Openings, closings
(This is continuing the conversation started here and here.)
When I was a child I don’t think I ever heard about clairvoyance or other kinds of outside-of-what’s-normal-for-most-of-us psychic phenomenon. Probably the first time I heard of such things was from television, where the pseudo-documentary shows always had deep, male voices narrating, like the one that does the trailers for movies: very dramatic, intended to spook you out, or get you thinking this is the most amazing, unbelievable thing you’re ever gonna hear. I always loved seeing those shows, and loved believing with only about a tenth of myself that the stuff they were showing was real. Most of what I saw seemed staged, or at the very least over-inflated, and the reports explainable by other means than actual psychic phenomenon. I wished I could talk with someone real, who really had such experiences and wasn’t always voiced over with that dramatic morning-voice guy. Would they be able to just talk…normally with me?
Spring of 2004 I started working on the novel that I’m working on now. I knew I wanted to tell a story about human motivation, and some of the common things I think all of us carry around inside. The seed for my story was a boy who has a gift for seeing in picture form, as well as actual scenes, what’s really going on inside of people. Like in his mind’s eye. He is the catalyst for most of the story’s conflict, because what he sees so often contradicts what people actually say their motivations are.
Anyway, I was in the beginning stages of dreaming up this character and forming a story around him, and decided to have him write me letters, telling me about himself. I didn’t use the word “clairvoyant” when thinking or writing about him because I had no category for his gift. It was just a gift that I gave him, and one for which I had to work out the “rules” (like how exactly does it work? when does he see these visions? can he see inside of everyone?).
So there I was, spending lots of time getting into the mind of this kid.
One day as I was working, I began to get an uneasy feeling. It wasn’t indigestion, and it wasn’t that I was realizing I had done something wrong, or forgotten to do something I was supposed to do. It was a different flavor of uneasiness than any of these things.
I kept working, trying to ignore it, trying to swat it away, and even got up from my desk and cleaned the whole house, trying to ward the thing off. But it persisted. I couldn’t get away from the sense that it had to do with someone else, someone that wasn’t me, and that whoever it was was feeling the very feelings I was, only way, way worse. The thought seemed strange, and wasn’t one I tried to produce or puzzle out–it was just a kind of clearness that was with me, like when you’re having a dream and just know something to be true.
Finally by early evening I felt so bad that I simply had to stop and listen. If this was about someone I knew, then I figured I might as well try and figure out who; if they were feeling these feelings worse than I was, surely they were suffering.
So I sat down on the floor and tried to listen.
Instantly a dream that I had had the night before and forgotten about came to my mind. In it I had watched a friend of mine at his place of work leave with two others to deal with a fire that had started in another part of the building. My friend had told those of us in the first location to stay put, that he and these other two would deal with this and be back soon. And everyone but me did just that.
I did not want to stay put, though, and so followed after them to see what was actually going on. Would they be able to put out the fire?
Then I woke up.
So as I sat and listened, this dream popped into my mind, and another knowing feeling came, where I knew it was this friend who was suffering so badly. I also knew his suffering didn’t concern me, and wasn’t something I was in a position to do much about. So I sent out all the strength and help I could wish and pray for, and tried to continue about my day.
That night I still felt awful. I went to bed, but had only fitful, frustrated sleep. I kept getting this image in my mind of a letter, though I couldn’t ever see what it said. All through the night I saw that thing, over and over, often in dreams, sometimes in half-sleep. It was charged, somehow, and deeply connected, though I did not know how, to whatever my friend was wrestling through.
I still felt bad the next morning, but within a couple of hours of rising, something dramatically changed. I had been feeling like something was making it difficult to breathe, a pressure on my chest and a kind of metaphorical smoke, but almost instantly that feeling was replaced by the freshest, most peaceful breeze. I can’t say literally, since I was in my house with all the windows closed, but more…internally. I actually got an image in my mind of a beautiful blue sky with bright white clouds and clean air. And again, that knowing feeling, this time that my friend was fine. I knew that whatever thing he had been struggling with was through.
The experience puzzled and perplexed me. It had come unbidden, and left within the day. And it brought to mind similar experiences I had had at other times, too, but without accompanying dreams. Occasionally I would get an image in my mind of a certain location–a parking lot, a street, a home–and the distinct feeling that something bad was about to happen there. I’d usually pray, feeling helpless to know what was actually about to happen or how to prevent it. The images were fleeting, but super charged–a whole different quality from the kind of images any of us gets in a day as memories are sparked, or daydreams wander through. I never thought to call this clairvoyance.
Given I was just in the thick of developing a character with a similar sort of gift, I started feeling strange inside. Wobbly. Shaky. Like life was getting too weird all of a sudden, and I didn’t know what to do with it. Like I was taking on this gift that my character had…which I had thought I had only made up.
I wrote to my friend.
“You may think I’m crazy,” I said, in effect, “but…did anything difficult happen to you on such and such a day? Here’s what I was feeling then, and the things I dreamt about before and after.”
He wrote back with only confirmations. He couldn’t betray any confidences, but said that the day I had felt so bad, he had become nearly debiliated by the afternoon from a conflict that was in the works. He and two others were involved in it, and he wrote, “I felt as if the air was being squeezed from me, the forces of Death looming large.”
The next morning, though, he got a letter from one of the people involved that cleared the whole thing up. The person had had a change of heart, and a truly awful situation got completely turned around. By means of this letter.
That week I had two other dreams/feelings of the same quality, but without any clarity as to who they were about, such that by the time I visited my therapist the next week (on a normal weekly visit), I was all worked up.
“What do I do with these things?” I asked frantically. I was feeling like I was back in time, playing some of the guessing games with God that had so characterized my young adult days of Christian evangelicalism. My beliefs at that time had made every day feel like a test of my faithfulness and attentiveness, where I was supposed to do and say specific things in specific instances, but never given clear instructions as to what these things were. It was up to me to figure them out, and I never felt like I knew if I got them right. It was crazy-making, I tell you. No way to Live.
“I don’t think you have to do anything,” my therapist said. “If these things come to you, just acknowledge them, and move on.” She knew me and wisdom well enough for this to resonate right away as what I needed to hear.
As time went on, my experiences like this lessened. I was fascinated by them, though, and could not help wondering about them. Why did they come when they did? Does everyone have these experiences? My dabblings in physics and Eastern thought made me search for some kind of theory on this stuff, some way to make sense of it. The explanations I would have made earlier in my life–having to do with God, and God’s urgings and conveyings of information–didn’t seem to describe what I was experiencing, or jive with my emerging concept of God. Jean Bolen’s The Tao of Psychology and Belleruth Naparstek’s Your Sixth Sense, were helpful reads at this time–the latter a very practical, down-to-earth discussion of the ways some people have actually nurtured this kind of gift. Naparstek thinks everyone is capable of having it, though some are much more naturally wired for it. I considered trying to nurture it more in myself, but never felt right about doing so. The possibility felt charged with danger for me.
That winter I stumbled into a comment left on someone’s blog that referenced this kind of thing–a kind of clairvoyant “knowing”. I emailed the commenter, asking him more about his comment. We proceeded to have a fascinating conversation, in which he described his own clairvoyant gift, as well as the gifts of some of his family members. His father and his daughter communicate regularly, he said, telepathically. His daughter can move physical objects with her mind. For years he was involved in the darker side of these things (I’m not sure what he meant by this exactly), but as an adult became a Christian and chose to use them only when he feels led by God to do so, and within his Christian framework for understanding things. He was a warm and generous fellow, from what I could tell, and it felt wonderful, on one level, to finally talk with someone so normally about these things.
But then my own “knowings” started to return. And unlike that first experience, they weren’t accompanied by clarity as to who they were about. They’d come most often as I was trying to go to sleep at night, like when my conscious mind relaxed. And again they began raising my anxiety about what to do about them, and also that crazy sort of feeling you get when it feels as though things you take for granted–gravity, for instance, or physical distance between people–are presenting themselves more as illusion than fact. I wonder how many people we consider insane in our country are actually in touch with everything this way–in touch in a way that makes it impossible for them to function normally. We need our illusions, I think.
One night as I lay there trying to sleep, I felt as though my brain tapped into a firehose of knowings. I wasn’t trying to know anything, but there I was, getting some of the most awful images. All of them were intensely charged. I felt like they were from people in the near vicinity–maybe the apartment complex next door. I got up and shook my head and shut my mind’s door. And decided this had to stop.
Reflection and another conversation with my therapist convinced me I didn’t want to pursue this at all at this point (i.e. try to develop this gift more, or continue conversing with the guy online). I was pregnant at the time, and, for the life that was growing in me, needed to be as grounded and centered as possible. I didn’t want to pry into anyone’s business, and didn’t want to play guessing games about uninvited information. And, tangentially, of course, didn’t want to feel or become insane. So I ended my conversation with that fellow online and kept my inner door shut. And have ever since.
Occasionally I’ll get a dream that feels more charged than usual, but generally I’ve been “knowing”-free for a couple of years now. And it’s felt great.
My take-home from all of this, including the research that I’ve done, has been a deep conviction that the psychic stuff people report isn’t all hogwash (including telekinesis, ESP, precognition, etc.). Though some of it surely is, it isn’t all made up. I’m convinced we are all interconnected in some mysterious way, and that time and space are both shorthands for something that’s bigger than both, that contains them both. I’m convinced that love makes time and space between people disappear sometimes–even into the past and the future–and opens up channels of communication that otherwise exist, but don’t get tapped into. And I’m convinced that at least in this season of my life, I don’t need to try to know, firsthand, how true all of these things are.
How does all of this jive with any of your thoughts or experiences? I’d really love to hear.
December 2nd, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Wow, Noelle. I’m loving this series of blogs. As for my own experiences, I’ve had many “very charged dreams” as you’ve said. But I’ve never really followed up on them with the people - as in asking them what was going on with them on those days. I think I will do that next time I have one of those moments.
I had one experience a couple of years ago along those lines that really stands out for me. At the time I knew a couple that was going on vacation to Italy. I told them that I would pray for them and their children (who were going to stay here in the States) regularly while they were gone. On the day that I thought they were coming home, I prayed for their safe travel, and then I stopped praying for them.
Weeks later, I asked them how their trip had gone and how their return trip had gone. They said that all went well until a certain day when things started to fall apart, both there in Italy with them and with their children here in the States. Interestingly, it was the same day that I had stopped praying. All three of us were a little stunned when we realized the “co-incidence” of those events. Things that make me say, “Hmmmm…..” Lots to think about.
Thanks so much for your depth of insight, your provocative questions, and your willingness to move beyond superficiality to what lies beyond. Please keep writing.
Blessings, Gail
December 4th, 2006 at 1:15 pm
I have had some related experiences. Several years ago, I went through a period where I was having completely random dreams about people from my past. Each time I did, I would see (or hear from) the person the very next day. These were people I hadn’t talked to for years, so it was quite unusual to dream about them one day, and then run into them on the street the next day. It got to a point where I would dream about someone and then I would wait for them to show up the next day. But then, as suddenly as it started, it ended, and I never really understood the meaning of it.
I’ve had other experiences too - some of them are so strange they’re hard to talk about. One experience in particular shook me to the core. I wrote about it and have contemplated putting it on my blog, but it still feels quite raw to put it out there. I was actually thinking of posting it this week, and now that I’ve read your piece I’m considering it even more. It was about a time I slipped into “temporary insanity” which the doctors thought was steroid-induced (I was being injected with them to speed lung development for my in utero baby) but for me was completely different. It was a surreal, scary, “knowing” to the point of being prophetic, experience, and like you, I feel like if I let down my guard too much, I might go back there.
December 4th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
Gail, yes, so much to think about! The thing that scares me about accounts like this is the idea that prayers (or meditations/sending vibes–whatever name you call a kind of intercession for others) could be crucial to things “going well” for people. This feels like a set up, at least for me, with my background, for feeling sort of tormented about praying for people, like everything good depends on you doing it. That’s a lot of pressure! Because I believe in the power of intercession, of course I can’t dismiss the idea that what we “pray” matters…and yet a big part of me wants to hope that whether we do it or not, that’s okay…that there’s a bigger story somehow holding all the details benevolently, no matter how ugly the details look from any given perspective. I guess I’m trying to find a way to feel like I–we–matter, without blowing our crucialness out into something that becomes a heavy burden, which, my intuition seems to think, isn’t really ours to have to carry. What do you think?
Heather, wow. I wish you lived here and we could sit down and talk for a few hours. I will look forward to reading your account, if you choose to post it, and if you don’t, to just enjoying the fact that I get to know you. :)
December 5th, 2006 at 7:35 am
You are so right, Noelle. The questions are many and mounting. What is my role in the lives of others through prayer/intercession/dreams? Why should my participation in prayer matter? What if I hadn’t prayed, didn’t pray, or don’t pray going forward? What if my thoughts and dreams and perceptions do matter and I do nothing with them or about them? Would/could someone else’s misfortune be on my account, on some act of commission or omission on my part? I want to believe that I have opportunities to act for the good of others through intercession, but not to their detriment through failing to intercede, but I simply do not know. It is a heavy burden to bear, no doubt about that. I truly don’t know the answer to any of those questions.
Now that I read Heather’s stories of dreaming of someone and then having them show up, I am reminded that I have those experiences often. And have had them for a long time now, but have never tried to figure out why it happens that way. As a result of those occurences, I have begun the habit of interceding for people whenever they cross my mind. I don’t think that those appearances in my mind are “random,” and so I ask for grace, peace, and mercy to be poured out on them whenever they come to my heart or mind. I am no longer surprised when I later hear from them; it has become a part of my life in the community of humankind. As these events happen more often, I am more convinced of our inter- and intra-connectedness.
Even so, I am beginning to think that there is no real, full, or ever-present knowing that is possible for us. Dreams come and go. Revelations as well. Perhaps my role is to live each one as fully as possible, to ask the questions, but then to press on in the pursuit of full life, deep prayers of the heart, and amazement that I have had anything at all to do with grace being present in someone else’s life in any way, shape, or form.
Like Jen Lemen, I spend much of my time in awe that I am alive, that I have known/read/encountered others along the path who are seeking deeper knowledge, that last night I saw the full moon, and that this morning I have awakened to a new day of life, breath, and knowledge.
In the meantime, I am challenged, awed, and intrigued to read stories like yours and Heather’s which are so different from my own. The knowing that you two describe as disturbing, surreal, and sometimes even fearful has not been my experience. I join you in hoping that she will tell her story - and that you will continue to tell more of your own.
One of my favorite quotes is by Rainer Maria Rilke - I keep it in the front cover of my journals as a reminder to myself - “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything; live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day to the answer.”
Still wondering, Gail
December 5th, 2006 at 9:47 am
This conversation is so intriguing to me, everyone has such unique experiences and pespectives on the type of knowing Kristin has described.
Maybe because we have such a similar background, Kristin, and because I know you well, I feel an instinctive protective impulse here when you describe feeling a burden related to this gift. Undoubtedly, years of teaching around being “faithful to your calling” and “using your gifts for God’s glory” have built a very solid foundation from which to feel incredible PRESSURE to DO SOMETHING AMAZING with this gift.
This raises for me an issue with how we “use” the gifts we are given: in Christianity, there is not much discussion around how our gifts affect us, how they affect the one who gives the gift out. Like how to remain healthy and balanced even when you’re feeling all kinds of prophetic insight or premonition about people around you. It seems to me that the tendency is for the identity of the person who has the gift to get lost, put on the sidelines, just the vessel. Think of the prophets in the Bible–how much do we ever learn about what it was like to be a prophet, how they felt after big prophecies were given? Jeremiah gives us some of this in Lamentations; but its still not from the perspective I mean.
I guess what I’m trying to get at here is that I don’t blame you, Kristin, for not wanting to engage all the time with that kind of knowing that you described, the kind that seemed like it could overwhelm you. Because as important as gifts are, the one who HAS the gift is more important, no? If I love someone, and give them a gift, the point is that somehow I’m intending to benefit their life, not further burden them. So I wonder how this might help correct some of our perception, for those of us from Christian backgrounds, about the nature of having a gift. A big part of me really reacts badly to the “all for God’s glory” nature of having a gift; as if the person in whom it resides is nothing but an anonymous vessel. Yikes.
One more thought–I wonder if epistemologically, there is another realm of knowing that some of us occasionally tap into, sometimes some more than others, and that this is that “thing” that you sensed and did not want to engage with in recent years. I mean here not to diminish your ability to tap into it, b/c that is for sure not an everyday thing, but more to say, its a whole area of knowledge that is just there whether anyone has a gift to see it or not. Like your recent blogs on how everything is a part of everything else; we just don’t always see it.
Anyways, thats all for now. Thanks for bringing up such great topics!!
Lori
December 5th, 2006 at 9:56 pm
Gail, a beautiful reflection. Thank you. It is good to grow a kind of comfortableness with not knowing how all these things work. If the not knowing is frought with anxiety, I think a change of perspective is probably needed. Or just time for the comfort to grow. Mostly these days, I’m feeling comfortable with not knowing.
Lori, I’m really with you on concern about the idea of being used. It’s strange to me how culturally we recoil from the idea of being used by any person, but in many religious circles welcome God to do it at any cost. There has to be a way, I think, of feeling oneself a part of something that transcends oneself, without having to see God as a chess player. I have a post percolating inside on the idea of losing one’s life to gain it–how I believe this is profound and true. So I have to think about how to combine it with this sense that we aren’t pawns, and that the particulars of our lives and trials matter, and that it’s actually healthy and healing to honor these and take them seriously.
Thank you for pushing the conversation further, and helping me think more holistically about this next post idea I’m pondering.
December 9th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
ok, please do not think i am crazy. the strangest thing that ever happened to me was that i dreamed that Christopher Reeve had a life threatening accident the night before the news came out of his horse riding accident. i have no connection to this actor. none. i walked around in a daze, wondering if i was crazy. i like the questions you bring up. that perhaps we are connected mysteriously…like me rising in the nighttime seconds before my baby whimpers, or moments after my father’s last breath. perhaps i am not crazy.
December 12th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
hi Kristin.
well, i’ve been away for a bit — haven’t even posted on my own blog! but started catching up with everyone else’s. i wish i had more energy and clarity right now to respond, but the closest i can get is:
-a few people have used the word “prophetic” instead of clairvoyant. this is how i have always experienced my own “knowings” and deep dreams. this also makes sense, considering my similar background to you. however, i never was taught it was scary or bad. i do agree with Lori there is that weird Christian pressure to have it be “used of the Lord” or some such other odd phrase. i’ve begun to see it more as a facet of Who I Was Created To Be, and its actual “usefulness” is less important than the woman it makes me to be.
-i love that you are jumping into this topic full force. get it out there. it’s exciting. and while the “firehose” is not exactly comfortable, i think there is a way to acknowledge your Giftings and not be overwhelmed by them. this is where i think that God worldview comes in — instead of giving you a gift so that He can use you like some cosmic chess piece — (not so consistent with the God i’ve experienced, by the way) it’s a true gift, for you to play with and use and enjoy and be reminded of how the Giver loves you and wants you to be whole. and if helping others, enriching others, is part of what makes you joyful — well, joy-full, then perhaps that is how you use it. and while that may not fit the traditional stale definition of Glorifying The Lord With Your Gifts and all that, i think it does give me, at least, a framework to poke around the wild and wooly world of sometimes having a less-tangible Knowledge of Things that would’ve gotten me — and you, and a lot of other women — toasted to a crisp at the stake a few hundred years ago.
i’m looking forward to joining you on this exploration.
December 15th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
Thanks for your words and your encouragements, Hadashi. I think you’re so right: God concepts make such a world of difference when it comes to practicalities–i.e. how to live, day by day. I like this move you’ve described so much, away from a chess-player God, and toward greater freedom to play and enjoy the gifts we’ve been given.