CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Revelation
September to October 2000
On the first day of spring, Steve began a ‘permanent’ job. It wasn’t a long term one, but at least it gave some degree of certainty. The last twelve months had been difficult for several reasons. He would be the last to admit my emerging new life threatened him in any way, but that's the way it came across. Accepting financial assistance from his children also didn’t sit well with him. A father was supposed to provide for his family, not the other way around. Out children grew up seeing him as a dictatorial, authoritarian, and distant man. Yet, the walls he built around himself were to protect them lest he turn into his father. He always had a volatile temper and issues with control. I would stew for days about things said or done, often long after he’d forgotten what precipitated his outburst. He justified telling me what I should or shouldn’t be doing by saying he was “protecting” me from myself because I was my own worst enemy. In many instances I knew this to be true, but I also knew he couldn’t keep doing it. If I fall into a great big hole, I fall. I needed to be allowed to grow.
Steve also didn’t like me working at Lifeline because volunteer work, to his way of thinking, was akin to slavery. After I met Petula, and started spending more time in the shop, he was less forgiving. When he was out of work and I was on duty, he did nothing to help around the house because it wasn’t as if I had to be out all day. Once, when I was supposed to meet him after he finished work, he found me at the shop talking with Petula and had a go at me. She returned fire. To her, he represented the oppressive male aspect that had dogged her life after life. To him, she was the enemy, monopolising my time and taking me further away from him. What she didn’t know was that in standing up to him, she set a new and dynamic thought process in motion, one that was to help us all.
At my next Lifeline day, I had the feeling I should take my Robin Wood deck with me. I soon learned why. A friend of Petula’s stopped in for a reading! After she left Petula told me one of the volunteers had put in a complaint about me. She was one of those people who believed there should be no joy in life because she had none. I made a mental note to be more aware of what I did and said when she was around. Gladys couldn’t return soon enough as far as we were concerned. In the afternoon, Faye stopped in and confirmed everyone was happy with their readings and that I may get a booking from some Playgroup mothers.
On Thursday, Leigh told me her niece’s bridal shower had been brought forward. She hoped it would be on a Sunday so she could go. She was fed up with work, but with Warren set to retire at the end of the month she knew she would have to stay with it a bit longer. Every time I went out to her place I read for this friend or that. It was becoming something of a ritual. The following Wednesday was better, especially as Gladys stopped in for a while. The extent of the bond between us defied explanation. We were kindred spirits, yet each of us very different.
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| Me, Gladys, Petula |
On Friday September 22nd, I didn’t go to tennis because Kristen released Danny’s ashes, and in doing so, Danny. It was a very emotional time. The next day I had much to do before Tamara and I went to the Grange to see a clairvoyant recommended to her by a colleague. On the way there I was scolded for making a flippant remark about one of her friends. She said I shouldn’t be too quick to judge others and if the person had to exaggerate to feel important then I should feel pity rather than cast scorn. I was shocked, but when I had my reading it made sense. Tamara and I had been mother and daughter before, only our roles were reversed. In one such life I was constantly in trouble for ignoring protocol and being irreverent. I guess some things never change.
As readings go, it was the most interesting I’d had to date. She said my guide’s energy was identical to my own, which was unusual. When I asked if she could see this guide she said it presented as male, with long hair, gentle eyes, a beard and moustache. Surely it was the same energy Petula saw! When I pressed her for more information she said my energies and his are so similar we are one and the same, that my guide is an expression of one of my own past lives, my own Higher Self. “It’s another expression of your soul. Your soul only expresses a portion of itself through you. That enables your soul to be in more than one place at the same time. Part of your soul can be out doing this or that. You can even meet yourself in spirit. That happened to me once. I met myself in the past and the future. I have even looked at myself in the past and the future simultaneously. So you see, it is indeed possible for you to be your own guide. But you should look at your guide as a separate person and talk to him as a separate person. The channel is always open because you are part of your own guide and your guide is a part of you. You know things, don’t you? You don’t know how you know them. The thoughts don’t seem to come from outside yourself or even from within yourself, as if given to you by another means. They come directly from you out of nowhere. They are just there.”
To hear her describe what I always knew to be fact, but never knew how to comprehend, was the strangest thing. It seemed to me that with every reading I had I was being given more pieces to an ever-expanding puzzle.
She went on to say I was very psychic, and that this life was a cleansing cycle for me. I am to clear out old stuff such as emotions, fears, people, etc. I am to put less effort into those who do not have my best interests at heart. She said I have many tears to release. There's been too much pain, great sadness, much fear, and far too much guilt. It is time to move beyond all that. She also said Steve and I have karma to release, he more so than me. He is out of kilter and must find balance. She said he is currently facing many demons from the past. When I asked what she meant she said he meddled with the dark arts, that he used them to control others. “An evil sorcerer, you mean?” I asked. “Yes.”. It explained so much. When I told her about the day I got my first Tarot deck she said: “And in that instant all his fears confronted him. He had lived so many lives trying to rectify matters that he went too far. Now he must find balance. With you, doing what you do, he will. This is why you must continue. He will come around.”
I told her about the many readings I did for him, at his request, where all he got were Major Arcana cards, very often with the Blank card. She went on about this card being likened to the blank rune. “There’s a sense of destiny at work. Which path will he choose? If he chooses the path to heal himself, and heal the leftovers from all his other existences, a bright new future will open up around him. He’s had a lot of very good lives, but there were just as many of the other sort. He has come into this life to deal with issues of control. What star sign is he?” When I said Scorpio she laughed and said: “Well, that wouldn’t help, would it?”
She then asked my star sign and was surprised to hear me say Pisces because she sensed Earth energy around me. I had heard that before but never paid it much attention. She said my Earth element gave me a practical, sensible nature, very necessary for a Pisces. “Pisces”, she went on, “are the marshmallows of the zodiac. Your Earth grounds you. That is vitally important. You must stay grounded. Too much airy-fairy stuff is no good. You and your daughter get along well, despite the usual Sagittarian-Piscean gulf. You two have lived many, many lives together. You have been mother and daughter many times, and you have been sisters in at least two lives. This sisterly energy is very strong and you will feel more like a sister in the years to come than a mother with her. She nags you, doesn’t she? If you do something she doesn’t approve of, you get into trouble, like a naughty child, don’t you?” She said it goes back to a life around three hundred years ago. She was very particular in that life with the dresses I wore. We belonged to an aristocratic family where appearances were everything. She felt it was in Austria or thereabouts. I couldn’t suppress a smile when reminded of an incident long ago when Tamara and I clashed over her clothing choices. I will have much success as a Tarot reader, she said, but my true vocation lies in healing. I will heal with my words and my voice, as well as my hands. She said Tamara and I would work together at times, she doing more readings than healings, and me doing more healings than readings.
She then said I will meet a person named Lenny, but she doesn’t know if the person is male or female. “It could be Leonard or Lenore. For some reason, this person will have an impact on your spiritual direction.” From there she talked about seeing an artist’s paintbrush and said if I wasn’t doing any artwork I soon would be. There will be something different about it, too, in texture or colour. She saw me working with strong, vibrant colours.
With the reading almost over, she said she kept seeing a man with me. He was swarthy-skinned, with sunken cheekbones, messy dark brown hair, and almond shaped eyes. She couldn’t get any other information except that she did not think he was a guide or someone I knew, in person or in spirit. She felt he would make himself known to me at the right time.
Kristen, she said, will meet a very reliable King of Pentacles with dark hair. “Tell your daughter that if an Earth sign man, with money worries, comes into her life she’s to know that he is a very nice man, a man she can commit to, a man who won’t let her down. The people who have been looking after her in spirit have been holding back. They know she’s not ready.” When I asked if Kristen had already met this man she felt she had, or if not, she soon would. Tianni, she said, has an “entertainer’s soul” and will dance, sing or do stage work. “She is a strawberry blonde now, but will go darker as she ages. Her mother will have two children, with the second most likely your father reincarnated. Your daughter needs to wear an amulet, an oval rose quartz amulet, on her heart.” Just days later, Kristen did buy such an amulet, wearing it on a long silver chain over her heart.
Tamara, she said, would likely meet an Air sign man but that Spirit was not very forthcoming. “She is her own person, and she will do her own thing. Such a man will need to be able to adapt to that”. As for Che, she said he is stubborn for a Gemini, and thinks he’s older than he is. “He is very protective of his family and won’t have anything go wrong. He and his girl….Jenny, is it? They will try to make it as a couple, but they will always be good friends. He won’t settle down until he is in his late twenties, early thirties. There’s a very special, very spiritual bond between them. He will not marry until he feels more settled within himself. He’s an ideas man. He may run a business, but it will have to be something he can be hands-on with”.
I asked about Liz and was told: “There are books in front of her. She’s going to feel drawn to write books. Not for a few years yet. There is a book in front of her in which she’s jotting down her feelings. There are paintings in the book, too. There is one with a lot of red in it. The book is about her life. It could be a book she writes, or a book someone else writes about her. The book details a painting and tells how that painting links in with a particular time in her life. She’s an artist who will make a lot of money from her work, but she should go to New York. Maybe there’s an agent there.” As for Don, she said: “There is a weakness about him. Weak people try to control other people. There will always be tension, even if the marriage lasts, but I can’t see that happening.”
When I asked if I will live by the sea she said I would, but not on the shore, several streets back up on a rise, like a small hill. I always wanted a house overlooking the sea so that gave me something to look forward to. She said I will spend considerable time alone there because Steve will be working away, coming home for a week in every month or so. She said I may not be there full time but will come and go. She also saw me in a much older Queenslander, but with people coming and going she felt it might be a refuge, like a retreat or something similar.
Before I left she gave me a guidance message. “The path has been opened for you, but at times the light on the path is dull. You stumble along, though, intuitively knowing which way to go. Things will happen quickly for you, but your husband will be resentful. It’s not that he doesn’t want you to succeed, it’s his fear that when you do you will leave him behind. Therefore, he comes across as a control freak. He’s threatened, but he’ll try very hard to pretend he isn’t because he knows that it’s pointless to stop you for you will do what you need to do anyhow.” Having said that that, she asked me to choose a card and place it face down on the table. She looked at it but would not tell me what it was. “That’s not the issue. If he doesn’t look after himself, it won’t be an issue. He needs to find balance, to compromise, to understand that this is why he is here, at this time, in this way.”
When handing me my audio tape she laughed, saying she just saw me with some chickens and knew them to be distressed, ex-battery hens. I was healing them, she said. They were unsure of me at first, but day by day, they came to look forward to my visits. I didn’t know what to make of that because I was afraid of chickens. The phobia probably started at the farm, but I know Grandad Casey had chickens, as did my parents, I think, at some stage. In my first year at the hostel I made the mistake of telling my roommate about it. No doubt believing it was time I dealt with it because being afraid of chickens was not “cool”, she did the unthinkable. I had a habit of putting my hands under my pillow when I got into bed, so one night, when my hands touched chicken feet, I let out a scream she wouldn’t forget in a hurry. No one would.
On my next Lifeline day, I told Petula about the reading and she said she would try and see what more she could get on ‘the face’. She also told me she knew a person named Lenny. Her name was Lenore, and while she hadn't seen her in a while, she knew how to find her. At that point she interrupted me because she had news of her own to tell. She’d been robbed. Gone was her computer, her television set and her stereo system. She needed something to brighten her day and it came in the form of Gladys, who felt she could put in a few hours. On Thursday, I got emails from Roberta and Liz. Roberta wrote that she loved Canada and was bushwalking her little heart out. Liz had news, too. A new tenant she had struck a friendship with has connections with New York. Her “filthy rich aunt is president of Saks Department Store, in Fifth Avenue, and another aunt loves art. All kinds of art!”
On Sunday October 1st, I read for fourteen people at a Tarot party arranged by Leigh’s sister, Gail. From all accounts everyone was happy. It was great practice for the following weekend when I had her daughter’s bridal shower. On Monday, Steve selected two books for me whilst I was emailing Liz. One was on dreams and the other on Atlantis. When Dana, who was on desk duty, saw the Atlantis book she asked if I had read any Edgar Cayce books on the subject. She told me she had grown up on his books and as she is planning to move, she will have to get rid of a lot of them. She had decided to donate them to the Relaxation Centre but wanted me to have first pick. She also had books on other great civilizations. On Wednesday, I took some my own books and Insight magazines to Lifeline. Dana’s clean-out inspired me to pass on that which I had read to others, so they, too, may be inspired.
After tennis on Friday, I rang Leigh about the bridal shower readings. Gail planned to come all the way from Runcorn to collect me, drive to her daughter’s place at Ormeau, after which she would drop me back at home before driving home herself. I tried to tell Leigh she shouldn’t as it was too much but Leigh said she insisted. Leigh was supposed to take me, but everything changed when her mother fell down the stairs while visiting with her eldest daughter. Miraculously, she didn’t break any bones, but her hearing was affected and she had some brain swelling. She was in a respite home for now, but the girls knew a decision must be made.
The reading day went very well. Only one person needed more help than I thought I was capable of giving so I gave her Sarina’s name and phone number. I read for ten people in all. The next day I went to a Clayfield natural therapy centre for a healing expo. It was certainly an eye-opener, especially when I heard I am to do more work on clearing my chakras! I went to visit Petula afterwards and we had a long talk at the end of which we decided we are both on a very long, very steep learning curve. One thing the day brought to the fore was that my repressed memories were slowly working their way to the surface.
On Tuesday October 10th, I put in several hours at Lifeline because Petula had to take her daughter to the hospital. The knives were out for her, according to one of the volunteers. Bobbi wanted her gone. She was in for a shock because if Petula went, so would others. The next day, we could see she was right because Bobbi made her first move. Perhaps it was all the negativity with that, or the slow release of repressed emotions, or too much tennis, but my ankle hurt so much I made an appointment to see my doctor for the following evening.
I waited two and a half hours, which ordinarily would have tried my patience, but that was the way it was with my doctor and I accepted it. He was popular because be was thorough. As I waited, I flicked through the latest issue of Insight magazine until I came to an article on Vibrational Therapy. I felt drawn to read it even though I hadn’t a clue what it was. And something happened. It wasn’t so much the words themselves, more the feeling I got when reading them that left me with an intense desire to meet the author. Never before had I experienced anything quite like it. That the woman lived at nearby Chermside West only inflamed the situation. I had to summon every ounce of willpower not to race over to the reception desk, push the poor woman out of her chair, and grab the phone.
In the morning, I rang the author’s number but had to leave a message. An hour later, she left a message for me. When I called back I left another message. At exactly 3pm, she rang. I know the time because the clock stopped at the exact same time. Steve wasn’t happy about any of it, and being unemployed again didn’t help matters. She said the moment she heard my voice she knew she had to contact me. We arranged to meet on Sunday week at her place. By then, Steve was standing right next to me, as if he was trying to force his energy over mine and smother it. His whole body went rigid as he yelled “No!” I ignored him so he demanded I look at the clock “See. It’s a sign. You believe in signs, don’t you? There’s something not right here. Can’t you feel it? I thought you were supposed to be able to sense these things. You can’t go. You can’t. Anyhow, it’s Friday the 13th. Do you feel ready to battle with the gods? Do you?” I told him he couldn’t protect me forever, and that this was something I simply had to do, whatever the outcome.
On the following Wednesday, Petula and I talked about her financial situation. Life was a constant struggle with nothing going to plan. In telling me more about her life with Dave, she told me more about what it was like with her ex-husband, and the huge debts he ran up. He was so self-obsessed he bought whatever he fancied yet left her with barely enough money to put food on the table, let alone buy anything else. It was time she stopped putting off the inevitable, for herself as a person more so than the financial considerations. At my urging, she took the first step by ringing Women’s Legal Services. The next day I applied for a reception job at a Bracken Ridge physiotherapy centre.
Sunday October 22nd was a red-letter day for both of us. She made the decision to leave Dave, whether she follows through will be another matter, and I met Gaele. Not only did we feel we knew each other, the year after I broke my ankle, she broke hers. Mine was the left, hers was the right. We even had identical scars, only she still had her metal plate and screws. As we sat and talked, I told her my story and she told me hers. When she described a man, very like my father, standing behind me emanating immense love she said he and I had lived many lifetimes together, several with religious and political overtones. She also told me he walked with Jesus as one of his disciples. She told me I had lived lives in Lemuria, Atlantis and Egypt, and that Isis energy was strong within me. When I mentioned the sketches I did at the City Hall psychic fair she said: “Yes, the red crystal. I just got an email about that this morning. It is said this crystal will activate a new level of consciousness on the planet. You have come into this world to teach and to heal.”
She went on to say a woman, several years younger than me, will play a role in my life’s work. When I asked if I had already met this woman she said I had, so I told her about Petula. On asking her age, she said: “Yes, I feel she's the one, but not for a while. She has things to do first. She also must make an effort with something concerning money. This is money owed her, but not easily obtained.” I knew only too well what she was referring to. Before I left she gave me some flower essences and a tub of cream to rub into my ankle.
During the last week of October, with so much occupying my mind, I had to accept yet another change. When the hot flushes began I finally understood why Glenda would race out of the laundry flapping her skirt up around her face whilst making orgasmic sounds as she writhed about with her back against the cool brick wall. I told her one day she was going to get caught doing that. The glare I got sent me back to my ironing board laughing. On Friday, Petula rang to say she needed a reading desperately because her “solar plexus was screaming.” This was despite her clairvoyant friend, Margaret, coming the next day to give readings for a few of us “Lifeliners”. I understood only too well the type of gut-wrenching fear she was dealing with, but I also knew there was only way to defeat it. I did not envy her, though. She not only had to leave Dave, with all its attendant ramifications, she had to take steps to obtain a financial settlement with Neville. The reading was blunt and left her in no doubt that she was running out of choices.
The next day, I collected Gladys and took her to Petula’s place for the reading day with Margaret. Faye was the only other person to come. Petula had been friends with Margaret since meeting her many years before when, desperate and at her wits end, she called for a reading. She didn’t have enough money but Margaret did what every sincere reader will do when faced with genuine need. She delivered.
The first thing Margaret said to me was that she knew me from somewhere. It’s staggering how many readers tell me that. In this life, she said, I am to release excess baggage from the past. There have been too many tears; too much pain and sorrow; too many recriminations. She said guilt and shame had dogged me through several lifetimes. In one, as a soldier on guard duty, I fell asleep with fatal consequences. In another, I was a frigid wife who looked upon her husband as more brother than lover. In this life, that man is Steve’s brother. She said the union produced two children, both girls, who I managed to raise to well-balanced adulthood. My husband in that life died believing his loveless marriage was his fault. In this life, she said I am repeating many of these patterns. I must forgive myself for the shame of the soldier life and allow myself to love and be loved. In the soldier life, she said Steve was my father, a well-to-do landowner, a man of considerable status and responsibility. She said life with Steve hasn’t been easy and there had been several times I wanted to leave. I have two choices, she said. “Leave and make your own way and create further karma, or stay and live your life the way you want, doing for him what you can, but accepting that only he can change himself.”
On October 31st, the children in the neighbourhood celebrated Halloween. Steve hated Halloween. When our children were younger and wanted to go “trick or treating” they were forbidden. He’d say it was time Australians stood up for their heritage instead of becoming Americanised. I thought that funny considering our ancestral heritage.
Halloween can be traced back to the Celtic Festival of Winter: Samhain (sow-een), the night of the great fire festival. For the ancients, who observed Samhain in the first week of November, this was a time of feasting and celebration for those who were living, and a remembrance of the deeds of ancestors who lived before them. It was a time when the veils between the world of the living and the world of the dead were at their thinnest. In the southern hemisphere, Samhain would fall on May 1st, a time not normally associated with Halloween. In early Ireland, people gathered at the ritual centres of the tribes because Samhain was regarded as the principal calendar feast of the year. The greatest assembly was the ‘Feast of Tara’, focusing on the royal seat of the High King as the heart of the sacred land, the point of conception for the new year. In every household throughout the country, hearth-fires were extinguished and all waited for the Druids to light the new fire of the year – not at Tara, but at a hill twelve miles to the north-west which marked the burial-place of a powerful Irish Druidess.
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