The Stories We Tell

As I have moved along this silly life of mine, I have often heard my father say in conversation, "Did I ever tell you the time..." to which I would think, "Why yes, of course, many times" even before he retold it. Over the years, he took the energetic hint to alter his introductory statement to be: "Hey, I told you about the time..." before the trip through Retroville.

And so would begin a fun, light, engaging, often mystical memory that probably entertained him as much as others in the room. And this was fine. Entertainment is a positive thing no matter who is enjoying it.

In considering these fun tales, I ask myself if there are any stories and memories that I hold that would entertain me down the road, and perhaps others listening in as well.
What would future generations be interested in as I recalled what I have seen and known throughout
this silly life of mine?

Well ...

Did I ever tell you the time when ...

• I was 7 years old and clearly heard an ethereal voice say "Hello Jimmy" after opening my dad's ESP book, thinking to myself, "My goodness, this psychic book really works!"
• I was 16 and my father, and I sent a silent energetic message to my good friend in high school very late at night, so strongly that she called right at that moment with: "You have to stop thinking of me; I have to get to sleep."
  
• In the late 90s, I was in my 30s and I had a super clear dream of an ex-girlfriend standing before me just smiling … this after she had left town on a spiritual journey some four years previous, pretty much acknowledging she would not return. I had let her go in my mind, and hadn’t dreamed of her before. What made this so mind-blowing was that later that same afternoon, I received a phone call from her saying, “Hello, I’m back in San Diego.”
• I was in India in 1996, on my birthday, and I was so wanting a Milky Way bar and even planned to buy one at the market there. It was my birthday after all! I was sharing a room with two other men who had traveled to the same Indian ashram. For some lame reason, I put off buying the Milky Way bar, believing it would be there later. Well, this was India and not a local store in the States. So when I went for my treat, the clerk said he had sold the last one. Oh man, so wrong, so bad, so not celebratory! I said a quick prayer hoping some magic manifestation could happen, and then just put it out of my mind. Later that night after returning to the room, I told my roommate that it was my birthday. He quickly said, “What? It’s your birthday?” And then whisked around lightning fast, singing, lighting a candle and putting it on his most recent purchase ... the last Milky Way bar.
• A few years ago, I had a "reading" from a fairly well-known medium named Thomas John, who looked at me at a book signing event, picked me out of a crowd and said, "Patricia is on the other side?" Yup, my mother. Among offering other impossible-to-know details, Thomas went on to let me know that my mom was saying she used to live at a house that stared with "10." 10? I would have no clue about that. My dad wouldn't be able to know. My aunt Ruby who lived there didn't think that was right at all. My cousins would not recall. It would take an Internet search into the 1940 census to see that it was actually true: 10 Superior Street, De Tour Village, Upper Peninsula, Michigan. No freaking way.
  
• In the early 90s, during a breathwork regression session (called “rebirthing”) I would come to “time travel” to some fascinating, timeless, higher plane, ultimately coming to perceive these bright entities, blue by site, guiding me on this journey. As we traveled over the globe, they would come to rest over my parent's home, revealing which family I would be born to, and which lessons were available. I felt the upcoming painful loss of separating from these loving blue beings, thinking they would not be with me as I lived a partly lonely lifetime. Ah me of little faith. The regression session moved along to have my most little self, laying in a crib, looking upward, beyond the mobile, to see … these loving blue beings smiling down on me.
• On Tuesday, September 11, 2001 it was the middle of the night, and as I laid in my bed in California, I was dreaming. It was a dark dream. It was a nightmare. I was moving along the streets of New York City, down at the foot of these skyscrapers. And it was so sad. This dark energy was all around lurking about. Some nefarious force was hovering on these streets, and I couldn’t tell what it was. All I knew is that it was not good at all. I would wake hours later to a phone call from a friend, crying.

Did I ever tell you the time?

Besides bringing me all his cool and sometimes far-out stories (sound familiar?), my father taught me many things. Most of all he taught me to question everything, especially if it comes from a government narrative, and also to keep an open mind about life. Armed with such, I’ve been able to experience many supernatural things.

Who knows, maybe after all is said and done, the natural world won’t appear very "natural" at all, and it will be those who stretched on this elastic Universal thread to see what’s truly out there, what’s truly possible, and what’s truly real.