A Divine Revelation

On several occasions, people have asked me when the first time was that I realized I was a dancer. I tell them this story. It was such a life-altering experience that I have devoted two pages to it in my soon-to-be-released memoir, THE NIGEL SESSIONS... UNLEASHING SACRED DESIRE. The following is an excerpt, pages 64-66:


"The anxious exhilaration I feel driving to Session #2 is similar to that of when I drove to Session #1, only this time it feels even more like an acid trip. I did a lot of LSD in college (in Amish country, Lancaster, Pennsylvania) and there were many times when my hippie friends and I would stay up all night and have wonderful, crazy trips together. To help focus my mind as I make my way to Nigel's land, I get to thinking about those fun days.

There was one very memorable trip in which I had a profound realization of my destiny. It was in the middle of the summer of 1975. I was between my sophomore and junior year of college and this was right before I left for Bangor, Wales for a one-year-abroad program. It was midnight and about six of us were mightily tripping and full of energy. One of my friends worked as a part-time secretary at a Protestant Church and had the keys to it, so we gathered some musical instruments and snuck into the Chapel.

The Chapel itself was unpretentious and elegant. The sides of the room had exquisite stained-glass and on the floor was a wall-to-wall deep red carpet. On a raised platform toward the front was a simple wooden altar with a Bible that rested upon it. We set-up and began to play guitars, hand drums, tambourines, rattles and even the Church’s ornate organ. I remember the sound of the music being huge, sumptuous and fantastic.

I was so inspired by the music and the beauty of the room that I began to dance... stately at first and then wildly, with full expression and abandonment! I had just purchased a beige antique shawl from the late 1800's at a local flea market and used this as a prop as I twirled, gyrated, pulsed and leaped around the altar. Everything I did was perfectly timed with the music and seemed to be sublimely connected to Universal Spirit.

When the music suddenly and climatically stopped, I released the fancy flesh-colored, floral-patterned shawl and it fell into a perfect semicircle around the altar. At the same instant I dropped dramatically to the floor landing flat on my back with my feet underneath. It was then-- at that impeccable moment-- that I had a major realization: I AM A SACRED TEMPLE BELLY DANCER! It was as if I had remembered this from a past life because the dance came to me so naturally and effortlessly. I knew that being a priestess belly dancer was in my destiny for this life as well. The dance movement I had done, I found out years later, had a name; it is called a Turkish Drop.

This revelatory moment wasn’t just in my head. Everyone was enthralled at the time and also in awe the following day when we were lounging, recouping our energy and recollecting our trips-- something we usually did after one of these drug experiences. We were laughing about how when the cops came we were able to hide in the church pews and sneak out before they caught us. And then everyone mentioned my dance and how much it moved them.

I have often wondered what my life would have been like if I hadn’t done LSD. Would I have become the psychologist I had originally intended to be?"

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And so, Illuminating the Dark blog reader, I ask you, have you ever had such a Divine Revelation about your own life?... a moment in time when your destiny has been revealed to you and your life is changed forever?

The Wonderful, Wacky, Weirdo World of Autism...Trip to Detachment

I had a dream for my life. I wanted to be a healer, vital artist and force for good in the world. I also wanted to be married with a family. To a large extent I have successfully achieved this vision, but like so many things in life, I also got a lot more than I bargained for. Specifically, I got a son, now 18, who has a full-blown case of autism. His name is Peter.

I hate it when people say, "God must have known you could handle it, that's why He gave you an autistic child." Please, don't say that to anyone. NO ONE IN THEIR RIGHT MIND WOULD CHOOSE TO HAVE AN AUTISTIC CHILD!!! However I must agree, if learning to be more patient, more compassionate and more DETACHED from prescribed expectations is something my cosmic soul had to get in this lifetime, then a child with autism was a brilliant gift. It has forced me to be way nicer than I was ever meant to be.

Life with an autistic person is akin to living with someone on acid 24/7. For them, everything is shifted to the left, right, center, up, down, nowhere, everywhere and the usual common agreed upon reality that we all trust to BE reality has no foundation, wall or roof. Just when we think we have a grip on his condition, Peter will manifest some new behavior ranging from wonderful to terrible to funny to downright heartbreaking. Parenting him is a trip that never ceases to amaze me.

Now I'm not talking high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome here, I'm talking the kind of autism where everything is going great and out-of-the-blue your adult-sized child shrieks like a banshee and violently smacks himself in the head as hard as he can with both hands; SIBS, or Self Injurious Behaviors, is what they are called. "Shriek! Crack! Crack! Shriek! Crack! Crack!" It's horrible. We feel like we are living in a mine field never knowing when a bomb will go off. Frustrated, we are still in the process of trying to figure out where this latest round of freakiness is coming from. It's pretty new, just manifesting this Fall.

Could it be the effects of puberty and testosterone? Or maybe it's sub-clinical seizures, the kind that happen quietly without the convulsions. Or it could be another disorder that's coupled with the autism, like Tourette's or Bipolar syndrome, because that scenario does happen with some frequency and there's Bipolar in my family. Or is it Exposure Anxiety? ...a chronic fight-or-flight response brought on by changes in the environment. And which neurotransmitter is out of balance? Is it norepinephrine, serotonin or dopamine? I feel like we are always guessing and the experts don't know much more and offer little guidance. Our son Peter is an ongoing experiment and the last thing my husband and I want to do is to cause more problems with ineffectual therapies and medications. I'll never forget several years ago when we gave him a dose of secretin, a pig hormone that was being lauded as the latest and greatest cure for autism. Several hours after the injection he had an obvious seizure (never happened before) and he was noticeably depressed and upset for six weeks. My desperation for a cure scared the hell out of me.

The Universe is a funny thing, however, and there is some light. As despondent as our situation with Peter seems to be, one evening on You-Tube set me straight. I viewed video clips of very severe, completely non-verbal autistic teenagers being tied down to chairs, wearing helmets and protective gloves to prevent them from inflicting permanent injuries on themselves. "Oh my God," I thought, "that's really bad." Everything was put in perspective. At least Peter is loving and can speak (short sentences). And when he's not having a SIBS attack he's got lots of skills- always helping with the grocery shopping, laundry, cleaning and food preparation. (His salads are awesome!) So for now, my Buddhist sense of detachment has kicked in and I am, for the most part, able to keep from freaking-out. I can stand back and observe our situation with intelligent compassion. It helps to have a strong, sturdy mate to lean on. I really depend on my husband Will's indomitable spirit.

I don't know what straight, rigid, right-wing religious families do with their autistic children who break all the rules of life. For myself, I am thankful for all those hits of acid I did in college that opened my mind up to viewing reality from a different angle. Little did I know that the hand of Destiny was preparing me for my future and the trip of my life.