Page 104 - Dark Matter Women Witnessing

and I learned to use the I-Ching. After that came forays into paganism, Wicca, and earth-

based practices originating in Native American traditions. Each of these areas of study taught

me many things, but none of them led me into a consistent experience of spiritual practice.

It was with animals that I found connection, grounding, and a connection to what deeply

moved me. Through working in animal rescue and advocacy, I rediscovered my childhood

ability to hear, feel, and understand my non-human friends’ thoughts, feelings, and

communications. These experiences awakened what was most alive in me, and I moved

deeper and deeper into the animal world and took my first tentative steps toward leaving my

career in classical music. As I opened into the world of interspecies telepathic communication,

I began to experience profound changes in both my inner and outer worlds.

And then Freddie came into my life. As we’d sit together each night, he offered me a visceral,

embodied experience of dropping deeply into the lake of awareness that was present behind

my constantly-running thoughts. Through his example, which included a kind of energetic

transmission that I felt with my whole body, I was able to enter into a place of shared

awareness where there was no me, no cat, no chair. “We” were simply a great pool of

awareness, deeply grounded, connected, centered, and resting. Sometimes we’d both sleep,

but mostly I’d find myself in a deep meditative state that had no edges, no boundaries. Often,

insight and wisdom would bubble up, and the clutter that was in my mind and life at the time

would simply fall away.

Sometimes Freddie would give me meditation instructions telepathically. If I popped up into

thinking, worry, spinning, and obsessive thoughts, he’d wake up, look at me, and send me the

clear message: “You’re fussing again. Come back.” And with that guidance, I could. He’d put

his head back down and close his eyes, and I’d drop back into presence and awareness. I

learned that thoughts would always be there, but that rather than try to get rid of them, I could

simply drop “beneath” them, into an awareness and a state of being that was Freddie’s

natural state. Through his example, I learned that rather than trying to control or remove my

frenetic thoughts, I could simply allow them to exist on the surface and drop into a place

below them that held a deep experience of what was real and true.

I discovered that what was most alive in this place of awareness and openness underneath