by Kevin Deeny
A knock on the interrogation room door brought him back to the present, and a middle-aged man, escorted by a uniformed police officer stepped in, identified himself as John Callahan, and Mr. Grey’s lawyer. This was news to Robert, but he just nodded and looked closely at the business card he was handed. He recognized the name of the firm immediately as the one his mother had worked for all of those years. Mr. Callahan was a founding partner in the firm. The depth of his shame and regret deepened. “How did she find out so quickly,” he asked himself.
He was given time to confer with his lawyer, and he gave him the unvarnished account of what transpired. His lawyer told him that Alecia would not be pressing charges, but he had to see what the City would do.
“How do you know that Alecia won’t press charges,” Robert asked.
“She called your mother and your mother, in turn, called me,” he told him. “She told your mother that she still cares even if you are ‘being a jerk’ and she hopes that you can find your way. From my part, I want you to know that your mother deserves better than this. I know first-hand the sacrifices that your mom and dad made for you; you’ve got some work to do young man.”
Robert agreed. He had to stop living in the past, and he had to make amends to Alecia and find a way to look his mother in the eye again. And if and when he can, he needed to look up the guy who made this second chance possible.
Chapter 21
Searching for Answers
The power to question is the basis for all human progress. – Indira Gandhi
Rosalind’s change in jobs and their relocation brought them closer to home. It would allow Rosalind to spend more time with her mother who lived in an apartment and had become more unfocused over the years. Rosalind still hoped to find something that her mother could take an interest in. Marcus would also be able to spend more time with his father who continued to maintain his sobriety and was closing in on his 10th anniversary in AA.
They had found a small farmhouse with a ramshackle barn that needed a lot of work, but they both agreed that they knew how to work hard and they decided to plant their flag there in the shadow of Blue Maintain. There was enough room in the old house for each of them to have a place for their files and computers and the small barn was ideal for a workshop and storage. Room by room, they slowly worked their way through the house rebuilding and refinishing. They got good at the handy things and enjoyed the mental release it provided to aggressively pound on a few nails at the end of a long work day.
Not long after they moved into their ‘new’ house, a pickup truck with a ladder rack pulled into their drive on a Saturday morning. Marcus came out of the barn at the same time that a large black man stepped from the pickup truck and approached him. He extended his hand and said “Hello Marcus. Tell me what you need help with.”
“Well Robert, pretty much everything,” He smiled warmly, and they stood shaking each other’s hands like long lost friends. Marcus introduced him to Rosalind and Robert told them how he searched for Marcus and eventually found their address in Pittsburg, but they were gone by the time he went out there to find them. It was happenstance that a roofer who worked on a project with him mentioned a lady doctor named Kenrick who treated his son. He took it as coincidence at first, but the hospital bio mentioned that she had come from Pittsburg and it was pretty easy to follow up from there; “As it turns out, I live about 20 minutes from here.”
Robert turned quiet, searched for the right words and looked directly at Marcus, “I came over here to thank-you. I think you literally saved my life.”
“You are more than welcome Robert, but I want you to know that the detective was a pain in the ass,” he responded with a laugh. And thus, began a friendship that was to last for the rest of their lives. Robert told them that he made amends with Alecia and they were married over a year ago. He applied his civil engineering degree in running a small construction company, just as his dad had done, and they were working hard to build their life together. Before he moved to leave, Rosalind invited them to dinner on Sunday.
“We would love to come.”
“And I’m serious about the help. It looks like you could use it.”
Once Robert left, Rosalind looked at Marcus and raised her eyebrows with a question, “Is this happening for a reason?”
“I don’t know honey, but I really don’t believe much in coincidence. I ‘knew’ Robert and Alecia for a reason I don’t yet understand, but I’m glad to see that things are now much different than they were in the alley.”
Although Marcus didn’t have an explanation, he didn’t forget the promise to himself to look deeper into the changes that were occurring with his capabilities; how he could ‘know’ someone, he hadn’t met before baffled him. The interaction with Robert and Alecia was a pivotal moment. Marcus was well aware that he didn’t have formal training to delve into the potential physiological factors, he would have to rely on Rosalind for that, but he would make use of his own technical training. He had become a troubleshooter of sorts during his career, and he was periodically brought into some difficult assignments where a condition would be observed and later ignored because it didn’t fit into an expert’s concept of how things were supposed to work. With this, he felt confident that he would have to look beyond the norm to find explanations.
He considered himself a bit of a geek, Ok maybe a big geek, and he started to list the issues and questions that needed some explanation. Weirdly, he considered these issues the same that would apply for any project, and he began to organize the information. He defined two areas about himself that needed some insight; The Name Thing and The Healing Thing. It lacked eloquence, but it gave him a starting point.
The Name Thing He became aware of this when he was in his teens and was not sure if the capability existed earlier and only developed as he matured or if there was a triggering event of some kind. His near drowning and NDE was an obvious trigger possibility.
The capability seemed to be unique. Marcus had not found any other account of someone who knows the names of people previously unknown to them.
He thought that the Name Thing was relatively unimportant, it seemed to be more of an interesting quirk. However, he wondered if his knowledge of Robert and Alecia was related to the same process he was experiencing in healing. It seemed likely to him, but what was the process?
Proximity was required; he knew the names of people he met which meant that he was physically close. Robert and Alecia were a little further away in the alley but still considered close.
He seemed to know a person’s given name, particularly in the formal sense. Dr. Bea came to mind. He “knew” her first (Louise) and middle (Beatrice) names, even though she only used Bea. Is there any significance to this or just another quirk?
He knew that he was never flooded with a cacophony of names wherever he went; instead, there was a focus to the “knowing.” What role did his intention play? He became aware of a person’s name because he intended to; he was either in the act of being introduced or was already in their presence. This, to Marcus, was the most important question because the healing process also required focused intention and that would suggest that the two were linked in some way.
The Healing Thing This was much more complicated and involved two levels he could identify. His inner geek got the best of him, and for lack of better terms he defined them as; The Colors Thing and The Energy Thing.
The Colors Thing Of the two, this was the one area he knew the most about, but he still had questions. There was also a connection between the two at some level.
The technique required the control of fear which he dealt with by multiple means. For himself, he had to face the fear directly; he ‘gave up’ and let the fear of death pass when he first battled with asthma. In others, it was helpful to visualize a safe place and go there mentally. This would clear away the fearful concerns and allow the mind to re-focus in a positive d
irection.
The sensing of the pulse in the fingertips helped to maintain the mental focus away from the fear and acted as a kind of biofeedback that signaled the calming that was necessary to refocus and define an intention.
Visualization of various colors helped to focus. It seemed to Marcus that intention was the key; your mind is directing your body to do something, and he chose the use of colors as a means to visualize the progress of that effort. His personal choice had been to use ‘red’ to indicate pain, and he focused on washing it away with a more soothing color such as blue or green. Does the choice of color matter?
The golden color represents the nexus between The Color Thing and The Energy Thing. In Marcus’ assessment, The Color Thing is primarily an internal process, not unlike the placebo effect, in which focused intention makes use of existing resources of the body to aid in healing. However, he thinks that the use of the golden color may have a slightly different meaning.
Golden color has long had a mystical interpretation that he was well aware of from his readings. Yet he was interested in its representation from a biological and personal perspective. The sun is the center of our solar system and provides all of the known energy on which our lives depend. The presence of the sun and the golden light it emits is baked into our existence as it is with other species. Trees and house plants alike will bend to it and bacteria in a beaker will migrate to it, and as Marcus has noticed countless times in his own life, like many, he turns his face to it to feel the warmth and energy it imparts.
From his struggle with asthma, and long before he understood the science, he was acutely aware that lungs control the transfer of much-needed oxygen to the body and when that process is inhibited, the whole body suffers. It was not unusual for it to take days for him to recover from an asthma attack which would leave him feeling drained and lethargic. To his own satisfaction, he was convinced that this was also the pathway for energy transfer; if he could breathe, he had energy. The golden color allowed him to visualize the flow of that energy.
The Colors Thing was teachable and empowering, particularly for kids. He was convinced that if this or similar techniques could be used widely, human potential would tick up a notch.
The Energy Thing The realization about energy developed slowly for Marcus. He believed that his visualization focus on energy helped him to become aware of its external availability. What he noticed in himself and what others had told him, was that his hands had warmed during those times when he helped others. He knew that warmth requires energy and although he was unsure of the source of it, he started thinking about it. This was the area that needed the most research, and it caused him to review what information he had accumulated in the past.
When he first experienced this as a teenager, his success in managing the panic night after night led to more control and he found the severity of his attacks waned and the frequency decreased. He was excited by the possibility that he was “training” his body and was fascinated that a mental process, his focused intention, could have such a positive impact. As he entered high school, his fascination grew into research. He read everything he could find in the local library about the linkage between health and the state of mind and was encouraged to find information that described the placebo effect. While in his teens, he had heard the term before, but never really gave it much thought because it seemed to be related to pharmaceutical trials. Yet repeatedly, researchers confirmed that subjects improved medically because they believed that they received medication when they actually had not. Belief is a mental process, and to Marcus’ understanding this confirmed a connection between the mind and the body and more; mental focus could influence the health of the body. He was encouraged that he was on the right path toward understanding what he had experienced. But there were still many questions.
In college, he had access to a good library and extensive databases. Yet he quickly found that healing such as he experienced wasn’t well documented in the mainstream scientific literature. It was considered anecdotal and didn’t merit more in-depth study. Similarly, the placebo effect seemed to be more of a curiosity or even an annoyance in pharmaceutical studies rather than a remarkable avenue of potential scientific investigation. He was surprised by this. He thought that if the mind could be tricked into improving the state of one’s health as studies demonstrated, focused and purposeful intention would have an even higher potential for healing. “Why,” he thought, “hasn’t this been an area of intense research?”
He took a step back and looked more broadly, and like it or not, it included religious sources. He thought that prayer might be a reasonable analogy to consider because this was apparently an act of focused and purposeful intention. However, there was a significant difference. Prayer is often directed toward action by someone else, usually God, to intercede and heal someone.
Yet, the placebo effect didn’t involve an intercession from God; it taps into something that is already there. What seemed plausible to Marcus is that human potential may be much greater than was presently understood and he was interested in how that potential could be realized.
He looked further for examples of healing in the world which would give him a glimpse of that potential. He was surprised to find a lot of information was available, typically from non-scientific sources. He started with the Bible, more specifically; the New Testament and he re-familiarized himself with the accounts of Jesus’ healings. For the most part, Jesus’ healings involved his actual intention (e.g., his healing of the Man Born Blind at Jerusalem) even if the healing took place remotely such as his healing of the Servant of the Roman Centurion at Capernaum. However, there was one account of healing that differed from the rest where Jesus didn’t intentionally heal; a woman in the crowd reached out and touched his robe and was healed. What fascinated Marcus was Jesus’ reaction; he asked “Who touched me?” and further said, “Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.” Jesus’ reaction clearly indicated that there was a transfer of energy involved and, in this case, the transfer was initiated by the subject. It was also interesting to Marcus that Jesus felt the energy leave. Marcus smiled to himself as he read this account. “Cool,” he thought. “Jesus was probably bumping into people all the time as he made his way through the crowd, but it was the woman’s intention, her belief, that caused the energy to transfer and heal her.” This was beginning to sound familiar.
Marcus understood that the healing he experienced took place over time; it was not nearly as immediate as Jesus’ healing accounts. Yet there was a similarity that intrigued him; healing required some intention, either by Jesus or the subject. Marcus’ healing required persistent intention, but he eventually got there. He wondered if there was a process of some kind that was involved. He was also aware that many ascribed Jesus’ ability to heal to his standing as the only Son of God. Marcus was less inclined to believe that explanation; it just didn’t fit his story because Jesus existed as a man. He thought there was a broader possibility; perhaps these accounts pointed to a process that Jesus made use of which was available to all of us.
Marcus’ continued search brought him to Edgar Cayce, and he marveled at the depth of information produced from that single source. Although Cayce didn’t heal people directly, he diagnosed their ailments and described how they could be treated in great detail. Cayce also often repeated a phrase in many of his diagnostic readings; “Mind is the builder.” He emphasized that the state of mind is intimately linked to the state of health.
He also came across the account of a healer, later identified as William Grey, who was the subject of the book Born to Heal and was credited with the healing of complicated and significant ailments. Grey described the healing process he used as involved with the manipulation and transfer of energy. He read of the Therapeutic Touch approach that was used in a Brooklyn hospital by a group of nurses which benefitted patients under their care. He became familiar with Reiki, which at its core involves
the transfer and manipulation of energy to bring about healing.
Virtually none was discussed or presented in his college courses. Given the long history of healing accounts associated in some way with intention and the transfer or manipulation of energy, he continued to be amazed that this was not an area of full-blown, mainstream scientific study. None-the-less, he had learned enough to provide at least limited direction for further investigation.
He also realized that this would be well beyond his capacity to pursue on his own. It was time, he thought, to take Will up on his offer to visit. He could provide a different perspective as one who learned to use The Colors Thing and as a recipient of The Energy Thing. He began to check on flights to Washington and hoped that Rosalind’s schedule would allow a little sightseeing.
Chapter 22
The Collins Farm
The wound is the place where the Light enters you. - Rumi
Marcus arrived at the Collins’ farm just before 8am. Like most farmers, he expected that Josh and Sarah had been up and working for a few hours already. Theirs was a small family farm of about 50 acres that they bought from an older couple whose children did not want to follow them into farming. After years of hard work and meager return, the elderly couple decided to spend their remaining time with children in North Carolina. Josh and Sarah had both been working in the corporate world; he for a small pharmaceutical company outside of Princeton and she commuted to New York City to work at a large brokerage house on Wall Street. Both were mid-level managers, but neither had the heart or drive to pursue their careers into upper management. They sought something different, and during a leisurely drive over a long holiday weekend came upon the listing for the farm when they stopped at a small town outside of Kutztown, Pennsylvania. They drove out to see it that day and stood in the drive outside the barn and saw their future. After 5 years of ownership and hard work, their organic farm business was turning the corner and becoming profitable. They were members of the Organic Growers Association and were passionate about their new-found profession. They began to see life in their future and talked about children.
