Wild & Crazy to The Miraculous

Purpose, Surrender, & Destiny

Prompted by Rebecca Romanelli. Thanks for reminding me to connect all the dots to tell of their transcendence.

After 5 months of living with a housemate, I came home to a house filled with realtors amid a bidding war. I needed to move in 1 month.

I had looked at several new places. One was in a posh east-side neighborhood with a woman and one other roommate. The woman found it strange that I needed a lot of cabinet space (a 2-shelf cabinet) for pots and pans mostly, because I was a guy. Clearly she had trouble seeing men as being able to care for themselves and believed that all men needed mother figures. I did an inner eye-roll and was about to say “no”, when my intuition told me I was needed there and had something to learn.

A guy in his twenties, Brian, one of my roommates, besides Lois, the older woman in her mid-fifties, hooked up cable illegally, unbeknownst to me. I didn’t have television before that for about 6 to 8 years. I got hooked on Star Trek: The Next Generation and I was unaware of the illegal cable hook-up. When a cable inspector came by and asked me about it, I knew nothing and she disconnected us. So I signed up legally. Brian refused to watch because he was a “rebel”.

He worked with his father in a small construction company, and both were raging alcoholics. He came to me about “the shakes” and was hallucinating. I told him he had the DTs and encouraged him to go to the ER. I could tell him more about it or give him literature about the long-term effect of alcohol. I worked with alcoholics, recovering alcoholics and others with psychological crises. He chose the literature. I told him that many people who are long-term problem drinkers who get the DTs could die, but he continued to drink heavily.

Every two to three months, the rent would go up by $100.00 for Brian and me while Lois’s rent remained the same (I overheard a conversation about rent over the phone.) I complained to her about it. Because of my complaints, her son — a crank addict confronted and threatened me about hassling his mother, and wanted me to go outside and fight him.

I declined. “I won’t waste my time,” I said, and he became flustered and walked away. Brian later told me I could “take” Joe down easy. Joe never bothered me again.

The Surprises

My parents came to visit from the east coast. They complained about the motel being noisy. Lois overheard them and approached me.

“If your parents would like to stay through the weekend, they could stay in my bedroom — no charge and I’ll sleep in my craft room.”

“Seriously?” I asked. She nodded vigorously and said: “Yes.”

I helped her move her many unfinished projects off the bed so she could sleep there.

In October of the same year, on my Mother’s 72nd birthday, we experienced the Bay Area’s Loma Prieta earthquake at 5:04 pm — 6.9 magnitude. Most of the damage was in San Francisco — on the Bay Bridge and in Oakland. I had been napping to prepare for an overnight shift at my job at the Crisis House. I was awakened in my loft bed on the second floor of the house and nearly thrown out of bed.

Lois was on the phone in the next room, dramatically proclaiming: “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, we’re all going to die.” to which I responded — half-awake:

“Oh Lois, no, we will not die,” but I didn’t think it was an earthquake until I got to the first floor and saw the chandelier swinging back and forth in the foyer. I tried to go back to sleep amidst the aftershocks and my heart beating like crazy.

I realized, duh, my body felt afraid, and I was irritated that I couldn’t go back to sleep.

A Miracle

It had been 12 months in the crazy house — a kind of testing ground that mimicked how I endured my family. Did I pass? I thought so.

One hundred twelve days after the Loma Prieta earthquake, I asked,

“God, what am I supposed to do with my life?” I asked — not knowing why I had asked and certainly not expecting an answer. I thought that I might have a dream about my path, if anything.

The next morning, I received an answer while I was awake in a drowsy state in bed.

A Being entered through my groin and curled up into a ball in my stomach. Then a full name came to me. It was the name of a woman whom I had met about a month earlier that I had instantly disliked. She was a prominent woman healer in the community, so I thought she would have an unlisted and/or unpublished telephone number.

I went to the phone book thinking I would be let off the hook and not be able to call her. But I found her phone number. I dialed the number. She answered, and I identified myself.

“I know what I’m about to say sounds crazy, but…” I relayed the experience that had just happened.

She said: “I’ve been curled up in the fetal position and I have been thinking about killing myself.”

At that point, I made her promise that she would not harm herself until we could meet the next day (for an intervention).

We met, she told me what had happened to her over the holidays. I had gathered the names of therapists and groups in town from my friends at work (the crisis resident treatment house) as resources for her. I spent four hours at her home.

At the end of my stay, I handed her the resource list, and she said: “The universe put you out there to hear my call. That’s what I needed to begin again.”

We became friends and colleagues and she continues to serve people in her own healing practice to this day.

This was magical enough, but I found an even more remarkable connection. It was 17 years earlier, in 1973, almost to the day that I emerged from a coma of three days after a suicide attempt. The early ’70s from 1972 to 1974 were dark times for me, where I had no insight into what had been happening.

I had come from a very dysfunctional family where I lived under the rage of a tyrannical father and a closet alcoholic. Expressing myself was not my forte. I had been depressed for a long time without having realized it and had a passive-aggressive style of expression and so on.

I was filled with rage, and I directed the rage at myself. I was near death. My girlfriend had told me that my parents had called in a priest to do last rites.

The timing of the recovery of from the suicide attempt without brain damage and the answering of my question allowed me to erase the karmic death (& debt) of disrespecting my own life. It gave me an opportunity to begin a new life to surrender to a calling or a destiny of helping others through the way of healing.

It was a blessing — manna from Spirit, as if I was privy to chapters of my destiny unfolding into the miraculous.

In my own intuitive manner, I searched out and found two teachers that helped me to the next steps along this path…

In a related story:

Swallowed, Chewed, Spit-Out and…

20 years Later: Inner-Work, Understanding, and Peace

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This story was inspired by the wonderful story of Rebecca Romanelli:

Hitching a Ride with Mr. Hard Luck and Troubles

Overcoming initial doubts and following intuition opened the door to a remarkable story and new lease on life for one…