Healing - Susanne's Roadside Attraction

STORIES

A Gift of Angels
for my Twin

My sister’s name is Carol and we are twins. We were not born identical: her eyes were grey and mine brown; her favorite animal was the pig and mine the parrot; she had a gift for music and I for art.... but nevertheless there existed a flow of energy between us which binds us in curious ways.

Let me be more specific. We married for the first time at the age of 36 to men who were Scorpios and when we bought our first homes, they were both number 18.... hers, 18 Alder Road in Massachusetts and mine, 18 Church Street in New Jersey.

These coincidences may not seem significant but in 1995 when I became pregnant and the slow growth of life began to swell inside me, my sister also produced a growth... only her growth was called breast cancer stage III. Shortly afterward, just as we had entered the world of light together, we began our descent into the realm of darkness as she struggled to come to terms with a life threatening illness and I tried to bear the unbearable pain of the death of my child at birth.

There is a school in psychology which maintains that all of life’s choices are unconsciously determined and that we humans rationalize our decisions as a way of holding onto the illusion of control. There is also a theory that the unconscious of each individual is multi- generational. This means that the deeply held beliefs as well as the events in the lives of our ancestors vibrate throughout future generations, exerting a powerful influence upon the psyches of the living.

Perhaps, then, it was no coincidence that at our age at that time, our mother had developed a debilitating illness which eventually claimed her life. Perhaps also the verbal messages we received from her which said that the responsibilities of marriage and child rearing meant “the end,” were internalized deep inside the two of us, waiting like a time bomb to go off at the appropriate moment in a sinister prophetic explosion. I don’t know. I do know that shortly before becoming pregnant, I had a dream of a tremendous darkness about to envelop a land where two small animals (my twin and I) lay huddled in fear. All of my life I have been connected to my sister in our dreams.

Carol did her best to handle her diagnosis bravely. She spoke to Bernie Siegel by phone, did radiation and chemotherapy, made dietary changes and tried to convince her husband to go into therapy with her to save their troubled marriage. She had a positive attitude, believing that her cancer was behind her.... but all that was about to change.

In 1987, our father died of a massive stroke. I gave birth to a healthy little girl and Carol began to feel some discomfort in her back. The cancer had returned.

For those who are diagnosed with cancer, there is always the dread that it may suddenly reappear and this dread is reinforced by the necessary checkup every patient in remission must undergo every three months.

Normally, it is a time of high stress as blood counts and bone scans are taken. Acceptable results buy three more months of being able to live without any debilitating treatments; three months to allow hair to grow and be nausea free. With a diagnosis of metastatic disease, everything changes. There is no longer, theoretically, any chance of attaining victory over the ‘enemy,’ there is only the buying of time with the realization that the cancer will ultimately triumph. Ninety percent of all women with metastatic disease will have died in five years, the odds being greater for women who are premenopausal, like my sister. The progress of the disease is insidious and unrelenting as metastasis spreads through the body like air-borne seeds staking their deadly claim, often first to the skeleton and finally to the vital organs such as the lungs or liver. Breast cancer is the leading cause of death for women ages 15 to 54 and is on the rise.

For my sister, a deadly spiral had begun; ribs fractured and a vertebra collapsed, causing terrific pain. She now had to wear a back brace and movement was difficult. First there was radiation then tamoxifen, then megace... all buying time.

I received a phone call from Carol’s husband to tell me that she had been taken to the hospital. That night, I had a disturbing dream:

l am driving a truck filled with garbage. I drive into a parking lot and see some barriers blocking off an area where men are working. There are signs saying “DANGER” all around. I decide to ignore the signs and drive through the barrier. Too late, I realize that the signs are warnings of a huge hole in the earth. My truck falls into a black, bottomless abyss. I am catapulted into the air and begin falling also. 1 am aware that the pit is bottom less and that I will continue falling forever. I am in tat of total helpless panic. Suddenly, from out of the abyss grows a tall white building with a flat top upon which I land. I realize that I am really my twin and I feel my body shaking with uncontrollable fear — I cannot move — my panic is too great.

The scene changes and I am standing on solid ground looking at my sister trembling on the top of the white building. She must somehow get to solid ground where she will be safe, but it is obvious she cannot do this alone. I find an old board and place it as a bridge to the building. She remains huddled in a fetal position, unable to move. I hesitate only a moment and then crawl out on the board to her. Slowly, [guide her to solid ground. She is safe.

The next morning, I received a call from one of my sister’s friends telling me that Carol’s condition is critical and I quickly made arrangements to fly to Boston.

In our conversations, Carol had referred many times to Dana Farber, where she received her treatments but I can’t ever recall her describing the building itself. The Dana Farber Cancer Center in Boston is a huge white monolith solemnly towering over its less ambitious surroundings. With amazement, I recognize the white building of my dream.

I find my sister trembling and terrified. There are blood clots in her legs and in her chart I read that there are now lung metastasis. The prognosis is very poor and her oncologist tells me she probably has only a month or two left to live. I spent several days with her before I had to return to my home. I felt so helpless! There seemed nothing more that medicine could do for her so I turned to the spiritual realm.

When I had traveled in South America, I had seen the icons of various saints covered with the tiny milagro charms which spoke of the bequest of a miracle upon the faithful. Feverishly, I set to work fashioning a talisman necklace for Carol to wear and an angel sculpture to protect her. I received another dream:

The setting is a magnificent cathedral and lam aware that a wedding is going to take place. It is a royal wedding and everyone is dressed in their finest attire. The atmosphere is one of joyful anticipation and the most beautiful music is playing. I have never before experienced a setting so elegant and I am filled with awe and wonder. Suddenly, with a shock, I realize that it is my sister’ wedding and that she is marrying a prince. The prince is vital and wonderfully handsome and appears to love my sister very much. I realize he is ten years younger than she and I worry about their age difference and whether he knows she has cancer. From a side door, our father enters and lie and I sit dozen in a pew to witness this amazing event. “Would you ever have believed that Carol could pull this off?” lie asks inc. l am totally enraptured by the beauty of it all and cannot speak.

When I awaken, I ponder the dream. I am aware of the wedding as a symbol of transition but I wonder about the ten years referred to in the dream. I feverishly continue making angels.

Miraculously, Carol goes into remission. She mobilizes herself in an incredible manner and travels to Mexico for treatment there and later to a hospital in Illinois for whole body hyperthermia. She leaves her marriage and returns to New Jersey where she gets her own apartment and lives independently while pursuing her interests.

Nine years after her original diagnosis, she begins to falter, experiencing more and more pain in her leg and spends a month in the hospital. During this time, I make her a small hanging angel wearing red shoes. Carol told me that she felt the red shoes on the angel were like the ruby slippers in The Wizard of Ox.... a promise that she would return home again.

She did return home, for a short time but ultimately decided that she had had enough of the struggle to live and so she decided to submit to the mystery of the eternal which lies before us all. It was very hard to let her go.

On the evening when I finally accepted she would soon be gone, I created “Angel Leaving Landscape,” to show my twin’s soul passing into the world of spirit. Later, when I looked at that angel, I noticed that it also had red shoes... and so it was finally going home.

During Carol’s last days, she saw angels in her room. I wasn’t with her when she made her final exit but I felt she would somehow let me know she was OK.

Several weeks after her passing, I had a vivid dream of her. She was in the hospital room where she had died, except that she looked terrific, like size did in her twenties. I noticed she was wearing a pair of shiny brown pants that shimmered with a strange glow. In the dream, I asked her over and over again where size got those pants but she appeared very busy and seemed annoyed by my questions. I awoke feeling confused and wondering what on earth that dream could possibly mean.

Several weeks later, I received my answer: At Carol’s memorial service, a friend came up to me and handed me a strange brown shining stone in the form of a pair of pants. “1 don’t know what this means,” she told me, “but I got a message from your sister that I was to give it to you.” I had told no one about my dream and I knew then that Carol was OK.

Perhaps where Carol is can best be summed up by one of her own dreams, given shortly before she died.

I did another workshop with Gurudev. He spoke to me and although he didn’t ask me directly, I knew he wanted me to come to work for him. His hair, instead of being long and flowing, was short like mine after the chemotherapy. Ifrit his spiritual power was just starting out.

Carol died ten years after her initial diagnosis. She had made arrangements to be buried in a beautiful cathedral in New Hampshire. I feel she is with her prince in a glorious place surrounded with love.

The Mask and the Medicine Wheel:
A Group Experience To Promote Transpersonal Awareness

As a therapist I have many times noted the difficulty clients undergo in attempting to integrate a spiritual or transpersonal awareness into their lives. Often the obstruction appears to reside in an abstract intellectual approach. Although the concept of the transpersonal can be grasped intellectually, the internalization of it appears to require a deep affective experience unavailable at the intellectual level.

The benefit of the transpersonal approach in therapy is that as one becomes aware of this sense of universality, values and behaviors tend to shift. Problems which remain insoluble at the ego level may now be reframed at a new perceptual level. For example, inappropriate behaviors motivated by fear, regardless of what the fear is, change automatically when one begins to see those fears as founded on the illusionary identification with the ego as a separate self-existent identity.

The deliberate creation of a transpersonal experience in western society is difficult unless the seeker is willing to devote himself to a long regime of spiritual practice.

In attempting to discover a more readily available expe?ience I surveyed the ceremonies of ancient traditions where the gateways to the transpersonal appeared to be perpetually open. Nature societies in particular make extensive use of the transpersonal dimension. Here ritual and myth depict through vivid imagery a kind of collective memory of the evolution of mankind. The human situation is aligned wFth cosmic events and participants attuned to the unifying flow of life. In this way the ceremony transcends duality with its sense of individual isolation and restores within the person a sense of wholeness; before the one was dismembered into many.

The culture of the native American is replete with rituals of this type, devised to connect man to the flow of nature and promote a sense of universal unity.

My colleague Gene Dillman had recently taken part in a native American ceremony given by a medicine man named Sun Bear in New York State. Together we formulated a group experience based on this ceremony which we hoped would provide a vehicle for transpersonal experience with our clients. The success of this experiment was to be measured both by verbal feedback from the participants and by drawings which were to be done before and after the ceremony. Our hope was that the first drawings would contain personal, concrete representations which would change to more universal abstract symbolizations as a result of the experience. There were twenty-five eager participants.

The medicine wheel itself is a hugh mandala constructed in the earth with stones. The stones symbolize all the things within the universe. The belief of the Indian tradition is that every living being begins life with certain medicines or abilities. These are represented on the wheel as a particular animal in a particular direction. During the course of living it was believed that a person must become familiar with the other medicines of men and incorporate them into his being. In this way a man becomes one with nature and achieves a deep sense of unity with all of life.

The ceremony begins with participants standing in their places on the wheel wearing the masks of their medicine animals. For example the medicine of the eagle is the ability to perceive things clearly, but unless he incorporates the medicine of love and trust from his brother the coyote, he will always remain above life and will never able to be close to things or to feel deeply. The ceremony involves acknowledging one’s own personal powers or medicines, and then dancing around the wheel touching and internalizing the medicines of all others so that at the end all are unified.

The medicine wheel ceremony we devised consisted of two parts. In the first part the participants were led through a guided fantasy where they met their medicine animal. After this they were asked to do a drawing of the experience and then to create a mask of their animal. Later on in the evening different animal movements were practiced in preparation for the ceremony the following day.

The next morning all met out of doors in a field overlooking the Delaware River where a medicine wheel had been constructed. After a time of sharing experiences in nature the dance began with each animal dancing around the wheel touching and exchanging medicines with all others as group members chanted in unison to promote a higher level of awareness. Afterwards everyone once again drew a picture.

The results of this experience proved to be immensely rewarding. In the majority of final drawings the individual animal representations which had predominated in the first pictures had vanished. to be replaced by more archetypal symbols such as circles and spirals. There was a deep sense of relatedness between all group members, and several reported vivid dreams the following night. One group member in particular had been given a broken crystal as a gift during the ceremony and that night had a dream in which the crystal grew whole and complete.

Although the transpersonal realm remains somewhat distant for many of our clients. it is my belief that through drawing on the wisdom of the past we may once again be able to engage actively in the healing experience of wholeness.