by Julie Rieger
And by the way, since smell and taste are connected, I have to say that though I’ve never experienced clairgustance (that’s the ability to taste something without actually putting into your mouth), that clair sounds glorious to me. Anthon St Maarten also opened my mind to a fascinating purpose of this clair. States St Maarten: “Psychics who work in law enforcement or forensics, for example, benefit greatly from their ability to become aware of the taste of chemicals, drugs, or blood. It often provides clues to how a victim died, or how they were kidnapped or murdered. . . . Clairgustance often also serves to enhance at least one of the other, more prominent psychic senses.”
When it comes to clairgustance, the principle of knowing your dominant humanness applies. If taste connects you to the world, like being a chef, then clairgustance is possibly one of your inherent clairs, whether you realize it or not. And if you’re sitting in your living room and suddenly taste cherry pie, well, you’re clairgustant—and I am officially jealous.
Finally, I might have to tussle with science about this final clair because it’s so “out there.” As previously mentioned, clairtaction is the psychic ability to physically feel the act of being touched by a spiritual being. I learned about this term for the first time on the website of a healer, psychic, and author named Emily Matweow, who may have coined the term “taction.”
“I chose ‘taction’ because it is an archaic word defined as ‘the act of touching or making contact,’ ” she writes on her website. Matweow goes on to describe a “telekinetic-like ability” to touch both “physical and etheric entities in such a way that both the recipient and the psychic have awareness of the feeling.”
Now I realize that the idea of being touched by an etheric entity—aka a ghost—sounds outlandish. But here’s the deal: If ghosts are comprised of etheric energy, and energy has weight, then it stands to reason that clairtaction is quite possible. Here’s another reason it’s quite possible: because I experienced it myself.
Suzanne and I were in Arkansas for Cubby’s wedding one year. We stayed with a good friend named Janet Selby, who lives in this fabulous old house that dates back to 1904. Janet swears she has a ghost in the house and calls it “CA.” Get it? CA (see a) ghost? Janet is hilarious.
Anyhow, Janet couldn’t wait for me to walk through the house and either confirm or deny the existence of CA. Like a good friend, I obliged.
Since I always travel with my protection kit, I grabbed a stick of palo santo and proceeded to set it aflame. Once it burned enough to produce smoke, I blew out the flame and started to walk though the house saying the Lord’s Prayer. Every minute or so I’d ask for CA to show himself. I suddenly sensed that there was something around the front door, but in the end that sense dissipated. I then turned my back to walk toward the kitchen area and boom!—I literally felt something jump on my back. It had the same weight as, say, a partially filled backpack with a binder or two inside. I knew immediately that a spirit had landed on my back. Energetically, in my mind, I told it to respect my space and boundaries, to no avail.
Now I know that this sounds freaky and might feed the idea that ghosts and spirits are menacing—and some are (more on that later). I knew in my core, however, that this particular spirit was more like a playful labradoodle that jumps around when you tell it to sit. I wasn’t scared in the least.
“Janet!” I yelled. “Your damn ghost just jumped on my back.”
“What? CA is here? I knew it,” she said in her heavy southern accent.
“Yup, and he’s not following the rules, either. I’m telling him to get off my damn back. CA has boundary issues,” I said with my rediscovered southern accent.
“OMG, he totally does. He messes with my boyfriend all the time,” Janet said, adding, “Did I ever tell you how CA locked Joe in the little room inside the barn? CA actually turned the handle to the lock position.”
“Wow,” I exclaimed. “I’ve heard of ghosts moving physical objects. I mean, damn, we all bought it when Patrick Swayze pushed a penny up a door in Ghost, so why wouldn’t CA be able to turn a lock?” (I mean this ironically, folks.)
Feeling the physical presence of a ghost is not as unusual as we may think, though all of this is hard to prove. That said, it hasn’t stopped a team of scientists at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland from trying. They developed a “ghost robot experiment” that tried to simulate “conflicting sensory-motor signals” that people might construe as ghostly in an effort to prove, as one of their neuroscientists suggested, that our mind is only playing tricks on our bodies.
Would those same scientists say the same thing about savant Daniel Tammet’s mind? If Tammet’s mind is playing tricks on his body, then wow, those are some pretty awesome tricks.
There are just as many scientists, by the way, who are pooling their resources to study the possibility of etheric life, rather than refute it. That includes Dr. Julie Beischel, cofounder and director of research at the Arizona-based Windbridge Institute, and one of the few scientists in the United States engaged in full-time empirical research with mediums.
All this to say that there have always been two sides of science. Working with data scientists who all have PhDs, I know for a fact that if your intention is to disprove something, you can always find an algorithm to do so. Likewise, you can find the data to prove the very thing you set out to disprove. Science has always straddled these two worlds, though it is increasingly faced with astounding and baffling mysteries that defy every form of empirical logic. This is especially the case with quantum physics and string theory, which is so “out there” it makes spooks jumping on your back seem like child’s play.
Science is a fickle beast. Remember, there was a time when scientists told us that it was healthy to smoke, and that we could lose weight by eating sugar and no fat. Today some scientists are trying to disprove global warming. Please know that I am not trying to debunk the entire scientific profession, but you gotta admit: They’re not always right.
So if you’ve experienced something you know to be true, whatever clair you might think it is, I have three words for you: Believe in yourself. Oh, and I have three more words if you’re getting tripped up by scientists who can’t accept the possibility of the seemingly impossible: Fuck those nerds.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Jacob Takes the Wheel
Sam: Molly, you’re in danger.
Oda Mae Brown: You can’t just blurt it out like that! And quit moving around, because you’re starting to make me dizzy. I’ll just tell her in my own way.
[pause; then]
Oda Mae Brown: Molly, you in danger, girl.
—GHOST
One May morning in Los Angeles I start my day like any other day. My commute to work is roughly twelve miles. That takes around fifteen minutes without traffic and about five minutes as the crow flies. In the clusterfuck of LA rush hour traffic, however, that fifteen minutes can easily become one hour or more if you have to drive on the notorious 405 freeway.
Before I tell you what happened, let me just say that the 405 is a bitch. She’s big ol’ girl that defines city life in LA: ten lanes wide in parts with nearly five hundred thousand people driving on her every day. In a recent US Department of Transportation report on the state of our country’s roads, the 405 swept the honors as the most traveled freeway in America. So you can imagine how busy it is during rush hours. Traffic on that freeway is so much a part of life in LA that it was spoofed in the Saturday Night Live satire “The Californians”: Karina (Kristen Wiig), her lover, Devin (Bill Hader), and her husband, Stuart (Fred Armisen), talk in clichés that revolve around different streets that go on and off the 405. It’s hilarious—at least if you live in LA.
But here’s the deal: I love my commute despite the traffic. The more traffic, the better, because during my drive I get personal and professional phone time. I can talk as loud as I want and say whatever I want. More than that, because it’s a self-contained space where no one can interrupt me,
I sometimes have some of my clearest and biggest epiphanies on the road.
At around eight thirty in the morning on this particular day, I call Cubby like I do every day as I’m making my way toward Sepulveda Boulevard.
No answer.
Then I call Mona’s sister, Pam, like I also do virtually every day.
No answer.
Okay, so then I call Dave, who heads up broadcast buying at our ad agency in New York.
No answer.
Now I’m kinda pissed. Where is everyone? Where is my morning entertainment? Where are my connections? It seems as if everyone in my entourage has mysteriously fallen off the radar.
I finally make it onto the grand dame 405 for a few minutes with only one hand on the wheel when I distinctly hear a male voice.
“Put your other hand on the wheel,” the voice says.
So I do. Wait, who is talking to me?
“If your phone rings, don’t answer,” he adds.
Okay, I won’t.
“In fact, don’t look at it, either.”
After five seconds of silence, he says with simple conviction: “There’s going to be an accident.”
What? Where? Shit.
I do everything I’m supposed to do: My hands are placed at ten and two o’clock on the steering wheel. I am alert. In fact, my internal alert mechanism had babies and they are also on high alert. I sit up straight, alternating my glance from left to right, then check my rearview mirror. I do not look at my phone. In less than sixty seconds, the two cars in the lane in front of me collide. Swerving into another lane is not an option for me since I’m boxed in with cars on either side and behind me. There is nowhere to go. I am on the 4-0-fucking-5 freeway during rush hour stuck in my lane when the sedan in front of me crashes into the pickup truck directly in front of it.
I pump on my brakes to signal to cars behind me to slow down.
I slam on my brakes to avoid crashing into the sedan. My handbag and gym bag fly out of the seat and hit the dashboard.
I remember seeing the Wilshire exit.
I get out to make sure everyone is okay. I’m ready to call 911, but not ready to tell them that I’m not involved in the crash because some sort of spirit voice warned me ahead of time. The drivers involved in the crash seem fine, though the front end of the sedan looks like an accordion. It’s a small miracle that everyone is relatively unscathed. I realized that had I not been forewarned and on alert for an accident, I would have ended up sandwiched between the car in front of me and the one in back. Make that crunched between both cars waiting for that 911 call on my own behalf.
I get back in my car and call Suzanne to recount the event. “So who was it?” she asks. “Who was talking to you? Mona?”
“No, it wasn’t Mona.”
“You seem so calm,” Suz adds. “Why don’t you call Patricia? She’ll know who it was.”
Exiting Santa Monica Boulevard and heading east toward the studio lot, I call Patricia, thinking how strangely prepared I was for that collision. “Hey. So I have a crazy story for you,” I say, then proceed to recount the details of my morning commute.
“Wow,” she says. “I’ve never heard such specificity from the Other Side.”
“Who do you think it was?”
“Well, Julie, that’s what our spirit guides do,” she says in a super serious tone. “They’re with us from birth and help guide us where they can, or where we let them. You know, they nudge us around. I’m pretty positive it was your spirit guide. Have you ever met yours?”
“No, actually, I have not.”
“Well, you have now, honey.”
“Wow. It’s a good thing he was there. I could have really hurt the woman in the car in front of me.”
“Oh no, dear,” Patricia clarifies. “It was your life he was saving, not that of the woman in front of you.”
Oh my God. My life? My little life that didn’t seem so little anymore?
I arrive at work but don’t bother sharing my story. I spend the rest of the day drifting in and out of morning events. On the commute home I call Pam.
“Where were you this morning when I called you?” I ask.
“At home.”
“Well, I’ve got a story for you.”
I proceed to recount every second of the morning traffic incident. I wait for a “no way” or “holy crap” or at least a “wow” from Pam when I’m done with my story, but instead I get a long pause. Finally Pam says: “Do you want to hear the other half of your story?”
“Why the hell not?”
“You know how I can fall into a deep depression and not get out of bed?” she asks. Do I know? Hell yes, I know. For a few years I was one of the only people she’d talk to after Mona died. “So I had the phone in bed with me,” she continues. “And I saw that you were calling this morning, but when I went to grab the phone, my body just froze up, like I was paralyzed. I literally physically could not reach for the phone.”
Pause. WTF?
“You know,” Pam continues, “there has not been a moment in my fifty years where my body did not do what I asked it to. What would have happened if I had answered?”
“I might be dead,” I sheepishly reply. I say that in my head at least a hundred times until it dawns on me that this is my biggest, most profound experience of clairaudience: I heard this voice as clear as day. It was palpable, real, and urgent.
In retrospect, I realize that I’d experienced what I can only call divine intervention: The minute I left my house that morning, everything lined up in the universe to prevent me from being distracted on my phone: people didn’t answer, and Pam couldn’t even move her fucking body to answer my call. The spirits were already orchestrating things to prevent me from having some sort of serious shit go down; they were setting things up in advance. We’ve all heard incredible tales of people who’ve had similar experiences that can only be explained this way. That one person who, by a series of seemingly ordinary scheduling mishaps, misses their flight on an airplane that ends up crashing into the ocean; that other person who gets waylaid and ends up not attending a concert where some lunatic opens fire into the crowd; even the one house spared by a violent tornado that swept everything else off their foundations.
In the end, I heard the message from whatever the voice was. I was a benefactor of its counsel from the Other Side. I desperately wanted to know who or what had reached out to me with that warning and orchestrated that series of morning events. For that, I turn to Ima. I tell her about my experience on the 405 and give her Patricia’s feedback. She explains how spirits can act as guides or protectors to human beings like yours truly, and are assigned to us at birth.
After pestering her to reconnect me to my spirit guide with a formal introduction, we do a few grounding exercises. By now, these exercises have become a daily practice in my life: I wake up every morning and ground our house through the olive tree we have that I call Oliver. I ground Suzanne and me and our animals. I even ground my car using its muffler as a grounding cord—I kid you not. And I always ground myself before tough meetings at work or in the world at large.
So here I sit quietly with Ima and ground myself in her presence. After a few moments, she finally tells me what to do to meet my guides. And it’s so simple I want to cry: “Call for them,” she says.
That’s right, folks. Call for them. Open your heart and mind for them. Be present for them and they will come.
So that’s what I do. I’m quiet for a long time, open and focused inward. After a few minutes, Ima asks what I see in my third eye. And what I “see” in a clear-as-day clairvoyant moment is a man with a full head of white hair and a medium-length white beard. He looks wise and biblical, but not in a hot-Jesus way. (You’ve got to admit that Jesus is often depicted looking like a hipster on his way to the Burning Man festival.) My guy looks sage and elderly.
Ima then instructs me to ask him his name. His answer comes back very clearly: “Jacob.” I sit silently for a few minutes until Ima finally as
ks what I’m doing.
“I’m saying hi to Jacob,” I reply as tears stream down my face. “I’m thanking my spirit guide for saving my life. I’m overwhelmed with gratitude.”
The word “gratitude” barely describes how I feel. I imagine the sense of infinite gratitude people experience when a firefighter carries them out of a burning building. I could have been killed. Jacob saved my life. He. Saved. My. Life. I was alerted to an accident and became the one domino that didn’t fall, preventing an even more potentially devastating collision. Thanks to Jacob, I have one more day on this precious Earth. I’m on my emotional knees in that moment.
Not long after that fateful introduction, Ima gives me homework: I’m to practice more grounding exercises and get in touch with my other guides (because yeah, we don’t have just one). And that’s how I meet my wolf guides: In the calm centered space of being grounded at Ima’s place, two wolves appear in front of me. One is gray and one is brown. They’re majestic and hold the protective energy of guardian dogs, a tribal and primal energy that makes me feel safe.
Interestingly enough, that night when I go home I don’t get the usual happy-barky greeting from Homer. He’s skittish when I approach him, backing up with his head practically cocked. Clearly he can see or sense my wolf guides, which became a palpable presence the very moment I connected with them. Once I ask them to stand behind me, Homer immediately comes over and nuzzles his head on my leg. Suzanne is, let’s just say, shocked.
And now I’m able to summon Jacob. He’s my sage, a font of wisdom whom I call on for advice from a higher source. My wolves are also my protectors and guardians, with whom I got in touch with once when I was on the phone with Brenda in my car. In midsentence I heard what sounded like a wolf howling at the moon.
“Brenda, did you hear that?” I asked.
“Hear what, my elf?” she innocently replied.
“Oh come on, quit messin’ with my already jacked-up head. You didn’t hear a wolf howling?”