I have probably received 50 or more emails about the Terri Schiavo situation. I felt to share an incident from long ago because it was an important part of my entry into the world of holistic healing.

I began teaching astrology in 1974. The first public talk was at a library in Honolulu and the first public classes were at a high school in Kona as part of their adult education program. One of students had a classmate whose child was "born blind". That's all I was told and my student asked if I would visit her classmate next time I went to Honolulu. The night before the meeting, I was at the home of my kahuna, Morrnah Simeona. As I was leaving, she said, "You have a very interesting case tomorrow.. Since I was used to her clairvoyance, I asked her for advice. She said that there were two stars behind her eyes and that all I had to do was awaken them and she would be fine.

This was stated in such a manner as to make it seem like an easy undertaking for someone of Morrnah's caliber, but I just looked at her and proposed that perhaps she should be the one to meet the child. She said, "No, you'll be fine."

 

I was totally unprepared for what I encountered the next day. The child had no voluntary movements. Her eyes were like little tiny peas way back in the sockets. They had never matured to full size and they were positioned way back. My heart sank. Mercifully, her eyes were closed. The mother was force feeding her by sticking her finger in her mouth to force the food down. When I don't have a clue what is wrong or why, I generally sit still and say nothing. So, I encouraged her mother to talk. She recounted all sorts of bizarre stories told to her by various well-meaning psychics who were obviously as clueless as I was. After some time, the child went into a sort of spasm in which one arm and one leg jerked. I asked her mother if the spasms were always the same or different. She said, they were always the same. I continued to watch. Five hours passed and then I had a vision. I saw a Japanese monk in a white kimono standing among a group of other monks. One person stepped out of the group and slashed him with a sword. The shock on his face was unbelievable. It was obvious he trusted the person completely, but the missing piece of the puzzle was the white kimono. His last movement was a reflex, a martial arts self-defense when attacked. It was identical to the child's spasms.

 

I sat a while longer and then put my hand in front of the child's and asked her to use her third eye and to put her hand in the palm of my hand. She complied immediately. I did this because I was certain that as a monk in a former lifetime, there would have been attempts to awaken the third eye. I was certain of my ability to communicate with someone who was otherwise utterly unable to communicate.

 

The mother was, understandably, totally overwhelmed. She burst into tears and later expressed how foolish she felt about all the other methods they had used to try to get a response from their daughter. The girl went on to live a relatively normal life. She rode buses, went to school, and did most of the things other children do, using only her third eye for navigation. She was not visually handicapped in any real sense of the word. She died suddenly at age 18, but she lived a rather astonishing and inspired life up to her death. Obviously, like many of my clients, I remained in touch with the family for years.

 

When we meet someone or something with whom we cannot communicate on our own terms, we are well-advised to drop our efforts to interpret behavior on our own terms. I am thinking of people who are impaired in some manner or people who speak a different language or whose culture is so different from our own that they see the world differently. I am also thinking of creatures who fly or crawl. For instance, after my spider bite ten years ago, I wanted to meet the spider who wounded me, listen to her story. It was a beautiful story. I made a rule in my house that the spiders were welcome to stay so long as everyone in the house was safe. My guests and birds and dogs had to be permitted to live free of fear. If the spider would promise me this, I would permit her to live as a guest and she would not have any reason to be afraid or to attack anyone. My massage therapist, a Catholic nun, started telling me Zen jokes about spiders being spiders and Ingrid being awfully stupid if she expected them to follow the rules. I told her that I would have to honor my promise as long as the spiders honored theirs. One night I saw a spider run behind the refrigerator. I told her to come out into the open and then, as if to test my ability to communicate, I said that she might like to go outside with the dogs because the weather was very nice. She walked straight to the same door I use to let the dogs in and out. The threshold seemed really high for her and I recall the struggle she made to go over it, but she did exactly as I proposed.

 

In years since I have assumed that it is possible to communicate with everything and everyone. I assume that trees and mountains have stories to tell, that all creatures have stories they want to relate, and that I am a kind of language specialist with a particular willingness to listen.

 

These last agonizing days for the creatures of Earth tell me how woefully ignorant humanity is. I pray that the publicity around Terri Schiavo will awaken us to the reality that only the soul can decide when and where to incarnate and only the soul can decide when to leave. This decision does not belong to any other human being (or animal). No judge or jury, no family member, no doctor or lawyer, no well-meaning or bungling individual, no selfishly motivated or sincerely impassioned person can decide anything at all for another being. This contract is 100% between the Creator and soul and we are deluded to think we know better what is right. I cannot believe the vehemence of those whose personal agendas fly in the face of this fundamental reality.

 

More importantly, it is not just Terri Schiavo, it is thousands of innocent seals who have just as much right to live as Terri Schiavo and you and the rest of us. If Solomon reigned in our courts today, he would obviously have the parents and husband appear before him. I am certain that he would offer the husband a divorce on the condition that he also forfeit the remaining funds in the trust intended to provide medical services for her. He would award formal custody to the parents just as he gave the baby to the mother who pleaded for the life of the child. So, where is Solomon. Where is this country headed. What has happened to our country?

 

With prayers for all who suffer,