HEALING THE SPLIT
The really valuable method of thought to arrive at a logically coherent system is intuition.
—ALBERT EINSTEIN
The view from the eighteenth floor of the Century City Medical Plaza was spectacular. In the distance I could see the sun setting over a deep blue strip of ocean lining the horizon, cradled by the rugged Santa Monica Mountains in the north. Now thirty-two, I felt I had arrived.
I was beginning my own private psychotherapy practice in one of the most prestigious areas of the city: Four blocks south on Pico was the Fox studio lot, the offices of ABC television were five minutes away, and directly across the street on Century Park East were the twin tower buildings, identical forty-eight-story triangular metallic and glass obelisks packed with the densest concentration of high-powered attorneys in Los Angeles.
With financial help from my parents, I had leased an elegant penthouse suite in a top medical building, and I was determined that everything be first class. My mother hired a decorator to pick out the finest fabrics, wallpapers, and paints to color-coordinate the office. The wall beside my desk was covered with my laminated degrees from college, USC medical school, Wadsworth VA internship, and psychiatric residency at UCLA—proof that I was now a full-fledged M.D. The stage was set. The external trappings were perfect.
But opening a private practice was a risky business. The Westside was already overrun with therapists: Entire office buildings were packed with them, and there were probably more therapists per square foot in Beverly Hills, Century City, and West L.A. than anywhere else in the country except Manhattan. It was also true that I had never been very good at selling myself. With such stiff competition, the odds against my practice succeeding were high. But I tried hard to look the role, to project a professional image to the world.
Sparing no expense, my mother bought me an entire new wardrobe and a car. On a resident's salary there was no way I could have afforded this. Each morning I would dress in a tailored two-piece business suit, a pressed linen or silk blouse, and a pair of one-inch Ferragamo heels and drive to work in my beige ‘77 Mercedes sedan.
Ushering me into their world, my parents were offering me all the advantages. Medicine was a comfortable language that they understood, and we now had a common bond. When I talked to them about patients or doctors we both knew, they could relate. Our relationship grew closer: They were proud of me and I was proud of myself.
But I wasn't doing this just to please them. I relished my authority and responsibilities, the respect of nurses and staff, the power to help people. I was getting an enormous amount of positive reinforcement from teachers and patients alike. Still, in my quiet moments, I knew something was missing. I had left a part of me behind, though in no conscious way had I intended it. To survive the manic pace of my medical training, a kind of protective amnesia had taken over. It was similar to what happens when the body goes into shock, closing down sensation and memory, cutting off my psychic experiences, nor did I have the energy or desire to backtrack to find them. Though I wasn't oblivious to what had happened, it was easiest not to look back. I became programmed to think more than to feel, and this became habit as I resigned myself to the loss and focused on the present. But there was a price: vague melancholy, a sense of absence, nagging emptiness—all covered up by the incessant pressure and motion of my practice.
Also, twelve years had passed since I'd worked in Thelma's lab. During most of that period I had been a teenager, with part-time jobs, often financially dependent on my parents, without a sense of calling. Now, at last, I had one. Finding medicine, I had been indoctrinated into the scientific method. Compared to the rigors of conventional psychiatry, the psychic research I had done seemed vague, less exhaustive than I was currently comfortable with. I'd come to value what could be systematically proven and gave little attention to anything else.
I intended to open a traditional psychiatric practice. I would see patients all day in my office and then in the evenings make hospital rounds, a typical routine for many psychiatrists. Since I would be on call twenty-four hours a day and weekends, my life would revolve around work. I subscribed to the system I had learned, matching symptoms to treatments, using medication and psychotherapy as my primary tools.
At UCLA, despite an emphasis on the biochemical components of psychiatric illness, we were also given supervisors, physicians from the community, to teach us psychotherapy. In my case, the supervisors were classical Freudian psychoanalysts. For them, it was essential to be caring, but to convey as little as possible about themselves. The goal was to remain a blank screen on which patients projected their own behavior. The theory is that removed from personal interaction, therapists are better able to help. Thus some psychoanalysts would seldom speak during a session, giving only occasional interpretations, mostly taking notes, sometimes not even sitting where the patient could see them. Generally, psychoanalysts also made a point of dressing conservatively, accentuating a neutral professionalism.
Not surprisingly, with this in mind, though searching for a style that felt natural, I was afraid of polluting the psychotherapy process. Determined to maintain a cool therapeutic distance, I was careful never to reveal any personal information. Stiff, I conveyed little emotion, keeping the boundaries between doctor and patient well defined.
I also had the medical role models of my parents to draw on, but my father was a radiologist, having little direct contact with patients. My mother, on the other hand, socialized with patients, even vacationed with them, none of which undercut her authority as a physician. But she was a family practitioner, not a psychiatrist. The same degree of emotional objectivity and neutrality required of a therapist wasn't as critical for someone in her specialty.
My first patient, Cindy, was a young makeup artist who was going through a divorce. Cindy worked in a well-established beauty salon on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. The referral had come from the salon owner, a very successful businesswoman and close personal friend of my parents. There was a great deal of pressure on me. I wanted Cindy to like me, and I wanted to show my family I could succeed. I anticipated this first appointment with the apprehensiveness of a teenager awaiting her first date.
When Cindy walked into my office, I was relieved to see that she was more anxious than I was. Redheaded and pixyish, in her midtwenties, Cindy was so distraught over the messy breakup of her marriage that she cried through the session, using up a whole box of Kleenex. I was off the hook, and barely opened my mouth: All she needed was a sympathetic listener. Fifty minutes flew by. When it was time to leave, Cindy thanked me profusely and scheduled a regular weekly appointment.
The salon where Cindy worked was the same place I went once a month to have my legs waxed. I figured it was such a busy, sprawling place that she and I were unlikely to meet, and assured her that in any case our relationship was confidential. She didn't seem concerned, however: It was my own uneasiness I had to contend with. Cindy was my first patient, and I wanted to hold on to her.
One afternoon, I was in a secluded back room of the salon getting my legs waxed when there was a knock on the door. I heard the sound of a familiar voice and then the door opened. It was Cindy, looking for a client, not knowing that the room was occupied by me. Our eyes locked and my face turned beet red. There I lay on the leather massage table, flat on my back, legs spread wide, covered with hot yellow wax, wearing only underwear from the waist down. Also embarrassed, Cindy nervously apologized for the intrusion and backed out of the room.
I was humiliated, sure that by psychoanalytic standards any hope of maintaining a professional relationship with Cindy had been compromised. But I learned that, now seeing me as more vulnerable, Cindy felt closer to me, and our therapy took off, though this was a response I certainly hadn't anticipated. I soon came to see the waxing incident as a wake-up call, a message telling me, “Lighten up. It's okay to be human.”
In any case, however hard I tried to keep a wall between my patients and me, it always seemed to get broken down. I would run into my patients everywhere: jogging on the beach, in movie lines, even at friends' parties. Since we lived in the same general vicinity, our paths naturally crossed. And though these meetings often unsettled me, it was my patients' sense of ease that gradually taught me to relax and be myself. I kept trying to play out a role, but the specifics of life were teaching me something else entirely, showing me the distance between theory and the complex reality of human lives.
Early in my practice, I began treating Eve, a ninety-year-old widow struggling with anxiety because her daughter had cancer. Some months later, when her daughter finally died in the Cedars-Sinai hospice, Eve called me to be by her side. As I came down the hall, I could hear the sound of Eve's wailing: She was making such a ruckus that the nurses were concerned. Not knowing what to expect, I braced myself as I walked into the room.
The sight of this frail, gray-haired woman pacing back and forth, moaning and crying, scared me. I was afraid she might have a heart attack or collapse. I wasn't sure what to say or how to console her. I just stood there, trying to be calm, not wanting to reveal how unprepared I felt.
But if Eve noticed, she didn't let on. Overcome with grief, she rushed toward me, weeping, and threw her birdlike arms around my shoulders. These were not controlled, guarded tears, but sobs. Her tiny chest heaved against mine, convulsing with each breath. It all happened so fast that my body stiffened in response: I wasn't used to such an uncensored outpouring. It blasted all my circuits; for a moment everything turned black. I was threatened by Eve's intensity, overwhelmed by her need. I had an impulse to rip her away from me, to tear out of the room and never look back. I believed that patients weren't supposed to touch their therapists, much less curl up in the fetal position in their laps, as Eve was now doing. That was a job for family members. But now that her daughter was gone, Eve had no family left. I was the closest connection she had.
Craving the warmth that comes only from physical affection, Eve clung to me like a heartbroken child. A few times I attempted to shift position, to loosen Eve's grasp, but she had no intention of letting go. So there I sat, on the unmade hospital bed, cradling Eve, her daughter stone cold on a gurney less than a foot away. Once I realized there was no escape, I gave up trying so hard to be the “appropriate” psychiatrist and began to relax. There was no more pressure; I was able to feel a tenderness for Eve that my contrived notion of professionalism had blocked off. Not drawing back, I allowed myself to care for her, woman to woman. She could have been my own grandmother, the love I felt for her was so great.
For more than an hour I held Eve close. We didn't say much to each other; I just let her cry. When she was finished, we walked to the cafeteria arm-in-arm for coffee and talked. But this was no formal session; rather, it was an exchange of anecdotes about her daughter, a time of remembrance. I had known her daughter from family meetings that the three of us had had at the hospital after she became ill. Now, surrounded by clanging trays and the smell of cigarette smoke, we brought her memory alive and honored it. To do this, however, was not how I was trained to conduct therapy in school. But it was what was needed, and I knew it was right. Something essential had happened. Eve had been given the freedom to express her grief, and I had learned how vital it was to be loving and authentic.
As I continued my practice, I found that I attracted the kind of patient who insisted on intimacy. They didn't want me to sit back quietly and nod my head while they endlessly talked. It wasn't enough for me simply to ask, “What are you feeling?” and then take notes. I was called upon to react, to be engaged emotionally and to offer my opinions. My patients also wanted me to reveal more of myself, and when I did, a chemistry was established, an energetic interplay that led to change. I followed my patients' leads and learned from them. A detached style might have worked for other therapists, but I was coming to see that it was not appropriate for me.
For six months, I played the role of the traditional doctor. Friends who were physicians in the community referred patients to me. My practice filled up fast. I enjoyed the intensity of the work, the hectic schedule, and the adrenaline rush of being called into the emergency room to see suicidal patients in the middle of the night. It was a challenge to face new problems each day, a privilege to help people change and better their lives. I began to feel confident, certain I'd found my niche.
And then I met Christine. As I recounted in the Prologue, it was at this point that my experience with her—when I ignored my premonition of her suicide attempt—pulled me up short. For the first time I realized how I'd lost track of my original goal in getting medical training. Instead of working to bridge the parallel worlds of the psychic and scientific, I had become as skeptical—of even my own abilities—as my colleagues.
But keeping that long vigil by Christine's bedside made me reclaim those feelings and focus on incorporating the psychic into my practice. I would never risk endangering another patient the way I had Christine. But although this was absolutely clear to me, I still did not know what my next step should be.
Occasionally, I went back to the Neuropsychiatric Institute to visit; returning to the familiar hallways and clinics was always comforting. One afternoon, shortly after Christine came out of her coma, I fortuitously ran into Scott, who was working on a postgraduate fellowship. I hadn't seen him for over a year. Scott was the only doctor I knew who had been connected to Thelma's lab. A conventionally trained child psychiatrist, he also had an appreciation of unorthodox healing approaches and was the one person at UCLA I felt safe enough with to discuss Christine. The timing of our meeting was perfect. Drinking tea in the cafeteria, I told him what had happened.
When I finished he enthusiastically said, “There's someone you have to meet. Brugh—pronounced B-r-e-w—Joy. His real name,” Scott added, smiling. “Brugh was a successful internist in Beverly Hills. Then, when he came down with a severe pancreatic disease, his doctors wrote him off. Incredibly, through a process of meditation and self-healing, the disease disappeared. This inspired Brugh to give up his practice and begin conducting workshops on psychic and spiritual development. Why don't you do a retreat with him? It might really help you understand what happened with Christine.”
It was a big step even to consider attending one of Brugh's workshops. They were two weeks long, tucked away in the high desert, two hours' drive from L.A., and during that time I would be asked to cut off all communication with the outside world. If I attended, this would be the first time since opening my practice nine months before that I would leave my patients in the care of another psychiatrist.
Aside from such considerations, however, my reticence went deeper. After my premonition about Christine I didn't know where to go next. I wanted to open up and yet I was conflicted. My medical training had taken me so far away from the psychic that the idea of reexamining that part of my life felt dangerous. I was afraid to begin, wary that I might jeopardize everything I had worked so hard for. I held on for dear life to the identity I had carved out for myself: as a traditionally trained medical doctor. The arguments in my head wouldn't shut off. The difficulty was that for so long I had come to view my dilemma in all-or-nothing terms. Every scenario I constructed was the same: The psychic and medical worlds could never mix.
I was driving myself crazy. I had to do something. Finally, I followed Scott's advice. Three weeks after our conversation I called Brugh Joy's office in Lucerne Valley and scheduled a retreat in early September. This gave me a month to mull over my decision, and I changed my mind many times, but whenever I picked up the phone to cancel I stopped myself. Remembering Christine, I just couldn't let myself back out.
At seven o'clock the evening before the retreat, I decided to take an aerobics class and do my packing afterward. Leaving home a little bit later than I'd intended, I quickly parked my car on a side street, tossed my duffel bag over my shoulder, and rushed down the street toward the gym. The sun was nearly down, the horizon dimly lit with a pale pink glow. I flew past an alley not looking where I was going—and ran into a moving car. Going perhaps twenty-five or thirty miles an hour, an aging Oldsmobile driven by an elderly man hit me with such force that I was hurled up and back against the windshield twice, each time crashing with a horrible thud.
Suddenly I was transported to a tunnel identical to the one from the Tuna Canyon accident. Watching safely from inside, I saw my body bounce off the hood of the car and then slam against a brick wall alongside the alleyway. Two teenage boys sitting on their front porch witnessed the accident and rushed over to help me. I could have been an acrobat in a black leotard and tights, performing a death-defying stunt. After rebounding from the impact against the wall, I landed upright and on my feet, almost as if waiting for the audience to applaud and the judges to score my performance.
A crowd gathered around me. The driver, extremely feeble and confused, his vision not good, was shocked. He wanted very much to help me, as did the teenagers. But feeling all right, and perhaps foolishly independent—in this period of my life I found it hard to ask for help—I drove myself to the UCLA emergency room. Except for a painful whiplash, there were no broken bones or other injuries. Having been to the tunnel before, I recognized what had taken place, but it had never occurred to me that this might be a repeating pattern that would protect me a second time when my life was in jeopardy. I found this notion extraordinarily consoling, realizing that the tunnel was a great blessing. People were severely injured and killed in accidents every day. But both times I had been in grave danger, the tunnel had saved me. Now, thinking it over, taking stock of what had happened, I knew I would be all right. Against medical advice, I prepared for my trip. And in the morning, I threw the suitcases in the backseat of my car and headed for the Institute of Mental Physics in Joshua Tree.
The temperature was over 110 degrees when I arrived. Visible waves of heat rose from the asphalt driveway that led up to the entrance. The desert surrounding the conference center was a vast expanse of sand with pale green barrel cacti dotting the landscape. Brugh's personal secretary, a robust middle-aged woman, directed me down a winding stone path lined with blooming oleander bushes to my room. Hot and weary from the drive, I took a shower and settled in.
After dinner that evening, forty men and women of various ages gathered in a circle in a large conference room. Brugh himself was a lithe, pale, androgynous-looking man in his midforties. Trained at Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic, he was a member of Alpha Omega Alpha, the medical honor society. Wearing jeans and a pullover sweater, he appeared reserved but unflinchingly blunt and confident as he spoke in a calm, evenly articulated voice, outlining the rules. Stay off the phone. Stay on the grounds. No drugs or sex. No outside distractions. Brugh wanted us to remain focused on the present. The purpose of the conference was to shift us out of our ordinary, conditioned habits of viewing the world and to open to a different reality. With group dream-discussion, meditation, periods of silence, fasting, and other techniques, we could shift into a more intuitive state.
At six o'clock the next morning the group reconvened, with Brugh leading, and we were to discuss our dreams. To get up so early was appalling to me, but I set my alarm for 5:30 and showed up on time. Sitting cross-legged on a meditation pillow, I planned not to participate, but inevitably, that first morning Brugh started with me.
The only dream I could summon up was a recent one I chose because I could remember it, not because I thought it particularly significant. For some time I hadn't been dreaming much; it was a special occasion when I could remember one at all. In this dream, I was walking through a residential neighborhood on a bright and sunny day, an area much like where I grew up, with manicured lawns and large houses. Suddenly, I came upon a huge, dusty, empty lot in the middle of the block. I paused, hesitating to enter: The lot obviously didn't belong in that setting—it had a suggestion of menace. At the same time, though, it had a strange appeal and evoked a kind of longing. I kept staring from my safe distance, feeling something in its emptiness that I couldn't quite understand.
That was all. Short, few frills, no real plot. The dream had left me unsettled, however. Brugh responded with an extended discourse about what it meant. He seemed to be making too big a production, and the language he used sounded like it had been taken straight out of Gum 101, a mix of intellectualism, spiritual jargon, and a know-it-all attitude. “Dream states are far closer to our natural Beingness than even our most highly intensified external reality. The empty lot represents the great mystery of consciousness, your spiritual and psychic potential. You've created an artificial partition within yourself that keeps you from experiencing total awareness.”
Brugh went on to say that I had fixed ideas about many things. Unless I let go of my rigidity, he argued, it would get in the way of any spiritual progress I hoped for. By the time he finished, I was mortified. It was unnerving to have him be so direct with me in front of everyone, as if trying to confront me so that I would react. The more he spoke, the more irritated I became: Who gave him the right to pass judgment on me?
I ate lunch that day with Michael, a writer and director from Malibu who was to become a good friend. Michael, a towering six-foot-nine Harvard-educated M.D., had given up medicine to write novels, many of which were later made into feature films. He reminded me of a huge, magnificient bird with outstretched wings flying high above the earth. Cynical and smart, he wouldn't easily be won over by spiritual mumbo jumbo. Having traveled all over the world, Michael had met psychics of many different cultures. As Michael now saw it, Brugh had given me a reading, and his interpretation of my dream was based less on content than on his deeper impressions.
“Did it fit?” Michael asked.
I knew Brugh had me pegged, but still I wanted to deny his words: Although Christine's suicide attempt had left me intellectually prepared to explore my psychic life, an enormous part of me remained frightened. Sensing this, Brugh had used the dream to break through that fear, and I had responded by fighting back, tightening, protecting myself.
The evening session began with high-intensity sound, a technique for stimulating the psychic process by listening to loud music and paying attention to the images evoked. Brugh described it as a powerful tool that could bypass our minds and help us to open up. He told us to relax, have no expectations, and to remain receptive to whatever took place. All forty of us lay down on pillows, side by side with our heads pointed toward the center of the circle. Brugh dimmed the lights and then, at full blast, he played the sound track from Chariots of Fire.
Instantly, I felt the vibration of the bass pulsing through the floor and into my body. I was terrified that my eardrums would explode, the noise was so deafening. The music assaulted me; I cringed and I fought it. But after ten agonizing minutes, something shifted. I forgot my discomfort, swept away by the beauty of what I was hearing. My mind became lit up by a fireworks display of mesmerizing images. Wild horses galloping through a lush, grassy meadow. A fierce electrical storm exploding over the ocean. The face of my grandfather when he was a young man. A troop of traveling mimes. All were disjointed pictures that flashed one after the other as the music built into crescendo after crescendo.
A floodgate had opened. I was being transported to a time when I was much younger. I was again able to see clearly, sometimes into the future. But I wasn't scared. The walls I had built around me were gone. Anything was possible. I felt courageous and free. I ached to recapture that innocence and freshness; I had lost so much. The sadness rushed through me, leaving me disoriented and drained.
When the music was done Brugh turned on the lights and I was jolted out of the session. The room was spinning so fast I felt nauseated. I struggled to gain my balance, overwhelmed by the lavish outpouring of images and memories from the past. It was a shock to my system to have them resurface so precipitously after being buried for so many years. I felt wobbly, as if someone had taken a plumber's snake to my unconscious and dislodged a gigantic plug. When we went around the circle and shared our responses, I could barely concentrate. Afterward, I returned to my room and went straight to bed.
I woke up the next morning in a fury. I didn't know why, but everything made me angry. The whiplash from my accident had worsened and the muscles in my neck had condensed into a stiff, knotted rock. I couldn't move my head in either direction. I wanted to go home, but something kept me from leaving. At breakfast, I decided to tell Brugh about my symptoms.
“How wonderful!” he said. “You're finally waking up.”
“Waking up?” I snapped. “I feel miserable.”
Brugh shot me a knowing look that made me seethe. He seemed so smug and sure of himself that I wanted to deck him.
Unfazed by my hostility, he continued. “The music was just a catalyst. It heightens your senses, opens you up quickly and makes you more aware. Last night you remembered something important about yourself and got frightened. Fighting it only creates tension. When you shut down, your body tightens and reacts with symptoms. The secret is to let go.…Trust your images instead of trying to censor them. Then tell me how you feel.”
“What does letting go have to do with it?” I pleaded. “I'm in enough pain. Why make it worse by purposely bringing up all that sadness?”
Brugh was soft-spoken but adamant. “The sadness is a key to your pain. You can't keep running from it forever.”
That was the last thing I wanted to hear. Preferring to believe that my problems were physical, I was outraged. What kind of doctor was Brugh, anyway? He didn't seem sympathetic at all. And I had no intention of reliving the images of the previous night. Maybe some other time, when I was in better shape. But not when I felt so awful. Exasperated, I got up from the table and left in a huff.
My dizziness and nausea continued to get worse. I was ready to give up. In the middle of the afternoon, tired of battling Brugh and myself, I collapsed in the desert beside a juniper bush and fell into a deep sleep. I slept there for hours, curled up on my orange beach towel. When I awoke in the twilight, something inside me had released. From that point on, my attitude changed.
Watching a half moon rise in the violet desert sky, I felt refreshed, unusually clear. I lay stretched out and tranquil, cushioned by the softness of the sand. I had reached a breaking point. Like a child who'd worn herself out after a tantrum, the fight in me was totally gone. I hadn't intended to let go. It happened in spite of myself. An unsuspected wisdom took hold, an organic impulse to bend and survive under pressure instead of getting blown apart. Whether an activation of a wiser aspect of myself or divine intervention, the result was that my resistance had melted. I was lifted over a chasm uncrossable by will alone. I'd gotten through medical school and residency on sheer will and perseverance. Whatever the obstacle, I'd just bear down, concentrate harder, and push through it. This style had worked a long time for me. But it hadn't succeeded here. I couldn't have forced myself to change. It was an act of grace, totally beyond my conscious intent.
I had never known the great relief that came from surrender. Thus far in my life, I'd always equated surrender with “giving in” or failing. But now I was bursting with energy, radiant. A thick, rigid band within me had dissolved, and my body felt unconstricted and agile. Within hours, my nausea disappeared and my neck muscles loosened. The tension drained from me; I was a different person, laughing and talking with the others, no longer pushing them away.
In this receptive state, I was primed to reexperience the intuitive side of myself. To do that, I had two weeks of dream groups, meditation, introduction to the use of healing rituals, energy work (the laying on of hands), and two days of silence and fasting. Far from the stresses of my ordinary life, I had a chance to acclimate to the renewed flow of my images and dreams. It was like learning to ride a bicycle all over again. I was awkward at first, hesitant to experiment. But with the encouragement of Brugh and the rest of the group, I slowly opened up.
Working with Brugh, I also got a firsthand demonstration of how the psychic and the medical could be blended in a positive way. One day, Brugh arranged for a cancer patient, referred by a person who had previously attended his conferences, to come for what he termed a “healing session.” Debbie, a thin, very attractive brunette in her late thirties, hair cut short in a page-boy, wearing designer jeans, polished cowboy boots, and a T-shirt, came to our morning group and sat down on a pillow next to Brugh. Except that her hair was thinning, which I recognized as a sign that she was taking chemotherapy, there was nothing to suggest she was ill. She said she'd been looking forward to this session for weeks. A flight attendant and mother of a five-year-old daughter, Debbie had been diagnosed with leukemia three years before. Despite treatment with Interferon, an experimental drug, her white blood counts were still abnormal, indicating that the illness hadn't improved. Now Debbie was facing a bone-marrow transplant, a risky surgical procedure that had a chance of saving her life. Traditional medicine could offer no more. This was where Brugh came in.
Brugh interviewed Debbie in front of the entire group. I couldn't get over how brave she was, revealing intimate details of her life with great candor. Though I was impressed with Debbie, what had the most impact on me was the thoroughness of Brugh's approach. Starting with a complete medical history, he went on to an appraisal of her psychological makeup far more sophisticated and subtle than any I had seen in medical school. Guided by his intuition, he uncovered areas in Debbie that might have taken years to emerge in traditional psychotherapy.
Remarkably, I saw Brugh pose questions that weren't based on information Debbie provided. Rather, they came from his intuitions. The most stunning example took place about halfway through the interview. While Debbie was talking about the progression of the leukemia, Brugh abruptly asked, “Have you ever lost a child?” Debbie turned pale and, in a whisper, answered “Yes.” She'd given birth to a stillborn infant twenty years before, when she was eighteen. The incident had been so painful that she had blocked it out for years.
Brugh saw in this the essence of a mind-body link, that there was a strong emotional component to Debbie's illness. Over the next hour, I watched him deftly uncover a lifelong pattern of losses for which she had never grieved: the grandmother who raised Debbie dying when she was fourteen; the death of a good friend a few years later; her two divorces; and the death of her son. Debbie's pattern had been to check out and not deal with her feelings. She'd pop a quaalude, snort cocaine, or, as a flight attendant, hop on a plane to escape. Although she had finally left drugs behind after enrolling in a hospital recovery program, she had never dealt with her unresolved feelings of guilt, self-blame, and unworthiness. And all of these, Brugh felt, contributed to the subsequent development of her leukemia. More so he believed that by dealing with the losses she could positively alter the course of the disease.
A master navigator, Brugh cut through Debbie's resistance and identified her blind spots. I studied his every move, noting how he incorporated the intuitive with his medical and therapeutic expertise, the art with which he wove these approaches together.
Watching Brugh, I was given a template for how I might have handled Christine. He showed me that it was possible to listen psychically while at the same time remaining medically astute. There were other doctors at the conference who, like me, wanted to use the psychic in their work. In this I was not alone, and I planned to keep up contact with them to pursue this new course after we left.
Before heading back to Los Angeles, I had seen that Brugh's eclectic philosophy incorporated the essence of many religions, above all the concept of unconditional love. This was the underpinning of what he had done with Debbie, the spirit with which he approached her life. For Brugh, psychic experiences weren't an end in themselves, but rather an extension of a compassionate spiritual awareness. Through meditation, that awareness could be nurtured and trained. No intellectual construct, unconditional love was a way of being in the world, a great gift Brugh was able to transmit in words and through his hands. I'd met many healers, like Jack and others in Thelma's lab, but no one who could so powerfully generate this force and bring it to bear with such impact on others.
I had received a taste of unconditional love, the spiritual link I had been missing for so long. During the conference I got glimpses of what it meant to be open-hearted, to see the best in others, and to help reach to their truest needs. It was such a relief, suddenly, not to judge or criticize everyone I met. I'd gotten so used to focusing on people's faults I developed a kind of blindness, rooted in fear, that I engaged in automatically.
I'd no idea how long it would take to move beyond my self-centeredness, the number of surrenders it would entail to allow that love in. Unconditional love is something achieved after very dedicated spiritual work, and I was just beginning. Nonetheless, I'd found the promise of what I was looking for, and in Brugh I had a new kind of role model. Returning home, ready to continue the integration of the psychic into my life, I couldn't foresee that the glow of the love I felt would soon dim in the ordinary world, without Brugh and the others to generate and reinforce it. My greatest challenge would be to learn how to renew and sustain such love in myself.
Three weeks after my return was the anniversary of my grandfather's death. On Friday night, after lighting a Yahrzeir candle in his memory, I wanted to do something special to commemorate the occasion. I had never been particularly observant of my religion, with the exception of attending services with my parents on the Jewish holidays. But shortly before sunset, I decided to take a walk to an Orthodox synagogue in Venice Beach. I was greeted at the doorway by a short, studious-looking man in his midthirties who seemed to be in a position of authority. He had bushy auburn hair and was wearing wire-rimmed glasses, a yarmulke, and a blue and white silk tallis draped over his shoulders. Directing me to an empty seat in the women's section, he then went to sit down on the opposite side with the other men. After the service, he approached me, introduced himself as Richard, and invited me to his home for a Shabbat dinner.
We soon became romantically involved. Richard was a successful entertainment attorney and had recently divorced. He was also a devout Jew, trying to balance his religious beliefs with his busy career. I quickly fell in love, and every Friday for the next three months I returned to the synagogue to pray with the group, a scarf covering my head as was the Orthodox custom. Afterward, since Richard didn't drive on Shabbat, we'd walk to one of the congregants' homes nearby for dinner.
I knew little about the Orthodox Jewish community, never having been exposed to it before. One Friday evening, Richard started asking me questions about my family, and the conversation made its way to my grandfather. Having recently returned from Brugh's retreat, I felt quite open about discussing almost anything, so I told Richard about the dream I'd had that predicted my grandfather's death. When I recounted this, however, I could see Richard's expression change; he then too politely inquired if I had had any other such experiences. Undaunted, I enthusiastically shared them with him, overlooking his obvious discomfort, trusting that he would understand. He didn't. When the night ended and he left, a wall stood between us.
A long letter arrived from Richard the next week, saying he couldn't see me anymore. Heartbroken, I called and asked him why. He said I was a psychiatrist and he didn't want to be in a relationship with a woman who had such a demanding career, but I didn't believe him; I knew there was another reason. Ruth, my friend and a member of the same synagogue, had appeared open-minded, so I asked her if she knew what had happened. It was just as I suspected. Ruth told me Richard had been so disturbed about my premonitions that he had consulted his rabbi. An elderly man of European descent, the rabbi told Richard that I was a witch and that he should cut off all contact with me. I continued going to the synagogue for a little while, but word had gotten around. People who had previously been friendly now became distant. I stopped getting invitations to attend Shabbat dinners. For all practical purposes, I'd been blackballed.
Before Brugh's workshop, such a humiliation would have dissuaded me from my pursuit of the psychic. But now I was more resilient. Though wounded by Richard's withdrawal and the synagogue's response, I didn't use this as an excuse to reject my abilities.
An opportunity to test my new resolve presented itself almost immediately. Anna, one of my patients, was a receptionist who worked for a cardiologist in my office building. Divorced, she'd lived alone for years in a small house in Culver City. She was in her early sixties, short, with sleek gray hair and clear blue eyes. Born and raised in Orange County, she had lived a quiet life, had never traveled, and followed a daily routine of work and coming home to watch TV.
Anna entered therapy to sort through a tumultuous relationship with her son. While seeing me, however, she developed a particularly aggressive type of lung cancer that rapidly metastasized to her brain. Even after massive doses of radiation and chemotherapy, the cancer didn't respond. Over a period of six months, she went from being a healthy, vital woman to being bedridden. Shortly after one of the chemotherapy treatments, she suffered a partial stroke, which rendered her unable to walk.
Following her stroke, Anna found it too strenuous to come to my office, but we stayed in phone contact. Despite her recent setbacks, the oncologist hadn't given up hope that she might still go into remission. One evening I visited Anna at her home. Prior to this meeting, we hadn't spoken much about the possibility of her death; the focus had always been on her recovery. But it didn't matter that her physical condition was more stable than it had been for months. Early that morning, she had had a premonition that she was going to die. This was not a vague impression or merely a fear. As we spoke together that evening, it was clear that Anna knew without a shred of doubt that within twenty-four hours her life would be over. And this absolute knowing horrified her.
In the past, I would have reassured Anna that her anxiety about dying was natural, considering the severity of her illness. After she had vented her feelings, I would then have emphasized recent gains. But I had a strong instinct that Anna's premonition was right: It rang as true as what I had felt six months before about Christine. Now, instead of questioning it, I made the choice to trust both Anna and myself. I didn't listen to the part of me that warned, “Don't risk it. You're going to make a big mistake.” I had followed that voice before and paid too high a price. This time, rather than trying to diffuse or ignore the premonition, I allowed it to guide me. Once that decision was made, I heard a voice in my head that instructed, “Direct Anna toward her own death.”
At first I didn't understand, but then an idea came to me. If I did a guided meditation with Anna to help her approach her death, if I brought her face to face with it, I knew she would somehow be consoled. I had only been meditating a few months, though, and had never tried this before. Even so, I felt strangely confident, certain I was taking the right tack, as if I were being directed by an intelligent force and shown what to do.
As for Anna, she was so distraught that she hesitantly consented to go along with me. I asked her to lie down on her bed and close her eyes. Then I began by leading her through some breathing exercises to help relieve her stress. When she seemed more at ease, as gently as I could I said, “Picture your own death. Tell me what it looks like.”
Anna flinched. I knew this would be hard for her. Anna didn't consider death to be peaceful; rather, she saw it as a painfully final separation from her loved ones. “I'm afraid to even imagine it,” she said. “What if there isn't anything there?” I tried to reassure her, and then, eyes still closed, she went on. “All I see is darkness. An empty void. Nothing. A dreadful silence. I'm cold, numb. I don't like it here.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. She squeezed my hand. “I want to stop,” she said.
I quietly urged her to go on, to keep focusing on her vision. Even though it was uncomfortable, I believed something important was there for her. I hoped she would stay with it and not give up. For some time, Anna remained alone in the darkness. I sat without speaking, sensing she was okay but not wanting to interrupt her. Five or ten minutes passed.
Then, abruptly, Anna began to speak. “It's very strange,” she said. “I can see a faint golden light, a glow like embers in a fire coming from behind the darkness. It's exquisite, I can't keep my eyes off of it. It keeps getting brighter and brighter, pulling me in.” As Anna continued to watch the light approach, a great tranquillity overtook her. Her breathing slowed; her body was still and calm. She remained like this for about a half hour. By the time the meditation had ended, her fear was gone.
“You're right,” she whispered and cracked open her eyes for a few seconds. “If this is death, it's nothing to be afraid of.” Then she drifted off into a deep sleep.
I found this striking, not only because of what Anna had said, but also because she wasn't a religious person and was unfamiliar with metaphysical literature and had no belief in an afterlife. Still, she'd had an instant recognition of her death as radiant light, could feel its brilliance and serenity. Without any prompting from me, she'd confirmed both my own direct experience and accounts of healers who had been with the dying.
That was the last time I saw Anna. Her son called my office the following day to inform me that his mother had died. Anna's death had been a peaceful one, he said. The whole family had been by her side. I hung up the phone and let the news sink in slowly. Anna and I had been working together for over a year. We were close and I would miss her. It was hard for me when anyone I cared for died. I would always be expecting to run into them, to see them smile or hear their voice. I knew that I would feel Anna's absence for a long while. I was sad that she was gone but, at the same time, relieved. Remembering the acceptance on Anna's face as we said good-bye, I realized that I had done the right thing.
For the first time in years, I had acknowledged the validity of my internal voice, had listened to it, and doing so had brought Anna solace. Even though I knew I had taken a huge chance, I felt giddy, almost euphoric: Since I had done it once, the next time would be easier. I couldn't have asked for a more positive affirmation.
On my way home that evening, I rolled down the windows in my car and took in the night. The stars seemed brighter, the air fresher, my hearing more acute. With a cool breeze blowing through my hair, singing along to a Willie Nelson song on the radio, I headed west on Olympic Boulevard toward the beach. As Anna had found peace in her death, so I was finding a new clarity in my life.