I think that ordinary people who are placed in extraordinary circumstances find themselves pushed beyond their limits, and learn new truths about themselves.
—Jodi Picoult
As time has gone by, I have gradually found comfort in my newfound capacities. The lightning strike happened half my lifetime ago. I have now lived as long with these abilities as I did without them. But accepting them has been a very gradual process. It took years after the lightning strike and near-death experience before I could admit to myself that the powers I had developed were not just figments of my imagination, that they were real. I was as skeptical as anyone else. I really tried to suppress what in my prestrike life I would have called crazy. But the facts simply wore me down. So did the convictions of the Garden. I have now accepted and adapted to these inexplicable enhancements to my daily life as best I can. I think I’ve done pretty well.
What finally changed me was knowing in the marrow of my bones that what I had perceived and received in the Garden, and what I had come to know since then, were incontestably true and real. The harsh dichotomy between this certain knowledge and the cruel dismissal that I had previously heaped upon such stories made for some internal conflicts that were difficult for me to resolve. In the end, though, I find it is impossible to deny the profound knowledge I was given or the abilities that I had manifested in and around it.
Naturally, I looked for confirmation from others, particularly from those who might know something about these things and so might be able to help me. My correspondence for six years with Dr. Bruce Greyson helped for sure, but Dr. Greyson lives in Virginia, while I am in Texas. I also needed to talk to someone face to face. It took me twenty-five years to find someone who was willing and able to help me in person with my near-death experience. It was then that I met the Reverend John Price, an Episcopalian priest in Houston who works with people who have had near-death experiences. He published a book on the subject in 2013.3
After seeing a story about the Reverend Mr. Price and his book in the Houston Chronicle, and realizing that he lived in Houston, I emailed him and told him how much I needed a clergyperson to listen to my story. He was kind and supportive each time we met. It was that acceptance and listening that helped so much. It was such a relief for me to finally talk to someone, face to face, who understood that a transformation had taken place in me. He helped me to understand that I was not alone in my experience. People from all walks of life have near-death experiences. This priest lent credibility to my near-death experience, something I had searched in vain for when I tried to speak to my own clergy about my experiences. I explained to him that I had tried repeatedly to talk to four different rabbis at my synagogue about my near-death experience. They were kind to me, but they were also mostly dismissive. I could tell they were uncomfortable with the topic. I confess that I was, and still am, hurt and angry that I could not turn to my own congregation’s religious leaders for answers and support.
I still wonder why those rabbis I sought out didn’t look into the topic and try to help me. In recent years, I have found a wealth of information inside (and outside) the Jewish tradition that would have been of significant help, had I known where to find it and how to integrate it into my own life and experiences in the modern world. Jeff treats some of this material in Part Two of this book, both in his discussions of the comparative study of religion and in his conversations with and readings of his professional colleagues in the field of Jewish studies. The simple truth is that people of every faith have near-death experiences.
Accordingly, I feel strongly that those who lead and guide these faith-based communities should have some knowledge of the topic in order to be of spiritual help to those who need it. A person should never have to leave a religious leader’s office feeling worse about a matter of great spiritual urgency than when she or he went in. This happened to me repeatedly, and there is no excuse for that. When a congregant goes to a rabbi with a spiritual crisis, and the rabbi is unfamiliar with the topic, my feeling is that the rabbi should learn something about the subject in order to spiritually advise that individual. That, after all, is their job. In my experience, clergy who don’t take a few minutes to do a little research on this topic do a great disservice to the people who look to them for guidance and spiritual support. In Reverend Price, I was fortunate to find the support I so desperately needed, but other people who are looking for help processing their near-death experience may not be so lucky.
While there is very little that I find inspiring in attending services in a synagogue, or any structured religious environment for that matter, I have encountered one relatively obscure prayer that actually means something to me. This prayerful meditation appears in a slim little paper prayer book at Congregation Emanu El in Houston, Texas. Oddly, the passage is the only one in the book that is cited as “Source Unknown.” During the course of working on this book, I found the source of this beautiful prayer. It is paraphrased from a sermon given in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London on May 15, 1910. The sermon, given by Henry Scott Holland, followed the death of King Edward VII, whose coffin lay in state in Westminster Hall.4
What speaks to me about this gem is that it illustrates that death is not final. It suggests that when people die, they are not gone. There is continuity. They are still right here, in a kind of room next door. This fits perfectly with my own experience of the afterlife and my subsequent conviction or knowledge that heaven is not some distant place but exists right here, right now, with us on Earth. It is simply in a different realm or dimension that we cannot see. Our loved ones are never truly gone. I find it wonderfully comforting to know that this is actually the case, that it is true. Here is the passage as it appears in the Congregation Emanu El prayer book:
Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I, and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we still are. Call me by my old familiar name, speak to me in the easy way in which you always used. Put no difference in your tone, wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me, pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of a shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was; there is unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well.5
It was my correspondence with Dr. Greyson and then my meetings with Rev. Price that helped me finally become aware of just how much we already know about the subject of near-death experiences. I now know, for example, that there are thousands of case studies of the phenomena in question, and that in many of these case studies people display odd after-effects and newfound abilities after a near-death experience, much like my own. It has become very apparent that I may be different, but I am by no means alone. Publications from a respected psychiatrist (Dr. Greyson) and a well-regarded Houston clergyman (Rev. Price) on the subject of near-death experiences went a very long way in helping me understand that I am not crazy, that I am indeed quite sane.
It was through my great-aunt and great-uncle that Mom came to know Nancy.6 My great-aunt and uncle were kind and very spiritual people who had sought Nancy out because of her reputation as a healer. They introduced Mom to Nancy, and then Mom brought me to meet her.
Nancy lived in Seattle, but she would come to Houston for a week each month to tend to her patients here. Nancy was a naturopath. She worked through a modality she called energy healing. She would assess the auras of the people who came to see her and determine through a person’s energy what course of treatment to pursue, which meant which and how much of the vitamins and herbal supplements she sold were needed to enable the person to return to health, or so she claimed.
The first time we met, in 1989, Nancy told me that she knew I had psychic abilities. I was enraged, furious that someone was able to see through my hard and carefully constructed facade and dial in to something inside me that I worked so hard to obscure. She was as eager to speak with me about my abilities as I was to avoid the topic. She saw them as a gift, much like her own, but I could not disagree more. I wanted to yell at her and tell her to mind her own business. “No, I am as normal as anyone!” I shouted in my mind.
After we left, I railed at Mom for insisting that I go with her to meet Nancy. This was the first time I had been called out by anyone, and I was one angry, busted psychic. “Why can’t you just accept that you have abilities?” Mom asked as we drove home. “You know you do.” I told her I didn’t want to discuss it. I made sure that my sulking and fuming made our quiet ride home most unpleasant.
Every month Mom would see Nancy when she came to Houston. Many times she took Dad with her. She’d tell me that she was going. While I pretended to be dismissive, I was, in fact, intrigued. I decided to look beyond the supplements Nancy was selling and to focus more on her energy healing and aura work. At that time I had only just begun to perceive auras, but I suspected that the energy I was seeing had the power to heal. I am not sure why I felt so sure of that, but it made sense to me for some reason. Perhaps it was the huge jolt of energy I had received via the lightning bolt that opened me to the notion that energy had powers beyond the visible. Or perhaps it was the near-death experience itself. Either way, I was intrigued.
Around 1992, I noticed a small area of skin on Mallory’s back that looked like it might need medical attention. She was two years old at the time. I immediately took her to the pediatrician to have it looked at. He assured me it was nothing. However, being the worrier I am, I was not buying the wave of my trusted pediatrician’s hand. I recanted my doubts about the merits of Nancy’s mode of healing and made an appointment for the next time she was going to be in town. This was to be only the second time I went to see her.
Nancy palpated my baby girl’s aura and then recommended herbs and vitamins to the tune of several hundred dollars. I politely refused. As Mallory and I were leaving, Nancy repeated what she had said to me three years earlier, “You really need to do something with these abilities you have.”
“What do you suggest?” I shot back. “What do you think I need to do, Nancy?”
“You need to be doing psychic readings for people.”
I laughed at the thought, said goodbye, and left.
But that brief interchange with Nancy planted a seed. I had toyed with the idea of possibly doing psychic readings, or channeling, for a while. After all, it was so easy for me. I could simply look at someone and know quite a bit about him or her. And if I spoke to them for a few minutes, I could receive all kinds of information. Personally, I had always been skeptical about this type of thing—until I found I had the ability to do it myself. Ever since my near-death experience, I have been able to tap into other people’s spirit guides. These were the companions I saw people with in the Garden. I also discovered that if a person posed a question to his or her spirit guide, I could sense the response. It was this capacity that Nancy was referring to when she urged me to put my abilities to work.
I had many misgivings about doing any type of psychic readings or channeling work in Houston, however. I hesitated to have my children labeled as the kids with the crazy psychic mom. I worried that it could damage my husband’s business if word got out that his wife was doing psychic readings. Three years passed. My children were still very young, we were a respectable Jewish family, my husband headed an accounting firm, and I simply could not bear the thought of people thinking of me as anything but normal. Because even then I still doubted the psychic abilities of others, I worried that people would make fun of me, just as I had always internally mocked those who were like I was now. I could not have my children stigmatized or known as the kids with the crazy mom. Nor could I run the risk of my husband’s ultraconservative business being damaged by his wife being labeled as nuts. Nope, doing psychic readings in Houston was not going to happen.
It was not that I had misgivings about my ability to do psychic readings. I knew that I could. Easily. After mulling it over, I called Nancy. It had been three years since I’d last seen her, when she’d planted that seed in me. “If I were going to do this, I can’t do it here in Houston,” I told her. I explained my reasons.
“Come to Seattle five days a month, just like I come to Houston. Use my office. I’ll even line up people to see you to get you started. You can stay at my house. Let’s just try it once and see what happens.” Her offer couldn’t have been kinder or more generous. And I couldn’t come up with a single reason not to give it a shot.
Until, that is, I told Barry what I was thinking. I explained to him that I had decided to leave him with the kids for a few days in order to perform psychic readings in Seattle. He was incredulous. “Going where to do what?” My send-off from home was not exactly a warm one. Mom, though, was very supportive of my decision to give this a whirl. She even went with me to Washington state to act as my receptionist.
When we got to Seattle, Nancy had people lined up to meet with me. For five days, I had eight or nine people scheduled each day for hour-long appointments. They paid me well and by the end of the week I had earned a substantial sum. The only downside at first was that I was so exhausted. I wasn’t prepared for the physical toll it took on me to sit hour after hour channeling information that had meaning only to other people. (I generally had no idea what it meant or why it was being given.) Mom was the key here, bringing me food and drinks throughout the day to help me keep my strength up.
I loved earning money. I loved it because, for the first time in our marriage, I was able to make a significant contribution to our finances. I loved that people were willing to pay me for what was so easy for me to do. But something was wrong. It was like I was getting paid for just breathing, and it bothered me. I kept telling myself that doing psychic readings could not be the reason I have these abilities. I could not have been struck by lightning and had that amazing near-death experience just so I could tell women that their husbands were cheating on them. I felt I was missing the point of whatever it was that I was supposed to be doing.
The abundance of money made my arrival home much more pleasant than my departure had been. Barry’s take on it was that I should make this Seattle trip every month. Barry was happy. Nancy was happy. So I scheduled my second visit to Washington state for the following month. People whom I’d seen the week before had made appointments to see me again the coming month. I wasn’t bullshitting them. I was passing along real and accurate information. Over the next couple of weeks, I heard from many of them that what I had told them had, in fact, come to pass.
When I went back the following month, Nancy had scheduled more appointments for me than I had hours in the week. People had told their families and friends about me. My schedule was packed. I even had a waiting list in case someone cancelled.
One of the people I saw that second trip was a young woman who walked with a cane. She had not had a session with me the previous month. The moment she entered the room I could sense her disease and dis-ease. I immediately knew she had ALS, and that the disease would literally torment the life out of her. Everything about this unfortunate woman told me of her coming demise. Every hint of her being—her aura, her palpably depleting energy—told me that she did not have long to live. She wanted my insight into her health. I did not want to tell her what I saw. Despite all of my earlier accurate readings, I worried inside, “What if somehow my perception this time was inaccurate?”
This would be a turning point for me. My knowledge of what this woman was facing seriously deflated the image I had of myself as a psychic. Suddenly, this was no longer a walk in the park for me, an amusing and lucrative pastime. Who was I to tell this poor woman that her life was almost over? It was not my place. For the remainder of the hour, I evaded her health questions and gave her answers like, “You will be fine,” because in heaven I knew she would be healed and happy. Because of these internal dialogues, I reasoned that I was not really lying to her, but I felt terrible that I was in fact misleading her. I redirected her health questions as best I could to information about her children.
That night Nancy asked about my session with the woman and what I had told her.
“She has ALS,” I said. “She’s going to die soon.”
“Yes,” said Nancy. “I know that. Did you tell her?”
“No,” I said.
“Good. Her husband has come with her to see me. He told me that they have stopped all conventional treatment for the disease. What you have to tell her is what I tell her, that she is going to get well.”
“Nancy, I can’t do that. I can’t do this anymore.” I finished out the week and concluded my short career as a psychic in Seattle.
Such dilemmas did not simply disappear, though. Just because I sense things about people that they may not know about themselves, am I obliged to tell them what I foresee if it is a bad or negative premonition? Of course, if it is a loved one or close friend, I will take the risk and say something. But a total stranger I pass on the street? Who am I to upset other people’s lives, especially if I might be wrong?
Okay, so I can see auras and precognize events before they happen. I don’t know why I have these abilities, and my cluelessness about how to put them to use frustrates me to no end. If I could understand this, I really and truly think my life would be much easier, or at least more sensible. Is it possible that writing this book and getting the fact out there that there is an afterlife is what I am supposed to be doing with these unearned gifts? I don’t know. But I do know that writing this book in Houston feels much more “right” than doing psychic readings in Seattle.
The lightning strike itself was not a revelation. It was a single natural event that brought on my near-death experience. Or is it more complicated than this? Toss the coin and tell me: Was it the purely natural phenomenon of lightning coursing through my body that is responsible for these aptitudes? Or do I possess these powers because I returned from death and had what we now call a near-death experience? What is “natural” here? What is “supernatural”? And is there really any difference? My metaphor of the coin toss gives away what I think. I think we are talking about two sides of the same coin here. Heads, and it is all natural. Tails, and it is all supernatural. But it is really the same coin seen or experienced in two different ways.
Whether it was the lightning strike or the near-death experience (or both), these abilities have been part of my life ever since. And they have been like revelations, at least to me. Each new ability unfolded and made itself known to me as situations arose that demanded my attention. I don’t think that by preconceiving a plane crash that I somehow caused it to happen, but I do believe that we can know about things before they happen, because, in some sense, they have already happened in the future. In any case, however we understand these things, the simple fact is that I have the ability to know about things before they happen or just as they are happening at great distances. This is a kind of revelation or prophecy. It certainly does not feel “normal” to me.
It was explained to me in the Garden that my having been struck by lightning and the abilities that I have been given as a result were all planned. I have written earlier that I came to these abilities gradually. Both statements are true. I was told about some of these abilities in the Garden, and some came then, but others manifested later. For example, the sudden understanding about the nonlinear nature of time was something I was taught in the Garden. I possessed this knowledge then and there. But I was not told, nor did I realize in the Garden, that I might later experience this understanding in dramatic ways. I was not told about the later precognitive nightmares, for example. I only came to know about them as they happened. Another way to put this is that in the Garden, I was given the understanding; in my life after, I experienced the practical effects of what I now understood.
In the Garden, I remember questioning the timing of my actions in relation to the lightning strike. What if we had waited ten more minutes to leave the house? What if we had left earlier? What if we had had a flat tire on the way? What if we had stayed in the car to ride out the storm? What if?
As I have come to understand things, I now believe that the reason for the lightning strike was to help me, to really make me understand that death is not the end of life. I have also begun to reckon with the complexities of free will. I now know that had I not been struck by lightning on September 2, 1988, it would have happened on some other day. All the “what ifs” I can come up with no longer apply, because what was going to happen was going to happen. My guide in the Garden told me that, free will aside, the lightning strike event and all the things I can trace back to it were going to happen, regardless of what actions I may have taken on my own. Being struck by lightning was “in the contract” before I was born. I don’t remember signing anything, of course. It’s a metaphor. I may question whether or not such powerful events are preordained, but the only adequate “answer” may well be in the owning of them all, that is, in the acceptance of what the ancients called “fate.”
In fact, I do question the idea of fate or a preordained future, because I like to think that everyone has the ability to exercise some control over his or her own life. I have to confess, though, that the events that have come to define my life since the strike, and especially the precognitive nightmares, have taken some of the strength of that conviction away from me. I am no longer so sure. As I will explain a bit in my next chapter, I truly believe the future is already “there,” somewhere ahead of us “here.” The future has already happened, just like the past. Certainly, I couldn’t have made the lightning hit me or conjured these abilities myself. They happened to me. I didn’t choose them. I don’t know if I own them, or they own me.
Maybe the point of this is to communicate that there is more to our world and to ourselves than how we live and what we happen to know at this present moment. Maybe the point of this is to show us that there are mirrors behind and in front of our present in which we can see not just self-reflections but also actual images of who we are and what we are capable of. I really do think that the ability to know as I have come to know is inherent in all of us. We are all wired with the capacity to animate those abilities.
I also believe that every one of us has the physical ability to interact with the energy surrounding us and to do things that many people presently belittle and laugh at, exactly as I, in my own ignorance, once did. But if everyone has the ability to interact with this living energy, why must it be such a dramatic and painful process? Why not simply flip the switch, painlessly? Perhaps this is not always necessary. Jeff tells me that many psychics, or what he calls paranormal prodigies, come to their gifts naturally and effortlessly, while for others it takes a serious injury, illness, or near-fatal accident to trigger or awaken the newfound powers. Perhaps this all happened in my case in order to get my attention, to slap me awake, as it were. I was certainly fast asleep. I was not told why we humans don’t gravitate toward greater interaction with energy. But then, I didn’t know to ask that question at the time. What I know now, though, is this. I know that if we did interact more with the energy surrounding and suffusing our world, a greater number of us would understand that there’s more to life than we ever imagined, that there is, in fact, much, much More.