Commanding the Wind, Part 3
The 3-part installment concludes here with a move to Georgia with Part 1’s Charlie after being cast out from her family of origin. The traumatic severance from her revered grandmother after turning to her for help with sexual abuse suffered at the hands of her own father caused our protagonist to sever tragically from herself. But that departure from her body drove her spirit into the ethereal arms of the creative, loving, intelligent forces of the Universe and for a few hours on one crisp fall afternoon she possessed the supernatural powers to command physical elements of the earth bestowed on the prophets of lore and legend.
Every man is a deity in disguise, a god playing the fool.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Charlie and I had reconnected via the telephone during this time. He was from Georgia and being so had remained there. I remember telling him a little bit about what was going on with me, but I don’t think even I understood it very well at the time. Whatever I told him, it was enough to move him to join me in Oregon for a while, but that did not go very well. We were depressed and anxious and drinking and fighting. We thought it was Oregon, so we went back to Georgia together. It wasn’t Oregon; it was us, but it was slightly better in Georgia. There I had the space and the anonymity to step into this ethereal ideal of myself that I’d often fantasized about: the seer, the mystic, the poet, the prophet. When I met this young man, from whom so much innocence had already been taken, Spirit, or whatever, said to me, “You’ll witness to this boy.” What I did with him after that was not consciously following that directive. It’s almost as if the phrase shuddering through my nervous system acted on me the way a trigger phrase acts for a sleeper agent, who is so profoundly trained that once it’s uttered, they can execute their mission in an almost dissociative state entirely from instinct and muscle memory.
Charlie and I were both operating from a very half-asleep place. Our minds were clouded with pain and trauma. We connected on a superconscious level, as if our souls were in conversation and our waking minds were eager and willing, but pitifully clueless about the arrangements our higher selves had made with one another. We couldn’t have grasped what we were truly meant to offer each other, to exchange.
Over the months we spent together, on the road and trading off being strangers in a new place, he told me more about what brought him to the day we met. He told me about caravanning through Iraq and even just a fraction of the heinous things he had to do. I knew then where the smoldering explosions that enshrouded his aura had come from. He could not forgive himself. He couldn’t allow himself to ever be happy again. He told me about going AWOL during leave and sitting in his car outside his ex-wife’s house with his military-issue sidearm in his hands in his lap, near catatonic, afraid and unable to see anything left for himself beyond taking his own life. How she made him check himself into the hospital on the base. About his children, whom he adored, and his parents and family, growing up with them in the south. He had been deeply loved and there was a lot of promise for his life. But there were deep-cutting inconsistencies between what he felt in his heart and what life had shown him. And I related to that intensely. The irreconcilable differences because of which material reality and I had gotten quietly divorced. It caused me constant agony.
All my life, for me most other people have just been these loud frequencies, sort of a whirring pulse. Being too near them makes me grind my teeth, stare at the ground, try to breathe through the ringing and vibrating, like I’m a tuning fork getting clanged indiscriminately against random objects. Most people don’t realize this, but each human being has an energy signature, or a range of energy signatures that they tend to emanate, patterns of thinking, feeling, connecting, communicating, going within, emerging again. A lot of people are really just noise. I can hear the drama in their head, feel the chaos in their emotions. But some people, even though they’re messy, have frequencies I can tolerate, or even more, that I’m drawn to. In fact, two people can seek each other out, find one another, bond in a deep, unbreakable way, and be completely unable to explain how or why. There’s no requirement for the bond to be healthy; it can cause further destruction, or it can be healing, or shift between the two. The only requirement is that the two energy signatures be complimentary: one has what the other lacks or needs or wants. And all of us souls do-se-do around one another in this endless partner swing dance, giving and taking and moving on.
When any two people connect, they elicit certain energetic tendencies in one another, and each person’s energy begins to change, in subtle ways or obvious ones. Like Jung said, when two people interact, “if there’s any reaction at all, both are transformed.” Something about the spirit of that boy, maybe about how he was broken and open, receptive and hungry for something nourishing for his soul; the student in that boy brought out the prophet and the teacher in me. And for some reason, I was more unapologetically and unabashedly that version of myself than I have ever been before or since. I still recall it as one of the most giddy, blissful, liberated times of my life. Our connection made me feel connected to Spirit. The obscene trauma he and I both suffered tragically severed our psyches from our bodies, but it also allowed us to channel a great magic.
The smoke that filled his aura was clearing. We were back in Georgia on a bright, clear, crisp fall day, but the wind was still and there was not a storm cloud in the sky. Across the street from his father’s house, where we often sat on the porch outside to get a break from the heavy, stale energy within, there were shallow woods and then a schoolyard and small brick schoolhouse. We had been sitting on some dried, twisted logs reading some arcane literature about humankind and the universe. Then we tromped slowly over the dried orange leaves in those woods for most of the late morning and early afternoon, heads low, brows furrowed in deep thought, Charlie and I, discussing those ideas.
There was an alchemical magic to it, Charlie was so curious and willing to ponder any notion and I was so packed with sacred ideas that I had enclosed in iron-clad orbs of doubt and shame for protection, but I was finally free to release them, to speak them as Truth, impart them on another to amplify their power. I didn’t proselytize and he wasn’t hypnotized, blindly absorbing my message. It was Socratic and invigorating, and had that energy of kindergarten, where Charlie innocently questioned and challenged everything including the reality of the leaves we walked on, the space between us. And I enthusiastically, joyously shared with him the staggering idea that it was all an illusion, that in fact, there was no space between us, and we were recreating the appearance of the leaves underneath our feet with every step we took, in perfect cooperation with their own consciousness, of course.
As I was speaking, a channel opened in my highest chakras, like the Vedas taught me, that reached out and communicated with some higher being that surrounded me, imparting upon me pictures and feelings, as words so often fail when trying to describe these mysteries. I was speaking so intensely; I was amazed at how quickly I could discern my word choices to harmonize with this perfect understanding of Truth, in which I was now bathed. There were fleeting times before where I had experienced this channeling. It was so surreal that I doubted it and it closed up. But on that day, I became convinced that there is a prophetic experience that is distinct from ordinary knowing or saying. It is visceral; the frequency of one’s entire corporeal being elevates slightly and expands what you can see and hear and know to that which is not believed to be there.
Every now and then, I glimpsed the gray fog that surrounded Charlie’s mind dissipating in these sudden evaporative bursts as shots of bright colors spurted and whirled forth from his auric body.
We walked back toward the house over the crunching leaves, and I was manically explaining how God shows up the second you look for her, that she speaks through whatever if you ask her to answer you, the next song you hear, the next thing you read, the next words spoken to you. I remember feeling so sure of that, not a small scrap of doubt anywhere in me. We had made it back to the porch and sat down, looking back at the woods from which we’d just emerged. There was a small breeze, a rustle of dried leaves, and I shouted, “She can even speak to us with the wind, can’t you, God?!?” And the wind picked up. I had to shout louder to be heard over the growing billows, “This is God speaking to us now.” The wind soared at us, whipping through the trees faster and harder. I shouted higher, “She’s showing us it’s real! That’s she’s listening! This is God right now!” I was cackling with delight, my heart was racing and pounding with surprise and excitement as leaves swirled around our heads in a frenzy. Even though I felt so sure, I was ecstatically relieved and delighted that it was working so easily, so powerfully. That I was witness to the power of God with so little effort, just a morsel of faith was enough. I could hear my heart pounding in my head. Looking at Charlie, he was amazed. Shocked and happy, but a little scared, too. I could see him questioning in his mind: is this real? And if so, is it just a coincidence? To show him it wasn’t, and to calm us both down, I sat, as I had risen to my feet, and with a bow of my head and my hands pressed in front of my chest, said, “Okay, that’s enough, God, thank you; we see you, thank you…” and the wind quickly subsided. A moment later, it was completely still again. And Charlie and I sat there on the porch in silent awe.
My connection with Charlie is what empowered me to command physical elements, as evidence of our connection with the Divine, to extol the real message of salvation, which is that we are already one with Spirit, that separation is an illusion.
The popular misunderstanding of salvation is that we have sinned, but we are welcomed back into the bosom of the Creator through forgiveness. That’s sort of true, but each generation interprets it more literally than the last. It becomes a bludgeon of judgement instead of what it once was. When it was first uttered, this idea of salvation, it was akin to when you’re young and watching a movie that’s too scary for your age. You’re trembling on the couch, eyes peeking above a blanket you’re otherwise guarding yourself with. Just when you think you can’t bear it anymore, your mom comes into the room, wraps her arms around you and holds you tight, and whispers in your ear, “Don’t worry, the hero survives. And this is all a movie. None of it is real. Everyone is okay in the end.” And your muscles relax a bit, and you begin to enjoy the movie again.
This great sin, as we have misnamed it, is simply forgetting, forgetting that we are part of the Divine. We are born with amnesia. We can’t remember where we come from and what we’re made of. And in truth, it’s the only way to get here, to Earth and incorporate. That’s the dotted line you sign on to take this ride, strapped to this rock hurling through space in nothing more than a meat suit. You agree to forget your Divinity. To come here and play. This horrible, nightmarish, dizzyingly joyful, exquisite game.
And this great salvation, despite the many ways we have imagined it, is simply remembering. Anyone who has felt that moment of clarity, of assurance, that they are one with Creation and accepted utterly by the Divine knows what I’m talking about. The Universe understands that forgetting is a prerequisite to physical existence and is relatively indifferent about the means by which we remember. It’s we humans that assign all the loaded value judgements. Perhaps that’s what’s meant by “the devil is in the details.” I’ve remembered my divinity through getting spectacularly high, and through being totally clean, through the messiest times in my life, and by observing ritual fasting and prayer. Some average days happen now and then where it simply dawns on me, during some routine task, like taking care of my daughter and my home, where the mundane suddenly seems so rich and I’m awash with peace and fulfillment. And without fail, a small breeze will blow past in acknowledgment.
The wind was always how the Universe spoke to me. Acknowledged me. I could conjure the wind with a strong enough wave of emotion. Times when I was desperate and alone, I cried in anger and frustration into the empty air, “What is the meaning of all this?!” and a gust of wind would blow through my hair and around my face in return. It was always a comfortable temperature regardless of the climate or weather. It would be a force sudden and strong enough to be taken as intentional but soft enough to be seen as caring. It felt crazy, but in my heart, I knew it was just a ‘hello’ from Creator. The power to conjure came from recognizing my connection to the All. In any moment, one has only to know, deeply, unembarrassed, unrestrained, that Creator, Spirit and they are one. That you, the reader, and I are one. We are imbued with Life and command it with our consciousness, and we co-create our entire reality with it. Just as it says, “Ask and ye shall receive. Believe and it is so.” So, if I tell the wind to move to show you that Creator is listening, and will speak in return, then the wind will howl and toss up the leaves at our feet, and we and Creator will reel in delight.
And that’s just exactly what I did that day on the porch in Georgia with Charlie.
Years later, I still thought about that afternoon. The one tiny little miracle that I performed and only Charlie witnessed. He was the Magdalene to my Jesus. But I lost my nerve to conjure after that, as if that very miracle shook me so deep to my core. From my marrow a question rumbled, “How dare you?”
And yet that one shred of evidence encouraged me to soldier on through the darkness of many years to come.
Charlie and I would not be in each other’s lives for much longer after that day, a few months maybe. There was a reckoning in myself that afternoon that I don’t think the better part of myself won. It was irrefutable to me that I had had the power to connect on a molecular level with the fabric of the Universe, and to bend it, even if just slightly, at will. The Universe happily cooperated. It verified for me a suspicion, a deep desire that this was my purpose on Earth. And yet, I could only rejoice in it for a few moments before an abiding shame crept its way back in. Quickly after, it felt grandiose, embarrassing. I felt I might just be crazy. I shrank again.
Within myself, there was a childlike, amazed part that said, “We can command the wind.” And straight away the other more dutiful or cynical parts of me cast her out for her bravado and recklessness.
Like a good little human, I kneejerk cast aside my Divinity.
