Dear B,

Greetings, love and peace, B. This letter will be written in bits and pieces like your own and undoubtedly delayed, which is fine. I thoroughly enjoyed your most substantive and thoughtful letter. It is wonderful to be talking to someone as intense and passionate as I am about the Creator and about R. It is wonderful to be vulnerable to someone equally vulnerable to me, neither side having anything to fear, both sides having suggestions to make.

It is wonderful to have a friend, such as you, and I bless and praise the opportunity to meet each other in this lifetime.

The contents of this letter will be choppy because I will be responding to the various things that you discuss. I shall try not to repeat myself, but it is bound to happen.

The way you prepare for meditation classes is tremendously impressive to me. I do no conscious preparation at all. I don’t even think about it because when the people come through the door, there will be an energy balance or imbalance that I feel, and I will be working with dynamics that I don’t know about yet.

Perhaps I, too, am a student by refusing to consider what content each lesson will have. In a way, that is not true because I know what my opinions are in general on the subject of being introduced to your own self and the realities of a real search as opposed to illusions of being in a mundane world. But the work you do is impressive to me, and I am sure that you personally get a good deal more out of it by working with Aaron beforehand and after. Whereas I only open to working with context to my larger beingness during the teaching time itself.

I do not yet have my Aarons. I have a spirit, but it is an impersonal one. When I center myself enough to seek it, it is there and it is there with humor, but not with words. The teaching is done simply by turning the mirror upon myself and gazing into it. I would like to expand the personal part of my contact with the holy spirits to the point, which you have done, but wonder whether that is my path. I am open to it, but it has never happened to me, nor until I met Aaron, did I feel particularly drawn to a personal guide. That is most satisfactorily why I can help her [inaudible].

Explaining the silent mediation, I discovered that is just what I have been doing, but didn’t know it. I follow my breath. Now different things happen to me than happen to you and it would be interesting to hear your reaction to the things that happen to me.

If I follow my breath, sometimes I never get beyond watching my trivial thoughts move by and letting them go. Sometimes as I breathe, I am suddenly walking down what I know to be is the low ground hallway in a great, huge stone castle. I have on a plain, white robe with a hood of some kind. It is not a cowl, but neither a head dress of some kind. I believe they may have called them a wimple. This is not necessarily religious, although I spend my time there somehow. I know this, leaning over ancient books in Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew and translations into a language which I speak, which I know not in this lifetime. I am busy mostly illuminating the first letter of the paragraph or partitions of these pages. There are no books except those written by hand and copied by hand.

All of this is in my awareness if I walk down this hallway in my white robe, very plain. I have a cord around my waist with a good stout buckle and from it hangs a ring with many huge keys. They look to me like skeleton keys. I have, when not meditating, considered these keys and decided that if this is a past life time experience, I must have been either the wife of an absent lord and the manager of a great castle while he was away fighting in some war, or I married the head of an abbey. I do not know or care which.

When I am meditating or when I am thinking about it, I can get in touch with no emotional content to this image of myself going down this hall. I approach a place that although within the castle is a kind of cascade or waterfall, but it is not called water nor is it even merely water. It is a mist of some kind that is supernatural.

I take my keys and hang them on a hook on the wall. I then strip off my clothing so that I am naked and stand under the cascade of this supernatural white mist. I feel as though I have become a pearl; that I am nacreous and of a subtle sheen within and without. I also feel extremely cleansed. The mist settles around me as clothing, not as a clothing of clouds, but as a specific garment. It is gauzy, many-layered and quite lovely. For the first time, I realize that I have very dark, very long and very curly hair. This is always hidden under the wimple. It curls abundantly around my head.

My slippers are white and embroidered with white. I am cold. I always seem to be cold and I move up some stairs made out of stone until I reach a kind of crow’s nest, a small roundish room, which has several long thin windows, very long, very thin. There is a soft, blue velvet chair upon which I seat myself. This is not done by making myself do it. This is simply what I see for whatever it means.

At this point, my meditation can go one of two ways. In some meditations I simply look out the windows and I see the green hills gently rolling in the distance, dotted here and there by small crops, the humble homes of farmers that work lands belonging to them. I see the peace and beauty of this green and beautiful land, and gaze contentedly at. There are times when I sit in the chair, the same sort of mist is at the window and as I sit down, it moves into the room covering me completely and I am no longer a being with form, but am simply aware of being part of the light and enjoying it in this stage.

Then a stray thought will move me back to the mundane and I will follow my breath, and from that point, move back and forth to the chair either becoming one with the light or gazing with love and admiration at the beauty of earth.

Occasionally I have seen visions, which are related to my religious practice of Christianity. I see that in terms of during the actual Eucharistic service. I am not a literal Christian, but a mystical one, and never seek to have any kind of experience, which could be connected with seeing Jesus in real life.

The two most strong visions that I have had, the most specific ones, were of Jesus and of the three Marys.

In the first vision, which occurred spontaneously during prayer, I was suddenly at the last supper near Jesus. I looked at Him. He was dusty and tired. His eyes were innocently tired and weary. He began handing bread to people and saying, “This is my body,” and his sleeve brushed mine. I did not fully understand what he meant, but was [inaudible]. The vision ended as quickly as it began and I did not seek to repeat it or prolong it.

The second vision was of Jesus’ tomb on the third day after the crucifixion. I was one of the three women at the empty tomb and unlike the story in the Bible, I was absolutely hysterical because I thought somebody had moved the body and we had lost that precious remnant, all that remained of this beloved teacher. I was crying hysterically, and calling out and wailing.

I came to myself and I was crying. I was not wailing, thank God. And again, I did not attempt to prolong the experience or to seek it again.

I have also had the experience of a different kind of light in the Eucharist—a golden sort of light, a more clear and lucid light rather than the mist, rather like liquid sun light instead of what might mystically call the cloud of unknowing.

I trust that light more than I trust visions, but I trust that which occurs to me in meditation of a white light that appears as a mist to my physical eye, not when I am in it, but when I first behold it, more than I do the experiences I have in church.

Moving on to another subject, taxes. I am the kind of person who does the thing she hates first so I did my taxes as soon as the new year rolled around—that is, I did everything that I could do in preparation for a document from the Trust that Don left me when he died, which is prepared specifically for the tax needs of people who are living on the income from their Trust.

When Don died, I read a few books, scanned them actually, on money management and realized that (a) I could do this work, and (b) I have absolutely no interest in it, and (c) I hate to take risks.

I decided that it would be worth the cost of hiring a Trustee to manage my Trust for me. As 1984 wound down, I visited three different banks looking for a person who really loved reading the Wall Street Journal, who was really vitally interested in how the business world worked, and whose favorite recreation was taking risks. I found that person in a lady named D.S. and has stuck with her while she has moved from one bank to another and become a Vice President. So part of my tax work has been done for me, the part that has to do with dreaded Schedule D, which amazes me that anyone on the best day of his life can understand or fill out correctly.

I get the record together all that seems to be needed other than the tax document. The longest self-work is going through my checks for what I have paid doctors and comparing those payments with the Medicare and the Blue Cross that I have received to discover whether or not I have paid anything that I have not been reimbursed for.

I certainly hope that you can hear me as the cat tends to sit on the mike.

Jim is trading some work for M.K., a beloved friend of both of ours. I have known M. since 1973 and Jim has known him since 1974. When we were in the country, I knew M. as a member of Epstan, an erstwhile spiritual group of which I was a part, which purchased land. I got it paid for by nagging everyone to tithe for ten years. Then in time, people turned away from meditation and became a communal society with no reason for being except being nice to each other. When it was decided that people who needed Epstan no longer needed to come to meditation, I realized that their paths and mine had split and I resigned from my office, which had been either Treasurer or Secretary-Treasurer, depending on whether anybody could take notes for nine or ten years while it was being paid off.

I think it was in the ninth year when the decision was made by Epstan to drop the meditation as part of their program and to drop the light center idea in favor of simply living together in community in the country. But the fact that I had responsibilities that I had undertaken by being the one who had, acting as my own lawyer, which supposedly is impossible and believe me, it nearly was, got us incorporated for 501(?) charity, filed tax returns, kept all the records and I felt that I had the responsibility to stay with it until the mortgage was paid off.

I was one who had the foresight to declare it one of our three goals, that of being a wild life sanctuary. Otherwise, we would have had, in all honesty, to turn the land over to another non-profit organization, which was fulfilling the purposes as stated in the Articles of Incorporation in order to file some form called SS?

As if this was not enough, I was at the time disappointed with so much work and love to produce in the end such a loss of intensity, such a forgetting of the passion of serving others. No one but me had retained the vision of our group beside those who were outside of the pale to furnish it, and communicate and love. It took me a couple of years to relax and accept that without feeling disappointed and I no longer feel any real relationship to the group except that I loved the members, most of whom I still know, although there are several new ones that I do not.

I have never changed my paper status with the Government. I am theoretically still a member of a three-man board holding the office of Secretary-Treasurer. I did not change it because I knew I could be trusted to do whatever Epstan wished to do without questioning it. It no longer moves me. Whatever they decide, I will gladly do. The reason I decided to retain this position was that I am aware that Kentucky, as a state and the IRS as a nation, red-flag or pose special attention to any charity that changes its Board of Directors or its Articles of Incorporation or its By-laws. I saw no reason to muddy the waters simply because I was not in agreement with the goals that had evolved so the people who were now on Epstan.

M. is still a member of that stance. He and his wife, S.S., still have hopes of finishing a half-built house down in the woods there. The land is over 300 acres in the shape like a teacup so the house [inaudible], but the land is wild and beautiful. Meanwhile M. moved into town when he and his second-year student married and produced a baby and immediately divorced. He moved into town so that he could help to raise C., who turned out to be a Downs Syndrome baby. She may be bald, but she is not retarded. She is a bright little thing and as bossy as her mother, and one wonders how people will put these things off. Even the way she holds her mouth when she speaks reminds of D., M.’s first wife.

She was the one who straight-forwardly said that she no longer felt that meditation was part of the part of excellence. No one else was as forthright as that and I expect that means a lot for being able to state things clearly. It made my choice obvious and [inaudible] entire attention and I was equally straight forward with her about what limits she would accept.

M. had her part of the time giving [inaudible]. She was beloved by both families. Of course, she has remarried. She lived where I grew up. It was in a section of town where the houses are close together and [inaudible] purchased two of them with very little money because they are ramshackle and dilapidated.

M. is an extraordinarily intelligent and uncannily perceptive intuitive and spiritually-realized person. He never moves on earth time. He moves to his own rhythm. It is very slow so Jim has gone over there to help M. with stain work on the foundations and the porches, etc., of the two homes that are falling down to make them structurally sound again. M. is an architect and a wonderful one. And made the plans to the house, which we may one day build in the country on Avalon.

We don’t intend to build it soon. We don’t make plans like that, but we just have a feeling we are going to be here a long time. We like it here and our sugar shack down there is relatively adequate for Jim for his solitary retreat. But M. may take ten years to do the plans so we thought we had better get him started on it.

Talk about life-threatening diseases, M. has one of the more impressive, advanced lymphoma. He has taken his second or third series of radiation and chemotherapy. He is expecting to move to [inaudible] and joking about how he and C. will dress in saffron robes and go begging when he has lost his hair. C., being a Downs

Syndrome child, who now is about eight. I don’t think he will die for a long time because it is not the anger in him, which would cause the disease to escalate. There is a pattern of careless eating habits and an inherent, I would call it, laziness in his thinking patterns along the lines of spiritual seeking.

He has so much of a hold on bliss and being, but he is unbalanced in that direction and needs more insight, which is exactly the opposite of a certain way of mine—a spiritual imbalance.

Back to the taxes, I guess. I think I have covered everything about giving ahead of time except for the fact about how incredibly lucky we were to find D.S., a genuine risk taker and a lover of business who reads the Wall Street Journal with a kind of eagerness normally reserved for the lurid pages of the National Globe or one of those strange things that keeps declaring that babies are being born joined at the head or something.

The good news is that we owe so much less than was figured by our Trustee that we have a bonus of $2,000, which means that we will be able to make it to Jim’s class reunion at the beginning or end of June by flying. I am very much afraid of flying so this will give me a chance to examine why I would be so afraid of the dissolution of a body that is an illusion. I look forward to dealing with that. It is not a particularly comfortable lesson, but I think it is one that I need to pay attention to because it is just so foolish.

Again, we will fly to my friend’s house, her grandparents’ cabin, a cabin in the sense that the Kennedys have a cabin on Cape Cod. It is a family of very old money and her cabin has ten bedrooms and five baths and you get the idea. Amongst the family is the only way it is rented, and it is rented for a mere $200 a week and so H. is going to spring for the $200 and Jim and I are going to fly up and visit her and her husband and possibly a couple of other girlfriends from boarding school that I haven’t seen in a long, long time. We doubt that anyone is going to be there very long except us, but H. is another person completely unlike you, but she is very open, vulnerable, honest, caring, trusting, sharing, spontaneous, lively and her husband, J. is a wonderful person and a wonderful friend. She is almost never satisfied with me, but she does not ever let me stand in the way of her devotion, nor do I let her little quirks stand in the way of my own.

We have been visiting each year for many years now. Of course, I am 47 and we graduated in 1961 so you see how far back this friendship does go.

This is going to be a long letter. It will be a while before it gets to you, but I am sure that is fine.

I am going to try again to get some shoes that I can walk in. Apparently the deformities of my foot have progressed. Needless to say, the surgeon wants to cut on the foot and remove various bones. My gut feeling is that when you start taking out parts of your body, you put a kind of strain on your body that it was never meant to have and yet, no matter how poorly something looks, as long as it is not threatening your hips, it seems better to attempt to accommodate yourself to it rather than to get rid of it as though you had no appreciation for the 47 years it has been doing you some good service.

We are going to try a new cast and I am sure that there is much, much more cushion in the insole and a vibron outsole so that there is a lot more shock absorbency between me and the road because walking has been pretty much out of the question. It is on pavement here in exurbia. There are no sidewalks and if there were sidewalks, it still would be a hard surface. I have my own gentle strollings that causes sometimes a day in bed as I cannot put my weight on the foot or even bear to have it touch the sheet. There is apparently some nerve damage.

That is part of the $3,000, in addition to the two trips. Then we plan to spend a bit on some guttering for this dear old house, which it has not had for probably thirty or forty years. And whatever is left, we will split as mad money and Jim will help me select some nice clothing, which will be a great deal of fun for me. I dearly love new things and have recently made the wonderfully cleansing decision to sell or to give to the poor all of my jeans, pants, any kind of trousers, skirts, anything with a waist and the blouses that go with them, so that most of my wardrobe is in the process of being either sold or packed in boxes to take to the church for the food giving to the poor, which is part of our church’s ministry to the street people of Louisville.

I am selling some of the things that have never been worn or have been worn only once simply because I feel that will give to me the chance to purchase more comfortable springtime and summertime shifts without a waist. I have not been able to wear a waist for about three years. If I ever get to the point where I can wear a waist again, I will begin anew with a wardrobe rather than holding onto things that are not working.

That is what is happening to our taxes. We are very happy about that and looking forward to both reunions, seeing Jim’s parents, and Jim’s first visit to Cape Cod. It is going to be very exciting for me because it is such a beautiful place when the tourists aren’t messing it up and it will be a time when the tourists cannot possibly be there yet. It is too cold. At that time, I probably will be experiencing the same kind of unfurling leaves that are now just out of the bud here. They are probably a month behind us so it shall be a beautiful time.

H. and I talk, and talk and enjoy each other tremendously. Her mind is more mundane. Her yearnings are spiritual, but she is a creature of psychological insight rather than spiritual insight. Someone who would like to change and who admires the way that I go at things, but who, at this point in her life, is not able to think in terms of service-to-others on the level of spiritual service-to-others, but rather thinks on the level of “let me help this child who wants to have an abortion and perhaps offer her alternatives.” She is a social worker and works in that kind of a setting, a women’s referral center. I am very glad that she has a chance to play in the snow.

Responding to your comments about the great pile of letters, I know that I have already spoken on the subject, so I will be brief. I, too, have from the very beginning of my writing career been called by people who must see me, who must contact me, who must work with me, etc. At first, I was intent upon serving to the point where I had no judgment and I always said yes. I came to find out, just as you do, that very few of these entities had anything at all that they wanted to discuss with me. They simply wanted to tell me what my problems were and how to get them better, or to explain what was going on in their lives without requesting any help from me.

They would ask me questions like salvation of my soul, which I truly could not answer except to ask people to pray for me because I did not wish to be a stumbling block in front of anyone else’s faith, which is other than mine, so I refrain always from foolish commentary and dissension. I honestly believe that each person’s path is valid and attempt not to criticize anyone. Not very easy for a natural born critic, but I work on it.

One of the reasons that I refrain from giving out my phone number is that people tend to misuse the telephone by gabbing. I have no desire to gab, to pass the time of day, to share the gossip, etc. I don’t dislike it. I enjoy my friends no matter what they have to say. It is simply that I am looking at a stack of mail from people that have asked me important questions, and although I will probably find some of the letters of which I am unable to helpfully answer, nevertheless I wish to give each person who has written a thoughtful letter to me the time that I feel they deserve and the quality of assuming that I wish to achieve before speaking to people upon matters that pertain to them.

I suppose in my own way these letters are a kind of personal psychic reading. I just don’t call it that and I don’t charge for it. This may perhaps need to be examined at a later date as I see Aaron is an extremely beneficial influence on you and experience his wisdom on the inner planes, a wisdom I have not heretofore been aware was achievable in the inner planes.

The answer, of course, as I have said before, is you have to learn to say no. You have to say, “It may be two months before you hear from me. I cannot talk to you on the phone. I am busy. Sorry.”

Your schedule is very much like mine, although I don’t see people. I write them letters. They don’t come to me. They come to me through the mail, but I do answer as many per day as I can with as much respect as I can, working mostly on tape. I certainly never get more than three a day done, unless it is simply acknowledging a thank you note, a get well card, a good wish from someone who is passing through or something like that.

It is very much too bad that you had to give up your [inaudible] working with Aaron on your own issues. If you don’t feed yourself, you have less to feed the multitudes with. I would value myself enough to give that some thought, if I were you.

As to all the busy work that you have to do around the house that I am spared by virtue of being completely unable to do it, let me just ask you a couple of direct questions.

l. Is your husband comfortably enough off to afford a housekeeper to do cooking for you, and keep your rooms, and bathrooms clean, and vacuum, dust, etc.? Two times a week would probably do it. You would still have some chores to do and you would have time to spend with your family that must be done, of course. There are priorities and the family comes first. But some chores can be done by any one with a willing heart and a will to serve, or a desire to earn a paycheck. Does your husband have money for a housekeeper? If so, ask him for one.

The work that you are doing spiritually is such that I would think he would recognize that it is using a wonderful jewel to dust and mop, when she could be sharing on a level that has so much resonance that you cannot give to the floor, and the table and the dishes, although you may love them and they may love you back, and all things done to the glory of God are the same.

Yet I wonder, could this be helped? Or could your children take some of these tasks upon themselves? They seem to be of an age where this would be perhaps possible.

If you made the decision to use cold water at all times, could they not do the laundry once you explain sorting the whites, the colored and the dark? Every little bit helps and you are perceived by me to be having a family who simply accepts gifts from you as a matter of course. I wonder if they appreciate you and support you as much as they could if they just thought about it for a while.

The second part of the question is, these friends of yours, these good, good friends, would they help you? Would they come over, not just to talk, but to clean? I have had friends do that for me. I have had friends come over and cook for me before Jim came and it was a wonderful sharing experience. It made the other person feel good too; not be put upon, but a part of things. A part of something exciting that was going on that they bought into as well as I.

I am beginning to realize more and more that you have undoubtedly thought these things out much more carefully than I have. You examine yourself very much.

On to the private readings and our apparent misunderstanding. I don’t think we have one any more, B. I accept you precisely as you are. I see that you are of a different nature than I. That perhaps I can do some things you can’t, although I know not what that might be, but you certainly can do some things that I can’t. I need not fear for you. Consequently, let me say unequivocally that I support your private readings. I don’t do them because I value within myself and in my own personality an impersonal view that looks at spiritual principles and applies them to specific situations rather than taking specific situations and moving into spiritual principles. There is not much difference in those two approaches except that they are the flip side of each other.

Aaron has been on this earth. He has the right and certainly feels a responsibility and the joy in working with people, one at a time, through your instrument. It is an impression of my own contacts that they have not been incarnate on planet earth and, therefore, not having the rights of a neighbor to give opinions on specific matters. I believe we simply have two different contacts.

This may be only scratching the surface of those eras and my contacts in the Confederation of Planets so-called. But there is no more disagreement about how long you meditate, about your personal readings or any other portion of what you do. I have found through our conversations that without rancor, without defensiveness, with patience, you have explained yourself. I am satisfied.

You say that doing past life work takes a lot of energy from you. The one time that I did do a past life, it drained me quite badly. I wasn’t doing it right at all. I certainly sympathize with you and when I was doing the Ra contact, it drained me to the point where I was losing two or three pounds at every session. However, I was willing, eager even, to continue the contact as long as possible because I could recognize that it had worth beyond anything else that I had channeled. I totally agree with you that time efficiency is not important. That each person deserves quality time.

The solution, as I have said to many, many people, is you may write me, but don’t expect an answer for a couple of months. I get backed up. Letters come in space and every once in a while I do get caught up, but it is rare and I do so much less than you in terms of meeting with people. I have one meditation with a channeling group on Sunday nights and right now, we are working with dreams in attempting to clear lower energy centers to prepare people for working consciousness on Thursday nights. Both classes are small.

I don’t know a way for a person of empathy to avoid being drained by the turmoil of a past life because if it is important enough to be discussed, it is pivotal and probably in the same way distressing. So you are simply walking the martyr’s path is one way of looking at it or being of the utmost service in your life as another way of looking at it.

Having come to know you as well as I have, I simply say, follow your own guidance. At this point, I really don’t feel that you need any instruction or comment from me on what you do, but only the trading back and forth of ideas that we have concerning the work that we do.

I have always felt that true charity is one person at a time charity and I mean that in the sense of charita, which is one word for love. I think the closest word is compassion. When you are dealing with humankind, I don’t believe there is personal compassion involved. And I believe that it is less of a polarizing and self-teaching mode of being than a treating each person with respect.

I told Jim while we were doing our half hour of snuggling (this was something I requested when we married). Bless his heart. He does it. I think everyone needs to cuddle, and snuggle, and be held and be touched without any object in mind other than closeness. Jim decided on the morning as the time to do that. So during that time I told him that you wished that he be a part of our communications and not just the slave labor that plodded through our ponderance thoughts. With his usual economy of words, he said that he would allow the spirit to move him.

There is no chance that you shall become a burden to him. We worked all that out when he discovered how carefully you answer my letters and how it may take more than one letter for you to answer one of my letters.

Consequently this tape being in answer to part I of your letter will be a concept that Jim will readily understand now because we have already gone through it. He doesn’t need to hear anything twice. He will not be a beast of burden for anyone. He is thoroughly independent and does precisely what he wants.

To the great topic of limitations. I wish we had last Sunday’s channeling transcribed already. Perhaps by the time this letter is sent, it will be. If so, I will send a copy of it along because it was my question on limitations. I channeled it myself, but the channeling had very little of me in it. As I said, I prefer being impersonal indeed—the general most spiritual principles that I can receive in a stable manner.

You are absolutely right when you say that we are unlimited. You are absolutely right when you say that I have given myself no end of grief by wanting more of myself. As a matter of fact, in this morning’s session, Jim was reading something that was very synchronistic so I am going to read it to you. It is from the unpublished material of Ra and I’ll just read it verbatim.

“The questions of the instrument says, ‘While on vacation, I uncovered a lot about myself not consciously known before. It seems to me that I have coasted a lot on the spiritual gifts given at birth and never have spent any time getting to know my human self, which seems to be a child immature and irrational.’

“ ‘I am Ra. This is partially correct.’

“Questioner: ‘If this is so, this seems to be part of the riddle of my beingness that Ra spoke of. I fear that if I do not work successfully on my human distortions, I shall be responsible for losing the contact. Yet Ra suggests that any over-dedication to any outcome is unwise. Could Ra comment on these thoughts?’

“ ’I am Ra. We comment in general first upon the query about the contact, which indicates once again that the instrument views the mind/body/spirit complex with jaundiced eye. Each mind/body/spirit complex that is seeking shall almost certainly have the immature and irrational behaviors. It is also the case that this entity, as well as almost all seekers, has done substantial work within the frame work of the incarnated experience and has, indeed, developed maturity and rationality. That this instrument should fail to see that which has been accomplished and see only that which remains to be accomplished, may well be noted. Indeed, any seeker discovering in itself this complex of mental and mental/emotional distortions shall ponder the possible non-efficacy of judgment.

“As we approach the second portion of the query, we view the possibility of infringement upon free will. However, we believe we may reply within the boundaries within the law of confusion. This particular instrument was not trained nor did it study nor work at any discipline in order to contact Ra. We were able, as we have said many times, to contact this group using this instrument because of the purity of this instrument’s dedication to the service of the one Infinite Creator. We are humble messengers. How can any thought be taken by an instrument as to the will of the Creator?

“We thank this group that we may speak through it, but the future is made which cannot know whether our just after one final working be complete. Can the instrument then think for a moment that it shall cease in the service of the one Infinite Creator? We ask the instrument to ponder these queries and observations.’”

I thought you would enjoy hearing the same thing that you and Aaron are saying to me. They quote so beautifully by Ra and note this stubbornness, the willfulness, the claim of my being to the concept that I could do better. Where does that come from? Why can I not be satisfied with myself? Why can’t I celebrate myself and be done with it? This is my question to the universe at this time and I am seeking to free myself of my own poor opinions, my own judgment, etc.

I enjoyed the ten qualities of the Buddha that Aaron brought through: generosity, morality, patience, energy, resolution, wisdom, enunciation, truthfulness, loving kindness and equanimity. Actually my great perceived lack are in energy and wisdom. These are both quite illusory. I have been told many times that under the circumstances, which prevail in my life, my energy is incredible. My vital urge to serve most remarkable. As to my wisdom, though I feel it is very small, others do not have that opinion.

Consequently, it helps me to see that there is a consciousness in me that is relatively free of distortion. That is not in any human sense perfect, but that carries the qualities of the perfections of the Buddha, or Christ consciousness or the giant weirdness of what we want to call it. As a matter of simple, normal functioning, it is a matter of my being quiet enough to realize these qualities in myself and to quit being so very, very hard on myself.

I would like to free myself. I have wanted to free myself for a long time and I think that this communication with you and Aaron and me and those things that I have learned from Confederation people is probably being of more substantive aid in my gazing at the problem with my heart than any previous exchange of thought. People normally are stuck in their minds. This is not one of my problems usually. I tend to think from the gut. However, I do rationalize and I believe that it is the rational part of me that is still punishing me for feeling a failure that I was incapable of avoiding from the earliest of childhood right up to the death of Don.

To speak more of Don, you are most correct in stating my blockages concerning Don. I did everything in my power to get him to seek professional help when I saw that he was, indeed, in mental trouble; to work with him myself long past the point of safety actually. Don would do things like stop dead in the middle of an expressway and say, “Isn’t it a pretty day?” Cars would be honking and streaming all around us and I would say, as gently as possible, “Don, it is not appropriate to stop on the freeway,” and he would say, “Oh. Then I should go on?” And I would say, “Yes, Don.”

Finally, he ran a red light and turned directly in front of another car with a train coming. The horror of that moment, although I survived it, was enough to convince me that it was no longer sensible to drive about with Don. I had always been, he had considered me to be, I had allowed him to consider me to be an extension of himself.

All of a sudden, this little extension of himself was saying, “No. Don’t do this. Do this differently. This is not wise.” He was in the midst of his deep, deep mental illness, confused and experienced a great feeling of abandonment. I found it extraordinarily painful, but it had to be done if I was to avoid a useless, senseless death. Gradually he stopped eating. He wanted me to stop eating also. I did not. He wanted me to stay in his room with him 24 hours a day. I did not. He wanted me to go out of the house never. I went out of the house as I always did.

He began to feel utterly and totally betrayed and there was in him an energy to which I was sensitive. I do not know what it was, but I know that when he touched me, I felt an actual electric shock. It wasn’t particularly painful. You know the feeling of sticking your finger in a light socket, but it was uncomfortable and distressing.

Further, Don who had in his fifteen healthy years been celibate, reserved and a perfect gentleman, began with all of his might attempt to hold me to him, hug me, kiss me, and with his great strength (he was 6 ½ feet tall) I sustained bodily harm. I realized, as I found him waiting for me at my bedside at 5:30 or 6 in the morning, waiting for me to open my eyes, that things had truly gone too far. That in this atmosphere, not only would I not thrive, but I would perish.

Being completely unable to convince Don to seek any help for himself, to take any medication, even after a certain point to eat (he did not eat for five months before he died), I found each day harder and harder to wake up to. I had to put latches on the inside of my bedroom door to keep him out so that I could sleep without fear that he was going to harm me during the night with his great strength.

My heart felt shattered in a million pieces. I knew that he was probably going to kill me to stay with him. I remember telling Jim one night that I was going to stay with Don if he killed me. The next morning I do not remember the day. I was catatonic. I had had a nervous breakdown. I had made a decision to die. My body carried out that it was not going to die or if was going to die, it was going to die right then and there. It was not going to respond and it really didn’t respond until Don and Jim put together a stretcher and decided to move me to my parents’ house for the sake of my sanity. This was five weeks before Don died. And this was when I realized that I was not invincible.

I felt failure where there was no failure. In a way I knew that all along, but I had given so much of myself to Don that when he died, a lot of me died. It was a beautiful relationship, but it was an unhealthy relationship. Our unity was bought at the cost of a good deal of my original indigenous personality. I pretty much had bent myself into a pretzel in order to get along with Don, who was very demanding of behavior that was that of a male comrade—stoicism, a sense of humor and every difficulty, a lack of response to insult, etc. are not my fortes. I learned a great deal from Don’s wanting for me to act in that way. But it was not me.

Of course, I could not save Don. I could only save myself. This I did, but for two years I felt I had made the wrong decision. That if I had been truly brave and truly faithful to my love of Don, I would have died with him. This constituted a suicidal set of mind that was completely foreign to me and it was basically the heritage of my giving up so much of myself to Don’s personality.

It has taken me years to begin climbing out of that trough of low self-esteem, that feeling of personal failure, that realization that nobody is invincible. Nobody can rescue someone who does not want to be rescued. I had always been able somehow, no matter how difficult the relationship was, to harvest from it sweet fruit.

Rather than perceiving that the son of a gun had left me in the most brutal way, I blamed myself. Finally I saw the brutality of his abandonment. I accepted, I forgiveth, but I see it and it is a great blessing.

I don’t know if there is any further karma between us. It would be interesting to find out if I can be of any help to him in an incarnation in which he relearns the lessons of personal compassion, which he was unable to bear in this life, and need my help or Jim’s help. I imagine that we will gladly volunteer to aid him. We both love him dearly, each in our own way.

But that is looking into the future and this is this lifetime and what is going on now. One single comment: You asked have I tried the rubber gloves? I will. Jim hasn’t got them yet. He went shopping, but he forgot to put that on his list.

I think I really did, and you are absolutely right, learn gradually. From my own coming up against the full stop of what I personally could do for another person, learn compassion for other people who felt that they had moved past their personal limits, their personal abilities. I now have compassion for people who smoke. I did not before. I have compassion for people in adulterous situations. I did not before. I really didn’t understand why people weren’t always honest because it is so much easier to be honest all of the time. You never have to remember anything because you are not hiding. You can live an open life. People can rip open your life. There is nothing hidden. There are no complexities that you have to remember. When people lie they create this problem for themselves in which they have to remember how they lied.

Now I see that a lot of the so-called lying that I perceive in people is defensiveness because they fear their own limits. They fear to love. They fear being hurt. They can’t be honest because they can’t trust themselves to be strong and I will say this for myself. I do trust myself to be strong. I may get cranky on bad days. That is definitely true. It takes me a little while to adjust when something happens that comes out of the blue, and that letter that you got about life-threatening diseases with the result of having test after test after test, they were finding cysts. They were finding a uterus full of water that was quite enlarged. They were finding a whole GI tract full of water. I was at that time unable to eat anything but clear liquids. You can only do that for so long.

My doctor was convinced that something was wrong that he hadn’t found yet. I think it has gotten to the point where he has given up. I certainly have given up on him. I have given up on authority in general. I never have been much of one for authority of the priestly class of doctors. I have had too many bad experiences with them and although I am very fond of the doctors that I have and work well with them, I feel that I am a partner in my own wellness. I have a new respect of my own sense of what is right for me.

To talk about life threatening situations was simply the result of being told, “You are in a life threatening situation,” by authority figures. It took me a while to work through the energy of that thought and to realize that the MDs that were telling this to me could not come up with a diagnosis. I had a lot of symptoms but no diagnosis. This was in my GI tract, in my plumbing, in my female parts and in some of my organs, I have a couple of cysts and stuff like that.

I released that. I don’t feel that I am in a life threatening situation at this point. I have, however, reacted to it in what I consider to be a measured way. I asked myself, “What am I doing that I don’t really love to do?” I sat down and made out a list of many, many activities, everything, in fact, except my prayer group at church, the choir and the local Box Society. I then sat down and wrote twelve letters of resignation. Actually I wrote one letter of resignation and Jim zeroxed it. I was shameless, and simply dropped out of the work-a-day world. I no longer volunteer here, there and everywhere, although it has in the past given me much pleasure to do so. I don’t feel that it is a loss at this point. I feel it as a release. I am now able to rest, to be nice to myself, to spend every available moment that isn’t spent on paying the household bills or working with the prayer group, which I did think is important to me and can be done right from this hospital bed in the front room here. I don’t even have to go to church. I can just call the church and find out if someone is sick and let people know through the mail whom to pray for.

So I have chosen my singing as the one activity to keep.

Exercise is kind of up in the air. It is an experience of mine from ten years of exercise. That exercise is excellent for my body as a whole, regardless of how it feels at the moment. And sometimes it can hurt. The second day back at exercise, it turned suddenly cold. I had just fought off a massive sinus infection and a lot of stomach trouble, etc. Sure enough, breathing in all that cold air while doing aerobic exercises, zero impact, and I just pad around with my feet. I do work very hard at the toning of the body. Breathing all that cold air, by the time I got home I knew I had an earache, that my right side, which was the side that was banged up in the car accident in ’88 was completely freaked out with the same sinus infection that had occurred to it before and it was because of breathing in the cold air.

I could basically feel it happening so I am talking to you after a night of about two hours sleep with a sinus headache on the right side of my head, nerve pain etc., feeling quite joyful, quite happy, but I am questioning my dedication to exercise. It may be time to give that up too, or it may be time to cut back. I have now perceived that the Creator limits the things that I can’t do so as to open avenues for those things that I can do. The question is, can I or can’t I exercise? A negative entity greeting me with this infection that comes from the nerve pain, which makes the tendons that press on the sinuses in the back of the head swell, which causes the sinus infection and the earache. I have a bad right ear to flare up. It keeps me from hearing. It keeps me from seeing very well.

So here I am sitting here with a temperature and a fur hat upon the origin around my ears so that it will not in any way get cold. (It is real fur. It belonged to a goat or something.) I may give up exercise too except for when the air I breathe is warm.

At this point in your letter, you mention that every time you sit down at the computer, it seems to be a signal for your family to converge upon you. I really do feel that it is time that you had a talk with them. I could be wet. I could be wrong, but I just offer it as a humble thought. You are not the general guardian of the world or of your family. You are a part of the family. You have needs too. Have a family meeting and talk these things over. See if you can find some understanding and the fact that the work that you do has value that cannot be measured by money and needs to be supported by some people helping you with some chores.

Of course, you want to be with your kids and get some quality time. Some of the things they come to you for, they can do themselves that they want you to do it for them. Can they not get their own snack, for instance?

Back to limitations because you worked got some time on this. You speak of emotional pain, and physical pain and the possible difference between them and in all humility, you say, “I can’t honestly say to anyone that at some level that their physical pain is okay.” I say to you, “Yes, you can.” It has to be okay. It is what is happening. If it is not okay, it is going to ruin your day. It needs to be approached with humor, self-acceptance, self-forgiveness and with accommodation. Walking around it.

I am going to go to sleep soon. I will accommodate myself to this illness, to this pain. I won’t push myself the way I used to. I want to be nicer to myself. I’ll move heaven and earth as far as retiring from a dozen different activities all to do with church in order to free up the time for the things that I can do right here in this bed like my teaching, my channeling, my letters, the household accounts, the prayer group.

If it takes a kind of bravery that accepting emotional pain does not, I am not aware of the difference. Having experienced emotional pain, spiritual pain and physical pain, I believe of the three, I would rather have the physical pain. Emotional and spiritual pain are of a nature that cannot be viewed by the world that does not inspire sympathy, that creates a feeling of solitude whereas my physical difficulties are obvious enough at this point that people are concerned for me in general. I have a lot more support than the person who is in emotional pain that doesn’t show.

If I am angry, well of course, I am angry. I hurt. If a person with emotional problems is angry, why is she angry? It is a nice day. What is wrong with her? She is in fine health.

What I think it boils down to is physical pain probably is a bit more intense, but it also commands a sympathy from others and accommodation from others that the unseen and unsung emotional and spiritual pain do not command except from those who are very sensitive.

You ask, “What does fully accepting your limitations mean?”

I did ask Ra and Ra felt that an answer to that would be interfering with my free will. Ra was not a person or a complex of persons of principle that intended to do my learning for me, but as I have said of my guidance in general, simply held the mirror back up to myself and said, “Take a look. Work it out.”

I think you are right on the button when you say that loving and accepting your limitations frees you from those limitations so that I am not what I can’t do. I am not my limitations. I am what is left over. I am the things I can do. And as my priest and my spiritual counselor said to me recently, “You know, you are just dust. You are going to make mistakes. You are going to feel why this is happening to me. You have feet of clay. But you are dust in the presence of God.” What a wonderful, wonderful thought, what a saving thought that has been for me lately.

I am not too surprised that there was a blocking of the typing when it came to communication with me. You have read the Ra material, I believe, stem to stern. Correct me if I am wrong and you know that especially in the third book there is a tremendous amount of greeting from a rather sophisticated negative entity that was very powerful. This entity does not want help to come to me. I had difficulty believing that I am important enough to merit such attention. I always have had trouble with that, but I certainly have had the trouble with this greeting and have responded to it just as you: giving love to it; expressing the willingness to listen but the unwillingness to obey; and just simply sending it compassion, and prayer, and love and caring with all of my being.

It seems to be the one and only answer to psychic greetings. I think Aaron and you having the tenacity to go at it twice so that I got your full message, and I think Aaron is exactly right. I think that my biggest difficulty was that in my youth, and I count youth up until about the age of 25 or 26, I was extremely used to being completely responsible for everything for everybody and doing it fine, not having any trouble functioning positively and purely, the reason being that I had that near-death experience at 13.

I was told that I was here to do something that would be of service to mankind and I was so encouraged by that, that the rest of my life has been incredibly changed.

I had always had faith, but it had seemed as I reached towards my thirteenth birthday, that I couldn’t help. I couldn’t help anybody. It was never enough to please my parents.

My teachers thought that I was a simple behavior problem and sent me to the library for a large part of every school year in grade school. My peers simply wouldn’t play with me. I was even kicked out of the Brownies because the first time I went to a Brownie Pack meeting, I corrected the instructor on some detail of how to do a project in order to save paper. The woman took it personally as an assault against her authority and banished me. It was this kind of thing that made me lose faith in my ability to serve and if I could not serve, I didn’t wish to be here any longer. I had no other agenda.

As Ra has said so often, I am a pure person. I have never had any worldly ambition whatsoever except to help and helping in general. I don’t care how I help. I have always been happy in any job where I could help people. Humble, better than humble, who cares? Help is help as long as it is a path of service.

So I am very motivated, but so active in my younger years. I raised my little brother. He called me mommy. I cooked for the family from the age of ten. I baby sat for the family from the age of seven. I handled things. I got the grades I needed to move ahead. I got scholarships I needed, not to be a burden on my family as I went through high school and college in very good schools.

I began to be much beloved around the age of seventeen. I guess everybody sort of caught up with me and realized that I had a very good heart and that there was no meanness in me at all. People began accepting my offers to tutor them for free and accepting the weirdness of my somewhat professorial outlook at times. I began making really good friends like H. whom I am going to see at the end of April.

My adult life has been a wonderful celebration of many, many friendships and many more acquaintanceships which had their own value, though they were not serious and deep such as the few friends that I have made.

I will listen to Aaron as I have listened to Ra, but I will attempt to listen with my heart more and more. I do have people who are very willing to do everything they can for me. I have a woman willing to come and live with me simply to help me through my day. She is in the middle of a relationship in which she is attempting to rescue an alcoholic. She feels that it is doomed to failure. She expects to be here one day soon.

Another fellow, whom I have known for years and years and who Jim considers one of the good people, is also willing to rent a room in the house, not to take care of me because that is not good—washing and bathing, etc. That doesn’t work too well between a married woman and a single man who is a little on the hungry side, but he would be here and it would give Jim freedom to go to Avalon whenever he wished, and there is much I can do without that Jim does for me on a day-to-day basis. I can do without it for a day or two.

I am beginning to have less and less trouble accepting this and beginning to feel, Yes, this is all right. It has taken me a very long time and Aaron is exactly right. If it had happened to me early in life, I would have gone through a grieving process, but I would have adjusted. I am still going through the process of continuing life experiencing further limitation. This means that I am constantly challenged to change. Change is uncomfortable. I have to change the programs that work in my head. I have self-forgiveness and self-acceptance to do on a month-by-month, year-by-year basis. I expect that will continue.

I chose this lifetime. I chose this lesson. I had full faith that I did not choose something I could not handle with the consolation of the spirit within to guide me.

I am attempting to release my unrealistic expectations of myself and I am suffering less. Thank you, Aaron, thank you very much.

Moving right along here, H. came over and touched you while you were working at the computer. I would suggest that you have a talk with H. about touching you while you are working at the compute because you are often channeling when you are working at the computer. I would strongly suggest that you suggest to him that he call you by name. This will enable your bodies to unify comfortably and to enable you naturally and easily to move into consensus reality as we know it.

It is potentially very painful to be touched when one is channeling. It calls whatever part of the self has drifted a bit back into alignment with the physical body, with a kind of snap that you’d feel if you released a rubber band against your own finger. It is not a good idea. I have experienced the same thing in a deep enough trance that I had trouble breathing and was in acute pain for most of the night. Luckily there was a healer available at that conference at which this happened. The healer worked with me for some time, moved the danger away and what little problem there was left, was healed by another psychic at the same conference, who simply stood behind me very unobtrusively until suddenly I realized that I no longer had chest pain. I looked around. She smiled at me and I said, “Thank you.” She said, “You are welcome.” Nothing more needed to be said.

As to this fifth density entity, these entities thrive on fear. They are somewhat vampiric in nature. They are in distress and with people like you and me, especially you, they are completely out of their depth because we do not know any response except love, which to them is the equivalent of being handed spoiled milk. You helped yourself. You undoubtedly did not help the entity. It is almost impossible to help a negatively oriented entity if you are positively oriented, because the love that you send is to them like a blow, and they must run from it.

Yes, learning that I wasn’t invincible was a very important lesson for me. Allowing myself to feel anger at Don was very freeing for me. It freed me from the anger towards myself that had poisoned me for years and I am in the process of reprogramming my computer, my brain, to take these things into account. I am always cautious about saying, “I have done this.” Because I know that the process is subtle and goes on much longer in a deeper fashion than we are consciously aware is happening.

What is begun in the head and the heart moves below our conscious threshold and the work continues and it is the deep work that we must have faith in without having control over that is the most telling.

We covered with the silent meditation, which I really enjoy your commentary on. I shall get Jim to pull up Stephen Levine’s book and enjoy it and let you know what I think I expect to enjoy it. We seem to be moving along the same track.

What you said about doing vs. being rang true in a resonance that had not precisely gotten through to me before. You said, “To find a calm center in any storm is the hardest work I have ever done.” I haven’t done that yet. I still react. It doesn’t take me very long to adjust, but when my condition worsens and it usually does in a quantum step, I become bloody-minded and irritable for at least a day. I find this to be not a preferable behavior. A very undesirable behavior, but one I simply have not been able to get at and alter.

I don’t have any memories of past incarnations. I am just dealing with this one. I am afraid my sensitivities don’t run in that direction. It is possible that I am contacting a previous incarnation as I spontaneously image myself with the keys, and the robe, and wimple and all that, and the illuminating of sacred literature and being very devout, but I don’t know. It also holds water as a kind of symbolic image that a ritualistic person, such as myself, would use as an archetypical cleansing and imaging process to move to a higher level of awareness and consciousness.

I would like to have memories of peaceful incarnations. I simply do not. When I was hypnotized, I went back to another planet. That is related in chapter eight of Secrets of the Earth. Although I was safe, the idiot who said, “Oh come on, let’s go to earth, it will be fun.” My usual and recall, ignoring the flight difficulty of the mission. But I don’t remember it consciously. It came out only under a very deep trance, which it took an hour and half to induce. I am almost impossible to hypnotize. The man was very, very patient to do that and very good.

I have, indeed, allowed myself to rage. I feel in touch with that and I feel good about that. I don’t feel I need to hang onto it. So I say that my business with Don is basically done. After this lifetime as I riffle through the pages of my own life with my higher self, I am sure it will be clear to me if I can be of help to him in any way. It would be my guess that would be my choice. Heaven can wait.

Glad you got a Christmas tree. Mama? No, she hasn’t sold the house yet. It was a decision she made. She still is intending to sell the house when she returns, which is going to be some time later this summer. Knowing her, possibly in the Fall if people are willing to pay her way, which they have done in the past in order for her to be at dancing camp, the same camp in which I danced for eight years when I was a child. The Isabella Duncan kind of dancing with tunics, and Greek masks and feeling the rhythm of the universe and all that. She may well be up at that camp until it closes, which is at the end of August.

But when she gets home, she will sell the house. My prayer is that it will not die before then in some way. My father had hitched it together with bailing wire for a good twenty years before he died, being the kind of person that was unwilling to spend a penny that he didn’t have to, and as an engineer who found bailing wire and pins quite adequate to do the job that other people spend great money for.

The selling of the house, I think, will be hard on my brothers to some extent. I don’t know how much. It is not at all hard on me. I am anxious that she get out of it before it falls apart under her. I have a very practical and pragmatic kind of mind when it comes to money and I know that at this point, the house is worth at least $60,000. If the furnace goes or the roof or any of the other myriad things that are just hitched together like electricity, etc., it is going to be reduced dramatically in value because it will become not just a fixer-upper but a real fixer-upper. It will mean less income for the rest of her life.

I would have preferred that she sell the house before she went on this journey, but instead she left it in the care of my Spanish cousin C. My father’s brother moved to Spain after the Korean war, did his schooling there all the way through to the doctorate, taught Andalusian history until his alcoholism rendered him unsuitable for that professorial job, and since that time he has been teaching English as a second language. He cannot drink any more because of his cirrhosis. He lives with his wife who is very hard to live with and C. tells me he does not speak, and certainly never, ever in English. He dislikes English a great deal.

C., on the other hand, is assured a life. He is about 27 years old. He showed up on mother’s doorstep about three weeks before the letter announcing that he was coming came, but it was perfect timing. My father had just died and my mother was a total lost soul. She didn’t know any reason to go on living. She had no outside interests at all except church work. So she was just sitting there and crocheting things she didn’t have to crochet, and reading books, and doing double-cross sticks and playing solitaire. With C. there going to school and working, she has someone to be in the house with her to help, by taking care of the house while she is gone, feeding the cats and making sure all is well. C. is wanting to learn the electronics and is taking English as a second language to improve his English, which is being improved by the day.

He is very bright and he is wonderful. I am very grateful for him and for the housekeeper, M.W., who is very loyal to mother and who has done many things for her that few others would.

I hope simply that mother gets home, gets the house sold, moves where she wants to move and can afford it, and is able to have some more active years because she does love living at this point. With C. to take of and to cook for, she again feels that there is a center to her life. God bless C.

The nearest bank to the self-defense about intensive meditation, and I will say once again to you, no need to do that any more. I trust you. What I can do and what you can do are two different things with two different people. We have two different gifts, but we have the same heart and the same desire to serve. I shall not judge you any further, but celebrate you.

I talked previously about the bliss and the insight when I was talking about M. I think he has concentrated too much on the bliss. I have concentrated too much on the insight and we must meet in the middle. But I am more content than most to let it be a natural process, probably because it has been a natural process as long as I can remember. I am an open person anyway, very spontaneous. Most people at a party think that I am drunk. That I have had at least three drinks because I am just looser and less inhibited than most people.

But that does not mean that I am not completely, single-heartedly focusing on staying in the presence of the Infinite One. I wish very much to be doing what you are doing, to take the knowing out of my meditations; to place it in my life. I am able to do this more for others than for myself and I need to practice mindfulness moment-by-moment. Little-by-little, I feel this will happen.

As to you, how exciting to know that there will be a new direction now for your meditations. I think it is neat that you also like the beach and the ocean. The address that we rent from is very plain. The island has nothing on it but the beach and the sand. There is no golf course, no tennis court, no fancy stuff. It is just like shacks, a beach, and the ocean. But the shacks are nice inside. Pawleys Island Realty, PO Box 306, Pawleys Island, SC 29585. the telephone number there is 803-237-4257. Just to give you some idea of what the cost is, we had to pay about $450 a week for the two weeks that we have the cabin, but we chose a cabin that holds eight people. We like the room.

Jim very much enjoys being separate and I enjoy being separate. I like a different temperature than he does. I like different activities than he does. He does not like the sand and the sea as much as I do. He tends to sleep more so the place that can sleeps eight sleeps two. There are places to be rented for considerably less. They don’t have air conditioning maybe. They don’t have TV for sure. You just decide on what it is that you want, but I will look for a brochure. If I have one I will send it to you. If I don’t, you can send to them for it.

We are occupying Brown up. I had suggested to Jim that we invite you for a portion of that time just so that you can enjoy the sun and the sand and be with us. Jim tends to like being alone, but he might enjoy the sensation of working with Aaron and Q’uo together. He might enjoy that more than he would enjoy simply our being together, which would be between you and me. He enjoys it, for instance, when H.D. and I get together, but he doesn’t really have access to the closeness that we share, whereas in the work, Jim and I work very much in harmony and he thinks that Aaron’s work is excellent. The only channeling he has seen besides the stuff I produce that he is really in synchronization with and he has mentioned to me that it would be interesting to allow Q’uo and Aaron to speak to each other, one way or another.

At any rate, Pawleys Island is just a big sand box. So it would be fun. We’ll just see. It is not until somewhere in the middle of August.

I agree with Aaron about your getting the book written. Although it will be found for your work to be published, I feel fairly sure of that. You are attracting a lot of good attention, a lot of favorable comment and this will bear fruit.

You asked me why I would need to become a recluse. Actually there is more to that than meets the eye. Jim would enjoy being a complete hermit. He wants to support my church. No matter how much of a recluse I am, he wants to get me to church because he feels strongly that is what feeds me. It is not a matter of giving up church in order to be a recluse. It is a matter of being at Avalon eventually in a place where it would be very difficult for people to come. Consequently, I think it would be a fairly reclusive life, but I don’t feel that I would be alone because, of course, I would have my tape recorder. I would have my letters. I would have my work. It would simply be that I probably would not have the Sunday meetings per se unless there was someone who was dedicated enough to our work to come and make a third person at our sessions because I don’t channel with just two people. I do not find that for myself to be enough protection. You and I are different in that I think one is enough for you, but we are just different.

I was not meaning to define what I could or could not do by saying recluse, I was simply meaning that I was willing to bend to the desire of my husband to be a recluse, which is what he really wants. He lived by himself for 6 ½ years before he came with me. He has sacrificed a great deal for the Ra contact and for my sake and I would not feel at all upset about moving to the country. I do not know what it is like to live in the country. I am a city girl, but it would be interesting to be more in touch with the earth, the insects that I irrationally fear at this point. There is something to be learned there. I adore trees.

I simply do not know one from another so there is much to learn and I think I could enjoy being more of a recluse than I am as far as seeing people in the physical. I am a very independent gal and when I talk to someone on tapes, it is as though I was talking to that person quite personally.

I like your suggestion about writing the story of my life now. If I ever get caught up, I just might do that. That doesn’t seem to be happening in the very near future.

I believe I answered this before, but just very briefly, yes, I do have friends that can help me with Jim’s need for solitude. My greatest hope is that T.F. at this point wanting to become a boarder of ours will allow Jim the complete freedom to come and go as he pleases because Jim has always been afraid to leave me over night for reasons known only to him. I hardly can see what is going to happen at 4 a.m. with me safely in bed.

Do let me know eventually about your work with J. It sounds very exciting. Again, I acknowledge that you were saying to Jim, “Jim, what is wrong with writing to Carla for the joy of writing. I have the joy of writing; Carla the joy of reading and answering. You, the work. Not fair. Maybe we need to bring you into this correspondence so you can share it too. As you type Carla’s replies, please do add your own comments. I have enjoyed getting to know you too.”

That is in the letter for Jim to type and for him to think about and I am sure that as he very tersely said this morning, he will let the spirit move him.

Your experiences in channeling Aaron are a delight to me. They are somewhat different from mine and I have a good deal to learn. Yours is a simpler way. Perhaps you are a simple person. At any rate, it is wonderful to be learning and to be relaxing.

As far as the dream is concerned about getting into bad situations and giving up, I think a part of me had given up for a moment when the doctors said all that stuff about your life is going to come to an end unless we figure this out because you can’t eat solid food. Well I started eating solid food again. That is all. I decided that if I threw it up, I threw it up so I was and still am frequently sleepless during the night because of a very hurtful stomach, but I eat, so I am not going to die.

I am carrying a tremendous amount of water weight and look like a pregnant telephone pole, but I am beginning to accept that. My vanity probably needed that sort of thing. I have been so light for 47 years. I am noting to Jim at this time as I wind down this letter, that there will be a continuation of not only a letter of the letter that I had written to B. She did not finish responding to my letter. She will be responding to it some time in the future. It will not be a new letter. It will just be the rest of this letter and she really would like you, Jim, to be a part of this correspondence.

Thank you for your love and your prayers and the words “ cherish yourself.“ I truly, truly love that. I found. something in Thoreau that spoke to our experiences together and I am going to read it and say good-bye before I give you some small news.

He says in Walden, “One inconvenience I sometimes experienced in so small a house the difficulty of getting to a sufficient distance from my desk when we began to utter the big thoughts and big words. You want meaning for your thoughts to get into sailing, trailing and run a course or two before they make their port. The [inaudible] of your thought must have overcome its lateral and ricochet motion and fallen into its last and steady course before it reaches the ear of the healer. Else it may plow out again through the side of his head.

“Also, our sentences want to bloom and unfold and form their columns in the interval. Individuals like nations must have suitable broad and natural boundaries, even a considerable neutral ground between them. I have found that it a singular luxury to talk across the pond to a companion on the opposite side.

“In my house we were so near that we could not begin to hear. We could not speak low enough to be heard as when you throw two stones into calm water so near that they break each other’s undulations. If we are merely loquacious and loud talkers than we can afford to stand very near together, cheek by jowl, and feel each other’s breath.

“But if we speak reservedly and thoughtfully, we want to be farther apart that all animals’ heat and moisture may have a chance to evaporate. If we would enjoy the most intimate society with that in each of us that is without or above being spoken to, we must not only be silent, but commonly so far apart bodily that we cannot possibly hear each other’s voice in any case. Referred to this standard, speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing, but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout.

“As the conversation begin to assume a loftier and grander tone, we gradually shoved our chairs farther apart until they touch the wall in opposite corners and then commonly, there was not room enough.”

I think that talking through the mail is room enough. It gives us both a chance to ponder and to enjoy. As to what is coming up for us, I have told you already about the two reunions. My daily work now consists strictly of either music or L/L letters and channeling and teaching, except for the prayer group work, which is negligible, taking perhaps an hour or two a week. I take a nap in the afternoons and will be doing so very soon now as it approaches noon time.

I love you lots, B., and I hope you may find play, and the courage and confidence in yourself to ask for what you need from your family and to allow the people around you to offer love offerings in a tangible way by helping you do the work that they can do, so that you do the work that they can’t do. Let them help you have more time to talk to Aaron, to work on yourself and to be of service. Think about it. It is just a thought. Not something I am sure about. It just seems to me that you are still trying to be super mom when you really could let people help you more without losing the quality time that you spend with your kids and your husband.

You need some time for yourself. You are the censor. If you are not okay, your work is not going to be okay so treasure yourself just as you told me to cherish myself.

Blessed love to you, B. I will be singing a piece out of Cantata 95, Bach’s Cantata for Passion Sunday for Palm Sunday and the crazy twelve-part piece by Boetheus, which will make the St. Francis of Assisi church ring for a good second and half after we finish. It is going to be glorious and it will happen on Palm Sunday.

God bless you and keep you and I send you my love and joy and blessings on your work, and a greeting of love and blessing to Aaron as well. Cheerio.

Carla