Angels and Omens
“Make yourself familiar with the angels, and behold them frequently in spirit, though you cannot see them, they are present with you.”
(St. Francis of Sales, 14th century monk)
Growing up as a member of the post-world war II baby-boomer generation, I was taught that we live in a two-dimensional universe. In recent decades, consciousness has shifted dramatically. Various fields of study now acknowledge the existence of a universe that includes multiple dimensions. According to New Thought perspective, we are fourth-dimensional beings living in a three-dimensional world. We are spiritual beings living a human experience.
The fields of religion, philosophy, psychology, metaphysics and science each explore aspects of other dimensions. In my opinion, what is often not seen can be more real, meaningful and important than what we see with our eyes. Invisible realities are no longer being discounted by science. Furthermore, science has also grown open to the prospect that invisible realities may be powerful.
Experiments in Quantum physics now suggest that the energy inherent in one cubic centimeter of empty space is greater than the energy of all the matter in the known universe.
Various fields of study are also coming together in agreement over the nature of reality and being. At the very least I have learned , there is a physical reality that I experience daily , a quantum reality, and a metaphysical or spiritual reality, which can be cultivated if so desired through diligent practice. It is possible to learn to become aware of magical encounters, moments of synchronicity, creative intuitional solutions, a deeper knowledge and awareness of Truth, a sixth sense about any number of things. It is possible to learn to align our thinking with higher consciousness. This takes an open mind. By remaining alert, awake and aware, it is possible to see that there are signs, omens, metaphors, and human and angelic encounters that stand outside so-called normal experience.
Over the course of my life, I have had moments of altered consciousness, which I have observed with my journalist’s perspective. “How fascinating,” I would say to myself. “What is that all about?” In asking such questions, I have learned that we live in a limitless universe of immense and possibility. What is seen daily is not all there is. Furthermore, I have learned that what is often not seen can be more real, meaningful and important than what is seen with physical eyes. I have had moments over my lifetime of heightened awareness; but never to the depths and heights as those I have experienced since losing sight. It is as if I have been freed from the limits of seeing only with my eyes. Throughout those early months after returning from the hospital to my home in Santa Fe, I experienced obvious and mysterious signs of hope and healing. In two important instances, I also had witnesses to significant events, which occurred and which were clearly outside the realm of what one usually considers as normal reality.
I share with you four of my meaningful, magical, experiences.
I returned to St. John’s Hospital for a second biopsy because the doctors were having difficulty diagnosing what disease could be causing the blindness. During that time, my children continued to visit every day. My daughter Danielle returned from the chapel one evening. When she returned, Joaquin asked, “What happened?”Danielle must have had a different expression after praying. Idid find the chapel. I was lovely being there. I had a profound experience while sitting and praying “ She would not say anything more. I was Deeply touchd e by her quiet reflectiveness. I turned to Joaquin, Let’s go there one night this week.” to evenings later, Joaquin and I walked to the chapel . Mybody was ready for more movement. I never have enjoyed lying about . It felt good to walk a distance greater than from the hospital bed to the batroomh. When we arrived at the wooden chapel door, Joaquín placed my hand on an elaborate carving. “What do you feel, mom?” he asked. “It feels like a carving of a thick branch or vin covered with leaves.” It was, in fact, a vine withbranches and leaves depicting the Biblical verse: “I am the true vine, abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unles you abide in me.” (John 15: 1-4). As I sat down in the small chapel-it only held six or seven people,- I immediately heard the words, “I am here.” And a few moments later, the voice said, “You have your healing.” “I know,” I responded. “Thank you.” It was a prayer answered. I accepted it as a message from Divine Spirit, God. The doctors still had no diagnosis. My case continued to be a perplexing one.
However, those words that mysteriously presented themselves, gave credence to my prayers.
The next experience took place a few months after I returned to Santa Fe.n My friend Anne gifted me with a CD of healing music the previous fall,.I began listening to it, especially while in bed. I was in the habit of playing one CD on my Bosesituated on my night table next to my bed, while playing different music on the radio/CD player at the other side of the house. The effect was similar to traveling from one frontier at Disneyland to another. Wonderful!
As I moved from the bedroom, across the living areas, through the dining room and then into the kitchen, the music in one room would yield to different music in another section of the hacienda The second CD player was located on the wide double adobe windowsill of one of the two large window facing the rear garden. The bold Mexican orange dining room had white wains coating three feet or so above the floor. This made it possible for me to maintain a shoreline as I danced across the dining room into the kitchen
Without sight, music and its rhythms offer even greater pleasure.
On this particular cool morning, the CD had stopped playing before I left the bedroom. The bedroom and entire house were silent. I walked to the living room to listen to the news on National Public Radio. However, I couldn’t get the radio to turn on. It was unplugged, and I couldn’t access the wall plug because a space heater was in the way and throwing out heat. Except for the humming of the heater, the house was silent.
All of a sudden, I heard the healing music playing , it’s sacred sounds.How did that happen? Who turned on the Bose?’ I wondered. I was the only person at home. It was a mystery. Even more miraculous is what happened next.
As I listened, there was a shift In my consciousness. That morning, I went into a state of meditation deeper than I have ever experienced before or since. I felt a universal awareness and connection with what I can only call Infinite Spirit, or God. I felt as if I were part of something beyond all boundaries of body, I felt a part of the wholeness of existence The feeling came swiftly, and I was experiencing myself as boundary-less. It was an all- encompassing awareness, very difficult to describe in words and very profound. I also felt boundless, as if my body were weightless or even non-existent. A few weeks later, I received a telephone call from my first love, Michael. He had just heard about my losing sight. His voice was filled withs adness and pain. “It’s not so bad, Michael,” I told him. “I have experienced the presence of God.”
A third experience occurred the following Spring. The tulips in the raised bed off the driveway were blooming their magnificent shade of bold red. The garden was beginning to awaken after its winter sleep The blanket of snow had evaporated. New life was beginning to blossom. With this resurgence of life came the weeds. One sunny morning, Julie led me across the portal, out onto the brick patio and across the expansive lawn, Framing the garden, a large border of flowers and bushes forms a four-foot wide arc. A split-rail fence separates the garden bed from a two-acre pasture. A stand of leafless trees opens to a stunning view of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains in the distance The picture was completed by Julie’s two horses quietly grazing on one side of the pasture.
As I began weeding and cleaning out the large bed, Julie told me about her nighttime visitor: “In the middle of the night, I heard noise on the roof, as if someone was walking on it. In the morning when I walked outside to have my cigarette and coffee,, I noticed a large broken egg on my doormat. ‘How odd,’ I thought. ‘Have some kids thrown eggs at my door?’ Then I noticed that a large female peacock was strutting around the front enclosed garden, and around the grounds. The peacock had found her way through the iron gate into the front garden. Somehow she meandered int theo school room off the front portal. She was having a grand time here.” Hearing this, I was delighted. “How wonderful!” I exclaimed, “We might have a peacock on the premises. That’s all I need, more poop to clean up. two cats, two horses, and now a pooping peacock!”
Julie had become an invaluable caretaker of the property. I used to jokingly say that it required ten peons to maintain the six acres. But instead, we had a part-time gardener, who power-mowed the lawn and took garbage and debris to the dump. I was the other nine and a half peons. After Julie arrived, we had begun to share some of the gardening work. However, after the blindness, most of the responsibility fell on her alone. My garden was a demanding mistress! But well worth it. I always enjoyed feeling the dark soil and watching the myriad number of bugs and critters that dwelled beneath the soil’s surface.
On the day the peacock visited, I was tired and thirsty after spending more than two hours watering and weeding a large area of the flower bed. I headed for the house, but instead of arriving at the sliding doors into the living room, I drifted off course and landed at the entrance to the school room on the north side of the portal. Julie previously had warned me to avoid that area because Fin, in preparation for his departure from the ranch, had cleared out the schoolroom and amassed its contents outside on the portal. “I don’t want you to trip or fall into that mess and get hurt.” When I touched the screen of the French doors into the school room, I realized that I was several yards off course. I slowly retraced my steps and navigated around the boxes and furniture piled up there and maneuvered around the large columns of the portal that guided me back toward the living room doors. It was cool and peaceful inside the home. In those early months after returning from the hospital and before I learned to use the long white cane to travel from point to point, I was always grateful to get to my destination. The grounds of the hacienda included six tree-lined acres, and I was still relearning the terrain surrounding the hacienda after the winter season with its blanket of snow. Without sight, it was easy to get disoriented or to wander into terrain that was dangerous.
When I emerged from the living room, Julie approached me with anxiety in her voice. “I was so worried,” she told me.
“Why? What happened?”
“The peacock that was wandering around the premises, the same female peacock that was on my roof last night, and who laid an egg that dropped off the roof onto my front door mat, was just six inches away from you when you approached the school room doors. You, of course, were oblivious, and could easily have bumped into and frightened her. Or, she could have felt threatened and squawked at you, frightening you and causing you to trip and fall. She could have attacked you if she had felt threatened, but the most amazing thing happened.”
”What was that?” I asked.
“You were obviously confused and trying to get away from the school stuff on the portal ,” Julie replied. “Somehow the peacock sensed that you couldn’t see. She didn’t want to frighten you, so she slowly backed away from you and traveled north along the house and headed down the driveway and away from the property. I panicked as peacocks can be unpredictable, and I didn’t know if she would frighten you or peck at you. It was amazing to watch how carefully she avoided you.”
We talked about what a good omen the peacock’s visit represented. The large bird had visited both Julie’s cabaña by the pool and the main house. Instead of hurting me, she had protected me. “The peacock can be seen as the phoenix that rises out of the ashes,” Julie told me. I understood this concept from Ancient Egyptian, Chinese, and Greek mythology.
”Yes, I know the mythology,” I responded. “As the story goes, the large Phoenix consumes itself in flames, and later rises up out of the ashes.” In response to the 9/11terrorist attack in New York City, I had written a newspaper column using the metaphor of the phoenix rising out of the ashes. I wrote that the American people heroically pulled together to rise above the horrific events of that tragic day. “The Chinese symbol for crisis is also the Chinese symbol for opportunity. The Wheel of Fortune takes us up and down, kings and kingdoms rise and fall, as do our individual good or bad fortunes. Only in the American culture do we expect to constantly live” happily ever after.”
To paraphrase Tom Hank’s character in Forrest Gump, life is not like a bowl of cherries, but rather like a box of chocolates, filled with unpredictable textures and tastes. Wouldn’t we be better prepared to appreciate the cycles of life if we were taught such cycles exist?
I appreciated that visit by the female peacock. And believed it to be yet another positive omen that for me, the blindness would be a positive learning opportunity.
Blindness can be viewed as a painful and difficult tragedy; it is a major inconvenience. However, it certainly is not the worst thing in the world. It is simply a situation however challenging, out of which positive lessons can be drawn. Thus I was heartened by that creature’s mysterious visit to my home Wherever did she come from?
The summer after completing my training at the Colorado center for the blind, I visited my life-long friend Sissy, who lives in Santa Barbara. She had faced numerous losses herself: the death of her mother, then her father, her brother, and the premature death of her beloved husband of 35 years. One day while we were talking, she said, “Don’t you ever feel sorry for yourself? Don’t you ever ask ‘Why me?’” I answered “ I think things just happen. We don’t always have to take everything that happens personally. In any negative or positive experience, there are lessons to be learned to facilitate our personal growth.” Sissy just stared at me, incredulously.” “So, I had to ask myself, ‘Why blindness Intuitively the question became, ‘To what am I blind’, and what is being asked of me?’ We don’t have to make ourselves the victim. So,I asked myself, ‘how can this experience help me help other’s?” My words brought tears to Sissy’s eyes, and she said, “So it’s not about yourself? It’s about finding a way to help others?”
The fourth experience offered an even more positive message of hope and healing, during those difficult early months. With each of these harbingers of positive omens, I realized that I had no reason to despair or to be afraid. A decade earlier, or more, I purchased a very old carved woodend image of the Virgin de Guadalupe, at the Tesuque flea market in Santa Fe. The artist from whom I purchased the piece had found it in. He removed all the old paint and re-carved the Virgin’s face and hands. The new face was beautific, and the hands very delicate. He also re-carved the face of the devil at the base of the carving.Thus creating a magnificent work of art.
I have long appreciated the Virgin as a symbol of empowerment, compassion, and healing. She has long been a strong and lovinginfluence in my life. After the blindness, I felt her presence as a constant companion. The Virgin would appear to me at different times during the day. Her on-going presence has provided and continues to provide me with a sense of protection, provision, and peace. I had for months been seeing in my mind’s eye the Virgen de Guadalupe. She appeared in various quadrants of the blackness I experience daily, in large and small form, with and without child. I felt immensely comforted by her loving, compassionate, presence. I felt buoyant when she was with me.
One Saturday afternoon that spring, my cleaning lady, Socorro, approached me, saying, “Señora, there is a picture of the Virgen de Guadalupe etched on the wood floor of your bedroom near the kiva fireplace,. It was not there the last time I cleaned your bedroom. ” “Where?” I asked. Socorro led me by the hand to the spot, several feet from the dresser and fireplace and along the route I walked each day to leave my bedroom. Lowering ourselves to our hands and knees, Socorro and I knelt down to examine the image.
When I told Julie what had happened, she walked over immediately. Lighting the area with a flashlight, she said, “It’s amazing. Come over here.” I got down on my hands and knees next to her. She took my finger and traced the image on the floor.
She said, “The Virgin is smiling and appears to be singing. On her right side is a small animal with a tail.”
“That is the lamb of God,” I said.
She continued, “And on her left is a bird.”
“That’s the dove of peace,” I responded.
“And she has a baby in her arms,” Julie remarked.
Once again, I moved my figures over the etching on the floor. It felt as if someone had taken a pen-knife to create the design.
“And what is more amazing,” Julie told me, “is that she has the orange-yellow aura around her, just like the flames that surround the Virgin in illustrations and carvings.”
A few days later, I called my friend, an author, journalist and historian, Orlando who lives just minutes from me in Nambé. Orlando drove over immediately. As we knelt near the image, he marveled at what he saw. He was so amazed that he rushed to his car for a camera. Four people saw the VIrgin’s image on my bedroom floor. Where did it come from? Only God knows. Although the Virgin de Guadalupe does not appear in my mind’s eye as frequently as before, she has remained with me, providing me as always with a sense of delight and peace. Her appearance has confirmed author Pablo Coelho’s reference to the Virgin as, “The feminine face of God.” Surely, our Creator must be both father and mother. In Sunday School I learned Father wisdom and Mother love comprise the essence of God’s multiple qualities of Spirit. I also learned that God is always present. Just as I have seen and felt, and heard Spirit’s presence during the most challenging times of my life..
For me, each of these omens has served as a positive symbol of love and protection. Each is a representation of the many angels who at various times have crossed my life’s path. The Bible and ancient texts are filled with accounts of angels, prophecies, healing and signs. In ancient times, people and prophets witnessed all kinds of miracles. Why, then, are they discounted in modern times? Miracles occur every day. They are even announced on the nightly news. It does not require blindness or other tragic loss or circumstances to become receptive to Spirit. However, the blindness has blessed me with an opportunity to deepen my spiritual awareness and to re- awaken me to and re-connect me with that “still small voice within,” my spiritual essence. What if we were to open ourselves more fully to these moments of spiritual connection? What if we understood that “faith is the substance of things unseen”? Imagine the extraordinary and wondrous earthly manifestations we would experience. I feel fortunate to experience so much good, beauty and healing in the blindness.
During these past years, I have encountered many manifestations of personal desires, visualizations, positive outcomes, and what I call miracles. I have also experienced a profound spiritual connection and an absolute certainty that we are guided, protected and provided for. I know that a spiritual solution is possible for every problem. I know that all is well.
I have for decades plunged forward to meet challenges and as Julie had always reminded me, “You are making continual progress and experiencing many breakthroughs.”
So, in spite of the darkness into which I had fallen, I chose to pick myself up and move forward, thanks to the positive omens and angels that fill my life.