Jump Girl

  The following week a third white-haired man walked into my store. He was charming in a hillbilly way. He wore a cowboy hat, which made him stand out in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. He had been through some kind of trauma and had suddenly found himself able to know things, somewhat similar to the main character in The Dead Zone—no ability until he was well into adulthood, then some cataclysmic trigger suddenly opening him to spirit.

  I spent a while talking to him, and he eventually became my student, calling me up and stopping by for guidance. It was obvious that he was not my white-haired man. Nor was Mr. Astrological Nude Photographer, because his price was too steep for my liking. Plus, something about the photographer smelled funny, and I mean literally. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but he had an odor about him that reminded me of decay. After multiple visits to my shop, I was quite sure his odor was a psychic phenomenon. He had done things to gain knowledge that had tainted his energy. He was not someone I wanted to play with.

  This left the first white-haired man, Lawton. I liked him and felt his integrity. He was clear and concise and spoke in a slow, quiet way. As he came in more and more regularly, I found myself looking forward to our conversations. He spoke primarily about healing and the human energy field.

  I decided to check Reiki out and made an appointment to have him work on me. The experience was profound. I found myself acutely aware of an energy working through my body, and I was amazed as it brought emotions to the surface in a compassionate manner that left me feeling positive rather than drained. A lot of the burdens I had been carrying for others lifted from my body.

  I stayed at his house for a few hours after my appointment, talking about the experience. He explained to me that one of the side effects of attunement to Reiki was psychic self-defense. Reiki worked as a natural shield, making it harder for the emotions of others to stick to the practitioner. This was what I had been looking for ever since I had begun working at the bar and store.

  I set about creating sacred space and went seeking my answers. I set a spell in motion—spellwork is simply active prayer—and asked that the universe answer my question. If Lawton was to be my teacher, I needed to know within three days, and I needed money not to be an issue, because a Reiki attunement was quite expensive.

  Three days later, Lawton walked into my store and told me he would teach me for free if he had to; he just knew he needed to attune me. He told me that when he’d met me, it felt as though a bucket of ice water was being poured over his head. At that moment he knew he was going to work with me in some way. I had received my answer.

  I bought and read the book Essential Reiki by Diane Stein. When I tried the hand positions, I didn’t feel anything. The book had said that an attunement, or energetic alignment, was necessary, and that Reiki was a hereditary art, passed directly from master to student. With this in mind I began my study of Reiki.

  I spent eight hours receiving my first attunement and studying the energetic system of the chakras along with hand positions and history of the art. When the attunement passed from Lawton, I felt filled with light, and my body was vibrating slightly. When I placed my hands on him, I could feel energy surging through them. They felt hot and electric at the same time.

  I left exhausted, something that happened after every attunement. The sudden shift in my energetic body required gentleness, rest, and food. It took a while for me to figure out which foods kept me balanced while my body adjusted to the new level of energy it was channeling after each attunement.

  Reiki did as Lawton had said, setting me back a bit from the emotions of others. Metaphorically, it was as if I were looking at people’s lives through a pane of glass or on television. I could watch it, know it, and experience it, but from a detached place of nonownership. This gave me freedom to dive deeper into my psychic gifts and allowed me to look at things I had once deemed too difficult.

  I started seeing clients for Reiki sessions. I didn’t charge them, but I was passionate about my new skill and wanted to use it, understand it, and develop my ability with it. I started offering healing to anyone I knew who had physical problems, emotional problems, or just wanted to try it. This was an important part of my development as a healer because I was exposed to many ailments, and I really got to see how powerful Reiki was.

  I went back for my second Reiki attunement within two months, this time asking the universe/God/Goddess to provide me the money if I was truly ready for the next step. The next day at work, I made all but twenty dollars of the money needed for the attunement, just from people walking in off the street looking for readings.

  Right from the beginning of my work with Reiki I was using my own shamanic techniques that came to me intuitively. When I would tell Lawton that I was drawn to blow into someone’s crown or felt like I should pull something out of their sacrum, he would say, “That’s shamanism, not Reiki, Sali.”

  This puzzled me a bit, but I thought it was because my healing guide was a Native American. Every time I worked on someone, I saw the face of an old Native American medicine man superimposed over mine. When I told Lawton this, he suggested we do some journey work before continuing my studies.

  When we did the journey work, I lay on Lawton’s Reiki table listening to a recording of someone playing a Native American flute. I soon found myself traveling on the vibrations of the music. While I waited for Lawton to start talking, I suddenly saw a familiar sight. I was in Montana. I had been to this place before many times in my dreams as a child. I was scared. Remembering the dream brought fear to my mind. I could see the barn, a barn that I knew would burn, a barn that I believed held my death. When I looked down at myself I could see that I was a young Native boy and that I was wearing the clothes of the white man. This was the first time I had ever seen myself in this memory, the first time I had known my own appearance. I had always assumed that I was white. In recognizing my difference, I knew I did not belong to the family whose farm I was on. I was there as some kind of ward. I was there to work, and I was hiding.

  Like in my dreams, which I long ago recognized as a past life, I ran for the barn. I could hear the whoop-whoop of the war party, and I knew that danger approached. A little blond girl was running in front of me. She was no more than six; I knew I was older, around nine or ten. We ran into the barn and hid in the hayloft as we had been told.

  There was a loud commotion outside, and I could smell smoke. I began to panic; I knew what happened next. When I experienced this memory/dream as a child, it always ended the same: the barn in flames and me screaming. This time, though, the memory did not stop with the barn in flames. I was able to follow the memory and see the entire scenario. I watched as an axe chopped through the door, and I was dragged from the burning building, coughing and choking. I saw myself slung over the back of a horse, barely conscious. I saw the Native Americans leave the farm with me in their keeping, and I knew that the little blond girl, the girl who had been my friend, whom I had thought of as a sister, was the one who perished in the fire.

  I moved forward in time, searching for what had become of me after the fire. What I saw was hard, powerful, and above all, lonely. I was taken back to the tribe, which I know to be Blackfoot—not surprising, as I carry the blood of the Blackfoot people.

  I was trained as a shaman, and I possessed the innate talent of that art. The name given to me by the white man stuck, the only name I can recall as mine from that lifetime: Joseph. I grew to become a shaman during the time of reservations. I watched the white man take my people’s land from them and destroy their culture. These sights filled me with turmoil. I had lived with white men, and they had treated me fairly, if not kindly.

  My life as Joseph was lonely because I never belonged. My experience living among white people had tainted me, separated me, and made me different. Add to that the role of medicine man, and I was alone, with neither peers nor friends. I joke to this day that no one invites Joe the Shaman over for coffee.

  This is my way of saying that the lif
e of a wisdom keeper and seer is inherently lonely. People look at you differently. You’re the first one they think of when times are hard and the unknown stalks them, but when they want to shoot the shit and have a good time, the seer often presents too deep a well to drink from.

  When I came out of my journey, I was ready to take the next step and become a Reiki Master. I had seen who I was, and I had seen how different my life was this time. I was not lonely; I was surrounded by people who loved me. My life this time around could be different. I could take Joseph’s skills, his knowledge and ability, and utilize them in my work. I didn’t have to walk the lonely path he walked. I wasn’t ready to step fully into shamanic study, but I understood that inside me was a book of knowledge waiting to be read when I was ready.

  Becoming a Reiki Master was in many ways one of the easiest things I ever did. It involved a lot of study, but it was study that came easily to me. For the first time since I was a child, I used the front door. After Grammy Brown died, I’d had no teacher, no one to show me the way, and my study was my own. My study of Wicca had been do-it-yourself. I instigated the research, training myself through books and experiments. I found my way by climbing over hedges and squeezing through basement windows. With Reiki, the door was opened, and I was invited in. There were clear instructions and rules. It was orderly.

  I studied Reiki for almost ten years, becoming a Master in six schools. Reiki led to other healing modalities, like sound healing, Rune Valdr, and more shamanism. At the core of my work as a healer, I am still a Reiki Master.

  Part 5

  The November Incident—Part 1

  34

  The Persistence of Spirit

  Reiki was not separate from the work I’d been doing as a psychic; it just added another dimension to that work. Shortly after I received my attunement as Reiki Master in the traditional Usui system, I went on to learn two other methods: Vajra and Prema. Vajra gave me the ability to move healing energy through my fingertips as well as the palms of my hands, but Prema opened my entire world, with many of its symbols being triggers for self-discovery.

  Shortly after my Prema attunement, I dreamed I was in my spirit house, standing at the beginning of a long white hallway with many doors. It was not a part of the house I recognized, but I knew it was my spirit house and I was accessing my higher self. I found the hallway intimidating, as the light was very bright, and the whiteness was very white. I’m more comfortable with shadows. I often find the intensity of light to be more intimidating than utter blackness.

  I moved down the hall, instinctively feeling for the door I needed to open. I found it, though there was nothing to set it apart from any of the other doors. I stood holding the doorknob and hesitated, knowing that on the other side of the door was something very powerful.

  Upon opening it, I saw a vast room with a large, white bed in the middle. There was nothing else in the room. When I approached the bed, I could see my Reiki Master lying in it, covered to his chin in a heavy, white blanket. At first I thought he was sick. I approached quickly, wondering what I could do to, why he was there. As always, I was lucid, awake in my dream.

  As I approached the bed, his eyes opened and said, “You have a long way to go and will need to learn how to rest while you can. You will need to find solace and quiet in a very loud world.” His words struck me as odd, yet I felt the weight of them sink into my mind, surrounding me in warmth and gentle pressure, much like the blanket he was covered in.

  I woke from the dream with a deep understanding that something was about to transpire. I was going to experience some kind of growth in my spiritual abilities. But I had no idea how, when, or how intense it would be.

  I received my Prema attunement a few weeks before Halloween, diving deeply into three of its symbols to which I felt intuitively drawn. Gnosa was designed to open one to his or her higher self; Zonar was for healing past lives, karma, and interdimensional wounds; and Shanti was for healing wounds that ramify through lifetimes by bringing one into harmony with the present.

  When Halloween came around, I gathered with my coven sisters for our annual night of spirit communication. Since I was hosting the event, I had put a lot of thought and study into how we could alter our consciousness and open the veil more fully. I had set up space in a small outbuilding I had on my property, guaranteeing us privacy and a bit more warmth.

  I created sacredness before the others arrived, calling in the directions, Deity, and the ancestors, and I added extra energy with my Reiki symbols, particularly the three Prema ones I had been using on myself. When the others arrived, we began by walking around the building three times backward, drumming and chanting. We entered the building and its sacred space with our backs turned, a purposeful reminder of the power of faith and intuition.

  We received deep, clear teachings and guidance from the spirits that night with regard to ancestor communication. As they watch over us, our ancestors are capable of seeing things from perspectives we cannot see.

  I awoke the next morning with the night’s happenings prominent in my mind. I felt a desire to connect more deeply with the spirit world. The spirits evidently felt the same, for they came calling, only this time it was not from a sanctified circle in the company of my spiritual sisters. They appeared in my car, in the supermarket, while I was watching television, and in my bedroom.

  My first experience was late at night on the way home from a friend’s house. Noel was driving, and our kids were asleep in the back of the car. We were almost home when we heard a loud clapping sound from the backseat of the car, so loud that Noel pulled over, thinking we had hit something or burst a tire. There was nothing wrong with the car, and the kids were still sound asleep. I searched the seat and the floor and found nothing that could have made such a sound. We wrote it off and kept driving home.

  That night, while I was getting undressed and talking to Noel about the weirdness of the sound in the car, one of our wall hangings started swaying back and forth across the room from where I was standing. Noel was already in bed, so there was no way that either of us could have caused the motion. This was second unexplained event in the same night, but I didn’t know who was involved or what they wanted.

  In order for a spirit to physically move an object, a phenomenon called telekinesis, someone with natural ability as a medium must be present to serve as a conduit or electrical cord. It takes a lot of energy for a spirit to physically move something, so such actions are usually reserved for moments of desperation, when the spirit feels they must get someone’s attention. If spirit communication goes on too long, the medium may find herself feeling tired and drained. This theft of energy is why many psychics and mediums are unable to wear battery-operated watches, and their cell phones drain rapidly. The spirits are using the energy.

  The next day I showed up at my friend Stacy’s house, cup of coffee in hand, determined to get to the bottom of my wyrd experience the night before. We got out a Ouija board and set to work. As soon as our fingers touched the planchette we were greeted by the spirit of my sister’s friend Adam. He had died suddenly a few months earlier without being able to say goodbye to anyone he loved. He took responsibility for the events of the night before, saying he had needed my attention. The conversation was brief, and I left feeling he wanted me to tell my sister that he was okay.

  Over the next few days I kept getting poked by spirit, seeing things out of the corner of my eye, overhearing conversations that were just out of earshot, and sensing the presence of others while I was alone. These types of experiences were not unusual for me, but to have so many of them in such a short time was.

  I finally got a clear message from an unusual source. While I was home alone watching the movie Pearl Harbor, I clearly heard one of the doctors say, “Do you know John Silver?” I heard it as if it had been written into the script. This put me into a hyperaware state. Since I knew the doctor had not actually said what I heard, I knew that spirit was sitting with me in the room. John had pressed his t
houghts forward at that moment telepathically, making me hear what he wanted me to hear.

  I turned off the movie, got up, went into my closet, and dug out the coven Ouija board. I had never used a board by myself, and the thought of it caused a mild level of fear. I had to shove aside all the dogma I had been taught in church. I created sacred space around myself by using Reiki and spreading light from the center of my being in the shape of a sphere. I picked up the board and placed it on my lap. My hands were shaking as I placed them on the planchette, but as soon as I did, it went off spinning around the board in large, lazy circles. I could feel energy moving through my hands, and I knew before speaking that there was a spirit present and who it was. I asked my standard questions all the same: “Do I have a spirit present? What is your name?”

  The answers came quickly. Yes, I did indeed have a spirit present, and his name was John Silver. He explained that he’d been trying to reach me because he wanted to talk to me more, and he felt he didn’t have enough time at Halloween. After a short while I became at ease, feeling that I was having a conversation with an old friend. Before I knew it, I had been communicating with him for most of the afternoon, only stopping to do little errands around the house.

  The next few days went by in much the same way. I accomplished the simple chores that needed doing, but I spent the remainder of my time talking to spirits. At first it was just John, and we discussed all manner of things: the unfinished bits of our relationship with each other, people we both knew who were living and dead, and other lifetimes we had shared.

  I mostly believed the information I received during the experience, but there was still a shadow of doubt in the back of my mind. What if he spoke about the things he did because I remembered them from him? What if the conversations were things I had wished we had said, and it was all in my mind?