Dear S,
Obviously, S., I must improve on my diction or my handwriting, which I don’t like, that you could not read. I think it was my diction actually. I think I sent you a tape last time and perforce will have to send you a tape this time too and perhaps for some time to come. It has been a very active and challenging time for me, a time that has rendered my right arm just about useless. In fact, when I go out I am carrying it around in a sling to keep the weight off of the shoulder.
I would like to tell you about the experience that I had at our Lady of Peace Hospital, which is the psychiatric hospital into which I was admitted for the purpose of getting off of a drug, which had been prescribed for me, to which my liver seems to react violently and allergically.
In the first place, the basic miracle was that it was expected since Prozac has a half life of nine days and since they moved me off of Prozac completely all at once, that I would be bouncing off the walls for about two weeks and my liver function would be turning to normal after that time. That was my state of mind. The side effect of coming off of Prozac is extreme panic. There was some medication to dampen that panic, but not the amount of medication that would have been effective. It merely kept me able to control my thinking enough that I could, in turn, control my behavior to a certain extent within the acceptable bounds of society.
I don’t ever remember a suffering more in a personal sense than opposed to suffering on behalf of another or because of a relationship. It truly was a time in the desert for me. Lo and behold, within four days my liver function had returned to normal. I had been granted some kind of dispensation, grace, blessings, which allowed me to realize that I had not risked any more to leave this plane of illusion, even though I was in a lot of pain and still am, and even though the future seems rather bleak since it contains back surgery. Somehow every dawn seems sweeter than the last, and I began to taste again the wonderful wine of living fully that I had missed for long since Don died.
He took the truly happy and peaceful part of Carla with him, not because he asked for it, but because I had given him power over me to the extent inappropriate in any relationship. I adored that man and perhaps it is not wise to love so very much that one loses oneself. Indeed, I felt like an extension of Don, one being with him, when in fact, I had simply entrained my thoughts to move with his in the greatest harmony possible.
This is, in itself, a splendid idea and extremely helpful for people who want to get along with each other. In my case, I had gone too far. I had dropped all boundaries between us and the effect was deleterious to us both because I could no more help him in his last days than he could help himself. Indeed, I simply broke down into a complete state of catatonic unawareness and was unable to do anything for at least a month before he died except cry and stare in his face without being able to speak.
Since his death in 1984, I have gradually recovered, rediscovered and reinvented old and new parts of myself, finding a Carla that I liked, adding to it, blessing it, and living always in the faith that this was what was supposed to be happening. That faith was my savior.
Although I am a Christian, I do not believe one has to be a Christian to feel that kind of faith because faith is not faith in anything, but simply faith alone. The faith that things are as they should be. Faith that we will not be given more than we can bear. The faith that we can, and will abide and the desert will not last forever, but the joy will return.
I wake up early every morning and one wonderful morning in the hospital I woke up with a whole self again. I felt comfortable within my skin, good and strong, and realized what it was to be fully myself again.
Perhaps it does me some credit that I grieved so fully, but I would rather advise others to keep more detachment than I did in that relationship; to be more independent than I was. In the face of greatness, I had recapitulated, not recognizing that I had good points of my own. I think it is important for each and every one of us to realize that we too have a Creator and must keep a balance between being one with all and losing self.
After a particularly nasty attack and verbal assault by one of these nurses, who was quite convinced that my arthritis was completely psychosomatic, I found myself empowered from within with a kind of strength that I recognized as my true self, that I remembered from times before 1984 when my world was shattered. She was as rude and nasty as you can imagine and she spoke to me of my lack, my faults and my supposed deceit for she was convinced, as were all of the nurses in the mental hospital there, that when I said I cannot do these things with my hands without suffering greatly, I was simply looking for an easy ride, and more help, and more feelings of specialness and being treated well than the other patients.
I was ill-suited to the rigors of that hospital. And when I came home a week later, instead of the month or so that was predicted, I had severe back spasms, which at this very moment press on me. They have not gone away. I had tendonitis in both shoulders, right elbow and both wrists have gone completely out of joint. I can’t remember being in more pain. It was the cost of doing things for myself, the simple plain, everyday things that healthy people take for granted: washing myself, brushing my hair, taking care of my body, carrying trays, and in general, living normally in a work-a-day world.
To say that I am one of the most fortunate women in the world is to make an understatement. Years ago through the great love of Don Elkins and Jim McCarty, I was asked, I was ordered, to stop doing anything with my hands. This led to an enormous depression within me, which continues to this day, and which will probably continue all of my life because I am an active person who enjoys and feels the value of giving physically to another person. There is nothing I like better, even now when I cannot it, so it makes no sense to love it, then to cook somebody a meal, or to make someone a sweater. To use my hands in service, that has always been my joy just as I enjoy using my voice in service at singing, my writing to people, my working with people in seminars with my channeling.
It was a most blessed week for me and I came home completely wrecked physically, but with a new lease on life mentally and spiritually because each and every patient on the same ward as I, had come to hold my hand, to hug me, to comfort me and in the midst of their stress, to give love and life to me. I have seldom felt so blessed in my life and I can honestly say that the commandment, “Love one another,” is truly the heart of faith and rightful living.
You may use your own judgment, S., as to whether to print any of that. It was a magnificent experience, an experience of which I was determined from the beginning to give praise and thanksgiving for each moment. That was the advice that Ra gave me when I had my last hospitalization in 1981 for hand surgery. I had failed to give enough praise and thanksgiving for the great blessings that were coming my way and concentrated instead on my pain and my limitations.
I was determined this time to be thankful and grateful and full of praise and wonder because I knew that Ra had the right of it and that attitude was the healing attitude that I had lacked in my previous hospital experiences. Certainly, it is difficult to have health problems, nor do I duck the responsibility for them. I know why I’ve got arthritis.
I didn’t feel full enough in faith when I was twelve to want to live and I prayed to die. Six months later my kidneys failed and I did die for about twenty seconds.
As I was moving towards a beautiful temple, my skin without blemish, feeling wonderful, completely out of pain, I heard a voice say, “You have chosen a difficult path and if you wish, you may stay here and choose another path. But you have not finished what you started to do in the life that you have just left. It is up to you.”
I chose to come back, but I came back to a very dead body, a body whose kidneys had not been functioning for two weeks. These were the days before wonders and miracles; before kidney transplants and dialysis. Even before knowledge of any medication that could address the terrible damage that was being done to my kidneys by Bright’s Disease.
Consequently when others speak of me as being ill, I think of the miraculous recovery I made from death. The poison that had not been able to be released from my system for two weeks had settled in my joints and in my heart. I had rheumatic fever, rheumatic heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus. That was my legacy for lack of faith.
I have forgiven myself for that a long time ago. I was twelve. I was lost. It is understandable to me that I thought I could help no one. My personal situation at that time was that I was the only functioning member of a dysfunctional family. My brother was failing at school. My mother and father were alcoholics. I was baby-sitting at seven and cooking at ten. Nothing I ever did was quite enough to please my parents, who relied upon me as children do upon their parents. I could never do enough, and I became convinced that I could not help enough to sustain a reason for my life. This was exacerbated by the way I looked and the way I spoke.
I was terribly cross-eyed for one eye had been looking almost directly at the pineal gland when I was born. One could barely see any part of the eye except pupil. It was thought that I probably would have brain damage because the eye is somewhat pointed in the front as opposed to that. Extreme measures were used to tug the eye back into some semblance of normalcy. I wore eye patches and I had glasses when I was ten months old. I was very intelligent and I would correct teachers, who then would send me to the library to discipline me for being so rude and insulting as to correct them.
My peers simply did not accept me. I was a bewilderment to them. I loved to sit and talk. I loved the company of big people and the few people who understood that about me were my joys in childhood. My grandmother, especially, on my mother’s side, always talked to me as a person and never talked down to me. I needed that desperately because I was a little person. So is everybody, but most people are not quite as bright as I was. I do think now that people make grave mistakes in talking down to children. Children may be small in stature but they are imperishable souls, quite equal to any of us big people.
At any rate, given that was the history of my arthritis, nevertheless the somatic problems that I had were quite real. I was in extreme trouble by the time I left that hospital, but I had not wavered in my determination to be thankful. I had not despaired. I was old enough to see what was happening to me as a simple challenge, a simple initiation to which I could respond very, very simply by remaining in an atmosphere within of love and light. It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life, even in the midst of the suffering of the physical body.
I wanted to tell you that because I could see that you were concerned with me just as I would be if you were in the hospital. You are right, we are all concerned Jewish mothers. We want to reassure each other and comfort each other and I do thank you for that reassurance and that comforting.
As to your own problematic cataract surgery, I do sympathize very much. A friend of mine who died young of juvenile diabetes had several laser treatments on her eyes before she died. She did not express that they were very comfortable. Doctors say they are virtually painless. This was not her experience, but I know that you too, S., will have faith and will give praise and thanksgiving and will turn the dreary experience into something wonderful.
As to your physical self, you think of yourself as a platypus, which is very funny. I think of myself in two ways: Intellectually I identify with Winnie the Pooh’s character, Wol, because my intellect gets me in more trouble than I can tell you. It is like having a computer with an enormous amount of memory capacity. One is not always in complete control of that big machine and it will get you in trouble every time.
I see myself as far as my mind is concerned as being very sophistic and sophomoric and usually wrong about things to some extent, just as Wol read the no trespassing sign so incorrectly and spelled his own simple name in a dyslexic manner.
Physically I have always reminded myself of a frog with my large wide-spaced eyes and my very generous mouth. This is not the way other people see me and I assure you it is not the way you look to me, that is, you do not look like a platypus at all. You look like a perfectly normal nice person, so I do feel privileged that you would share your thoughts, and feelings, and your troubles with me in return, and you will be in my prayers.
I will also from time-to-time say blast and all bother because S., you are going to have to be in some pain and discomfort. But we are not our bodies and I know that now more than ever before.
As to the question of studying the transcripts, I am all for it. I think it is a grand idea. I have probably seen published about 5% of our output, most of it is my output. Most of it is channeled by me. There are channelings by other entities too during times when I am teaching people to channel. I have never had anyone but Jim stay with it for very long, but there is a great deal of material in the archives that simply have never seen the light of day, which is entirely worthy. But the simple problem of energy, that great energy called money—we trust that we will be given the amount of energy needed to produce the best of what we have and to have it reprinted. Until this last year, we were able to do new projects. This last year has seen disastrously great rises in postage and handling costs, especially in the area of printing and mailing.
Our last bird, the Book of Days, was unable to fly and we put it to rest until some time in the future when its wings are paid for. But I am very happy to supply with transcripts. It would not be to anyone’s advantage for me to choose the transcript that you are to study each month. It is always a bad idea for any channel to edit or otherwise manage his own material. You cannot be completely objective about your own work. I would advise anyone who is doing channeling or teaching to make sure that someone is editing your output.
However, I am perfectly content to send you a manuscript a month since we produce on an average of four a month obviously. And a few people then would have the opportunity to share in the information that we are receiving in this small circle of seeking in Kentucky. That would please me greatly. I feel that your method of showing how much things cost and simply allowing people to draw their own conclusions as to whether they need to donate money is an excellent way to handle the financial aspects of publishing. I can only encourage you because I feel that no matter what is talked about in the Ra party-line group, it is a community and each of us blesses the other as we love each other.
As I always say, and as it strikes me every Monday when we go and get the mail and read it over, the number of lonely people who feel isolated because their spiritual hunger is staggering. And for me to be able to have a resource, a place for them to be spiritually, is an enormous blessing. It is as if there were within the heart of the Ra party-line a kind of temple or church, a spiritual place, an ashram where people may gather in spirit and enjoy each other’s company no matter what the subject is.
Personally, I have little or no interest in phenomenon. I don’t deny that the phenomena exists. I don’t say there is nothing to astrology. I know there is a great deal to it. I don’t say there is nothing to numerology or the study of the Tree of Life. I would be a fool to do so. I don’t turn my back on any of the great oddities or strangenesses of which I have been a part, including psychic surgery or seeing ghosts. To me, the point is that all of these phenomenon point to the mystery of creation, of the Creator. It is that mystery that fascinates me. It is that mystery that created me that I cherish, and worship and adore because that mystery loved me enough to frame me into being.
Life is very sweet right now, S., for me and I hope that you too will respond to the idea of using the transcript affirmatively. I would prefer very much for you to be as always the authority in the Ra party-line. I do not wish any power in this effort. I only wish to be a channel. Someone else needs to judge and intuit that which is relevant for one particular issue and I know that you will do splendidly.
Things are moving along very nicely with my getting better from all of the difficulties that I have encountered in the hospital. I can no longer sit up at all for more than say an hour at a time without a tremendous load of pain and since I refuse to take pain medication, it being addictive and very harmful to the system, I am pretty well stuck with it until it stops happening, which it will eventually, I hope because the back pain together, with the nerve pain, and other aches and pains that I have, intrude into my life too much and keep trying to draw me away from the consciousness of love that is all around me. But I shan’t let that happen. This I do vow.
Today I get a hospital bed. Medicare has a program whereby the rent on a hospital bed is paid if there is a prescription for one given. Needless to say, my rheumatologist, Dr. H., could not write fast enough to give me that prescription where he is most concerned about my condition and most upset at the hospital and its treatment of me.
I looked through catalogues and I found a bargain and I now have ordered some dark blue sheets and a comforter, I had bought for my mother, yarn in blues and deep maroons, to make an afghan for me to put over my feet because I get chilly sitting in one spot so much of the time, even in a nice warm house.
Yes, S., we now have a warm house. Our furnace, which died on Christmas Day of old age after many, many years of valiant service, was finally replaced by a furnace that is so dear and sweet that I have named it Snuggle Bunny because there is such a soft feel to it. The noise that you are hearing in the background right now is the sump pump. We have a lot of rain right now and a very high water table, but when the furnace comes on, it doesn’t sound like a Viking. It sounds like a snuggle bunny. It is soft, and gentle and very efficiently putting out the warmth.
Jim has gone out and bought the lumber already in order to construct for me a system of shelving, which is free-standing as opposed to the current system of shelving by my nest, which rests on the back of the couch. It will be a tremendous help to me that at any time of day in which I feel too much pain, I can simply put the bed down and lie flat. That is the single best thing I can do for the difficulties I have at present, which are made much worse when I attempt to be vertical. Gravity is not my friend at this time, but rather a nagging in-law reminding me of my difficulties and shortcomings.
So I can hardly wait for the bed to get here, knowing of the additional comfort it will provide. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am that Jim is going to build me a new and improved version of my shelves. It makes things so much nicer that I can work at this station and not have to move around and sit up at the desk any more than is minimally necessary for filing things away and for doing the scut work that one always has to do in mundane reality. Jim cannot do everything. I keep the household accounts so there is some sitting-up time involved and I sit up to sing at church and to sing in the Box Society. I have decided that is all; that I will limit myself more and try to do less and I have a feeling that I will be more effective doing less than I have been attempting to do more.
As for the coming operation on my back, the doctors have not agreed in any degree about whether or not I should have surgery now or later. And in such a mixed bag of opinions, I am inclined to wait. Yes, I am in a good deal of pain, but if I have to have a back operation now and then another back operation later, it does seem sensible to me to take the pain until the situation ripens so that the entire matter of the back spasms, the pressed nerves, etc., be addressed all at once and I have only one experience to challenge me with back surgery.
I haven’t finished making up my mind on this because I haven’t finished gathering information, but that is the way I am leaning at this point, which means that for now, I don’t have to think about going to the hospital, a thought that makes me tremble. There is no less healthy place in this world than a hospital. It is a terrible place to be ill. I am glad I am home. I can’t tell you how glad I am.
The situation with K. is progressing really well. She has disassociated herself pretty much from our group physically. That is, she is almost always gone. She simply could not handle the strength within the group, that is my personal diagnosis. Both Jim and I are strong characters and we came across to her as authoritarian figures, which is the fartherest thing from the truth, but she has had difficulty with authority figures all of her life. Because we live a different life style than she does, she is an extreme health-food eater and New Age type who believes in nothing except that you are what you eat and L/L Research, so she was ill equipped to deal with two very strong personalities and feel like a colleague, although we were treating her as a colleague the whole time.
Now, she has, without any hard feelings, without any consternation on either of our parts, flowed into a pattern of looking for a place of her own. She has found a roommate. She is looking perhaps for a third person so that they can rent a house and she will have peers around her, not authority figures, and she will do much better. I am sure of that.
Meanwhile I am sure that she will continue to be of great use and helpfulness to L/L Research. I truly believe that her dedication is sincere and that she will continue to help with typing and with coming to the Sunday night meditations to be part of the circle. So that has been working out very well.
I will be tickled when she finds a place and when she moves because Jim is most disturbed and feels that he has been misled. She said she was coming to work for L/L, but she has instead taken a full-time job and when she is not working at the full-time job, she is out on the town with one beau or another, being a very pretty curvaceous blond.
There are tremendous depths to K. and she will grow into them. I have utter faith n her and I will stick by her. I love her dearly, but I am perfectly willing to give her a chance to have fun her way in her own time. What she is doing is normal. Our problem was that we were looking for somebody who was not normal. We were looking for someone extraordinary. We don’t think about ourselves as being extraordinary because we are us.
We have both given over our entire lives to this labor of love. We do nothing else. We survive on the money that Don left us and my Social Security. This means we live a somewhat simple life. We can’t afford everything that I would like to afford. All of the money that comes into L/L stays with L/L except for one dollar a year, which for tax reasons, we must pay Jim.
That dollar is infinite as far as we are concerned. We do our work for the joy of it and we count ourselves as very blessed and lucky. We don’t think to ourselves that we are unusual, because between us we are quite ordinary. We think along the same lines. We are pulling the same yoke, carrying the same kind of loads and on the same journey. But when one thinks about it, one can see that it is not normal for people to be able to give up an entire life to the impersonal service to others that we attempt to offer.
I do not mean that we do not have personal compassion or that we do not have friends. We do. We have some really close and good friends and an awful lot of fond acquaintances. But we don’t go outside of the house to make more money than has been offered us by circumstance. We make do on what we have so we can do this work. That is not possible for many, many people. I would say the great majority of people. There would constantly be the pull to make more money, to be able to afford more luxuries and to be more materialistically oriented, more comfortable, more posh.
We scrimp and we save, but we are free to give our lives in the service of the one Infinite Creator. That little sacrifice is not a sacrifice to us, but an opportunity. This probably doesn’t make a lot of sense to very many people, but it makes sense to us. We are in it for the long haul. We have no intention of stopping this ministry short of leaving the planet and entering larger life.
Since K. took the responsibility and sat down and talked with us at length about the situation and agreed that she really did want her own four walls and did not want to stay here, the atmosphere here has lightened back to its normal love and light vibration. There was a strain there for a while, especially between K. and Jim, both of whom are somewhat firm and unable to adapt easily within their relationships and their belief systems. I am a chameleon. I can blend in with anyone. I haven’t met more than—since I have been an adult, I have met one person with whom I could not communicate in love and light. This person was someone with whom no one could communicate in love and light.
There are people that are determined to be unhappy and that like to spread it around, but I think those people are very few and most people are good-hearted and really respond to a loving presence and that has been my experience of adulthood. And I don’t believe that it is an illusion within an illusion, but I do believe that it is a blessed manifestation of imperishability within the illusion. Love is eternal.
S.B., an old meditating friend of ours, a member of the group for ten years at least, has taken off some time from work to come and help out. She is asleep upstairs right now and I can’t tell you how thankful I am for her presence. She truly loves us and we truly love her. She knows the situation as regards my needs and she will make it possible for Jim to have what he has needed desperately, an extended time alone on Avalon. Now mind you, during that time alone he will not be sitting contemplating his naval all of the time. Jim is a worker. He has to do things. God help him if he ever lost the ability to do things because he sees himself as the man of practical application. He sees himself as a Thoreau-type character and, indeed, he lives a life of a Thoreau, both in thought and in action.
As you know, he was a homesteader for six a half years and he carries that independence and that can-do positive attitude into everything that he needs. He gives substance to reality and does not trivialize it. He is a fine man, but he is a hermit and has given up being a hermit in order to work with me. Now he says there isn’t anyone on earth he could think of that is easier to get along with than I am, but this is a subject for debate. It is a nice compliment and I feel that he means it. That he really, truly does get along with me very well, but he desperately needs to be alone for an extended time. S. will be here for ten days. We will have the time of our lives. We really will have a good time, talking, meditating, doing the work and enjoying each other.
S. is about ten years younger than I am, about 36 I think. She has two grown children that she bore very early in her life. She was an Army wife whose husband left her and all of her adult life since then she has supported them as a waitress or some other job because she could not find the time to take training in college or vocational school. A young woman with two children simply has a limited number of options in this society. She has done a wonderful job of being a single parent. Her children have turned out beautifully. They are good people and full of love and bless their hearts, they feel as if they are part of L/L too because they have grown up for the last ten years of their young lives (lone is now 17 and the other 18) in the purview of the spiritual approach that L/L Research offers.
You can see the difference it makes when children are given a spiritual focus. These kids are tremendous and all of the kids within the group are very loyal to the group and love coming to meditation and coming to picnics and getting together. It is a really fine group here locally. A small but intensely loyal group so S. shall stay here for ten days and we shall have a good time.
I think you should definitely move ahead with the new format after you finish Book IV. It would be interesting to me to see how people could work together to draw the rest of the Tarot Major Arcana since we were only able to use the first seven archetypes and have them accepted by Ra as being accurate enough. I think that there are plenty of hints in Book IV about the rest of the archetypes—what should be deleted from them as far as there being additions made by scholars of the sky. It is not intended to be a deck of divination, although now it has come to be a focus for that, and that is okay, but that is not Ra. I think those influences can be taken away pretty logically because all through the first seven, the things that were removed were the same. It was very consistent or should I say, Ra was very consistent in its appeal to release certain symbols from their stricture.
I would love to see a Tarot deck done by someone who is a true scholar of Tarot, and especially of Ra’s discussion of the archetypes, but I would never do that myself because I am too much of an authority and what I think of myself is nothing of authority, but it would be taken as authoritative if I were to continue to draw the deck simply because I happened to be the channel through which the information came, which is like blaming the pipe for the water.
That is the way people think. Somebody is responsible and I’ve got to be somebody’s living. I am sorry, but Ra is a discarnate entity and it was responsible, not I.
I guess really there isn’t any other great news. Our mail has been fairly small lately. An awful lot of prisoners have been writing us, which makes us very happy, yet very poor. This is the reason that we can’t do more. We send an awful lot of material out for free and that is something that we felt that we should do when we started in 1980 and we still feel that we should do that. That the information should be freely acceptable to many who wish it. I know that people who can give generously will and that this will continue to snowball as more and more people become aware of the Ra material. I have faith in its excellence. We strove hard and mightily to have integrity and honesty of the group and in our work. I think that comes through to the people who read our material.
We still have that attitude and we still channel and it seems perfectly relevant to me that the Ra student party-line move on to those things, which are being channeled now. It is the same consideration; the same basic group of sources. The same type of information—spiritual principles, healing and inspiring thought. So what better thing could someone interested in the Ra material do then begin to pay attention to what is being channeled now?
I wish you every piece of good luck and good fortune in this change-over, which will occur after you have finished with Book IV. It is logical, sensible and inspired. Congratulations with it. You just gave yourself another job.
[Carla discusses the company they have staying over night and Jim’s room.]
Jim will be in heaven down on Avalon. His parents, who are saints, have offered to donate to Jim the amount of money it will take to paint the cabin inside and out, which will transform it incredibly. Right now it is an amalgam of many different kinds of wood in many different stages of age, some very weathered, some brand new. It is a sound house, but not a pretty one. It is surely a shack. I call it a sugar shack. When the paint goes on, and I believe that it will take many, many gallons of paint for that old wood to soak up and make a difference, it will really shine. It will really be pretty because it is basically a very pretty structure, simple and yet quite capacious in its own way. He will probably be going down tomorrow and not coming back until the weekend and then perhaps next week too while S. is still here. That is balm to my soul because I feel helpless to remove myself from his environment to a degree that would satisfy him completely, because here I am and I don’t even drive.
Lots of love to you, S., and many thanks for the service you provide. God bless.
Carla