sounded closer than the first tap. As though it was coming down the hall, from the kitchen. Tap. They were definitely footsteps. And they were definitely coming down the hall. Something was coming down the hall.

Was I scared? Nope. Was I afraid? Nope. No, I was PETRIFIED! Literally. Think about what the word means (pet-ri-fied adj 1: converted into stone). I was so filled with terror that I. Could. Not. Move. Get out of bed? Escape out the window? Forget it. I was paralyzed with fear. I used to be afraid that way when I was a small child and heard monsters or aliens in the night, but this was the only time I've ever felt that way as an adult. All I could do was lay there in absolute terror and listen.

Tap... closer.

Tap... closer.

It seemed like forever was passing. And then...

...tap. The footsteps in the hall were at my door.

Another forever... and then...

...tap.

The footsteps had turned down the dogleg to Denny's room!!! I know this makes me sound like a coward, but I'm going to tell the truth, and the truth is that I was awash with relief. Whoever it was, he or she was after Denny, not me! The paralysis left me. I was able to think. To plan. I waited to hear the intruder enter Denny's room, and I was calculating how long it would take me to jerk open my door and run down the hallway and grab the butcher knife from the knife drawer. How long would it take the intruder to get down the hallway after me? Would I have time to duck behind the refrigerator and stab him as he came around the corner? I remembered that you're supposed to stab in the gut, under the ribs, and angle sharply upward, going for the heart. (Thank you Bridge Over the River Kwai).

I'm not making this up. All these thoughts rushed through my head. And then, while they did, I heard a sound from Denny's room. It was a high-pitched buzzing, like a dentist's drill. What could it be? My first thought was that someone was drilling through Denny's door, but that made no sense: We didn't lock our doors, he only had to open it. Then the sound seemed to be moving around inside Denny's room. What could it be? I thought and thought. Could someone be attacking Denny with a dentist's drill? Really dumb things occurred to me, like did the burglar have one of those flashlights that's powered by turning a tiny crank? I was afraid again, not paralyzed afraid, but still afraid of the sound that as hard as I thought I couldn't figure out. I didn't dare leave my room until I could identify the sound. Nothing made sense.

Then the sound stopped. There was a long pause, while I waited for something to happen, and then...

Tap. In the hall.

Tap. The footsteps were clearly going back down the hall, away from me.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap. And then...

Nothing. Silence.

So I got up and opened my bedroom door and turned on the hall light. Nothing. It was empty.

I checked the front and back doors. They were locked. From the inside. I checked all the windows (turning on every light as I went). There were shut tight.

So... whoever it was, he was still in the house.

I searched the house. I looked in all the closets. I opened the kitchen cupboards, in case someone had squeezed in there. I looked everywhere that anyone, no matter how small, could hide. I even looked in the refrigerator -- I know it sounds crazy, but it was a crazy night, and I'm telling the truth.

Finally, I opened the door to Denny's room. He was in bed, his back to me, and I could see that he was breathing. I turned on the light and checked his closet and under his bed. Nothing. (I should mention that Denny was the heaviest sleeper that I've ever known. Once he went to sleep, there was no waking him. I don't even think a fire alarm could do it.)

So... I went back to bed. And, eventually, to sleep.

Sleep is like a gulf: It creates a distance between you and whatever happened on the other side of that gulf. When I woke up the next morning the events of the night didn't seem so harrowing. I got some breakfast and was sitting at the kitchen table. I was probably reading a book, though I don't remember exactly. I was facing down the hall. I also faced the refrigerator. I saw Denny come down the hall, disheveled and stumbling a little. This was typical for him in the morning; he was not a morning person.

"Good morning," I said. (I was a morning person.)

"{mumble that might have been 'good morning'}"

"Did you sleep well?"

"{mumble that might have been 'okay, how about you?'}"

Denny was getting milk out of the refrigerator and pouring a glass.

"Not bad," I said. "There was one weird thing. I thought I heard footsteps come down the hall and go into your room."

"{mumble}"

I will remember what happened next until the day I die. Denny was putting the milk back in the refrigerator when I said, "Yeah. And oh, I thought I heard the sound of a dentist's drill in your room."

I could see Denny clearly with my peripheral vision: It was like some of the life just drained out of his body. He had been closing the refrigerator door and suddenly he turned and sank back against it. His mouth fell open. His eyes lost their focus. His arms went limp by his sides.

"What is it?" I said. "What's wrong?"

Denny reached out and grabbed the back of a kitchen chair as he stepped over to the table from the refrigerator. He sat down. Pretty hard. And then he told me this story:

The summer when Denny was fifteen, at the start of summer vacation, he met a girl from New York City. I'll call her Susan. Susan was pretty and had dark hair and was spending the summer with her grandparents. Denny and Susan hit it off. On the surface, they didn't seem to be well matched -- Susan was a very serious girl who was very interested in the occult, and Denny was happy-go-lucky -- but however that may be they were together all the time and it was a mAgIcAl sUmMeR. At the end of summer vacation there was a heartbreaking separation. There were tears, and promises to write. Then Susan was gone. A couple days later Denny woke up and got over it.

Susan, however, didn't get over it so easily. In those days, there were no cell phones, no free long distance, no Internet. The only way to communicate over distance that a teenager could afford was to write letters. Susan wrote Denny letters. When he didn't write back, she wrote and asked why. Then, in one letter, Susan said that she was making arrangements with old woman in New York so that she and Denny could be together again. It seemed very mysterious. Denny never did write back.

Oh, before I continue, I need to tell you about the neighborhood where Denny grew up. It was in the middle of leave-it-to-beaver-land. Miles and miles of unbroken white middle-class suburbia. There were no slums, no railroad tracks, no warehouses, no industry, no homeless shelters, no bus stations -- nothing to attract anything but the Beav and his kind.

Okay, back to the story: School had started. One morning early in the school year Denny walked out his front door, heading to the bus stop. He noticed a very dark-skinned black man on the sidewalk in front of his house. The man had a beard, and long hair braided in dreadlocks. His clothing was worn, shabby, and mismatched. His jacket and pants were too big, as though they'd been given to him as charity. A worn green duffel bag was slung over his shoulder.

Denny was taken aback. This wasn't the kind of person that was often (read ever) seen on his street. But the man was walking in the opposite direction from Denny's bus stop, so once he had passed the end of the walk Denny continued on his way. He was on the sidewalk when he heard a voice behind him:

"Hey! Waitup!"

Denny continued walking.

"Hey! Denny! Waitup, mon!"

Denny turned around. Of course it was the black man.

"Denny! I be a friend a' Soozan! She send me wit' a message for you mon. She say she be seein' you soon, so you be lookin' out for her."

Then the Rastaman turned and went on his way.

Denny thought this was weird, but in the end he assumed that the Rastaman had seen him with Susan sometime during the summer, and was playing some kind of joke. Once he got to school, he gave it no more thought. Denny lived in the moment.

But that night Denny has a dream about Susan. In his dream, he was sleeping in his bed when she walked in the door of his room and sat down. The first thing she said was, "Why haven't you written to me?" He answered her, though he was sleeping, and the two of them went on and had a conversation. They caught each other up on what was happening. In the dream.

The next morning Denny remembered the dream vividly, which was unusual, since he hardly ever remembered dreams. He also remembered the Rastaman's words. He guessed the Rastaman had put the idea in his head, and that was why he had had the dream. He went to breakfast.

His annoying little sister was at the breakfast table ahead of him. She had the bedroom next to his.

"Didja get rid of that dragonfly?" she said.

"What are you talking about?"

"The dragonfly that was in your room last night. Didja get rid of it?"

"There was no dragonfly in my room."

"Yes there was. I heard it buzzing around. It kept me awake."

"You were dreaming."

The next night, he had the dream again: Susan came into his room and they talked, about this and that. And the next morning his sister was at the breakfast table:

"That dragonfly was back in your room last night."

"There was no dragonfly in my room!"

"Yes there was. I heard it."

"You're on drugs."

The next night, for the third night in a row, he had the dream, and for the third morning in a row his sister insisted that there had been a dragonfly in his room. He didn't have the dream immediately again after that, but he did have it twice more in the next three or four weeks, and each time his sister said she heard a dragonfly in his room.

That was the end of Denny's story. He and I were left sitting in what suddenly seemed like a very cold and bleak morning in the kitchen of our house. Creeps were running down my spine. My stomach was queasy. I could understand what his sister called a dragonfly. I called it a dentist's drill. And she wouldn't have heard the footsteps, because their house had carpet, not tile.

Denny said, "I haven't thought at all about Susan in the last few years."

He looked at me, and he looked sick.

"But I had the dream again last night."

Labels: Transcendental

I had an unusual experience this morning. It was 4:00 am, and I was laying in bed, on my back, awake. I heard footsteps enter and cross my bedroom. Though I was alone in the house, and wasn't expecting this, I found that I was neither surprised nor afraid. I found myself thinking, quite distinctly, that there couldn't be any danger because the dogs weren't barking.

Something sat on the edge of the bed -- I felt the mattress sag. The rational part of my brain tried irrationally to tell me it was Andrea jumping in. I knew it wasn't.

My hands rose into the air, not by my raising them, but by their simply becoming weightless. They drifted over me for a moment, then came back down over my face, and Reiki flowed into me.

I moved my hands down so they were over my chest, still sending myself Reiki. Then fingertips which might have been mine but were definitely also someone else's began to stroke my face, a hand on each side of my face, the bottoms of the fingertips stroking my face top to bottom, then the tops of the fingers stroking back up, bottom to top. My face was stroked, top to bottom then bottom to top, over and over again. The stroking was very gentle and full of love. Eventually it stopped, but I continued to send myself Reiki until I fell asleep.

I got up at 5:00 am feeling serene.

Labels: Transcendental

If you treat yourself with Reiki while you are dreaming, does it count?

I have trouble sleeping, and when I'm awake at night I treat myself with Reiki to help me get back to sleep. Also, recently I've been sending Reiki to an "Internet acquaintance" who's having a bad time because of a relationship. Anyway, this morning I was lying in bed trying to sleep when I experienced what I can only describe as waves of mini-convulsions. Alarmed, I realized that I was actually asleep and dreaming that I was in bed awake, so I made an effort to wake myself up, and I gave myself some Reiki to calm myself down. Then I got out of bed, but weird things began to happen, and then I realized that I was still asleep and dreaming, and that meant that earlier I had actually been dreaming that I was asleep and dreaming, and inside that dream I had been lying in bed unable to sleep and having mini-convulsions. In other words, I had been dreaming that I was dreaming that I was awake.

If my explanation is confusing, don't worry about it (though you programmer-types may know what I mean when I say that I was apparently dreaming recursively). With great effort I finally woke myself up for real, and I wouldn't consider this worth posting about except that I got to thinking that after I had woken myself from the inner dream, but was still dreaming the outer dream, I had dreamed that I had treated myself with Reiki. Could that Reiki, applied during a dream, have had any actual effect? Normally, of course, things that happen in a dream don't have physical consequences -- if you drink water in a dream, you're still thirsty when you wake up. But Reiki is different. It's not bound by space, and some say it's not bound by time. Is it bound even by consciousness?

The experience has left me very energized. I'm going to send some Reiki for that Internet acquaintance who's having such a bad time. If you can spare any prayers for her, I'd appreciate it if you could send them. She could really use them.

Labels: Transcendental

Yesterday evening I received my Reiki Master attunement. Studying Reiki has been an odd experience for me. I am a Geek. (I would be an engineer, but I do not have a college degree. Engineers are Geeks with college degrees. I do not have a degree, thus I am a Geek.) I am an atheist who does not believe in the existence of anything that is not scientifically quantifiable. But I have been, in the Reiki classes, in the company of people who freely converse about their communications with angels; discuss past and future lives as though reincarnation was as obvious and apparent as the full Moon in this morning's sky; and bandy terms from Quantum Mechanics with an ignorance that is shocking but is also, in a strange way, charmingly innocent. I have said nothing of my own thoughts to these people, because I realize that I am a guest in their world, they are not in mine, and I respect them, and I have no desire to create discord -- or stimulate discussion, whichever you choose to call it.

So how (you may ask) did I come to be in these classes, with these people? How did a Geek come to be a Reiki Master? Therein lies a story, from long ago, but I'll save it for another time. The story I'm going to tell today happened just a couple of months ago. Since part of it happened on the public Internet, and I do not have the permission of the principles to repeat it, I'll obscure the details:

I received a request, via the Internet, to pray for one who was very ill. As an atheist, prayer wasn't exactly one of my options, but I was moved to send Reiki. I went home after work that day, and I had some other things to do, and it wasn't until mid-evening that I did the distance send. The flow was very, very strong -- stronger than any Reiki I've ever experienced. The energy felt like it was gushing from my palms. I thought, at the time, "This is either very bad news -- the sick one must be very ill to be drawing this much energy -- or this is very good news -- the energy must be helping." And I did feel, very much, that the energy was being drawn, not sent.

After ten or fifteen minutes, I went back to my evening. The next day I watched for some news, and was surprised to learn that the ill one had died late the previous afternoon, hours before I sent Reiki. The caretakers reported that they had gone home, grief-stricken and doubting themselves, until a few hours later, when they were in different parts of their house, and they were suddenly moved to come together, and they both at the same moment found peace, and agreed, together, that they had made all the right decisions.

That's the story. I will leave you to interpret it as you wish. I bring it up because I told it to my Reiki teacher yesterday evening, and she said, "Those people gave you such a beautiful gift." I hadn't thought about it that way, that I was the one who received the gift, and should be thankful, but I was, and I am.

I apologize for the donnish tone of this post, but the attunement has left me feeling solemn. I'm sure I will return to my normal self soon.

Labels: Transcendental

In I go!

Labels: Transcendental